The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-20 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1844.

When the question of the occupation of Sinde by
British troops under the command of Sir CHARLES
Nartma was before the public, engrossing people's
attention in no ordinary degree, and creating a sin-
gular diversity of opinion among men of all parties,
The Sun was among the few journals that, from the
very first mooting of the question, strenuously
insisted on the occupation of that Indian province.
The majority of our Contemporaries were decidedly
opposed to us on this knotty point, arguing that the
British Government had no moral or legal right to
make war on Sinde, and that it was a most iniquitous
eat of aggression, which would scarcely fail, in the
keg run, to be attended with disastrous consequences.
.'..espite these arguments, which were urged from
fine to time with considerable force and ingenuity,
we still adhered to our original opinion ; for, in the
first place, we were well aware of the treacherous
oanduct of the Sindian Ameers, who set at nought
their most solemn and deliberate pledges; laughed at
the idea of maintaining the faith of treaties, and
made them with us and broke them just as it suited
their convenience, so that there was absolutely no
rt lying on their sense of honour and justice; secondly,
it was a notorious fact that these degraded Ameers
were tyrants of the most remorseless and incurable
character, who oppressed the miserable people sub-
jected to their sway with the most cruel exactions,
exceeding in this respect all that has been recorded of
TIPPOO SAIB and his father, HYDER ALT, and had,
sonsequently, no claim on the forbearance of the
British Government, with which they had so often
played fast and loose ; and, thirdly, they had the un-
controlled possession of the river Indus from its
mouth for several hundred miles up the country, and
blocked us out, whenever they pleased, from this
great highway of nations, thereby crippling our
neans of extending and multiplying the commercial
resources of India, and preventing us from keeping
that quick, vigilant watch on the Affghans, the
Ilelochees, and the wild tribes of the contiguous pro-
vinces, which recent events have shown to be indis-
pensably necessary to the safety of our Indian em-
pire. For these and other reasons, not necessary
here to enumerate, The Sun was a constant advocate
for the occupation of Sinde ; and we are glad to find
our view of the case adopted by the celebrated author
of the " History of the Peninsular WarfeoiNnlajor-
General NAPIER, who, in his work on the
of Sinde"—the first part of which has just maClieurtt
appearance—insists that the occupation of that
country was a step necessarily growing out of Lord
A UCK LAND'S mistaken policy, and which subsequent
events had rendered every IN ay defensible. Speaking I
of the Sindian Ameers, for whose downfal so much
spurious sympathy was at one time expressed in Eng-

