UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
MICROFILMED 1992
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE
BERKELEY, CA 94720

MAY BE COVERED BY COPYRIGHT LAW
TITLE 17 U.S. CODE

REPRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE THROUGH
UC BERKELEY GENERAL LIBRARY
INTERLIBRARY LOAN OFFICE

 
   

AUTHOR : Robertson, Thomas
Campbell

TITLE : The political prospects
of British India pe

PLACE : London

DATE : 1858 VOLUME :

CALL psyoy M NEG :90-
NO : ps 4174

 
 

 

 

FILMED AND PROCESSED BY
LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
BERKELEY CA 94720

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

no 179 wi

| - i
DATE 8 9 2) L2S [Lis Jus
REDUCTION RATIO ¢
DOCUMENT  —
SOURCE

GENERAL LIBRARY

 
 

UNNUMBERED
PAGES]

Fagination begins on
p. 4, pp.L1-31]
not designated.

 
POLITICAL PROSPECTS

BRITISA INDIA,

BY

THOMAS CAMPBELL ROBERTSON,

LATE MEMBER OF THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF INDIA, AND LIEUTENANT-
GOVERNOR OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES.

LONDON:
THOMAS HATCHARD, 187 PICCADILLY.

1858.

 
Printed by G.

LONDON:
Barcray, Castle St. Leicester 8q.

THE

POLITICAL PROSPECTS OF BRITISH INDIA.

 

In writing upon India, two qualifications are essential to
success — an acquaintance with the people of that country, and |
a familiarity with the tastes, feelings, and prejudices of the
reading public in England. The former may ensure accuracy,
but by the latter alone can even a patient hearing, much less
popularity, be expected. Wonderfully correct as are the remarks
of Bishop Heber, considering his opportunities, his Journal owes
its extensive circulation mainly to the elegant, yet thoroughly
English-minded, tone in which it is written ; while the late
Colonel Sleeman’s published account of his own “ Rambles” as
an “Indian Official,” though replete with much more curious
information than the accomplished Bishop could possibly collect,
is hardly known even by name, because the writer, from long
residence among those whom he describes, was wanting in
knowledge of those whom he sought to address. Though India
is no longer the stranger-land it was when the works just cited
appeared, there is still the same distinction to be observed
between the classes who, either by public speaking or writing,
undertake to treat of its concerns; and theres still, as formerly,
room to regret that the most knowledge generally resides with
those who are least gifted with the art of arresting the public
attention. No man really acquainted with the people of Upper
India can open a newspaper without groaning in spirit to observe
the winning fluency of language which is made the vehicle of
the most enormous misstatements; and this feeling is often
aggravated by a consciousness of his own inability, even with
A2

 
4

truth at his back, t i
» to cope with error arm
e
eal d with this power of
: a 1t seems almost like shrinking from a duty, for one who
as . " .
as taken an active part in the government of
Empire, to refrain, at such foie 1 a
y a crisis as the present, fr
py : s rom at le
attempting to impart some of the res a
those who can have no practical knowl
final decision on which 18, nevertheles
by their convictions.

5 Ate pmo, it is fearful to look at the conflict
of JS prejudices through which our rulers will have
ig I way, ere they can arrive at a sound and safe
ecision on the course to be pursued, after the suppressi
of : Ey which has given our power in the East iis he
shock 1t has ever yet had to sustain. Among ourselves, h
many are the darling theories, speculations odor
likely to be either imperilled a re Su

tion, whatever it may be, to whi
, to which those who ha p
the future administration of our WE

ults of his experience to
edge on many points, the
8, certain to be influenced

colossal dependence
y must
eventually come ! Among our Eastern subjects, at the same time
2

what a fierce medley of passions must be agitating the breast
of thousands of guilty, and millions of innocent, men of pa
Hn os avs they await the decree which is to os
uture fate! With the ever-benevole 1
sufficient, ardour of the British Rr bo HH To
volent, and in no degree more diffident, zeal of the British sili
tarian, on the one side; and the chronic, sullen fanaticism oa
Moosulman, with the fitful but almost objectless fur p toe
Hindoo, on the other, there is a prospect of such an an : 1 0
Ing as may render it difficult for the sober voice of oo :
heard. At such a season, it is to be hoped that, reckless of the
past as the present age in general is, it may A permitted in
groping our way to the future, to avail ourselves of the eujd
of the views and sentiments of one of those reli Ra
former days, to whom we owe it that we have such an By ii
legislate for. Thelately published “ Life of Sir John M or :
supplies exactly what is wanted. Stoo

Malcolm may, indeed, be taken as one of the best specimens

5

of the good Sepoy officer. He was, it is true, from an early !
period of his career, continually employed in high political posts,
separating him in some measure from the Madras army, to
which he belonged ; yet we are told by his biographer, “That
the habits and feelings of a soldier clung to him throughout his
career. Whatever might be his official environments, his heart
was continually turning with a tender and sympathising interest
to the single-poled tent of the subaltern officer, and the matted
hut of the faithful Sepoy.” In this readiness to sympathise,
not only with “the faithful Sepoy,” but with natives of every
class, lay the secret of Malcolm’s extraordinary success in win-
ning the affections of all over whom he was placed in authority.
Such sympathy, though an engine of wondrous potency in
dealing with Asiatics, is, it may be feared, regarded by the
cunning workmen of the present day as an implement too rude
and simple for their handling. Instead of learning from the
natives themselves, as Malcolm did, how to make them happy,
we now-a-days undertake to teach them what they alone can
thoroughly understand.

(Our designs are doubtless benevolent, but they are carried
out with so little consideration for the feelings of those to be
affected by them, that, coming in the shape of inflicted blessings, |
they more often estrange than conciliate. Take, for example,
the law not many years since passed by the Legislative Council
in Calcutta, to permit the re-marriage of Hindoo widows. Ab-/
stractedly viewed, no enactment could be more just, but it was a
direct infringement of that tacit compact, not to meddle with
the social relations of the people, in virtue of which we had
ruled with ease and profit to ourselves for a whole century.
Those who advocated this measure doubtless laid much stress
on the precedent of the Suttee, abolished in 1829, without any
of the evils predicted having ensued. But the cases were not
parallel. The Suttee was an outrage on the feelings of hu-
manity, and even worldly morality called for its suppression. Its
abolition was preceded by a long discussion, in which many
intelligent Hindoos argued in favour of the proposed prohibitory
enactment. Thus we had a party amongst the Hindoos them-
selves, and the whole of our Mahommedan subjects on our side ;

 
6

and thus it was that this great measure was carried through
without any strenuous opposition, or even distinctly marked
discontent. A great moral triumph was thus achieved ; and it
had been well, perbaps, if, contented with this success, we had
refrained from any similar act of direct legislative interference
for a century. (The Widows’ Re-marriage Bill, to use an English
Parliamentary phrase, was directed against a purely private
evil, and of the working of which natives alone could judge ; for
the most experienced amongst ourselves know little or nothing
of them in their domestic sphere. We have only to figure to
ourselves what our feelings would be, if a conqueror, obtaining
sway in Great Britain, were to pass alaw removing the restraints
at present imposed by our ereed and code on the number of
wives to be lawfully wedded by each man, and we may form an
idea of the shock given to the feelings of our Indian subjects by
this indication of a disposition to let our legislation trespass
upon points not to be alluded to, even in conversation, without
a violation of Eastern ideas of decorum.

In the present state of our information respecting the move-
ment still in progress among those who constituted the flower of
our native army, we can only speculate on its source and origin ;
but it is probable that, when the whole truth shall be disclosed,
it will be found that it was to this very re-marriage enactment, *
and other analogous measures, that those pointed who wished
to work upon the religious feelings of the Sepoy, and stir him
up to acts of sudden and murderous mutiny. Who those insti-
gators were, whether a Brahminical conclave in Bengal, or a
Mahommedan cabal at Delhi, Lucknow, or Calcutta, matters
little ; all that is here argued for being, that in this instance our

own legislation has probably furnished them with a weapon of
offence against ourselves.

Among the various reasons assigned for the recent revolt,

* The following passage in a letter, dated 12th May,
the sadly consolatory intimation that t
before the massacre,

and given to us with
he lady who wrote it died at Cawnpore
is strongly confirmatory of the opinion stated in the text.
*‘ They, the natives, have an idea that the Government are trying to convert them
to Christianity ; and what with the mistake of the cartridges being greased with
cow’s fat, and this new law allowing Hindoo widows to marry, whick I think has
a great deal to do with it, they are frantic about it.”

