The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1885-08-29

AJONAAA1oONtAAlEs AA.s august ~, 1ooJs
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Written for the CHIEF.
VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF INDIA
AND H'NDOOSTAN.
Yhe English government also insisted
upon taking into its own hands the political
jurisdiction of India.
These claims and regulations were first
proposed in Parliament November, 1772,
and may be said to have laid the founda-
ton for that destructive system of admin
istration and control which has prevailed
since, though under different tyrannical
notifications, from Lord North's bill in
1878 to Mr.. Pitts in 1874. By this latter
bill a Board of Control, composed of cer-
tain commissioners of the rank of privy
counsellors, was established, the members
of which we're to be appointed by the King,
and removable at his pleasure. This board
was authorized to check, superintend and
control the civil and military government
and revenue of the East India Company.
A high tribunal also, for the trial of Indian
delinquents, was proposed at the same
time. The management of their CONNER
cial concerns was left in the hands of the
Company, the political and civil authority
only transferred to the crown. In 178G some
alterations were made in the bill; the Offices
of Commander-in-Chief and Governor
General were for the future to be united
in the same person, and a power given
to the Governor General to decide in op-
position to the majority of the Council.
The presidencies of Madras and Bombay
had been previously by Lord North's bill
laced under the superintendency of the
Governor and Council of Bengal, but by
this bill that point was also confirmed.
When this bill passed, it appeared from
the preamble to be decidedly the opinion
of Parliament, of Government, as we'll as
Of the court of directors, whose orders had
for some time breathed the same spirit,
that !" to pursue schemes of conquest and
extension of dominion in India we're meas
ures repugnant to the wish, the honor and
the policy of England" It had previously
been resolved by the House, "that the
maintenance of an inviolable character for
good faith and scrupulous re-
gard to treaty, ought to have been the SIM
pie grounds on which the British govern
ment should have endeavored to establish
al influence superior to other Europeans,
%ho 3o off fba, ,o%; ~, T,,
dia; and that the danger and discredit
arising from tho forfeiture of this preem-
inence, could not be compensated by the
temporary success of any plan of violence
and injustice
Such was the tenor of the resolutions of
the House of Commons in 1882. recognized
as the principle of the bill of 1884, and far
ther confirmed by an act passed in 1893.
In all we perceive an aevident allusion to
those malpraotices of the Company's ser
wants, which will forever remain on record
to tarnish the lustre of the first victories and
territorial acquisitions in India, and to
detract from the reputation of persons
whose names might otherwise have justly
stood high on the list of those from whose
prominent talents and abilities the Brit
ish nation has derived by wholesale plum
der and most dreadful confscation both
glory and advantage, and has built up her
colossal Empire of India.
The English system of jurisprudence had
been extended to India by North's bill of
1873, but under disadvantages extremely
The difference of manners,
habits, customs, the difficulty, if not i'm
possibility of mingling two codes so very
dissimilar as those of Britain and Hindoo-
stan, the forms and technicalities of the
English law, totally unknown to the native
courts, the apparent injustice of subjecting
a people to laws to which they were no
parties, end to which of course they had
given no sanction; these and other grave
difficulties have been acknowledged by
those who have had to administer the laws
under the new system III India as having
prevented those effects taking place which
might otherwise have been expected from
tho introduction of the English iurisprn