land, the gallant author says—" Their stupid,
selfish policy, was to injure agriculture, to check
commerce, to oppress the working man, and to accu-
mulate riches for their own selfish pleasures. What
are the people to us ? was the foul expression of NOOR
MOHAMED to Lieutenant EASTRICR. Poor or rich
what do we care ! If they pay us our revenue, give
us our hunting-grounds and enjoyments, that is all
we require. The most fertile districts was made a
wilderness to form their hunting-grounds. Their
Zenanas were filled with young girls torn from their
friends, and treated when in the harem with revolting
barbarity. In fine, the life of an Ameer was one of
gross pleasures, for which the labour and blood of
men were remorselessly exacted, the honour and hap-
piness of women savagely sacrificed." As regards
their observance of treaties, we are told that " con-
stant evasions or direct violations of every article
attended the conclusion of every treaty. Forged
letters, false seals, secret forms of instruction, false
assertions as to promises which had never been made
by the opposite party—such were the means dili-
gently, systematically, and not unskilfully employed
by the Ameers at all times in their intercourse with
British political agents." Truly it was high time
that such a fertile territory as Sinde, peopled, too, by
inhabitants, simple, hardy, and industrious in their
habits, should be freed from the grinding oppressions
and cruelties of rulers like these ; and we can well
believe that the vast mass of the Sindian population
bless the hour when they were first liberated by
British policy and valour from the heart-withering
despotism of their Ameers. The present part of
General NArsea's work is, as might be expected,
merely introductory, and is principally devoted to a
consideration of the many causes which rendered it
absolutely indispensable in Lord ELLENBOROUGII to
take the bold step of occupying Sinde with a
British army. Of that Noble Lord's system of
Indian policy the gallant author expresses himself
in warm terms of approbation, and hints indirectly
that he fell a victim to a tribe of jobbers and selfish
civilians, by whom he was uniformly misrepresented
to the Court of Directors, who have themselves a
lurking taste for " nepotism," which the Governor-
General (lid all in his power to suppress. The
gallant author's work is written in a style of manly
glowing eloquence, and as a record of military
achievements, is worthy to vie with the ablest that
has ever appeared in England. Perhaps the follow-
ing particulars respecting the Conqueror of Sinde
may amuse our readers :
" Sir Charles Napier embarked at Bombay in the
Zenobia steamer on the 3d of September; thus com-
ruencing his new career upon Oliver Cromwell's fortu-
nate day, a coincidence which he did not fail to note
with some satisfaction as a good omen. Yet the augury
seemed at fault in the beginning; for scarcely had the
vessel, which was full of troops, gained the open sea,
When cholera broke out in the worst form, and the
hideous misery of the voyage, which lasted until the 9th,
shall be given in his own words:—
" 'ln those six bitter days and nights we cast fifty-
four dead into the sea, just one-fourth of our com-
panions! One passenger, it happened, was a surgeon,
and he was assisted by two native apprentices belonging
to the hospitals: fortunately, only two of the sailors
died, or we should have been lost for want of hands.
The engineer perished the third day, but happily, there
were amongst the passengers two others going to the
steamers on the Indus. Since landing, ten more soldiers
have died, and one captain, making sixty-four in all !
This pulls down the spirits of men. It was the worst
description of blue cholera. The agonies, the convul-
sions, the dreadful groans, were heart-rending: and then
the screams of the poor women who lost their husbands
and children! And, amidst all this, in the darkness of
the night, the necessity of throwing the dead overboard
the instant life was extinct, to make room for the living!
Then also, added to this scene of human wretchedness,
the violent effects of the disease could not be cleaned,
and extreme filth increased the misery. Well ! God be
praised! it has ceased, but more troops are on this
voyage, and ,I dread to hear :of similar sufferings, for
most of it has been caused by neglect. I have made a
formal complaint to Sir George Arthur, who, I am
sure, will stir about the matter. The Commander of the
Zenobia, Mr. Newman, is a noble fellow. I believe all
that were saved owe their lives to him; and we, the
officers, have given him a gold snuff-box in token of our
gratitude.'--' On making the land both mates got
drunk, and such a night-scene of confusion I never saw.
We were nearly as possible on a reef of rocks; we fired
guns and rockets, but no help came. had we struck, all
must have perished; at least, all the sick, eighty in num-
ber: at last we cast anchor, and luckily on good holding
ground.'