 

7

one is more frequently dwelt upon than the scanty a 2
5 ¢ officering of native battalions, in consequence of :
wich of ities men who are employed in the paid ™
ivil departments. The practice of thus draining the army
Sa members has certainly been carried too far, but it was,
a afforded by the PS of blade
ment that made Malcolm and others what t yh a y Ho
ing them to qualify themselves for the hig est p
ns : The evil, too, it must be remembered, 1s not oe
Sol in the system, but might at any fe he en
rected by each successive Governor-General, . ¥ P
the mischief now liens Da “ ge ig
in truth, no Indian ruler, ;
a a newly-aequired territory, Sr he el;
ation to employ the fittest available person i A ow
this will generally be a military man, Be i
has few hands to spare from the duties of the a a
inces of our empire. No man in this way di Asetn
he a hich he wrote more than the late Sir C. Napier, w d
oe Be military men from their regiments to act a os
capacities, but drove away six of the ablest ny ” 7
sent to his assistance in Neus aa Sateen Sn
1 | ndant o -
, yes a be best corrected, » by
tog A military men from all hope of pa Eps
motion, and so preventing the developmen BR
lent, but by rendering the command of a batta ion so | i
or tative, as to induce the juniors to remain wit
I ining to that post.
NE = a a as on the Sse
and capacity, of the English officers ii ha ’ 2 ey
battalion, that its efficiency depends. In for nd ak ie
attachment between them was at ede go Wid
we believe, fewer in proportion to their men tl a ye oo
but then they were almost all good Soa a a
the way of becoming so; and though somewhat Sha,
graces of European society, had obtained an i J
social system of Asiatic life, such as their more a

 
8

successors seem to think it beneath them to acquire. The
Sepoy officer of the present day, equal to his predecessor in
courage and conduct in the field, and generally his superior in
book-knowledge, in manners, and perhaps in morals, falls far

short of him in point of real acquaintance with those under his
command,

This defect, though in some degree imputable to the system

which makes escape from his regiment the great object of every
young officer’s ambition, is still mainly attributable to the in-
' creased facilities of intercourse with England.
Young men who are fre
with their mother-country
home, in the same way

quently refreshing their acquaintance
cannot settle down to India as their
as was done in the bygone days, ere
steam was known, and a return to England was looked forward
to as a remote and barely-possible contingency.
Tastes acquired in Europe do not readily
clusively Asiatic pursuits : the native nautch is m
when the opera lives in recent recollection ; and
community, even of amusement, to bring
native officers into something like
other. It is impossible here to ¢
creased number of our fair coun
probably made the separation betw
it was before. It is alleged, we
but it is alleged by natives,
European functionaries are lost
their marriage ; and they genera
they meet with at any but busi
the lady of the house.
It would be easy to fill man
friendly feeling that former]
and Sepoys of every grade,

conform to ex-
ore than insipid
thus there is no
the European and the
social intercourse with each
onceal the fact, that the in-
trywomen in the East has
een those classes wider than
know not with what truth,
that their best friends among
to them from the moment of
lly impute the colder reception

ness hours to the influence of

Y pages with instances of the
y subsisted between English officers
and also between the latter and the
common European soldiery, classes apparently dissociable by
nature; but it is enough to draw attention to the following
“incident in Malcolm’s life, in order to show how enduring may
be the recollection of kindness in the minds of men of the same

class as those whose enormities of ingratitude, as well as cruelty,
we are now deploring,

9

REA
The first great opening stroke of ipa Vy: i
policy, in 1798, was the dispersion at Hyder ot : DR Ron
er French officers in the pay ,
ri an enterprise, Malcolm, as An Sie
dent, bore a conspicuous pe Alig fps a Se
a ihe So hy ee among the native soldiers
Puen 2 their command. Malcolm was despatched to
Seat yun ” but soon became himself involved in the same
erin ae a a whom he came to rescue. His escape 1% thus
peril with i on Kaye :—¢ Among the crowd of mutineers
Sy Yo i had formerly belonged {onlay ha
were ion. bu had deserted to the Fr
oY 2 Bo wii their old officer, and went at
gL hi Ey ah He had been kind to them n former
one iy had not forgotten his kindness. Lifting him ap,
a away on their heads, they rescued him from
® infuriated mob.” :
i [as OE this little anecdote with the ay ies
brought by each successive mail, it is difficult so i § a >
wi of the partialities of Mime vi ” i or
3 18 ged ;
Jopte a inn nn rested on moral influence
Hs Over oa erior physical force ? The probability arising
i Sian oo dad nature, and the stationary Sa
oof pp ¥ ie into certainty by our knowledge of what
bo ri oing on among our Indian rulers, both at home
a Bitten a we must pronounce that it 1s we who are ot
snighes So A perception of this fact 1s indicated in t g
whit Ye ra hee by natives, “ Whether the
Ro a the present day are of the same caste as those 0
gentlemen 2 92 oh is more distinctly shown in the following
Top bo fh amphlet of the late Mr. Francis Horsley
, ee the Bengal Civil Service, published in bis Free
er Hang been officially compelled 0 Bike So rss,
ton to an old retired officer of Gardiner’s lrreg Hwtols
cation [ahommedan of rank, calculated to hurt the relig :
: o SL oo Mr. Robinson thus describes what followed :—
eelings » Mr.

 
10

“I shall never forget the looks of mortification, anger, and, at
first, of incredulity, with which this announcement was received
by both, nor the bitter irony with which the old Russuldar
remarked, that no doubt the wisdom of the new gentlemen
(Sahibilogue, so they designate the English) had shown them
the folly and ignorance of the gentlemen of the old time, on
whom it pleased God, nevertheless, to bestow the government
of India.” —(Page 17.)

But it is needless to cite authorities in support of what, so
far from being denied, is with all of us more or less a subject of
congratulation. That there was much room for Improvement
in the manners and morals of the Anglo-Indian community of
former days, must be admitted even by those who regret that
this improvement has not come unmingled with a certain
unwinning bearing, in English functionaries of every grade,
towards all natives but those who evince a disposition to
Europeanize.

Our regimental officers, not being exempt from this change,
it may be doubted whether an increase to their number would
have abated the evil of scanty intercourse between them and
the native soldiery ; and it certainly would have added little to
their general efficiency, under a system of centralisation cal-
culated to lessen their influence and deaden their zeal. The
conclusion to be drawn from what has just been stated is, that
it is not by the inadequate officering of our army that the
pending mutiny has been provoked, and, on general grounds, it
may be asserted that such a cause is totally insufficient to
account for the event. Insubordination in a battalion or two
might thus be brought about, but it seems absurd to suppose
that a large body of men would throw away pay, promotion,
pension, and rush into frantic excesses, through mere disgust at
the incompetency of their leaders. Such incompetency may

further their ends, when revolt has been resolved on, but it
requires some more stirring motive to engender the spirit to
give birth to so desperate a movement.

Annexation, and consequent extension of our direct domi-
nion, comes next in the list of causes

assigned for this revolt.
Whether such extension be matter fo

r praise or blame, it is

11

desirable at the outset to make it clear to whose account it ought
0 a of the various blue-books published are [
the year 1838 will show, that it is from Downing Spent ts
policy of extension has of late years, 1n almost every fos I %
emanated. The prophetic protest of the Chairman of t ou .
of Directors, the late Mr. St. George Tucker, against the hr
sion of Afghanistan is on record ; and we know fo ii
ought to have studied it before, could hardly, w en io :
peruse that able document, bring themselves to believe 2
was not written after the event. The Ea Sra
that unhappy war, the seizure of Scinde, was, we ne Poy 2
demned by the same Court. The conquest of the a n
be sure, was forced upon us by circumstances, and of t gs he
the natives do not complain. On the three oa hy i
annexations (for Pegu falls not within the limits of . i oo
through by the late Government of our Eastern pe yo
judgment was pronounced by the Court of Directors p ion
tain ; but it is well known that each of these Hee as on
taken in direct opposition to the CE opinion of some

* r ir ablest servants in India.
. i wy then, it may be assumed that Her i
Ministers, and not the Court of Directors, are the aut ors of
that annexation-policy alleged by some to be one main caus

iling disorder. ;

oe my o Lord Metcalfe’s, made in the hearing op ths
author, in the year 1835, deserves to be here gi ih
an opinion was expressed in favour of sending i OD ia
to Dost Moohammed, the then sing and oe y a
Afghanistan, Lord Metcalfe’s reply was: Depen ape Sip
the surest way to bring Russia upon ourselves 1s, for us

"Ovi xed ma
* The extent and population of each of the three provinces thus annexed may

stated, as follows :— Cs ;
% 3 Cond India, is 70,000 square miles in extent, with a population
erar,

ji vay oy the south-west, 14,000 square miles in extent, with a population of
Satara, 1

0, . . . . f
giv on the north-east, 20,000 square miles in extent, with a population o
u ’

3,000,000.

J

 
12

the Indus.” Had the East India Company and its servants
been allowed at that juncture to rule the country, for which the
British public persist in holding them responsible, it is pretty
clear, from what has just been stated, that the war in Afghan-
istan, and all its humbling and damaging consequences, would
have been avoided. That the since-ensuing annexations would,
in that case, have all of them been avoided, cannot be confidently
asserted; but thus much is clear, that in the plunge made in the
Afghan affair our Government seemed to get rid of all those
scruples about the rights of others, and strict adherence to agree-
ments, which sufficed to hamper such weak politicians as Wel-
lington and Malcolm in dealing with the native princes of their
day.

While those two men of a former age were engaged together
in settling terms of peace with the beaten Mahrattas, a question
arose as to whether the important fortress of Gwalior should
belong to us or to Scindiah. The Governor-General, Lord
Wellesley, was for keeping ; his illustrious brother, and Mal-
colm, for resigning it to Scindiah. In a letter to a private
friend on the subject, Malcolm argued that the mere fact of
doubt existing ought to decide the case in favour of the weaker
party; “For,” he wrote, ““ if we decide a case of disputable nature
in our own favour, because we have power, we shall give a blow
to our faith that will, in my opinion, be more injurious to our
interests than the loss of fifty provinces. What has taken us
through this last war with such unexampled success? First, no
doubt, the gallantry of our armies, but, secondly, and hardly
secondly, our reputation for good faith.” In the same strain his
glorious colleague, then plain Arthur Wellesley, writes on the
same subject : “I would sacrifice Gwalior, or every other frontier
of India, ten times over, in order to preserve our credit for
scrupulous good faith. What brought me through many diffi-

culties in the war, and the negotiations of peace? The British
good faith, and nothing else.”

