The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-03 00:00:00

Q OYAL NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT
R.W) INS! ITUTION.—The Committee of this Institut on would
earnestly call the attention of the public to the great and extra-
ordinary exertion which the Society is new making to supply ex-
posed points on the coast with efficient lire-boats, and which will
iavolve an expenditure of more than £3,000: they therefore earnestly
APPEAL to the benevolent for ASSISTANCE to enable them to
c ntinue, with unabated vigour, their hitherto successful exertions
in the cause of humanity.
THOMAS PARING, Chairman.
Oct. 27, 1857. THOMAS CHAPMAN, Dena, y-Chairman.
'I he Committee gratefully acknowledge the following additional
contributions :

The Misses Frends,don. X5O 0 0 James Taylor, Esq., a ...Z1 1 0
L. Poyntz, Esq., 2nd don. 50 0 Admiral sir Eaton Tra-
Lady Jones Parry, don. 50 0 •crs, annual
Sir J ohn Maxwell, Hart., a 5 0 0 Lord Shelborne, don 2O 0 0
- -

Donations and su.scrlptions will
Willis, Percival, and Co ;Coutts an
metropolitan and country bankers ;
at the office of the Inst tution, 14,

I be thankfully received by Messrs.
id Co.; Berries and Co. ; by all the
; and by Richard Lewis, Secretary,
John-street, Adolph'.