" His first care was to provide comforts for the sur-
vivors of this dreadful voyage, which he affected by the
toth, but further mishap awaited himself. On the 13th,
while observing the practice of a rocket train, ono of the
fiery missiles burst, rocket and shell together, and tore
the calf of his right leg open to the bone, but neither
the bone itself nor the great artery was iijured; the
wound was instantly stitched and dressed, and then a
life of temperance, aided by a patient spirit of endurance,
was repaid with a surprising cure. The hurt, jagged as
it was, healed by the first intention, and in four days he
was out of his tent: the fifth saw him free from fever,
on horseback, travelling with an escort of wild troopers
towards Hyderabad.
" Some superstition the human mind, whether strong
or weak, seems always to lean towards, and several of
the greatest hare rested thereon; those who deal in war
seldom reject predestination, and Sir Charles Napier's
life, one justifying Lord Byron's remark that truth is
more strange than fiction, encourages this sentiment
though reason should recoil. In infancy he was snatched
while at the last stage of starvation from a vile nurse;
while a young boy, attempting a dangerous leap, he
tore the flesh from his leg in a frightful manner; a few
years later he fractured the other leg. At the battle of
Corunna, struggling with several French soldiers, he
received five terrible wounds, and but for the aid of a
generous French drummer would there have been killed;
he was made a prisoner, and his fate being long un-
known, ho was mourned for as dead by his family. In
the, battle of Busaco, a bullet struck his face and lodged
behind the ear, splintering the articulation of the jaw-
bone, and with this dreadful hurt he made his way under
a fierce sue to Lisbon, more than one hundred miles! Re-
turning from France after the battle of Waterloo, the
ship sunk off Flushing, and he only saved his life by
swimming to a pile, on which he clung, until a boat
carried him off, half drowned, for the pile was too large
to climb up, and he having caught it during the reces-
sion of a wave, was overwhelmed by each recurring
surge. Now, escaping cholera, and a second shipwreck
off the Indus, and marvellously recovering from the
stroke of that unlucky rocket at Kurrachee, he was
again on horseback, and hastening to conduct with
matchless energy a dangerous war—and he did conduct
it to a glorious termination; for neither age, nor acci-
dont, nor wounds, had quenched his fiery spirit; but
how the spare body, shattered in battle and worn by
nearly fifty years' service in every variety of climate,
could still suffice to pace him amongst the famous cap-
tains of the world, is a mystery. His star was in the
East !

The meeting of paper manufacturers and others
concerned in the important trade in that commodity,
at the London Coffee-house, Ludgate-hill, yes-
terday, were unanimous in the expression of
their support to the resolutions submitted to
them, calling on the Government to repeal
the whole of the existing duty on paper. It must be
evident to every observant mind that the necessary
tendency of a tax upon paper must be injurious to the
interests of even elementary education—and oppressive
and pernicious in respect of its bearing on the general
literature of the country. It is, therefore, originally
vicious in its nature. But when we find it demon-
strated in the exceedingly able speech of Mr. DICKEN-
sox, the eminent paper maker (who was voted into
the chair of the meeting), and corroborated by the
personal experience of Sir WILLIAM MAGNAT, the
late Lord Mayor, that the duty " at present presses
on some branches of the paper manufacture so
heavily as to amount from 60 to 150 per cent.," and
that for the collection of this revenue, on the one
hand, " the Excise regulations adopted greatly im-
pede trading operations ;" and on the other, " the
damages done to packages (of exported English paper)
at the Custom-house," by vexatious opening and care-
less repacking, are such as to cause large parcels to be
put aside and sold as waste and refuse on coming to
hand at their destination :--we can scarcely imagine
a branch of trade which could establish a juster claim

upon the consideration of the Chancellor of the Ex

chequer. But the case of the paper makers is strong
in every point of view ; and we agree with Sir W.
MAGNA; that the entire repeal of the duty offers the
"only adequate remedy." The depression of price ac-
cording to the Chairman, "had been occasioned partly
by the reduction of duty," (a reduction of lid. per lb.,
or one-half in the year 1836), " but partly by the
evasion of payment of any duty by the fraudulent
traders." How easily these frauds are practised, and to
what extent, can only he judged by a careful notice of
the facts detailed in the speeches we have referred to,
which also show the enormous extent of the contra-
band importations of glazed and other papers from
France, under the present defective system. Mr.
GAIISSEN said that the revenue derived from the pre-
sent duty was 620,0001., there having been an IN-
CREASE of 60 per cent. .since the reduct;on of duty in
188 G." Can any fact more strongly establish the
wisdom and policy of repealing the whole duty ; from
which repeal, by parity of reasoning, an increase of
just 120 per cent. on the whole consumption of paper,
and therewith the immensely extended employment'

of labour (especially of female hands) in the manu-
facture, may be confidently anticipated ?