The wisdom evinced in these sentences, written by two of
our most distinguished countrymen more than fifty years since,
receives a most mortifying confirmation from the following lines,
penned in the English language by a most intelligent Brahmin,

 

13

on the 23rd of June last, at Indore, the capital s A
dominions, in Central India i—" There can be no dou :
much of the disturbance owes its rise to the bad Bs ont
Government have lately acquired through Hivesations. “
don’t keep it a secret now, and say that our So 1a
become faithless ( be-eeman’), and none but the EE e -
munity would be glad to see order restored. toi
from your kind favour that they did not warmly ma a
ation in England. This is good, but how ane can i ev be
is in one’s mind when the act 1s against it? v y Pore fis
measures carried ? Indeed, the annexation-policy as done i
Government of India a harm which will not be early repaire ;
Passing from the question of the value of a reputation for
ood faith, it may be interesting to view the contrasted plans
of two high authorities, equally remote from each Shes fb ps
of time, on the subject of annexation. Sir John Ma ge i
letter to a friend, about the year 1818, thus expresses ins on
that most important question :— The native eae s are
abused as intolerably bad. Why, even in this view, i a
contrast of their government with ours is strength. Kn a !
India into zillas (civil districts), and I will assert that 1 in
in the order of things, considering the new sentiments ot
must be infused—the operation (unchecked by Oa
that dislike to rule which all human beings In) an by %
depression and exclusion from all high rank an ye 2
military, of more than a crore (million) of ae w Bi
the consequence of the establishment of Joe rect a Sony
that our empire should last fifty years; but 1 ue ne ot
to keep up a number of native states without poli ly A ™
but as royal instruments, we shall, 1 believe, wo in Dt
long as we can maintain our naval superiority in Eur ps : vey wi
this date it is impossible. But, on the other i ; ”
have that superiority, no European power, not even ie 2 a,
Russians, can shake our Eastern throne, if we : av
enough (which I doubt) not to destroy ourselves.

* Kaye's * Life of Malcolm,” vol. ii. p. 3

 
14

Thus wrote the soldier-statesman of the beginning of this
century. Let us now see how the same subject is treated by an
Editor of the present day, whose very clever paper, “The Friend
of India,” was not long since reputed to be the organ of the
Supreme Government in Calcutta :— The policy of annexation
may be considered secure. One by one its opponents convinced,
or otherwise confess by their silence, that they are logically
defunct. The dreamers who feared that the empire would be
weakened by extension, and the Orientalists who believed native
governments better than civilised rule, are already, for practical
politics, extinct. The more generous class, who invested native
princes with a right of property in their subjects, and hold con-
quest to be excusable only by invasion, are rapidly passing to
the grave ; they will soon be extinct as the dodo,
of protection.” *

A single glance at the history of the brief period separating
us from the date of this manifesto is enough to check our
disposition to smile at the arrogance of its assertions. Even
while it was being written, the extension of our dominion over
Oude had caused a European battalion to be withdrawn from
Cawnpore, and so weakened the chief military station on the
Upper Ganges, as to prepare it for becoming the scene of events
so dreadful, that we shudder to read the recital of their details.
“ Dreamers,” indeed, were they who “feared that the empire
would be weakened by extension ;”” but such dreamers as seem
to have seen farther in their sleep than those who sneer at them
did in their waking moments. If the writer of this passage
stood alone, his presumption might do little more than provoke
mirth ; but unhappily he is the organ of a party,—and a party
having in its ranks many a name of mark, both in England ‘and
in India. The peculiar characteristic of this party is a fanati-
cism in favour of its own measures ; so that it cannot be made

to believe that the reasonable being is to be found who would
take offence at their enforcement. It was to this sort of feeling
that Sir Thomas Munro, though he lived before the period of

or the party

\* “Friend of India,” June 6th, 1856.

15

its fuller development, alluded, when he said that « Sela
are as fanatical in regard to thei institutions as the Mahom-
ith their religion. :
gi 0 case of Oude. Admit that humanity required us to
eject in favour of ourselves the very ruler whom we i
pledged to support, in return for the vast cession I shy
his ancestor at the beginning of the century,—admit all of this,
for the sake of argument,—but the question will still remain,
what grounds had we for supposing that such an Sons
addition to our empire should not bring with it a proportiona :
addition to our risks? If it were reasonably to be Ssh
that the cultivator, and the agricultural commumty an ,
would gain by the substitution of our power for that o ; &
native ruler, were there not many, and those of the Bete oa ve
and energetic classes, who would suffer by the change r >
there no existing and expectant placemen to have wi i
mortified, their hopes blasted, by the coming in go at %
wits of Upper India have long since called the ““Sweepe
2
as it not more than imprudence to take no WR)
against the animosity of such a class, beyond the oe le
measure of bringing over from Cawnpore to ey be
tance of fifty miles—the only European ros So or baad
along a line of about 500 miles in extent ! ; os
apparent fool-hardiness on the part of men of eminent abi 8 y 8
be accounted for, but by imputing it to an overweening re ene
on the power inherent in their Do measures to comman
d assent of all mankind !
pi Ee benefits would accrue to the hg :
of Oude from its annexation was seen. What the Wa of
any class among them might be was not, ot bone
worthy of a thought. Yet there was plenty of proof, ing Jed
works, as well as in unpublished despatches, to Do iar
seizure of the country would irritate a very formida e y
among its inhabitants. Bishop Heber, RE i :
in his hasty progress through the land, perceived ji bs 3 Zui
repeating a conversation between a friend of his an : a 2
forming part of his escort from Cawnpore, mentions that, g

 
16

/full of complaints against his own rulers, this man fired up at the
mere suggestion of the extension of British rule as a remedy for
the abuses complained of, and said that any tyranny was prefer-
able to such a degradation. The late Colonel Sleeman, known
even in Europe by his successful operations against the Thugs,
and who knew the natives better than any man of his time,
when afterwards Resident at Lucknow, warned the Government
‘of the umbrage that would be taken by many classes at our
‘seizure of the country, mentioning particularly that our own
Sepoys would be likely to be offended by such a step.
Another Resident, when compelled, some twenty years ago,
{to address a remonstrance to the rulers of Oude, on the alleged
disorders in that kingdom, was met by the significant question,
“ Whether there had been any emigration from that territory
into ours ?”’ But the warnings of danger were not confined to
India. More than twenty years since, on the design being
hinted at in the House of Commons, the late Sir Robert Peel,
not then in power, expressed -his apprehension that the absorp-
tion of Oude would shake the confidence of every independent
prince in India in the good faith of our Government. Thus

dence

warned of the agitation likely to ensue, common pru
seemed to require that the measure should have been postponed
until, at least, two strong European regiments could be added to
our force in Oude, without weakening our strength at other
Important points, like Cawnpore. It was not, however, only

before the step was taken, that the warnings of approaching
danger must have been apparent, for the author has himself seen
a letter written in Hindee, in the month of November last
addressed to an officer now in England, commencing with here
words :—“By the seizure of Oude all Hindostan has been
thrown into consternation.” Yet jt was at this very juncture
that the Government of India, receiving its instructions direct
from Downing Street, was compelled to reduce its European
force by sending regiments to Persia. Meanwhile, extension in

another quarter had reduced the strength of the European por-
tion of the Indian army.

of : Pegu, so needlessly added to our
dominions in 1852, furnished employment to four or five stout
European battalions, who were thus virtually lost to British India,

 

17

properly so called ; for Pegu, it must be remembered, is not a
part of India, but an entirely distinct country. Annexation has,
then, unquestionably contributed, both directly and indirectly, to
bring about the disastrous revolt of our Bengal army. Directly,
by weakening our European force, in spreading it over a wider
surface ; indirectly, by stirring up the animosity of influential
classes, not only in the countries added to our rule, but also in
the original provinces of our empire. Our annexation of
Satara and Berar, on the by them accounted insufficient plea of
default of natural heirs, alarmed the Hindoos; while our seizure
of Oude galled the Mahommedans, every one of whom felt a
pride in the independence of that principality. Thus, by these
almost simultaneous measures, we have supplied a motive of
potency to bind in temporary league against ourselves those two
discordant races, whose dissension was our strength ; and thus
it probably is, that Mahommedans and Brahmins have been
brought to co-operate in spreading disaffection among our
Sepoys of either persuasion.

The last and most difficult question remains to be con-
sidered. Has, or has not, any indiscreet meddling on our part
with their religious prejudices operated to provoke our Mahom-
medan and Hindoo Sepoys, hitherto so faithful, to break out into
such a hideous display of perfidious cruelty as they are even now
exhibiting to the world? The question is a thorny one, and
whoever enters upon it must be prepared for much miscon-
struction.

Judging by the analogy of all past history, there is to be
found in the very ferocity of the Hindoo portion of the native
soldiery a proof that some religious delusion must have been at
the bottom of their hostility, however mixed may have been the
motives of their Mahommedan comrades.

The Hindoo Sepoys have, for nearly a century, been esteemed,
by those who knew them best, to. be a kindly-dispositioned
race, aid, when well managed, ever well affected towards their
English chiefs. That such a body, having literally no wrong
wherewith to garnish the manifesto issued from their rebellious

stronghold at Delhi, should have been worked up into a state of
deadly and unreflecting fury, by any feeling short of religious

 
\

exasperation, would be at variance with what we know of the
history of mankind.

