The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

Now, if this is Anglo-Indian public feeling in
the Peninsula, all we can say is, that so far from
sympathising with it, we would heartily join the
Calcutta Government in modifying it. If this is a
true representation of it Calcutta public feeling is
very different from public feelingat home. There is
this great difference,—that public opinion here has
always made the distinction between a mutiny and
a rebellion, between the soldier and the ordinary
native. We ourselves have all along expressly
maintained that this has bean a military revolt, not
a national one. Here there has been no feeling
against the Hindoo as such. We do not say this
as any matter of moral triumph over our country-
men in the Peninsula. We can easily understand
the sort of things that people say on the spot from
sheer disgust, horror,
_melancholy, and temporary
despair. Events strike much more strongly on
the spot. These Anglo-Indian expressions of feel-
ing are probably rather a vent to outraged hu-
manity, just as ejaculations are to bodily pain,
rather than deliberate statements. The fist idea

which an earthquake_ inspires is to distrust the

very solid globe itself ; when the earth has once
given way under one's feet, one feels as if one could
never rely upon it again • the very beauty of
nature appears so much treachery, and under every
smiling cornfield and glowing vineyard we suspect
a latent volcano. Persons who have been travel-
ling in a train when an accident has happened, even
though they have escaped hurt themselves, have felt

a certain giving way of an inward railway faith, as '
if they could never travel again with exactly the
same sense a security with which they travelled
before. The English in India have naturally, some
of this feeling. The Peninsula was, to all appe
mice, quiet, prosperous, satisfied. English influ-
ence and English law were gaining ground every
day, and the rule of a hundred years seemed to
have produced as its results an established obedience
and a natural loyalty, when the volcano burst, and
the sepoy mutiny disclosed rebellion, barbarity, and
revenge lurking in Hindoo hearts. It is natural that
under such circumstances the Anglo-Indian should
feel his faith in the Hindoo shaken to its basis, and
that he should say to himself, " Well, it's of no use;
we have given them a good Government now for a
century, and this is the result." There is no won-
der that he should for a moment desrair, and that
despair should speak in accents of indignation. The
truth is that this sort of language expresses all sorts
of feelings. Its uppermost expressions are those of
burning resentment, but this very language of re-
sentment is the vent at the same time to gloom and
despondency. We do not lay claim, then, to any
moral triumph over Anglo-Indian public feeling,
but we must at the same time call attention to this
distinction between public feeling in the peninsula
and at home—viz., that we have never been bitter
agaißst the mere native. We have from the first

stigmatised the outbreak as a military one—an ex-

per-iment of wanton ambition, the offspring of all
those motives which produce military revolts—ra-
pacity, insolence, ferocity, and passion. But we
have let off the native population at large, t o
easily some have said, who interpreted our consi-
deration for the Hindoo as a mask and a disguise,
which we wished to throw over the Indian outbreak
itself, to conceal its importance and its depth.
But, though we would caution our countrymen
in India against an indiscriminating exasperation,
which would involve mutineer and ordinary native
in the same guilt, we do not go along with th 3
Calcutta Government in its absurd attempts to
hamper the military commanders in the execution
of justice upon the mutineer. It is very easy fur
half-a-dozen civilians in a room to draw up
a set of instructions, no single one of which
will be open to objection, and yet the generd
effect of which will, be to hamper military jui-
tice. To issue such a set of instructions, having
a►owedly for their object the mitigation and dimi-
nution of punishment, is at any rate to tell our
Brigadiers beforehand that we suspect them ; that
we think them savage, hard, unfeeling men, who,
if left to themselves, will massacre everybody they
meet, and overrun the whole country with fire and
sword. Fancy au Engli.h General, who has had
the example of brave, nobleyand benevolent chiefs
of the service before his eyes ever since his boyhood,
being told exactly how he is to proceed, and cau-
tioned at every step against punishing innocent
men. "Do not kill everybody you see ;if a mar►
has simply fed turkeys, or carved satinwood, or
ornamental slippers, or broidered saddles for the
last year, he is not to be hanged ; if you come to a
perfectly inoffensive village which it can be proved
for certain has done no Englishman any harm,
which has done nothing•for the last six months but
grow rice, or tobacco, or cotton, or Indian wheat,
do not burn it to ashes. and put all its inhabitan!s,
men, women, and sucking infants, to the sword."
Did the instructions simply amount to this, their
very unmeaningness would hamper our command-
ers, because they would naturally suppose that the
Government regarded them as savage men, and
would therefore weigh every act of severity which
they had to perform in a rigid and auspicious ba-
lance. Generals who are not trusted by a Govern-
ment act under a disadvantage. How much let-
ter, when armed rebellion and outrage have put a
country under military law—when ordinary civil
justice is for the time necessarily suspended, and
British rule must use extraordinary means for its
vindication—to trust your military commanders.
What particular use for issuing cautions and antici-
pating cruelties ? Are English Generals made of
such unfeeling stuff 1 Is that their character in his-
tory I Are they rough, uneducated men, too, who
know nothing about public opinion at home, and
how strongly we feel here against unnecessary bar-
barities and sindiscriminat ing vengeance? Our Gene-
rals in India are, we frucy, fully up to this home
standard; they have no wish to violate it ; they
naturally want to stand well with the public when
they come back here to enjoy their hard-earned
laurels. It is not likely that they would dmli-
berately tarnish their good name by ferocious and
bloodthirsty acts. They have nothing to gain and
everything to lose by such tactics. Shall we
be told of what the 10th at Dinapore has
just done ? That is nothing to, the purpose. We
know that the English common soldier will
behave at times with a wild justice, especially
when he has heard that the women and children

of another British regiment has b :en massacre:3,
after experiencing cruel indignity and torture.
But we are talking now of our Generals. They
are the persons whom these instructions are
meant to influence ; and we suspect that they
do not want those instructions, ar.el know per-
fectly well how to execute military justice so-
berly, temperately, and judiciously without them.
When a country falls naturally under military law,
leave it to the action of that 1• w. Military justice
is not necessarily bad because it is not civil justice.
It may be exercised with as much f,rbearance, in
proportion to the circumstances wiqr which it has
to deal, as civil justice can be. Our Generals will
not be able, perhaps, to check all brutality in their
soldiers; pho can stop the passion of an army in
its very triumph, when, inflamed by wrong, it
enters at last the devoted city 1 There is a terrible
force in the swing of events, when, after the long
whizzing circuit, it comes to its climax. But our
Generals will, we apprehend, do what they can,
and do what English Generals always have don
to suppress as far as possible all that deserves the
name of cruelty.

THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE AND TU INDIAN FUND.
—A tubscripticn from Mae c!erkv, sorters, and letter
cartier3 of the eiroulation glepartmet.t of tha Gener:l
Post-oce, amounting ten 1371. 12-. Bd., 1,a3 beau paid
to the committee of the Indian Relief Fund, T,iin large
6um was collected in the circulation d,pattinent :,I;ne ui
the General Post-office, and i 3 a moot enditalt: test.-
mony to the public Ppir:t of this body of civil servants.
—Gird Serrice Gazette. _ _

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