A public meeting—the first annual one that has
yet taken place—of the Association for promoting
the Relief of Destitution in the Metropolis, was held
yesterday, at the Hanover-square Rooms. The report
which was read at this meeting, gave, on the whole,
an encouraging account of the prospects of the
Society, for it appears, that within the ten months
which have elapsed since its organisation, upwards of
fifty new societies have been formed, for the visitation
and relief of the poor at their own dwellings; and
upwards of a hundred societies, in different parts of
London, have been brought into connexion with the
metropolitan Association. Moreover, nearly a thou-
sand visitors of the poor have been called into exist-
ence since January last; and, with scarcely an
exception, the whole of the most destitute parts of
the diocese of London is now under a course of
visiting, more or less perfect, by societies supplied
with the means wherewith to meet the temporal
wants of the poor. The Bishop of LONDON—who,
by the bye, is far more usefully employed in advocat-
ing the objects which this Association has at heart,
than in advocating the erection of new churches in
the metropolis, when the old ones are only half-filled
—observed, at the meeting, that the fundamental and
most excellent feature of the Society in question was
the system of district-visiting which it had established
—a system every way calculated to induce the middle
awl upper classes to overstep the chasm which di-
vided them from the lower, to descend from their
elevation into the vale of poverty, and hold out the
right hand of charity to their distressed fellow-crea-
tures. "It was undeniable," said his Lordship, "that
the present age was sadly deficient in that intercourse
between these classes which once prevailed through-
out the country, and which was so conducive to good
feeling towards one another." No one can doubt the
strict truth of this remark, or fail to perceive—if he
be endowed with only ordinary faculties of observa-
tion—the lamentable results that have ensued from
the gradual haughty estrangement of the higher and
middle classes from the lower. Of late years the
mischief has been :one of rapid progress, and its
fruits are now before us in the increasing demoralisa-
tion of the poor, and their conviction—a conviction
which tends to increase their recklessness and
sense of degradation—that those who, from posi-
tion and circumstances, should be their guardians and
benefactors, are utterly indifferent to their interests,
and careless whether they be in a thriving condition,
or rot and die in cellars, garrets, or workhouses.
But within the last year or two a more generous and
Christian spirit has begun slowly to develop itself
in the upper and middle ranks of society. The sig-
nificant warnings thrown out by " Swing," by "Re-
becca," and by Chartism, have not been without
their effect ; and it is now at length discovered that
the vast masses of the overworked and underfed poor
are no longer to be neglected with impunity, for the
iron has entered deep into their souls, and if they can
feel a kindness, and be grateful for it, they can with
still greater acuteness feel a slight, and sternly bide
their time to retaliate. But it is not enough, in the
anxiety to benefit their condition, simply to relieve
their temporal wants, and toss alms to them with
an air of supercilious commiseration ; the kindly in-
tercourse, the encouraging smile, the word of friend-
liness and sympathy spoken in,,season ; the frequent
visit paid in an unassuming spirit to their cottages or,
it may be, their hovels—these are quite as effective
instruments in their way for doing good, and are
even more likely to raise the poor and destitute in
their own esteem, and win them back to the classes
from whom they have been too long estranged, than
the mere act of coldly and ungraciously subscribing
to public associations for their relief. " The rich,"
said the Reverend T. DAL] at the meeting
to which we have been alluding, " had no idea
of the mine of moral wealth to be found often in the
dwellings of the destitute, nor of the noble traits of
character which were constantly displayed by them
in their conduct to wards each other." Numerous
instances of this inherent nobility of nature, flashing
out in the gloomy depths of squalor and destitution,
have from time to time been recorded in the columns
of the public Press, and surely a class, large bodies of
whom can be capable of such conduct as Mr. DALE
hints at, are well worth conciliating, even at the
cost of some personal trouble and inconvenience to
their superiors in station

Madrid journals of the 12th inst. have been received,
but they add nothing to the intelligence which we
have given from the Paris papers.
MADRID BOURSE, DECEMBER 12.—Three per
Cents. 32i cash, and 32i at sixty days. Fire per
Cents. 22 1-3 at sixty days. Floating Debt, 78 at
sixty days. Coupons, 26 at fifty-seven days. Ex-
change on London, 37 5-16.

