The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-15 00:00:00

do-nothing principle, and let matters take their•
course, whether for weal or woe, is far more ac-
ceptable, than an energetic man who dares to think
for himself, and to act in accordance with hir,
well-considered conclusions.
The mysterious silence, to which we yesterday
alluded, respecting Sir COLIN CAMPBELL, is thus
explained. He has, we fear, been forced into
collision with the civilians, and of course no notice
could be taken of the difficulty, by the " Secretary
to the Government of India !" It is probably on
this account that his name has been so completely
ignored—that no allusion whatsoever is made to
his sayings and doings. If disabled by illness it
would have been stated, or if he had set out to
join the army before Delhi, or to bring with him
reinforcements to the gallant HAVELOCK, some
notice would surely have been taken of his pro-
ceedings. It is only to be explained by the exist-
ence of differences and dissensions, such as have
already been rumoured. Sir COLIN is not,
however, the man to permit himself to
be swathed and fettered in bandages of red-tape.
He well knows what is expected at his bands, and
he possesses sufficient energy to assert his own
rights and privileges. He is no sluggard, to per-
mit unauthorised and unjustifiable usurpation,
and those who may attempt it will find a very
tough customer in the dashing and straightforward
Highlander.
Our facetious contemporary, Punch, who gene-
rally contrives to " hit the right nail on the head,"
and to inculcate precepts of sound wisdom in its
own peculiar style, has by cartoon and verse
direct©d attention to this truly deplorable
circumstance. The cartoon represents the
General, who so pre-eminently possesses
the national confidence, as a modern Laocoon
assailed by " the serpent that's made of
red-tape." The sword which he has so often
wielded in his country's service, both in India
and the Crimea, is apparently glued to its scab-
bard. He is complelely paralysed, but we ven-
ture to predict that the result will be very diffe-
rent, and that the red-tapists will come off
second best from the encounter. As we have
already stated, he is supported by the people of
the United Kingdom, and they will supply the
necessary strength to conquer the common enemy.
The verses of our contemporary are so exceed-
ingly appropriate, that we cannot refrain from
repeating them here. They are as follows :

THE RED-TAPE SERPENT.
Sir Colin has landed, his forces are banded,
And sworn that no murderous Sepoy shall 'scape,
Bat the first of the foes to encounter his blows
Is the pestilent serpent that's made of Red Tape.
Sleek clerks with white liver " had ventured to differ
With Campbell, our Highlander, touching the shape
He should give the campaign" that's to give us again
The empire they have ruined and lost by Red Tape.
A. black-hatted fool is presuming to school
A. soldier whose banners are muffled in crape,
Through the folly and crime of " officials" no time
Will ever set free from tie strings of Red Tape.
The idiots stood gazing while cities were blazing,
And all they could do was to gibber and gape ;
Yet now dare to wrangle, and seek to entangle
The Avenger's bright sward in their links of Red Tape.
Let us hope that Sir C. has resolved to be free,
To launch as he pleases his steel and his grape,
And en route for the slaughter by Jumna's red water
Has mangled the Serpent that's made of Red Tape.

The moral is sound. He has a sharp contest to
fight before he can come face to face with the re-
bels. Unless that monster be destroyed or para-
lysed, he can do comparatively little with the►ene-
my. He will not howeverfail before "the watcher
on the threshold." He has the true Highland
spirit and hardihood to command success, and we
earnestly hope, that strengthened and sustained
by the voice of public opinion, he will, ere setting
out for tie scene of his more arduous duties, suc-
ceed in strangling or rendering subservient to his
views

" The pestilent Serpent tbat'■ made of red tape."

We have but too often to dissent from the politics
and ecclesiastics of the Bishop of OXFORD and Mr.
GLADSTONE, it is, therefore, with the greater plea-
sure that we notice their efforts in a right direc-
tion. Both of them are orators of no mean en-
dowments, but both, unfortunately, are ever too
ready to convert ingenuity into sophistry, and to
employ a plausible or a fluent eloquence in the
worse cause. Hence, and hence alone is it, that
the opinion of both of them is wholly destitute of
weight with the country. There are men whose
powers of utterance are but limited, who have no
resources for garnishing a topic ; for overwhelm-
ing the auditors with a torrent of words, or for
inventing innumerable specious arguments ; their
nature is too truthful to see anything but the
truth, or their judgments too honest to accept
mere plausibilities, even if they occur to them,
and to vend them to others as sterling reasonings.
Such men's &pinion, passes for something. That
they should think sow, is a reason for our studying
their thoughts although not borne to us on the
surface of a stream of eloquence. Just the re•
verse is it with our two ecclesiastical and lay ora-
tors. No one thinks their mere opinion worth a
straw. We all know that pure faction, or High-
Church fancies, are most probably the fathers of
half, and more than half their oracles ; and that if

