The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-26 00:00:00

BRITISH RULE IN INDIA.

The Rev. Dr. Duff, of Calcutta, has addressed
another letter to the Edinburgh Witness, relative
to the slight in which British rule is regarded in
India. The following is an extract from the rev.
gentleman's letter :
The real fact is, that of loyalty to the British Crown,
in any genuine sense of that term, there is,
except in
rare individual cases, very little to be found among the
people of India. I mean, of course, loyalty in the sense
of attachment, fidelity, or resolute adherence to the
p
erson or cause of a sovereign, especially in times of
revolt or revolution. On this, as on all other subjects,
there have been extreme statements that are equally
wide of the truth. Nu one generalisation, on either
side, can p issibly portray the reality when that reality
is not simple, but mixed—not homogeneous, but vastly
heterogeneous. Briefly, the case may be thus stated,
with some approximation to the truth.
The great bulk of the rural and naturally pacific popu-
lation of Bengal, and several other provinces of India,
if not violently interfered with in their ordinary domestic
and social routine, are totally apathetic on the subject
of their supreme rulers—caring little or nothing as to
who they may be, whether native or foreign. Nate•
rally they are neither loyal nor disloyal—neither love
nor hate the British Government. Of late years, the
cruelties of zemindars, the police, and the harpy myr-
midons about our courts of justice—all of whom they
consider as the agents of Government—have tended to
generate feelings of discontent and disaffection, among
numbers at least, towards the Government which
employs or tolerates such agents. But the intros
duction of a really improved and equitable system,
which curbed and restrained the zemindars aad
police in their endless and nameless tyrannies,
arid administered cheap and easy justice in simple and
summary forms, suited to the wants and neces-
sities of the people, would at once produce among them
feelings, if not of loyalty in any high or noble sense, yet
certainly of quietness, contentment, and uncomplaining
acquiescence. It is for the introduction of such a system
that the missionaries memorialised Parliament a twelve•
month ago, when their apprehension of prevalent dis-
affection were scouted by ignorant and self-sufficient
officials both at home and abroad. The last six months
have served amply to test the relative accuracy of the
knowledge of these respective parties.
The case is totally different with the rural population
of the North-West and Central India. These, for the
most part, are naturally as warlike in their dispositions
and habits as ours in Bengal and elsewhere is pacific.
With them the sword, and rapine, and violence, are the
most delightful pastime. They dislike our Government,
not because it is British, but simply because it ie strong;
just as they would positively dislike any other, whe-
ther native or foreign, which, being equally strong,
would be equally capable of controlling their lawless
predatory tendencies. For the last generation or two,
they have been kept in a peaceful state ; and this state
of necessitated peacefulness has too:often been mistaken
for satisfaction with our rule and its enforced order and
tranquillity. No measures having been devised for the
effectual eradication of the spirit of restlessness and tur-
bulence, it was simply kept down by a force of reprint.
awn ; and the instant the repressive influence was relaxed
or removed, as has recently bean done through the
revolt of the native army, the old spirit of lawlessness
and misrule awoke into a manifestation of terrible
energy. Men are everywhere rioting in the excess of
licence, which they mistake for liberty. Unwilling to
brook the restraints of lawful government, their hands
are uplifted against it, that they may be all the more
free to uplift them against one another. Who-
ever will carefully study the state of things
in the highlands of Scotland upwards of
a century ago, before the ancient spirit of the proud
chieftains and their clans was fairly broken by the battle
of Culloden, and the measures of uncompromising seve-
ritystill
uwohbicrhoktoww olosfaetde
oitf,
fnaeoalyiougndaenrdstparnadotsioome eftnhiNn
and Caitral India. A preliminary measure—heretofore,
in our over-confidence, neglected—towards the ultimate
pacification of these vast regions must be the universal
disarmament of the people, sternly and rigorously carried
out. With their peculiar tempers, hereditary usages and
traditions, rehearsed in the songs of their bards, the cons
tinued possession of arms is a perpetual temptation and
provocative to social turbulence and rebellion. But no
measures, however wise or beneficial, can for many a
year reconcile such a people to the paramount power
that restrains them. Indeed, in the end, it will be found
that the grand and only effectual pacificator and
_rem?.
tiler, after all, is the gospel of grace and salvation, as it
has already proved amid the wildest glens and remotest
solitudes of the highlands and islands of Scotland.
Apart from both these classes, or rather rural mass,
of the Ilindoo family, the members of the Brahmant-
cal race occupy a position of their own —a position
which, in the main, is, and cannot but be, hostile to
the British Goverment. They feel keenly that their
craft is in danger—that the very existence of a Govern-
merit like ours cannot but endanger it in a hundred