Excepting in the one case of the French Revolution, the
author can call to mind no instance of men becoming for a while
divested of their humanity, through the action of any weaker
emotion than one of religious wrath. It seems almost superfluous
to do more than allude to the recorded instances of revolting
barbarities perpetrated by members of the great European family
on one another, on account of a disagreement on some mysterious
point of faith. It is remarkable, also, that women and children
have always been the victims of these outbreaks of fanaticism,
and that such slaughter has never been accounted by their own
partizans as discreditable to the perpetrators. In every record
of the struggles of parties during the first centuries of Christian
history, we find mention made of women and infants being
murdered.* Neither sex nor age were spared in the crusade
against the Albigenses in the thirteenth, or in the massacre of

‘St. Bartholomew in the sixteenth, or the Irish insurrection in
the middle of the seventeenth century; while Milton’s celebrated
Sonnet tells us how

“The bloody Piedmontese roll’d
Mother with infant down the rocks.’’

Yet Dante devotes a whole canto of his Paradiso to the
praises of Dominick, who was the main promoter of the war of
extermination standing first in this list; the court of Rome
returned thanks to Heaven for the treacherous butchery in Paris;
no Roman Catholic writer has expressed any great horror at the
event in Ireland ; and the acts denounced by Milton were doubt-
less accounted pious by those whose descendants have, in our
own days, evinced something like a desire for their repetition.

Instances of like barbarity towards females can be found
even in the early annals of Scotland, as appears from the follow-
ing passage in Tytler's « History,” vol. i. p. 113:—“Their revenge
seems especially to have been directed against the English
ecclesiastics who were possessed of Scottish livings. A public
edict passed by the Scottish Estates, in 1296, had banished these

* See Fuller's ‘‘ Profane State,”’ book v. chap. ii.

 

19

intruders from Scotland, and this edict Wallace, 1t 1s said,
improved upon with a refinement in cruelty. Some aged priests,
and it is even asserted, although almost too horrid to believe,
some helpless women, had their hands tied behind their backs,
and in this helpless state were thrown from high bridges into
rivers, their dying agonies affording sport to their merciless
captors.”

If such is the power of this principle, even on the compara-
tively phlegmatic European temperament, what must not its
With these
its force is the greater, because it is the only one that tells at
all upon their collective feelings.

influence be over the more excitable Asiatic races ?

Patriotism is almost unknown
in the East; no encroachment not trespassing, directly or
indirectly, upon their religion would ever there excite any
general indignation. But, then, religion is in those regions. so.
mtertwined with all social institutions, that none of these can
be touched without risk of jarring with the great master-
principle of the Oriental mind. It may be observed, also, that
the nearer any European nation approaches in character to the
people of the East, the more sensitive do we find it on points
affecting religion ; and we have within the last few months seen
a disturbance arise at Belfast, that might have swollen into
something as bad as the massacre of 1641, if the restraining
hand of government had been suddenly paralysed in Ireland,
as it has been in India. 4 priori, probability is, we therefore)
think, on the side of those who assert the present Indian
movement to be essentially a religious one; and there is
nothing in after-events to warrant the adoption of a contrary
conclusion. It is urged by some, for whom the author feels
the sincerest respect, though he cannot adopt their opinions,
that a movement participated in both by Mahommedans and
Hindoos cannot have religion for its source, because it is
impossible to believe that these two races can be actuated by
any community of feeling on such a point. Their antagonism
may be admitted, without acquiescing in the inference thence
deduced. The Mahommedan is astute enough, when it serves his
purpose, to feign a regard which he does not feel ; and the
Hindoo, being by far the simpler of the two, may be so blinded
: B 2

 
20

by his choler as to lend a willing ear to the suggestions of his
hereditary antagonist. Cardinal Richelieu was no friend to the
Protestants when he used their zeal as a weapon of offence
against the house of Austria; yet surely no one will, for that
reason, deny that the movement in Germany was a religious
one? The real question is, what was the character of that
distempered mood which fitted the Hindoo Sepoy to become, as
many believe, a tool in the hands of the more wily and steadily
vindictive Mahommedan ? That mood was evidently one of
extreme religious exasperation, arising out of dark suspicions of
our designs, infused into his mind through some as yet undis-
covered agency, and deriving confirmation from several indis-
cretions on the part of our Indian legislature, as of various
individual members of the Anglo-Indian community, some of
whom, we know, have acted as missionaries, without resigning
their military commissions; while others, we have heard, have
even gone so far as to compel their native servants to attend
daily at family prayers. This view of the case is supported by
the declaration of the Sepoys themselves, who loudly proclaim
that they are acting in defence of their faith, and in their
manifesto from Delhi accuse their rulers of nothing but a design
to make Christians of them by force or fraud.

So great, however, is the reluctance to give credit to the
Sepoys’ own statement of their own motives, that we see con-
tinual attempts made to account for their conduct on some other
principle. Not long since, in defiance, apparently (perhaps in
ignorance) of the fact that for a hundred years past a million of
millions has been faithfully guarded and escorted by Sepoys
alone, it was stated at a public meeting, that their motives on
the present occasion have been entirely sordid. Riots, of course,
lead to plunder, and accordingly the Sepoys, having once broken
loose from authority, obeyed the instinct of all mobs, and rifled
the treasuries, which they had for so many years protected ; but,
like those who followed Lord George Gordon in 1782, though
they ended with pillage, it was by a religious feeling that they
were first set in motion. :

The point is not one of mere curiosity, but of vast prospective
political importance; and it may not, therefore, be lost labour

 

21

to bring together some of the proofs to be collected from the
blue-books, of a religious feeling having been at the bottom of
the discontents which, after long smouldering in the breasts of
our native soldiery, have at last been fanned into a flame by the
unwise attempt to force the obnoxious cartridge upon the 3d
Cavalry at Meerut. At Amballah, the station on the plains
nearest to Simla, where the Commander-in-Chief was then
residing, no less than fifteen fires were reported by the canton-
ment magistrate to have occurred between the 26th March and
the 1st May ; and these he, in a letter dated 4th May, distinctly
ascribes to ¢ the newly-introduced cartridges,” and the Sepoy’s
ineradicable belief, that ¢ the innovation is derogatory both to
his caste and religion.”

The magistrate further remarks, that “similar conflagrations.
had occurred at Barrackpore, Oude, Meerut, and Lahore, all
owing to the supposed impure and tainted cartridge.” These
conflagrations, unmistakable symptoms of discontent, as every
reader of Eastern tales must know, ought to have made the
Commander-in-Chief pause before he offered to the troops at
Meerut a choice between the cartridge and the jail. The latter
was accepted, and those consigned to it from that moment were
regarded as martyrs. The whole Bengal army being one great:
military family, the feeling rapidly spread, and the contagion of |
revolt extended to every station. Panic aided its development,
for it is clear that, in many instances, the Sepoys flew to arms
under an impression that the European troops were advancing to
attack them. In a Division Order of Major-General Hearsay’s,
published at Barrackpore on the 5th April, the conduct of the
Sepoy, Mungul Pande, then under sentence of death for mutiny,
is ascribed to his having been “in a state of religious frenzy.”
In a previous letter, dated 23d January, the same gallant officer,
and thorough Orientalist, informs the Government, that “a
report has been spread about by some designing persons, most
likely Brahmins, or agents of the religious Hindoo party in Cal-
cutta (I believe it is called the Dhuurma Sobha), that they (the
Sepoys) are to be forced to embrace the Christian faith.” In
the Governor - General’s Minute of the 27th March, it 1s
recorded that the men of the 7th Native Infantry assigned as a

 
22

reason for their mutinous movement at Berhampore, that they
thought that “the guns and European troops were coming ;
and they said they, were prepared to die rather than lose caste.”
AA letter from the Sceretary to the Chief Commissioner in the
Punjaub, dated 16th May, asserts the “ cartridge >’ (which word
is the embodiment of the religious feeling) to be the cause of the
existing disaffection, recommends its immediate disuse, predicts
that nothing else will stop the spread of the evil, and ends with
ithe following remarkable passage :— Even punishment will not
prove effective, for the sufferers will become objects of sympathy,
and be looked upon as martyrs for their religion.”

Mr. Colvin, the late-lamented Lieutenant-Governor of the
North-western Provinces, in a letter dated 22d May, after
noticing his own address to the troops on parade at Agra, adds
the following remarks :—¢ They all at the moment expressed
their belief of my communications to them; and I have seen
them in a familiar way on several occasions since. They have
undoubtedly been infected by a deep distrust of our purposes.
The general scope of the notion by which they have been influ-
enced may be expressed in the remarks of one of them, a Hindoo,
Tewarree Brahmin, to the effect that men were created of dif-
ferent faiths ; and that the notion attributed to us, of having but
one religion, because we had now but one uninterrupted domi-
nion throughout India, was a tyrannical and impious one.”