we interpret them fairly, they mean that SAMrEL
of OXFORD has the power of imparting Divine
gifts inherited from the Holy Apostles at Rome,
and that W. E. GLADSTONE, Esq., is the man
who, if England were in its senses, would be now
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one day or
other a notch higher than that. Hence we natu-
rally run through their speeches as we do those of
advocates on the wrong side, merely wishing to
ascertain whether they have lighted on any inge-
nuity or plausibility, which it is worth while to
reduce to a common denominator with men's or-
dinary thought and language, that its value may
thus be easily computed by all.

But we ought not to write in this strain just
now. Both gentlemen have been speaking on
India, and speaking at a Church of England mis-
sionary meeting ; and, considering the topic and
the occasion, have spoken on the whole well. The
Bishop, as became him, confined himself to our
religious, or, rather, our irreligious misdemea-
nours there. Rightly enough did he denounce
the selfish c)wardice of the EAst India Company,
which, out of no regard to religious liberty, but
perhaps from regard to rupees, literally humbled
themselves to their own subjects. If Mahomme-
dans went to one extreme, if they " dared do
more than became a man," by forcing their creed
on Hindoos, we dared do less than became men ;
for we long excluded the ministers of our
religiop from India—long tolerated by law
the disinheritance of natives who adopted
our faith—long broke a native soldier from
his rank in the army, if he became a Christian—
long paid tribute to an idol-worship in which men
were, literally, immolated beneath the wheels of
the idol's chariot--and, to the last, by every go-
vernmental act, proclaimed that a faith of follies,
obscenity, and cruelty, was worthy of official
homage, and of being placed on a level with our
own I ! Tht Bait India Company—for they are
the men who thus abased
flattered and petted the English nation,
wiser° they ought at most to
have tolerated and pitied. The result is now be-
fore
us. We have tried to buy off the opposition
of an ineffably barbarian faith and Priesthood, as
Rome tried to buy off barbarian swords--and
with the same results. We have had indeed all
I the humiliation for worse than nothing. We laid

ourselves in the dust before JUGGERNAUTH, SIVA,
VISHNU, and old MAHOMET too ; and their wor-

shippers or disciples have tried to put their foot on
our necks for it 1 The Bishop and the M.P. did
their part on this topic well. We trace, however,
the origin of the evil to the Government of India
by a batch of little-souled traders. English gen-
tlemen would not thus have dishonoured their
faith and lowered themselves, like Dutch burgc-

masters, for mere gain.
Mr. GLADSTONE, as became him, wielded the po-
Ljtical lash, and this time applied it to the right
delinquent. He denounced in his best style, the
secrecy of Indian Administration. It was so conducted
that India is to Englishmen a Foreign country,
and that no one knows anything of it, unless he
has made it a special study. This is perfectly
true. All political questions of any importance
are more or less understood by the constituencies ;

they are discussed in the House of Commons and
in the Peers ; they are presented catechetically at
the hustings in all important elections ; every
man who pays the least attention to public matters
has some opinions about them ; but on India it is
a thousand to one whether he has any opinion at
all. Australia and the Canadas, as soon as they
began to be important through their trade and
population, began also to attract the attention of
the people at home ; but India, whose population
is talked of sometimes as 200,000,000, some-
times as 150,000,000, sometimes as 100,000,000,
as if a few score millions were a matter of indiffer-
ence there, has, till this very outbreak, attracted
infinitely less attention than the humblest question
of domestic policy. The country, like the Hud-
son's Bay territories; has been treated as the
property of a trading company. Tnis company
and the Board of Control have quietly parted the
patronage between them ; and the latter has
received the aristocratic share of the patron-
age
as the price of letting the com-
pany do what it would with its own ; and,
pretty effectually, has the company barred
the door in the face of the general English
public. "India for the Civil Service !" has been
their motto, when it ought to have been " India
for the Indians, through making it attractive to
English energy, commerce, and capital !"
The Company's break-down is complete. Not
a rag has it left to clothe its nakedness, and glad
are we to number Mr. GLADSTONE among its un-
sparing enemies, for with a good cause what may
he not effect I Leaden Hall has not politically a
shilling in the pound, and we hope the coming
session will see it pronounced an uncertificated
political bankrupt, and forbidden ever to trade
political administration again.