WIMBORNE, FRIDAY.
A public meeting in aid of the India Relief Fund
was held in the New Town-hall, in this town, at
two o'clock to-day. The Right Hon. the Earl of
.Shaftesbury, lord-lieutenant of Dorset, who has
just returned from the Continent, presided. There
was a full attendance of the elite of the neighbour-
hood, many of whom were ladies.
Prayer having been offered by the senior clergy-
man of the Minster, the Rev. H. P. Cookesley,
The Earl of SHAFTESBURY rose to address the
assembly. After the cheering with which his lord
ship was greeted had subsided, the noble earl read
letters of apology for non-attendance from Mr. W.
C. Lambert, enclosing five guineas for the Indian
Relief Fund, and another from Mr. Gerard Strut,
M. P., also enclosing 5/.
The NOBLE EARL then said—Ladies and gentle-
men, we are assembled here to-day upon a serious,
I may almost call it a solemn occasion. We are
here to contribute all we can afford towards that
fund that is now being raised for the relief of our
suffering countrymen and countrywomen. I will
not dwell upon this point, because I am sure no ar-
guments will be necessary to excite you to give of
your abundance, according to your means, to the
relief of such direful necessity. But we are also
here to express our sympathy with those who have
suffered unprecedented miseries, resulting, I must
aty,fromunpreeedented crimes; for whetherwe consi
der the things that were done, or thepersons who have
done them, I do not hesitate to affirm that history
will not furnish a parallel of atrocity either in the
principle or in the perpetration of the guilt. And
what were the things that were done ? I must confess
that I have been astonished that some persons
should have been found to maintain that there
ought to be a reserve upon the publication of these
enormous crimes ; that the British people should
not be told in plain, forcible, and true language,
what has been endured by their countrymen and
countrywomen in the East Indies. These atroci-
ties ought to be known, as marking a period in the
history of our race, that in the 19th century men
should be found in any nation capable of such
enormous crimes ; and marking a period that, under
the good providence of God, there could, at the
same time, have been found people professing the
Soristian religion capable of enduring with heroism
pains and insults more grievous than ever were in-
flicted in the early periods of Roman persecutions.
Doubtless, there is a certain reserve that must be
practised in the matter of public writings, because
the cruelties, if recorded, are so vile, disgusting,
offensive to every sense of modesty and shame, so
outrageous, so exceeding human imagination, that
many would recoil from the narrative, and many
would reject it as untrue. Yet ,surely there are
some things that ought to be brought before the
British public when we are appealing to them
for contributions and for sympathy. Will you
not be told that hundreds of your countrymen
and countrywomen have been massacred, with
circumstances of torture and of cruelty un-
precedented in any age, and not to be found in
any nation ? I pass over things that have oc-
curred elsewhere and in other times, but I do think
that the history of these cruelties presents a series
of events for which you will find no parallel in any
history of mankind. Hundreds amd thousands have
been massacred in the onslaught of towns, provinces
have been ravaged, thousands have been put to
death, children have been tossed into the fire iu the
momentary excitement of rage and under the influ-
ence of an assault ; but where have you heard of
such cruelties being perpetrated in cold blood ?
Why, I myself saw the other day a letter from the
highest lady now in India, describing that day by
day ladies were coming into Calcutta, their ears
and their noses cut off, and their eyes put out ; and
I can tell you that children of the tenderest years
have been reserved to be put to death under cir-
cumstances of the most exquisite torture, in cold
blood, not in moments of excitement, as you may
read when the town of Magdeburg was sacked by
the Imperialists, but reserved to be tortured with
circumstances of the utmost refinement before the
eyes of their parents, who were made to witness the
cruelties inflicted—who were made, in cold blood,
to swallow portions of the flesh cut from the limbs
of their children, and themselves afterwards burned
upon a slow fire, to gratify the malignity and the
hellish temperament of those creatures who bear
the human form. Aud who were they who perpe-
trated these atrocities? Was this a nation rising
violation
in the sense of its wrongs, writhing under
torture, plunder, oppression, cruelty ; under the
recover of every
their sacred
lost and
libertiessocial; rising righsting ; ris-
ingas
one man to assert their independence and the
integrity of their religion ? No such thing. Has
any proclamation been put out by the rebels that
they had a single wrong to complain of Have
you found in any one instance a national,
or even
the symptom of a national, rising ? Has not the
whole country, with very few exceptions, been per-
fectly tranquil and quiescent? Have not the greater
part of the villages assisted the royal troops, and
attempted to discomfit the mutineers t Wherever
an exception has occurred it may be traced to the
brigands and dacoits, and those wild and lawless
hordes that will always be found in the continent
of India wandering from one village to another ?
The villagers themselves in no instance have risen
against the British power ; they have known that
their security consisted in the vigour and perma-
nence of her Majesty's dominion. From whom,
then, rose this frightful rebellion ? It arose from
a monster of our own cieation ; it arose from
an army pampered, flattered, overpaid, and un
gefsworked ; it arised from an army that we
had raised by discipline into the attitude they have
assumed ; and, having given it that discipline and
that knowledge of arms and of the military pro-
fession, by our foolish system, and by our neglect,
we allowed it to acquire a sense of its own import-
ance, a convicion that it could act independently
of its European officers, and that it was as ca-
pable as it was willing to take the empire into its
own hands. We drew these soldiers in all their
barbarism and corruption from the votaries of the
goddess Kali—votaries of the grossest, filthiest
cruelties that ever disgraced mankind—from a
set of men to whom morality was a dead letter.
Never having been taught it, they never could have
known it. Constituting these men into an army,
giving them discipline, force, and arms, these men
turn round upon us and say, "The power that we
have we will make our own. You are dependent
upon us, and we will make you feel the force of
our authority." But as for gtievance, what
grievance was ever put forward ? God knows there
is no such thing to be laid to our charge in our
government of India ; and there is nothing to be
laid to our charge in our rule and institution of
the Sepoy army, except the charge of folly, igno-
rance, flattery, and, I must say, foolish and con-
temptible truckling to their pride and superstition,
as we taught them to believe that they were gods,
and that the religion they professed was at any rate
as good as that which we profess. The retribution
that falls upon their crimes must be equal to the
nature and extent of the crimes themselves. His
lordship observed that justice, simple justice,
demands that we should exact of those men that
compensation due upon the perpetration of crimes
unparalleled in the history of mankind. The noble
earl, in an address of considerable length and much
earnestness, urged the presenting of a memorial
to her Majesty, and afterwards to parliament,
seeking better government in India for the future ;
the granting to all religions their full liberty ;
alluded to the courage and bravery of our brethren
there, in securing, before the arrival of one man
from this country, the citadel of Delhi, into which,
as into a trap, the mutineers had ensconced them-
selves ; animadverted upon Lord Canning's mani-
festo, saying it should have been preceded by
a declaration of the determination of the Crown
to do justice, and so prevent the growing hatred of
coloured persons which must spring from this catas-
trophe ; paid au eloquent and impassioned tribute
to a free press, the value of which he never prized
so highly as now ; an I touchingly dwelt upon the
blessed providence of the time when the outbreak
occurred, after the Crimean and Persian campaigns,
and not ere the telegraph could be prevented from
apprising isolated stations of the threatening at
Meerut. The noble earl urged also the placing of
unlimited power in the hands of Government to put
down the mutinies.
Resolutions were passed sympathising with our
fellow-countrymen in the East, and a subscription
list was then formed.
The meeting closed with prayer.

TEMPLE GARDENS.—The chrysanthemums in the
Temple Gardens now present a most beautiful appear-
ance; and the admirers of the MS ill urbe will be well
repaid by a visit to this remnant of Old London, the
benchers having liber lly granted the public admission
We have before had occasion to notice this autumn
show, but we think the flowers this year surpass those of
any former season in variety and beauty. A great deal
of this improvement is doubtless attributable to the par-
tial aupprealion of the (smoke nuisance.