‘Again, in a letter dated 24th May, Mr. Colvin says of the
mutineers: “Many are in the rebels’ ranks because they could
not get away. Many certainly thought we were tricking them
out of their caste; and this opinion is held, however unwisely,
by the mass of the population, and even by some of the more
intelligent classes. Never was delusion more wide or deep.
Many of the best soldiers in the army, amongst others, of its
most faithful section, the Irregular Cavalry, show a marked
reluctance to engage in a war against men whom they believe
to have been misled on the point of religious honour.” *

* Tn confirmation of what is stated in Mr. Colvin’s letter regarding the mass
of the population and their feelings, it may not be out of place to mention that a
system of feeding the prisoners in messes, a system not to be carried out without

occasional violation of the laws of caste, has caused the inmates of our jails to
become objects of sympathy to those without.
+

23

The concurrent testimony of three such authorities as General}
Hearsay, Sir John Lawrence, and Mr. Colvin, ought to be con-
clusive ; and those who still demur had better, perhaps, be left
to their prejudices ; nevertheless, it 1s as well to draw attention
to a circumstance showing, in the strongest light, the extreme
improbability of the Sepoys having acted under any influence of
less power than one of religious delusion. Two regiments, the
26th and the 46th, broke out into open mutiny at Mean Meer,
and Sealkote* in the Punjaub, after they had been disarmed, when
success was impossible, and swift retribution certain, from the
proximity of a strong European force. The reasonable conclusion,
therefore, is, that they were not quite free agents, but were
impelled by the same kind of force as has often driven our fellow-
subjects in Ireland to crime, and sometimes to rebellion. :

There is one other reason assigned for the mutiny, to which
alliteration lends its artful aid. The Sepoys have, it 1s con-
stantly repeated, been “ pampered and petted futo state of
insurrection. In one sense, though not in that generally attached
to the words, there is some truth in the saying, | Ever since that
lamentable expedition to Cabool, which destroyed our reputation
for good faith, and the prestige of our invincibility, the native
army has been led to think too much of its own strength and
importance, and an insubordinate spirit has too often been passed

over, from the necessity of gently handling a cord which ih
snap, if pulled too tightly. The spirit alluded to showed itse

in a very formidable shape before Sir George Pollock’s advance
to retrieve our disasters in Afghanistan ; and few know how
much his country is indebted to that distinguished officer for
the patience and skill with which he allayed the discontents, and
raised the morale” of the native portion of his army, before he
advanced into the Khyber Pass.. Various indications of the
presence of such a spirit in the Bengal army have since broken

* The 5th Irregular Cavalry acted in the same manner at Bhangulpore, :
station on the Ganges below Patna, on learning that Sir J. Outram had ve
off that place, en route to Upper India, with a large European force. A er
regiment at Chittagong, far down to the south-east, and completely cu o os
the rest of the army, is stated in the last accounts to have broken out into the

same sort of hopeless and objectless mutiny.

 
out from time to time ; but the Indian Government were power-
less to apply the only sufficient check, by increasing the nume-
rical strength of the European branch of its force.

In so far, therefore, as mere discipline is concerned, there,
perhaps, is some truth in the assertion, that the Sepoy has been
over-leniently dealt with at times, when there was a call for rigour;
but, as regards his scruples of caste, it can only mean that the
Government have adhered to the conditions on which the high-
caste men have entered its service. One of the first of these
stipulaticns is that of not being obliged to embark. When
service beyond the sea was in prospcet, volunteers were ever to
be found for the duty. Certain regiments, called “ General
Service Battalions,” were raised, upon an understanding that
they were to embark when required. Of late years it has been
ordered that all recruits are to be enlisted on this understanding.
This order practically excludes the relations of half the men
in an old regiment— men who served as much in the hope of
being able to push on their kinsfolk, as to advance themselves.
This order, therefore, savoured of bad faith, and must have

tended to add strength to the distrust of our designs, which,
however engendered, was, during this period, excited by the
malevolence of the native and the extravagance of the European
press,* until at last “the cartridge” appeared, with its alleged
pigs’ and cows’ fat, to cement the union of the two classes of
our subjects against us.

§

The cartridge was the proximate cause of the revolt; and
+ [the revolt itself is now becoming the fulerum on which the lever
‘to upset the Fast India Company is to be made to rest. Yet the
revolt proves nothing against the general administration of
India, and only shows that there have been great mistakes
committed in the military department, where the Company holds

* How closely the English press is watched by many of the more educated
natives, may be seen from the following passage, copied from a letter written by
a Hindoo of rank, in the month of June last : —

““T cannot but regret the tone of several recent articles on religious subjects,

especially one in the Bengal ¢ Harkaru,” headed Christianity ». Brahminism.
These things, with a greased cartridge, have led to fearful results.

They may
promote the cause of Christianity, but they

can hardly be said to promote that
of humanity, when they cause so many innocent people to be slaughtered.”

25

but divided sway. It was not, be it remembered, from a Joby
of the Company, but of the Crown, that the order issued which
provoked the explosion at Meerut. But though there has been
a mutiny, there has been no insurrection. We have lost con-
trol over a large tract of country, not by the people driving us
out of it (they were too well pleased with our rule for ii
by our European officials being compelled to flee from bands o
mutineers, who sought to destroy them and plunder the country.
Chiefs and Princes have stood by us to a marvel, all the trading
classes are with us, so are the landholders, and even the pea-
santry, with few exceptions, in every province but Oude, Mle
as yet, we are regarded as invaders. It behoves us now to
beware, lest by indiscreet public speaking, and precipitate oe
sionate legislation, we bring upon ourselves the evil from w .
we seem to have escaped, and cause the very suppression of the
i ive birth to a popular insurrection.
gs A tt that the East India Company and
its servants, though closely connected with, we gy
say, every family in the country, are viewed = Sew
eyes by men of every class and order. This probably
from their having to deal with races whose habits and fee ings
are so foreign to our own, that measures suited to meet i ol
wants often strike those not conversant with Eastern Sos
as being strange and unaccountable. It 1s easier to of 2
to learn, and a fluent abuse of what they do not unders Sa
enables many to escape from the mortification of avowing %
they are ignorant. Jealousy ever treads hard upon success, an ;
the East India Company, when left to itself, has been the es
uniformly successful governing body in the world. Ba chec
which it has ever sustained may be traced in some shape *
other to those disturbing influences which the late Le
Metcalfe had in his mind when he said, in the hearing of the
author, that the real dangers of British India Te
mence from the day when the party spirit of the Britis Br
liament should be brought to bear directly on its Saiyan
The Company’s troops were successful in every iin
every wet engaged in was admitted to be justifiable, % fhe
luekless Afghan expedition was forced upon the reluctan

 
(in Leadenhall Street by the ministry of the day, in 1838.
Since then, the Company’s rule has ceased to be as firm and
consistent as it was before, because Governor-Generals took
their tone from Downing Street, and shaped their measures
‘accordingly. Still it is most unjust to tax the Company with
remissness in those branches of administration over which they
retained their sway. If their Government in India has erred, it
has been less from hanging back than from advancing too
rapidly with its improvements, and striving too hard to keep up
with ¢ the spirit of the age.” If the thirty years’ settlement of
the revenue, a work of immense labour, were all that there was
to show, the agricultural classes in Upper India evince by their
present conduct their sense of the value of that blessing.
Conscious of its own anxiety to promote the welfare of its
subjects, the Indian Government for a while forgot the necessity
of being physically strong, as well as benevolently disposed. It
was consequently taken by surprise, but has not found the fabric
of its power to crumble beneath the shock. How is this? Is
it not a proof that for one hundred years we have been moving
in the right direction, slowly, it may be, in the opinion of plat-
form orators, but as rapidly as is consistent with safety in such
a country as India? Those who “ account mechanical inventions
the great agents in the history of mankind” will, of course,
blame the Indian Government for not having overspread the
land with railroads. Yet the truth is, that works of this class have
perhaps gone on with greater speed than is quite consistent with
safety ; and the only blame attaching to the Government is, for
not having sufficiently appreciated their tendency to create alarm
in that Brahminical body whose influence it was folly to ignore.
Another cry, proceeding from the same quarter, blames
the Indian Government for not having covered their territory
with European colonists. No account is taken of the obstacles
opposed by Nature to British colonisation in any but temperate
climates. Englishmen will never go to India, excepting to make
fortunes to be enjoyed in other lands, and under a milder sun.
Landed estates would by such settlers be merely held as sub-
sidiary to commercial speculations. Should they become
numerous, the effects of the domination of race over race would

 

27

be exhibited on a scale to surpass, as is well remarked by the
Indophilus of The Times,” all that is recorded of the Nor-
mans in England, or of the Orangemen in Ireland. In con-
firmation of this view, take the following passages in a letter
addressed to the author, in the year 1854, by a most intelligent
Hindoo gentleman in Bengal :—

¢« The fact is, that European traders have obtained, in many
places in the interior of the Bengal Presidency, almost uncon-
trolled power,—a power which they are seldom sufficiently
scrupulous not to exert to the injury of these with whom they
come in contact. It is not exaggeration to say, each indigo
factory, together with its surrounding estate, is a little kingdom
within itself, wherein avarice and tyranny hold unlimited sway.
The police is too feeble to render effectual aid in suppressing the
lawless oppression of the factor.” :

Those who raise the ery for colonisation, and other kindred
measures, are the original authors of the clamour commenced
in Calcutta, and, though now dying out, for a while re-echoed
in London against the present Governor-General and his
councillors. These gentlemen, who undertake to teach the
Governor-General his duty, and choose the most embarrassing
moment for doing so, have, in fact, but one great object at heart,
and that is, to get rid of the Civil Service, which stands as a
protecting barrier between them and the people of the country.
It is with this end in view that they have spread rumours of
dissension in the Supreme Council, and sought to stir the
gallant Commander-in-Chief into opposition to the Government,
of which he is at once a member and the servant. The furious
abuse of Mr. J. P. Grant springs from the same source, and
tends to the same end. That gentleman’s talents being un-
questionable, he is taxed with presumption and vanity by a
writer who, having served, as he tells us, under i Charles
Napier, has caught not a few of the witty old Gencral’s foibles,
among others, that of an outrageous antipathy to the Civil
Service. To explain to the English reader the nature of Mr.
Grant’s mission, it is necessary to state that, as the enemy 1s
expelled from the rich provinees of Upper India, it becomes
actually necessary to provide for the resuscitation of something

