The Sun. — 1857-10-08 (London, England)

VERNON 52,01/1.  A delicate topic this no doubt for the Court Liturgist to touch in constructing the prayers. The nation was to confess its sins against India ; but the nation's sins have all been committed through its Government ; the more we confess, the more we deplore what our Governors have done. We acknowledge, indeed, that the nation, the constituencies we mean, have been guilty of one great delinquency ; they have let our governors do almost as they liked with India. Our foreign policy has been far too much surrendered to our Germanised Court, and the Premiers who retained Royal favour by proper regard to cousins across the water ; and India has, in like manner, been treated by the electors too much as a foreign country. It was forgotten that East Indians, though nominally the subjects of the East India Company, were really and truly subjects of the English Crown, as well as ourselves ; and that had we but spoken out, our vast colony coui could not have been governed as it has been, till wretchedness characterises the people, and till a whole army of 100,000 men is guilty of mutiny and murders of the most atrocious kind. If, however, the nation has to confess the sin of leaving their rulers to themselves, and forgetting the national responsibilityfor the good government of the country our arms had conquered, what must be the sins of those who abused the national indulgence till they have ruined everything ! In all seriousness we look upon this day of fasting and humiliation, just passed, much as we did upon the one in reference to the Crimean disasters. If there be anything to confess, it is that we have trusted too much to our rulers, and that their misgovernment for a long series of years, and their mismanagement at the present time, have brought all these evils upon us. Nor do we see' how our rulers themselves can really think otherwise ; they must know full well that they "have done the things they ought not to have done, and not done the things which they ought to have done." And truly enough we may add, too truly to incur the censure of profanity—" that there is no help in them." So true is this, indeed, that to a great extent a change of Governors for India is the first thing required of our fasting and praying Cabinet. " HEAVEN helps those who help themselves," and the first help which Lord PALMERSTON can render is, beyond question, that of pitching the wrong men out of the wrong places. Look at India first. The cholera has already superseded one Court appointment, that of an incompetent Commander-in-Chief—a commander who was enjoying himself at Simla when the mutiny broke out at Meerut, who took that awful affair in very leisurely style, and of whom we hear nothing in regard to the earlier mutinies at Barrackpore and Berhampore. And then the Governor and his council there is hardly a difference of opinion as to their utter unfitness for their position. Lord CANNING himself, no one speaks ill of personally, but no one knows any recommendation he possesses for his post, except that of being his father's son. With abundant qualifications to make a most respectable English Peer, even the Government papers are obliged to confess that he would not have been sent out had anything but a featherbed Governor-GeneraLahip been expected for him. His only faults have been those of a second or third rate man, dependent upon officials in emergencies which neither he nor his patrons contemplated. As to those officials themselves, we may refer our readers to an exeellent photograph of them all, by " One who has served under Sir