The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.,
racist THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
TIMES.—The probable invasion of the Punjaub
occupies a prominent place in our India news of this
month. Hostilities, it is said, are meditated there,
and this invasion is one of self-defence on the side of
this country. Another statement of the case is more
simple, and subjects the territory of the Punjaub to ,
what is called the law of extension on the part a the
Indian empire. The two statements may probably
be combined. Want of order and government in a
native district takes the form of anti-English out-
breaks; and the Indian empire outside is a pressure
always at hand to make its way through any channel
opened to it, as air rushes into a vacuum. The result
is the combination we mention—native States act the
assailant, and English empire extends. The case of
the Punjaub is one of a class. No new moral or
political hypothesis has to be invented for it. One
casuistical mould fits all the stages of our Indian
progress from the first. The mould was made
under Lord Clive and Warren Hastings; and it still
remains in the Government workshop, and forma
the foreign policy of one Governor-General after
another. Lord Ellenborough and Sir Henry Har-
dinge are individually as different men, perhaps, as
could be found to succeed each other; but their po-
licy is the same. Their policy is the same, because it
is neither's o*n policy. Sir H. Hardinge finds his
course cut out for him as soon as ever he gets to
India. Ile hears as soon as he lands that he is to
invade the Punjaub, and has his lesson given him,
his line laid down for him—just as a soldier comes
to be drilled. The Governor-Generals act, in this
respect, one like another. The Indian policy is a
Procrustean one with respect to its conductors; and
requires spirit and activity rather than originality
in the latter. Here, in fact, is the old story again,
which recurs like a dream. We heard of Sinde two
years ago and Lord Ellenborough; now of the Pun-
jaub and Sir Henry Hardinge. The internal con-
dition of this State has been one of the greatest
confusion and anarchy for a long time. The chiefs
live by plunder, and amuse themselves with perpetual
feuds ; a weak minor of questionable legitimacy sits
nn the throne, and cannot control them. The Sikhs,
a ieowerful military, race, not unlike the Ma-
melukeg of. Egypt in position, are filled with
a spirit of hostility to the Indian Govern-
anent. poet Igahomed and his son, Akbar Khan,
with a third, Yar llahomet, the usurper of Herat,
have, it is said, fin-met; an alliance, and made arrange-
ments with lieera Singh a:"'d the Sikhs, in prepara-
tion for an attack on the Eng;:sh territories. These
intrigues are well known, and Sir eery Hardinge,
it is thought, will make use of his kri:.weledge, and
anticipate their invasion by an invasion of his own.
A singular unanimity is said to pervade the opera-
tions of the chiefs of the alliance ; and they eihibit
altogether a more formidable frontage than a native
attack has often presented. Lord Ellenborough
showed some acuteness, though an acuteness not con-
sistent with the rules of the Company's service,
in the undisguised and bold partiality with which
he treated the military department as opposed
to the civil. Lord Ellenborough seemed to
foresee the line which things wet* • taking, and
saw that the military were the department to
be attended to and complimented. India was bright-
ening up a little from its grave commercial character
into the belligerent one; and foreign relations were
taking the place of internal. His Lordship took the
camp accordingly, and sank the Hon. Company's ser-
vant in the gallant man of arms. He took a regular
taste for a soldier's life, acted the comrade, and looked
forward to being the favourite and admired of the
Indian army—their great man. We rather question
whether, if his Lordship had had the veteran experi-
ence of a full-blown general, he would have found his
enthusiasm so great, and whether the charm of novelty
was not a considerable ingredient in the mixture of at-
tractions which connected Lord Ellenborough with the
military department. But so it was. "The only regret
I feel," says his Lordship in his farewell speech at
the dinner given him by the military society at Cal-
cutta, " the drily regret I feel at leaving India, is that ,
of being separated from the army. The most agree-
able, the most interesting part of my life, has been
that which I have passed here, in cantonments and in
camp." According as Indian policy takes the foreign
direction, the military acquire more and more int-
portance. If they have a great deal to do, they must
be complimented, cheered, and courted. The late
Governor-General did this ; and though he did it in
a way invidious to the civil service, and contrary, to
rule, there was some point in the adoption of the
line. Sir H. Hardinge has now a fair field before
him. Ile goes out with apparently fewer difficul-
ties than his predecessor; with a line well marked
out for him, and a thoroughly understood Indian
policy to carry out. According to the account
of our correspondent he has started well, and suc-
ceeded—though there is a disparaging proverb as to
such early successes—in creating a most favourable
impression of himself in the eyes especially of the na-
five gentry. Ile will not have the temptation of a
new soldier to set up the military above the civil, and
make invidious distinctions. With respect to the
.Punjaub—there is no reason why he should wait
for a_positive invasion from that quarter before com-
mencing proceedings, provided he can satis-
factorily make out that an invasion is threatened.