 
 

like regular government, otherwise all the revenue now in abev-
ance would be lost, and the provision of food and carriace for
the army would become almost impracticable.
: Mr. Grant’s mission has two objects ; one is to put together
into something like working order, the fragments of or oil
porarily shattered system of internal government ; the other
that of putting as speedy a stop as possible to the fierce he
sures of vindictive retaliation, burning of villages, and wholesale
hanging, which, however natural under the circumstances of the
time, could not but have a ruinous effect, if persisted in for a
moment longer than stern necessity warranted. What those
measures were, will be seen from the following passage, extracted
from a letter written at Cawnpore by an intelligent oung
officer, detained at that station by wounds eccived in Gen 1
Havelock’s first advance towards Lucknow :— pe
“The English newspapers are frightfully bloodthirsty and
revengeful. So are the people here ; but I hope a stop will be
put to wholesale hanging. I have seen a tree ornamented with
nine or ten Sepoys in a few minutes by our men. They just
tied feet together and hands behind back, rope round er J Ta
throwing the other end over a low branch, up the fellow wath
But these were fellows caught with arms in their hands The
talk here is, * Hunt down every Sepoy!” If they do _ will
keep the flames alive for long. As to their dase, I should
like to come in upon them apropos, to teach then, JARNETS;
but our civilised officers and men would, if allowed, Hh

* titi

The following is from a second letter from
home, as well as those here, seem to have gons
ago 1t was wrong

the same pen: — People at
J mad about revenge. Half.a-year
a ope 1 a bysaanical £ hit a native, even if he were imperti-
ws ho ane is Im a ‘nigger, oh, horror !! but now nothing is half
Pain ww 1e magistrate catches a nigger upon some sort of evidence,
hoje epoy, or rebel, and of course ordered off to the gallows, and
mes 1s previously flogged. The gallows are erected whers the
murdered, and the culprit is made to lick the ground where Hoo a
exist, and every soldier or person gives the rascal a lick with a ‘
head bleeds. Some cram grease into his mouth, and .
open his mouth,

d is supposed to
ck till the man’s

if the wretch refuses to
the most gentle means are not resorted to in order to compel

29

It is hardly necessary here to repeat the refutation of the
silly story of the release of 150 mutineers by Mr. Grant, though,
in spite of its manifest falsehood, it obtained credence in quarters
supposed to be above the reach of vulgar delusion. Had editors
been capable of cool reflection, a glance at the map might have
assured them that the whole was a fabrication. Cawnpore is
about 200 miles from Benares. If General Neill had taken any
mutineers, red hand, it was most unlikely that he, who had hung
so many, should suddenly have hesitated, and referred their
cases to Mr. Grant, who, without such reference, could not have
had time to intermeddle. But the object was to get up a cry
against the Civil Service; and so the tale was seized on, and
written about, until the next mail came in, and the spiteful
bubble burst. We are as yet without any information as to the
limits of Mr. Grant’s powers, but we may be assured that there
will be no interference with the military authorities where
martial law prevails, though much will doubtless be done in
anticipation of the period when civil authority may with safety
be re-established.

The destruction of all the records will make the re-adjust-
ment of the revenue, and the recognition of landed tenures, a
work of the first importance to individuals as well as to the state,
and one which none but an experienced civil functionary can pos-
sibly perform. Let those who propose to leave all such matters
in military hands reflect whether, if a similar storm had visited
England, and swept away all the title-deeds and documents in
the country, it is from the Horse Guards that they would have
sought for the man to clear away the rubbish, and reduce the
troubled mass into order.* The great danger that now threatens
him to do so ; and many other like practical jokes are carried on. Now, I would
hang the culprit myself and flog him too with pleasure, but as many natives
come to enjoy the entertainment, I would read the crime and sentence, and
nothing more should be inflicted ; but here I am considered mad, because I see
any harm in such reprisals. What a very just idea the natives must have of the

atrocities they committed, when they see us now trying our utmost to vie with
their ingenuity! It won’t be many months before ¢ The Times * will turn round,
and then we shall not have many confessing they assisted at the fun.”’

* Jt may here be allowed to say a word about the salaries of Civil servants.

Those who think them too high should ask themselves this question. Would
any man with 10007. a-year, secured to him in London, go out to live under an

 
 

Upper India is dearth, perhaps famine. To avert this evil may
be difficult, and, if the sanguinary politicians of Calcutta held
the sway, would be impossible. J udging from the tenor of
their writings, indeed, we may almost assume that they would
exterminate the fifty millions of Upper India, and then rail at
the Government for letting the land fall out of cultivation.

Of all the absurdities springing up in the course of this
discussion, none is more extravagant than the attempt to link
the mutiny in some way with the torture-story brought home
from some remote province in Southern India, where, as was
well remarked by the Earl of Harrowby, “it is difficult to pro-
tect the people, because they will not help you to protect them-
selves.” It is ever necessary to remind the purely English
reader that India is a country as large as Europe, and that what
may be true of one province may never have been heard of in
another. In the Gangetic portion of British India no such
thing as authorised torture has ever been known ; and this,
indeed, was admitted in the House of Lords, and accounted for
by the charitable supposition that the hardy character of the
people in that quarter deterred the Court of Directors from
sanctioning its introduction! As the author limits his
remarks to the provinces connected with the Bengal Presidency,
he must leave the members of the Madras Service to defend
themselves, as they are well able to do. But though it is
strange that the cruel practices of which a man of some note, not
long since, told a farmers’ meeting that he had inflicted a volume
of official proofs on a happy party assembled at a country-seat,
did not stir even the softer races of Southern India to some acts
of mutiny, it is stranger still to know what actually did once
provoke a rebellious movement in that very region.

In the year 1837 a rebellion broke out in the district of
Mangalore, on the western coast of the Indian Peninsula. It

Indian sun, and lead a lonely life in the interior, for less than double, or even
treble, that sum? Multiply a stay-at-home salary by three, and you will come
near to the Indian equivalent. Moreover, where men are largely trusted, they
must be largely paid ; and no men are so largely trusted as the Civil and Political
servants of the Indian Government.— See, on this point, Lord Macaulay’s
“Essays on Clive and Hastings.”

31

spread like an epidemic, infecting every class, even the officers

of Government of every grade, some of whom tried to dissuade

the Collector from sending off the public treasure to a vessel

that was luckily at hand, in order that it might be reserved for

the insurgents who were then advancing towards the station.

This movement was suppressed by the arrival of troops in

steamers from Bombay, and with the aid of the people of the

newly-conquered province of Caorg. Now, what was the cause

of this insurrection ? It was nothing more nor less than our
humane substitution of the process of selling land, in realisation
of public and private debts, for the simple coercive Bossa in
use under Asiatic rulers, or what we should call torture. Now,
no one would propose to allay the discontents on the Malabar
coast by the re-introduction of the good old practice of subject-
ing the bodies of defaulters to a little suffering, and leaving their
lands untouched ; but such instances as the above should teach
those whose knowledge of India is scanty, to beware of passing
hasty censures upon the men by whom that extraordinary
empire has been governed, with such undeniable success, from
the days of Clive until the outbreak of the present disturbances,
for which it remains to be seen who is responsible. A letter of
the Duke of Wellington, dated 13th October, 1803, is full of
instruction to censors of the class in question. Writing on the
absurdity of trying to reduce things in India to the European
standard, he thus expresses himself :— In short, the only con-
clusion to be drawn from all reflection and reasoning on this
subject is, that the British Government in India is a phenomenon,
and that it will not answer to apply to it, in its present state,
either the rules which guide other governments, or the reason-
ing on which these rules are founded.” *

But the most serious, and certainly the most popular, as
being the most easily-understood, charge against the Indian
Government is, that of taxing it with religious indifference, and
even hostility, to the diffusion of Christian knowledge throughout

its dominions. :
At the by-gone period, when that charge had some appear-

* Gurwood, vol. ii. p. 411.

 
ance of truth, it might have been brought against the Govern-
ment of England, as well as against that of India. The early
years of this century were certainly not years of religious zeal,
and our public men in the Fast partook of the apathy which
prevailed among our Gallios in office at home. As religious
feeling revived in the mother-country, it was gradually commu-
nicated to the dependency. Bishops were appointed, churches
built, the numerical strength of the clerical body was increased,
the strict, at least the decorous, observance of the Sabbath
was enforced, the utmost freedom was allowed to missionary
bodies, American as well as British, whose agents traversed
the length and breadth of the country at their pleasure; and,
more than that, were, when well-mannered and good linguists,
ever treated, not only with politeness, but with respect, by
the natives, especially by the Hindoos. Higher testimony was
never borne to the moral and intellectual merits of any body of
men, than will be found in a speech delivered in the English
language by a native gentleman in Calcutta, himself a Hindoo,
on the 25th July last, in praise of the Christian missionaries
in Bengal.