The two leading Ministerial journals of Paris have
taken different sides in regard to the affairs of Spain
and the conduct of the present Government ; the one,
we suppose, with a view to conciliate the CHRISTINA
party at Madrid, and the other to screen the Court
and Cabinet against the attacks of the Opposition in
the Chambers. The Globe expresses great admira-
tion of the conduct of NARVAEZ in pardoning the
persons lately condemned to death, and asserts that
he was only waiting for an opportunity to show
clemency, without at the same time compromising
his duty to the throne and public order. This is
carrying flattery too far. While NARVAEA could do
nothing less than spare the life of REUGIFO, without
exciting universal execration, he has obtained his
banishment for life, and his agents in the north are
carrying out his murderous system to his heart's
content. The journals announce that three more
of the unfortunate men taken at Hecho and Anso had
been shot at Huesca—a striking proof of the cle-
mency of the Spanish Government ! The Journal des
Debate, on the other hand, denounces the atrocious
system, and calls upon Spain to take warning from
the melancholy example of France during the Revo-
lution. "We have declared a hundred times," it
says, " that we are not the enemies of the present
Spanish Government. On the contrary, we desire to
see it gaining strength, realising its promises, and
producing order and prosperity in that unfortunate
country. If, to arrive at that end, it is absolutely
necessary to reform the Constitution, be it so. But
we cannot have two weights and two measures ; we
cannot laud in General NARVAEZ, orcover over with an
indulgent silence cruelties which, with all well-think-
ing persons in Europe, we have stigmatised in
General ESPARTERO. The blood of ZURBANO'd
sons, shed without trial, and for their father's
crime rather than their own, has not cried more
loudly to our ears than the blood of the un-
fortunate DIEGO LEON. The first principle of
our politics is humenity ; Without it, all the
fine names which parties glee each other are only
odious lies ; without humanity, there is neither liberty,
nor progress, nor veritable order, What is it we de-
'nand from the men who at present triumph and
govern in Spain ? To justify their title of Moderadoes
What sort of moderation is that which would effect its
objects, like tyranny itself, by placing beyond the
law, and by executions without trial. We are re-
inmded that France has passed through these acts.
No doubt she has, and it is that vihich tenders us
more severe towards those who, with our cruel ex-
perience before their eyes, have neither sufficient
good sense nor heart to imitate us in good, in place
of imitating us in evil. Yes, we have had re-
volutionary prevotal courts, placing men out of the
pale of the law, and executions en masse.
We, alas! left nothing to be invented in these
points; all our parties have reciprocally shot,
banished, guillotined each other. Blood has flowed in
torrents, at one time of the Royalists, at another of
the Republicans. Yet, what party has saved itself
by such execrable means ? The Convention killed
enough, and did it not perish in its turn ? But we
have also given another example to the world. Was
not the first act of the Government of July to save
the lives of the Ministers who had issued the ordi•
!lances; and who can tell what blood that first act
of courage and humanity has spared our revolution ?
Blood is not arrested by blood, r,ut by clemency.
Such is the example which we propose to Spain and
her Government ! As long as the Government shall
shoot in Spain, it will have to fear being shut. As
long as it shall act revolutionally, revolution will
threaten it. A pardon granted to ZURBANO'S sons
would have caused their stern father to drop his
arms, or would have rendered him the execration of
the whole world ; at present he is an unfortunate

man, whom it is difficult not to pity."
One of the Opposition journals at last adverts to