The ordinary rules of self-defence allow an anticipa-
tion of the attack, provided the intention of attack
can fairly be proved. But there should be this proof.
Even our Indian policy, not a very straightlaced
one, should have its evidence to bring forward on
this heed. We have alluded to the subject of the
Indian army : we will mention one point—the prac-
tice of military flogging, which is, it is said, to be
revived there, having been dropped ever since Lord
William Bentinck's Governor-Generalship. The dis-
cipline in some of the native regiments seems bad
enough, certainly ; but this is not the proper mode of
remedying it. Flogging never reclaimed a mutineer;
and a recurrence to the practice will be a much more
odious thing than the original practice itself. The
fault in the native regiments seems to be the want of
officers, not of modes of punishment. With the
present inadequate establishment the routine work of
the army, on which so much depends, is necessarily
all done. We shall be disappointed if the addition of
an extra captain to each regiment will not supersede
the proposed cat-o'-nine-tails. At all events, we hope
the (xperiment will be tried first.
CHRONICLE.—From Lord Ellenborough's cha-
racter it might easily have been anticipated that he '
could not quit the Indian stage without committing
some of those strange antics which must immortalise
him as a hero of political melodrame. Still, his
quiet retirement to private life, and the failure of all
attempts at Calcutta to get him the usual ovation paid
to departing Governors, led us to hope that the award
of such abrupt dismissal had recalled him to a sense
of dignity, and of the respect due to the high office
which he held, as well as to those from whom he de-
rived it ; and although a rumour reached us by the
last mail of his having sat and talked in solemn
'banquet with the military chiefs whom he pa-
tronised, casting insult and defiance at the civil
authorities of the Indian Government, we did not
credit behaviour so marked with spite, disgrace, and
impolicy. If there is a country in the world in which
Europeans of all classes should be taught to hold ami-
cably and equally together, it is India, where they
are so insignificant in numbers and eminent in posi-
tion. If there is a country where civilian rule and
political prudence ought to be made to predominate
over brut! ideas of violence and conquest, it is again
India, where the material force of the European is as
nothing compared with his moral predominance—
where wealth and revenue, instead of being co-existent
with empire, is-found generally in the inverse propor-
tion of extent, and where glory is a dear and idle gain,
too distant to affect our character with our true rivals,
and calculated to awe merely the subject or semi-
subject races of Asia.. hence all the great men
'who have ruled and conquered Hindostan,
gladly embraced every opportunity of sinking
the soldier in the statesman, considering
administrative reform and organization achieve-
ments more difficult and more glorious than
routing or crushing barbarian hordes. As to Lord
Ellenborough, if he was sent to India with any
specific views at all, it was as the representative of
these ideas. He went out enthusiastically, obstinately,
-perversely civilian, and his first act was to " snub"
his predecessor, in a proclamation, for having sent
armies across the Indus. The smell of gunpowder
was, however, too much for the weak brains of the
new Governor, and no sooner did he taste of "pomp,
pride, circumstance of glorious war," than all his ideas
M India, of its wants, of his own duties, and of his
employers' wishes, changed as if by the touch of a
magician's wand. Whatever censure such unwarranted
and sudden change may deserve, it certainly is
patter pf amazement that his Lordship should
not have been prepared for the strong disap-
• probation which his whisk round to a war-
policy must have excited in England. We
are not now going to discuss the merit of the
achievement wrought under Lord Ellenborough. We
may merely remark, that the glories won in battle
are the greatest slurs upon his administration. They
were glories, because won over enemies equal or su-
perior to us in numbers, enraged and emboldened by
our own rashness and injustice. We perilled success,
-where a slight degree of prudence would have ren-
•dered it so certain, that neither Scindia nor Mahratta
(thirst have offered resistance. They were battles
fought, not for the security of India or the mainte-
Dance of rights, but for the glorification of Lord El-
lemborough, and the illustration of his military friends.
That these friends should have feted him excites
neither our surprise nor our censure. But no words
ly-,,,ean convey condemnation strong enouh upon an
N-ndividual placed in the rank of the Queen's vice-
and representative in India, who would be
'rented is exclusively delighted with all he
bacrseen in camps—who, having undertaken such