It is curious to observe how the disposition to carp at our
Eastern administration veers round with the varying humour
of the time. At the beginning of this century, the Bard of
Hope winds up the first part of his poem with an apostrophe
to the Hindoo Olympus, imploring its intervention to avenge
the wrongs endured by the “children of Brama” at the
hands of the “free-born Britons ” of those days. Seriswattee,
Canideo, and Gunesa, are invoked by name, and the ‘tenth
avatar” is hailed by a Christian poet with more than Hindoo
fervour. Now-a-days the tide is turned, and our countrymen in
India are accused, with equal injustice, though less imagi-
nation, of undue deference to the scruples and feelings of the
people over whom they were once said to tyrannise. Both
charges may, in as far as the Gangetic provinces are concerned,
be pronounced to be figments. The religious or superstitious
feelings of our subjects have, in that part of our empire, never
been either outraged or petted. Salutes to idols, or parades in
honour of Hindoo festivals, are unknown on the banks of the

33

Ganges, whatever may be the case in the Southern Peninsula.
All that can be alleged against the Company’s government
in that quarter is, that it has kept faith with those high-caste
men whom it received into its service, and with religious establish-
ments found by us in possession of endowments when we took
the land from its former rulers. Even in this respect, the leaning
of our administration has for the last thirty years been directly
the reverse of what 1s often, with over-confidence, asserted.
This will appear from the following passage taken from the
pamphlet of Mr. F. H. Robinson, to which we have before
referred : —

“The Government have of late years systematically resumed
all religious endowments, an extensive inquiry has been going
on into all endowments, grants, and pensions; and in almost
every one in which the continuance of religious endowments has
been recommended by subordinate revenue authorities, backed
by the Board of Revenue, the fiat of confiscation has been
issued by the Government.”—(Page 17.)

Whether these confiscations, or resumptions, as they were
called, were wise or just, isa matter of dispute ; the fact of their
occurrence is unquestioned ; and that fact alone is a proof of no
over-indulgence having been shown to establishments having the
support of either the Hindoo or the Mahommedan faith for their
object. It is remarkable also that the natives themselves coupled
the idea of religious zeal in their Christian rulers with activity
in carrying out these very measures. The author has more than
once had the question put to him whether Mr. A. B., and Mr.
C.D., gentlemen known for the strictness of their views, did
not account it a duty to bear hard upon the Moosulman and the
Brahmin, and the conjunction of these hitherto dissociable
names struck him at the time as ominous. It may be recorded,
as worthy of notice, that Hurdeo Bukbs, the landholder, to
whose good offices Messrs. Edwards and Probyn, of the Civil
Service, owed their escape from the fate which overtook the
other fugitives from Futtehghur, is said to have declared, that
in saving these Englishmen, at some hazard to himself, he

was actuated by his grateful recollection of kindness shown to
0

 
 

34

his father by the very gentleman * from whose pamphlet the
passage above cited is taken. Much stress has been laid on the
case of the Brahmin native officer gently withdrawn from his
regiment after his conversion to Christianity. This event hap-
pened nearly forty years ago, and yet it is spoken of and preached
upon as if it were an act of the ruling power of the present day.
Those concerned in it have long since passed away. Yet, in justice
to the departed, let us consider what the circumstances of our
empire were in the year 1819. Two great wars, that with Nepal
on the Kast, and with the Mahrattas and Pindarrees on the West,
had just been brought to a conclusion, but the passions excited by
the struggle had not even begun to cool. Runjeet Sing, at the
head of the Sikhs, stronger at that time than when they after-
wards tested our mettle to the utmost, though his good sense
had withheld him from taking advantage of our merely apparent
difficulties, while engaged only with foreign foes, might have
found, in such a falling-off of our own troops as we are now
witnessing, an opportunity too tempting for even his prudence
to have withstood. A mutiny in 1819 would have been a more
serious matter than we find it now, for then there was no
steam to shorten distance. Twelve months must have elapsed
before any succours could have reached India from England. To
assert that no mutiny was to be dreaded, is merely to beg the
whole question at issue, and therefore we must conclude that
they who blame what was done by the Government of the
Marquis of Hastings, in 1819, would, if they had been in power,
have followed a contrary course, and taken their chance for the
consequences, even if the loss of the empire itself had been
among the results to be apprehended. What would have hap-
pened in that case cannot, of course, be known, but what has
happened we see and feel. The men of 1819 have transmitted to
us an empire which has not certainly been brought into jeopardy
by over-adherence to their principles of government, but which

* The late Mr. P. H. Robinson had held the office of Commissioner of the
Futtehghur division not long before he left India. It is hoped that the above
anecdote may draw attention to his clever and original pamphlet.

we are, nevertheless, now reduced to a struggle to preserve and
hand down to our successors.

But in what form are we to transmit it? As an absolute
conquest, to be ruled over in the manner most consonant with
the wishes and passions of the dominant minority, or as a country
held by an official tenure, where the duty of the Government,
acting as trustee to the estate, is to endeavour to administer
it for the benefit of the various races interested in its welfare ?
The first of these two modes of rule will be the most popular in
England, and with what are called “the independent KEuro-
peans ” in India. It will be popular with that more numerous
than sagacious class, which hates the East India Company, it
knows not why. It may allure the ministry of the day by the
promise of a vast accession of direct power, freed from the
harassing necessity of having often to contend with men of
superior intelligence, whose counsels thereisa pre-determination
to overrule. To the Horse-Guards, also, the cry for a re-
modelling of the Government of India, and the re-conquest of
a country which has never revolted, must have an attractive
sound, for it holds out a prospect of increased patronage, and
the riddance of that standing perplexity — the Company’s army.
The absolute-conquest scheme will also command the suffrages
of such proselytising societies as seek for the co-operation of
Government, without distinctly declaring what the nature of that
co-operation is to be. The same scheme will, of course, be in
favour with the “independent European” class in India, for it
is with them that it originates. Thus there is a formidable
display of interests in support of a scheme which, nevertheless,
appears to be fraught with both injustice and danger. It is
unjust to visit millions with permanent humiliation on account
of the misconduct of some thousands, whom we have ourselves
detached from the bulk of the people and brought into an
artificial state, more directly under our own influence than that
of any other section of the community. It will be dangerous
to attempt, with our numerical disparity, to introduce a system
only to be sustained by an ever-present and ever-watchful
superiority of physical force. Admit that we can conquer and
scatter every enemy whom we may for the next three or four

c? |

 
 

years encounter in the field, still the question will remain of,
How is the pressure to be kept up which, in the case supposed,
will continually be required to suppress the heavings of discon-
tent ? A mighty force is now assembling on the Upper Ganges,
—a force, perhaps, a little in excess to the means of feeding or
moving; cavalry without horses, sappers who cannot work in
the sun, and artillery to supersede, rather than to co-operate
with, that noble corps of Bengal, pronounced even by Sir Charles
Napier to be perfect. Of all this array, if deprived of the assist-
ance of native troops in the discharge of duties involving con-
tinued exposure to climate, at least twenty per cent would,
before a year is out, be dead, and few forthcoming to supply
their place in- what would then be considered an unattractive
service.

It is necessary here to remind the English reader how
almost incredibly small is the European machinery employed in
the government of India. Excepting at about ten stations, far
apart from each other, along a line of nearly 1200 miles in
extent, there is not an armed European to be seen from the sea
to the boundary of the Punjaub. These stations are mostly on
the Ganges and the Jumna ; while to the right and left of those
rivers vast provinces, peopled by more millions than half Europe
contains, are governed by little knots of English functionaries,
sometimes only two or three, and seldom more than five or six
in number, with nothing but native physical force to support
them. In its very essence, such a system, resting mainly on
moral influence, is of course one of compromise. The people
yield their obedience to all the fair behests of their rulers, but
expect in return to have their social freedom respected, and to
be exempt from all authoritative intermeddling with their reli-
gion. They also calculate upon being subjected to no novel
mode of taxation, and upon the bulk of what is levied on them
being taken in the form of the portion of the produce of the
land, assigned by immemorial custom to the ruling power to
meet the exigencies of the state. Partial deviations from this
course may be submitted to (though even to these fierce oppo-
sition has at times been made), but any such alteration of the
whole revenue system, as is evidently contemplated by the advo-

37

cates of the “ colonising”” policy, would estrange from us the
good-will of the now well-affected agricultural class. Two in-
stances of open resistance to fiscal innovations may here be
noticed ; the one took place in the year 1809, when the towns-
people of Benares, to the number of half-a-million, left their
homes and bivouacked in the fields, until the Government
yielded to their petition for the abolition of a recently imposed
house-tax ; the other occurred at Bareilly, in the year 1816,
when a police-tax, eventually carried into effect, provoked on its
first enforcement an armed resistance, which soon assumed a
religions Mahommedan aspect, and was only quelled, with the
loss to the insurgents of about 1500 killed and wounded, by the
firmness of three companies of Bengal Sepoys.

The proposed substitute for the immemorial land revenue
has not yet been distinctly stated, but, considering the quarter
whence 1t may be expected to proceed, its tendency most pro-
bably will be to make the Indian Government pay for the cotton
to be supplied to Manchester. This end will be virtually gained
merely by reducing the assessment on land, and leaving it to
the Kastern exchequer to find in new imposts an equivalent for
that of which it will thus, for the first time in the history of
India, be deprived.

It 1s impossible to read what daily appears in print without
perceiving that the scheme of Colonial Government, once cried
up as fraught -with blessings to the people of India, is now
built upon a studied disregard, or rather hatred, of their race.
This, indeed, is openly avowed by the hasty, and is implied in
the suggestions of the more cautious, advocates of the measure.
To take a specimen of each :—A letter inserted in the “Morn-
ing Post” of the 26th November, and professing to come from
India to a correspondent in Paris, contains the following
passage : — The hatred of the Bengalese, whatever his calling,
is such, he will be treated like a ferocious wild beast ; he is one,
and we are to treat him, forsooth, as a mild and faithful Hindoo.
Oh, this lovely country !—for in some parts it is a paradise
— to think that the race of Ham should enjoy it under a
mild Christian rule, and not appreciate the goodness of God !
England must make the Government a Colonial one, and no

 
 

native of India, for many years to come, privileged to enjoy
a share in its bounty, or hold an office of either trust or
responsibility.”