ways.
As for countless nondescript tribes that roam up and
down, in a state of barbaric independence, through the
mountain ranges and vast forests and jungles within
the bounds of our Indian empire, they cannot, for the
moat part, be said either to love or hate our Govern-
ment. Of it the greater part can scarcely have any
knowledge ; as with it they never have had any direct
dealings. In instances where the experiment has been fairly
tried, such as those of Cleveland and the Bhaugulpore
hill people, Col. Dixon and the Maws, General Outran.
and the 13heele, it has been proved with what compara-
tive ease some of the most uncivilised and predatory
tribes have been reduced to order, obedience, and appa-
rent contentment with our rule—all through the adop-
tion and pursuit of kindly, conciliatory measures, wisely
contrived and skilfully adapted to their extremely pecu-
liar circumstances. It is only in rare cases like those of
the Coles and Khonds, some 20 years ago, and more
recently of the Sontals, where, driven into despair by
the encroachments, oppressions, and exactions of their
greedy and relentless Hindoo neighbours, they have been
goaded into open insurrection against the paramount
power,
Segregated from the Hindoo and all other Indian
races, and standing out in sullen and gloomy isolation
from them all, are the Mohammedans, exceeding in
number the entire population of the British isles.
Numbers of them still retain and exhibit much of the
innate vigour and energy which they have derived from
the blood of the Affghans, Tartars, and Moguls. Their
faith, not less than their descent, has tended to confer
on them a character of aterness and intractability. First
the conquerors, and for many centuries the sovereign
rulers of Ilindostan, their minds are naturally filled
with visions of past glory, and traditions of the
magnificence cf their empire. Regarding the British as
the destroyers of their power, the supplanters of their im-
perial dynasty, they cannot, and do not, as a class, con-
plete our sovereignty with any feelings of attachments
and loyall. On the contrary, hating us, on religious
grounds, as they hate all other Kaffirs or unbelievers in
the faith of Islam, they additionally detest us on poli-
tical grounds, as in their eyes the usurpers of their
throne and sceptre—the subverters of that absolute
dominion which they once wielded over these gorgeous
realms. Accordingly, as I was led some time ago to
remark in a communication elsewhere, the Mahomme-
dans, as a race, have for the last hundred years not
ceased to pray, alike privately in their houses and pub-
licly in their mosques throughout India, for the
prosperity of the House of Timur or Tamerlane,
whose lineal representative is the titular Emperor
of Delhi. But the prosperity of the House of
Timur, in their estimation, undoubtedly implies
neither more nor less than the downfall of the British
power, and the re-establishment of their own instead.
In their case, therefore, disaffections towards the Bri-
tish Government, with an intense longing for its speedy
overthrow, is sedulou4 nurtured as a sort of sacred
duty which they owe alike to their faith and the memory
of tbeir ancestors. Consequently, no measures, how-
ever cenciliatury or advantageous to them on the part
of our Government, can never render them as a class
well affected or loyal towards the British crown. No-
thing short of complete political ascendancy will ever
eatisfy them, so long as they absolutely adhere to the
faith and traditions of Islam. Besides the private and
public prayers already alluded to for the prosperity of
the House of Timur, there have been circulating for
many years past among the Mohammedan., what they
reckon prophecies connected with the same subject.
Any uue who will try calmly to realise these things--
the hatred which the Mohammedans bear towards us
as Kaffirs, and the special hatred which they entertain
towards us as British Kaffirs, who wield what they
reckon a usurped political ascendancy over the vast realm
while's they once reigned supreme—and all this, coupled
with daily prayers, le private and public, for our over-
throw, together with popular vaticinations relative to
the present as the foredoomed period of our overthrow
—cannot but perceive what a soil was prepared in the
general Mohammedan mind for designing intriguers, in
which to plant the etanourd of treason and revolt against
the British Crown. At the same time the feelings of
discontent and disaffeetion long gathering and brooding
in the minds of the Brahmanical race, and their wishes
and expectations relative to a release from their present
humiliating position, by the destruction of the power
that has degrades them—all happening to chime in
harmony with the aspirations of the Mohammedans--
one may see how both parties, under the hallucination
of blinding eeif-interest, were ready temporarily to
compromise their radical and irreconcileable differences,
for the sake of accompliehiug an intensely desired com-
mon object. And what but Christianity can furnish
anything like a commensurate counterpoise to the
bitterly regretted loss of their earthly power, and dignity,
great n
and reknown ?
lasellatilhmast hoafittein groats°.
varying in kind and degree.
ndsaiaidia, plophrailvaetiobneern
Amongst them all, their are exceptions, with differeucee
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a clerk at Gloucester. MH.
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ltain,gate, has been appointedr' T. Jones, collector at
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Mr..l. Foyster, comptroller
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Mr. J. Glasson, co
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