Northern Times. — 1857-08-22 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

POLICY IN, INDIA.  Mr. A. G. Stapleton, formerly private secretary-011'51r, Ctnning, has addressed another• oommanicatien• to the Braiford Foreign Affairs Committee. With respect lo•ou'r policy on the Asiatic continent, he writes as follows: " Lords of the ascendant, revelling in our irresistible' might, almost every hostile proceedingin. which• England has beerfengaged, has been an outrage on law. We have taken offence without just grounds—Vie have pretended to be aggrieved, when we were really the- aggressors. We have commenced our proceedings 'on the instant with violence and bloodshed, and we have only relaxed our overwhelming oppression when our prostrate victims have purchased our forbearance (?) by conceding to us a • province or a kingdom. We have insisted on pecuniary indemnity, when we -aught onrselves to have paid it Such is a true and unexaggerated statement of British • doings in the East. In proof thereof, to whet do you appeal ? To the one-sided evidence of interested individuals ?—to loose accusations put forth in foreign journals ? tNo! yeu]appeal to none of these ; yotrappeal to' the evidence of blue books, which .albeite garbled, coloured, and perverted, contain enough to satisfy those who search them, of•the•truth of all your charges. Take, for instance, the Afghan war and• the first war• with China. With respect to those two wars, a committee of 30 members of the Colonial Society Ca body of some four- or • five hundred gentlemen connected with the coloniesldaberiously examined into the p apers which were laid before Parliament. 0* the Afrg'san war they came unanimously to this conclusion--tbat. 'for the war there was no necessity, not even.so much as,an.apparent cause -;• that therefore it. was rabbery and not war ; that being a. violation of the law of nations, it was a. violation of the .. British. COnstitution ; that it entails upon this-nation loss • and injury, and involves it in.clanger ; that it is as:cruel and unjust to our fellow subjects in India as the Affghan people ; that it renders Great Britain, hitherto the de- : fender of uetional right.,, the chief violator of those rights.' In the case of Cainae.a judicial sentence of the Court of Common Pleas haA• pronounced all our hostile proceedings illegal; and the .sa.ase committee, after a most elaborate exposition of. the: Parliamentary paper",., unauimouslTdeclared that the crime committed against China was an aggregate of acts the most infamous and despicable.' To the everlasting disgrace of this country, these crimes have long since been laid bare to the public without any attempt being made to punish those by whose agency they were committed, Impunity ,has produced its natural consequences esimilar crimes have been and are being repeated under the sam3 influence. —.ln Burmah, and to a certain degree in Persia) international • law has been violated ; and detestable outrages have been perpetrated upon the innocent inhabitants. From China each mail brings report of hostilities, carried on withoutZa jnstifiable cense, but also carried on without those necessary forms being passed through, which the laws of war prescribe; and the neglect of which consqueutly stamps these hostilities with a piratical and murderous character. To those who are endued with a just sense of- right and wrong, the conscientiousness of belonging to a nation which tolerates those atrocities, is almost a maddening reflection. It affords one, however, no small consolation, that there are yet amongst us those whose bosoms burn with virtuous honour and indignation at crimes for which, as a part of the whole, they unhappily are responsible. You, at any rate do not allow yourselves to be deceived as to the true nature of these deeds, by the wretched excuses that Eastern nations are differently constituted from European, and that the only intelligible language to the Orientals is the language of force.' You know the very different testimony borne by that celebrated historian—Macaulay—who has studied deeply Indian I affairs in England, and Indian society in India. He records it as his deliberate opinion, that English valour and English intelligence have done less, to preserve our Oriental Empire than English veracity;' and that 'the greatest advantage a government can possess is to be the one trustworthy government, in the midst of governments, which nobody can trust.' The nations of Asia are-not less capable than European nations of distinguishing what is just from what is unjust—and assuredly the eternal laws of justice do not vary with the longtitude of the climate."•  -