The daily union. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1845-1857, 1845-12-24
From the Democratic Review, for Deeemper'
ENGLISH PoLITICo. coMMERCIAL COM
PANIES.-

PANIES
There is nothing of splendid achievement in mod
ern tunes 10 surpass the conquesis OF the English
in India century ago, their possessions consist,
ed only of the little island OF Bombay, obtained
from Portugal as the dowry OF Charles the oecohu
wife and OF small commercial factories here and
there on the cosst as at Sura Madras, and Calcut-
Ia. Then, the English in Asia were, IN profession
at least, humble and painsiaking traders, anxious
but 10 make good bargains in spices, muslins and
silks. The dissensions, however, OF the native
princes of india soon pointed out TO the English
tho more brilliant and profitable path of conquest,
of plunde,, and of empire. They could almost al
ways find, either some rebcllious governor willing
10 purchase foreign aid against his sovereign, or
distracted province IN whose affairs 10 inter
yene; and where these were wanting, II was quite as
convenient for them to effect the dethronemcnt of
the sovereign himself, by means of some vagabond
pretender the throne, and thus to set up puppet
of their own in his stead. In this way, scrupling
at no means either Of force fraud, Of cruelty or
Chine, to accomplish their ends, with courage and
policy worthy Of the splendid field afforded for the
exercise of such qualities the British in India pro-
ceeded to lay the foundations, and rapidly to raise
the superstrucure of the greatest empire (save that
of the Manchus) on the face Of the globe
True, in the commencement of these conquests,
all Europe shuddered with horror at the recital of
the acts of perfdy and atrocty perpetrated by the
English in India, and England herself rang with
denunciaons Of the crimes of her Asiatic agents.
But England did not the less accept and maintain
the conquests made by such MEANS and every year
extend them in the same way. And to the accus-
ing voice of Parliament, the pulpit, and the press,
her agents could with justice reply, in the words OF
Erskne, that 1t was preposterous to bring to the
standard of justice and humanity, the exercise OF a
dominion founded upon violence and terror; that, II
England, from ambition and lust of dominion,
would insist on maintaining despotic rule over dis
tant and hostile nations and give commission to her
vlceroys so to govern them at all erents to pre-
serve them and their revenues she could not,
with any color of consistency, place herself In the
moral chair, and affect TO be shocked at the execu-
ton of her own orders; that her agents might and
must have offended against the rights and privileges
OF Aslatc government, IT they were the faithful
deputies Of power which could not maintain it.
self for day without trampling upon both; that
they might and must have offended against the laws
of God and nature, if they the faithful viceroys
of an empire wrested in blood from the people to
whom God and nature had given it; that the un-
happy people of India, to be governed at all, must
be governed with rod of iron; and that her empire
IN the East would long since have been lost to Great
Britain, if alternate fraud and force if civil skill and
military prowess, had not united their efforts to sup
port authority which heaven never gave, by
which it never could sanction.
England, therefore, elected to adopt and to hold
all the conquests made by her people in India, and
In so doing sanctioned all the means by which those
conquests were made, and were to be maintained.
From having few commercial counters only on
the scattered parts of the Of Inda she to
be, FIRST the steward of the populous provinces Of
Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, under the great Mogul,
the legitimate sovereign Of the Peninsula; then the
absolute mistress of Arcot, the Carnatic, and N.Y.
sore; next of the Maharatta states of the Deccan
and Concan; and finally, by at length deposing the
great Mogul himself and reducing him to the rank of
a mere pensoner, she became the ruler in one form
or another, of the whole of the vast Empire of Hin
dustan, excepting only Sindh and the Punjab. OF
these last remaining Independent States of the PEN
lnsula, she has recently invaded and conquered
Slndh and is now preparing for the conquest Of the
PuDjab. Thus, in the space Of one hundred years,
she has gradually extended her power by conquests
III India at the average rate of about one million fire
hundred thousand souls per annum. And what haH
been the annual COST in boodshed and in misery,
of this annual forced addition to the members of the
subjects of the British empire? Let the selErght-
eous declaimers of Exeter Hall figure up this sum
in the intervals of Of their trades against the
United States
Meantime, whilst maintaining in India a standing
army of some two hundred and fifty thousand men,
with camp-followers .innumerable, and every year
fighting battles the broadcast scale of strategy, of
carnage, and of devastation England processes, Tin
Europe to be at peace with all the world; and whilst
declalming in the loudest terms of indignant inno-
and virtue, against the sprtef conquest, the
cupidity, the rapacty, and the imperial ambition,
now Of Napoleon and the French, now of Russia,
and OF the United States, she has, at the same
time, been engaged in wars Of INVASION in conquests
and in territorial acquisitions in the East alone, Ito
say nothing of the West,) exceeding those Of Ma
poleon, of Russia and of the United States, COM
bned.
And how these contradictions of peace in Eu-
rope and war in Asia of pretended regard for the
laws Of nations side Of the globe, and of de.
liberate and open violation of all those laws the
other; of professions Of the largest liberty here and
of practice of the largest slavery there's of crusade
in favor Of human rights in the Atlantic seas, and
trampling them under foot in the Indian seas; of an
attempted moral prescription Of the United States,
because two millions of our people are black men,
without political and social privileges, when she her
self holds as subjects one hundred millions Of
black men, and fifty millions of white men, who
equally without political and social privileges
how we ask, all these extraordinary contradic-
lions reconciled Why forsooth, we are to accept
the pallry fiction, ridiculous, if were not mon
srous that all 'hese of ambition, all these acts
of oppression, are the deeds, not Of Engand-oh
no she is moderate, unambitious, self-denying,
without rapacity or cupidty; she violates no laws,
she is the pattern of reserve, and the champion of
liberty-hat all these of ambition in Asia, and
acts OF oppression, the deeds of the East India
Company.
"Ihe United Company of Merchants, trading to
the East Indies" have, indeed much to for.
in the face of God and of man, If they alone
swerabe for all the blood shed, and all the wrongs
committed, by the English in lndia and if all the
waged there, have been waged for no other
purpose than that the blood and tears of so many mill
lions Of men and women, may be coined into divi-
dends on the stock of India-Hoise.
But it is not SO; and it is time that the world
should understand, and should act on the under
standing, that, for all the the purposes of response
biity, moral and POLITICAL England and the East In
dia Company are one and inseparabIe, and the COM
pany mere administrative department Of the Brit
Ish government.
Nor can it be alleged that the deeds on which we
are commenting, arc the deeds of past times only,
and times of iaxernorality; for the blood stained
fields and plundered cities of Kandahar and Kabul,
of Sindh, and of Gwalior, yet steaming and
smoking before U.S. in the freshness of their recent
devastation.
Nay in justification Of the contemplated invasion
and conquest of the Punjab, we are now told, by
those very presses which are most clamorous in de-
nuncation of the bloodless and voluntary union of
Texas with the United States, that
ain India, we (the British) shall be impelled ir-
rcsistibly, to extend our dominons, till we have