_
Reverting to the Bishop, we were, by the bye, a
little amused at his reference to his father's famous
resolution, ultimately expunged by the East India
Company from the preamble of the Act of 1783
—" that India must be held by the British nation
for the moral and religious good of the nations
thereof." Does SAMUEL of Oxford forget that what
he calls "religious good " his father would have
deemed religious evil, and evil, too, almost as bad
as Mahommedanism or Hindooism itself ? If we
remember rightly, WILLIAM WILBERFORCE was a
leader of "The Clapham Sect," and wrote a once
celebrated book on "Practical Piety," which
piety was, we believe, of the puritan stamp, and
utterly opposed to Apostolical succession dogmas,
baptismal regeneration, and all the second-hand
mummeries of Puseyism. WILLIAM WILBERFORCE,
if we are not mistaken, would almost as soon have
sent Mahommedan Moolvies to India, as Anglican
priests, who believe in apostolical succession and
sacramental efficacy.

Those professional gbonl,!, the Resurrection-
men, have, it is true, become extinct as a separate
class of the community. Their " occupation has
gone," like OTHELLO'S. They have passed away
into that old lumber-room of dilapidated curiosi-
ties in which are stored up the memories of the
Rakehells, and the Footpads, and other Minions
of the Moon, by whom, in byegone times, this
island was so often " frighted from its propriety."
Yet—the new Anatomy Act, by the agency of
which a final quietus was supposed to have been
administered by the Legislature to those very
amiable gentry the Body•snatchers, obviously still
requires considerable revision and amendment.
For—it is perfectly evident that the " witching
hour" still strikes, sometimes, when

" - Churchyards yawn,
And graves give up their dead."

It is manifest, in spite of all our Parliamentary
precautions, that there still remain to this hour
a few supplementary kidnappers of the dead, the
burthen of whose song is that of HAsmor's quaint
friend with the shovel and the waistcoats--

" A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,
And 0 for a winding-sheet !"

The horrible truth that it is so has come out very
recently, in the midst of certain revolting reve-
lations. The disclosures we mean have unex-
pectedly been made in various parts of the me-
tropolis, in connexion with the investigations set
on foot by the police in regard to this hideous
tragedy—the last act but one of which took place
on Thursday se'ennighf, over an abutment of
Waterloo-bridge. The last act being yet reserved
for performance (let us believe) upon a certain
scaffold outside Newgate Gaol, within sound of
the death-bell of St. Sepulchre's.

That occasional Resurrection-men are stiq
abroad at intervals has been pretty clearly proved,
we take it, by two or three of these same disgust-
ing revelations—the Anatomy Act to the contrary
notwithstanding ! A couple of human heads—
one a man's, the other a woman's—are found
poked away as negligently as a pdtsherd or a dead
kitten, under the mould and fallen leaves in a
corner of Sussex Gardens ! A bit of a human
foot is raked up from the filth and slush of the
Grand Junction Canal ! Horrid little pieces of
the human form seem really to be scattered hero
and there all about London—some of these, we
read, bearing evident marks of having been ope•
rated upou by the delicate implements of the
anatomist. One of the heads pulled out of the
earth in Sussex Gardens (the man's head) we are
told ‘, is quite hard and withered." Of the
other, we learn, yet more horribly, that it " is that
of a female with red hair appended." The frag-
ment of the human foot hooked out of the Canal
is described as being " the fore-part of the foot
from the ancle joint" and no more. An odd
skeleton or two about the game time turns up here
and there—evidently secreted away under rather
suspicious circumstances. And not by any means
the least loathsome part -of the proceedings conse-
quent upon the discovery of that sickening carpet-
bag full of bones at Waterloo Bridge, is the fact
that, in the police-yard at Bow-street, they have
been trying to fit one head after another ou to the
mutilated remains of the poor murdered victim !
All this is surely very terrible and very
detestable ! But, for that very reasoa, it
ought on no account to be smoothed over, or
smoothed up. We should, at once and earnestly,
look well to this abomination. We should find
means without delay, we should adopt measures
prompt and well considered, with a view (4 pos-
sible) to the prevention henceforth of the possibility
of our having all the nobler sentiments of hurna-