The use here made of the name ‘Bengalese” warrants a
suspicion that the letter was written by a Calcutta cockney,
unaware of the fact, that although our native soldiers in that
quarter are called Bengal Sepoys, there is not a Bengalee among
them. Bengalee is a name exclusively applied to the native of
Bengal Proper. There are forty millions of this race, and it is
hard to make that portion of our subjects the special objects of
our hate; for to them the triumph of the mutineers would have
been so fatal, that we may be assured of the sincerity of the
prayers which they offered up for our success.

The Bengalee is a timid being, and may be dealt with at
discretion ; but it is as well to think how the other “ children of
Ham” will relish the scheme for reducing them to the condition
of serfs in their own land. It is almost useless to waste
argument on so wild a scheme as that for Helotizing all India,
with its 170 millions of inhabitants, of whom one-fourth are not
yet under our dominion. More consideration is, however, due
to a graver project, lately presented to the public in the form
of a letter printed in ¢‘ The Times” of the 2d December. The
project is detailed in six separate propositions, and these it may
be useful to review seriatim : —

1. “India must be kept free from external war, and from
further expansion.”

A wise suggestion, doubtless, but the English public must be
changed before conquest can be stayed. If they will be so
blinded by the glare and glitter of successful battle as to be
unable to see when a conquest is unjust, as in the case of
Scinde, or unnecessary, as in the case of Pegu, how is it to be
expected that men in power abroad, to whose ¢ quick bosoms
quiet” often “is a hell,” will not be tempted to indulge in the
enticing luxury of military expeditions ?

2. “The high lands of India, north, central, and south,
must be systematically filled with European colonies.”

If the mountainous tracts in the Himalaya, Cossyn, and
Neelgherry ranges are here alluded to, there is no objection to

39

the scheme, excepting as concerns the interest of the colonists,
who, in those mountainous tracts, will find very pleasant places
to reside at, but few spots to promise extensive profit to any
great number of agricultural settlers. Should we ever recon-
quer the site of the ancient Bactrian kingdom, a colony in a
country blest with an almost European climate may be feasible.

3. “English citizenship must be recognised in India as a
distinct element, and be cautiously imparted as a reward to
individuals, to classes, and to places.”

An attempt to apply the policy of a continuous continental
empire, like that of ancient Rome, to a detached dominion based
upon maritime superiority, like ours in India, would probably
in practice fail.* It carries with it a semblance of fairness, but
is intrinsically one-sided and partial, as will appear from what
is to follow.

4. “ Well-defined political as well as social rights should
be granted to all English citizens in India.”

The real drift of this proposition is, that the Government of
India ought to be placed in the hands of those “ unofficial ”
Englishmen who may migrate to that country for a while, to
make or to repair a fortune. This will appear more clearly in
the sequel.

5. “The Indian Government must not fluctuate with
English party, nor its policy be made subservient to the
shifting politics of Europe.”

This, like the first proposition, is a wise one, and furnishes
the best possible argument for keeping the Government of
India in the hands of a body like the Court of Directors, who,
as the representatives of a separate constituency, with chartered
rights, can alone effect what is here truly stated to be most
desirable. The same chairman of that Court who protested
against the Afghan war, in 1838, the late Mr. St. George
Tucker, said on another occasion, what then was true, that
“India is of no party.”

* Egypt alone, of all the Roman provinces, bore any resemblance to British
India, and there the ‘* Equites,”” with their exclusive right of administration,
seem to have stood in a position very like that of the Civil Service of the present
day.

 
 

6. “The permanent burdens of India must, in the long run,
be borne by India.”

There is no objection to be urged against this. In fact, it
only approves of what always has been, for the Home Treasury
has little cause to complain of Indian importunities. It 1s,
however, in the comment that follows, that the latent injustice
of the whole scheme is disclosed. Taxes are to be voted in
“Parliaments consisting of English citizens, and of none be-
sides.” There is a show of consideration for the native in the
provision for “imparting English citizenship to him as a re-
ward,” but who, that knows anything of the bearing of the
races towards each other, will fail to perceive that in such a
motley parliament the voices of the dusky portion would be
drowned by that of the robuster whites?

The concluding passage of the letter hints at the possibility
of setting up one of our own Princes as King of India, which
very idea has ere this occurred to two well-informed men of
different countries and races, writing at the distance of half-a-
century from each other. No. 31 of the * Edinburgh Review,”
published in the year 1810, contains the following speculation
on the future Government of India :—

“ A simple form of arbitrary government, tempered by Euro-
pean honour and European intelligence, is the only form which
is now fit for Hindostan. But that government should be one,
the interests of which are identified with the interests of the
country, and arbitrary as it must be, such checks and influences
might easily be applied as would render it mild and paternal in
its exercise.

“It has occurred to us, then, that the only way to escape
great evil, both to India and to England, is at once to give the
former country a government to itself. Instead of sending out
a Governor-General, to be recalled in a few years, why should we
not constitute one of our royal family Emperor of Hindostan,
with hereditary succession? The sovereign would then be
surrounded by Britons, and the spirit of Britons would animate
and direct his government. Europeans of all descriptions would
be invited to settle in his country, and to identify their interests
with those of the nation. The productive powers of European

41

industry, under the protecting hand of a British Government on
the spot, would soon give new life and new riches to the state,
and the commercial enterprise of Britons would find a field of
boundless extent, every year presenting a more vast and pre-
cious produce from which to cull for the commercial aggrandise-
ment of their country.” *

The same opinion, supported by almost the very same rea-
soning, is expressed in the following passage, in a letter from an
intelligent Hindoo at Indore, dated 23d June, 1857, of which
the first part has been already given :— we

“ As I have always been allowed the indulgence of writing
anything to you that comes foremost in my head, I hope you
will excuse a question from me, how foolish soever I may appear
in putting it. Pray, why does not England send out a King
for India ? Surely Her Most Gracious Majesty would have no
objection to instal the Prince Royal to that high office. Sir
Vernon Smith and Sir George Clerk may come out as wuzeers,
and the Honourable Court of Directors may come out as the
council of state. The princes, and the intelligent gentry and
nobility of India, may furnish material to form a parliament, and
India may be governed in India, and for India; I don’t know
who loses by this plan. This country has always been governed
by monarchs. The difference of religion between the governor
and the governed will not signify a bit, seeing how endeared the
Hindoos had become to Mohammedan kings. But one great
point will be gained. There will then be some one to think India
his own, and, so far, to take interest in its actual prosperity. A
Governor-General for five years cannot take a permanent interest ;
he may do something to secure a pension or a name, but very
little for the country.

“But I am afraid I am rising from the foolish to the pre-
sumptuous, and will end here.” a

Climate, the great bar to every attempt at Europeanizing
India, would stand in the way of this kingly project. To give it
a chance of success, an English Prince, with a retinue of courtiers,
must be found ready to take a life-long leave of England, to

* ¢ Edinburgh Review,’’ vol. xvi. p. 156.

 
42

become the denizens of a tropical country. This is as little to be
expected as the emigration of the thousands of substantial
Englishmen who would be wanted to thrust out, or crush, a

. corresponding number of native landholders, and become the
basis of that democratic despotism so evidently desired by the
more ardent advocates of colonisation.

Since, therefore, inexorable climate opposes every projected
change, why should we quarrel with that official tenure proved
by experience to adapt itself to the peculiarities of the reciprocal
position of England and India better than any device that we
now can hit upon? The still existing, though perhaps expiring,
form of rule, gives as free a scope to the English progressive
spirit as is consistent with a due regard for the stationary
character of our Indian subjects. Electric telegraphs have over-
spread the surface of Upper India, and probably contributed
to alarm what they bestride; railways are advancing steadily,
and have had their share in startling the Brahminical directors
of the Hindoo mind. Canals to command the admiration of all
engineers have been completed, roads and bridges have been
constructed, schools in villages, colleges in towns, dispensaries,
attended by native practitioners educated in Calcutta, are yearly
Increasing in number in the interior.

The settlement of the land revenue for thirty years nomi-
nally, but in fact in perpetuity, is a blessing, their appreciation
of which is shown by the general good conduct of the land-
holders in Upper India during our recent difficulties.

The labour attending that settlement was immense, and
many a young civilian injured his health, about seventeen years
since, by tarrying at the most trying season in tents, to carry
on this most important, though not showy work.

The police and administration of Justice in these Gangetic
provinces will, if viewed with reference to the character of the
people, not be found to merit all the reproaches bestowed upon
them, mainly by that « independent* European class” whom
it is often the painful duty of our Judicial officers to reprove and
restrain. The admission by Lord Brougham, that the Privy

* See ante, p. 27, Letters from a native of Bengal.

43

Council reversed in appeal more, proportionately, of the de-
cisions of Her Majesty’s judges of the Supreme Court than ;
did of those passed by the Company’s judges, is a clear proo
that the latter cannot be so very bad, notwithstanding what owe
other Law-Lords have declared. If those sages of the bs
could be transported to the banks of the Ganges, and place i
the head of some troublesome district in Bengal, they wou
soon discover that an acquaintance with the native So
and language is there of more use 1n the Oe 4
justice than all the knowledge that can be imported from a lan
of complicated rights and artificial habits like England. op
If, turning from the subject of internal management, it 2

abroad to what is passing on and beyond our actual boun ary,
what a wonderful spectacle of administrative skill meets a)
eye! On this, however, as it has been stamped a ie iia
applause of our Sovereign, it is needless, and would be perhap

-esumptuous, to dilate. :

Ha oe department only has there been any SE
and that one, as before remarked, is not under the ast lo 2
Company’s entire sway. The supreme command of 3 iii
in the Bast has always been held by one of Her Ry
generals, and to this circumstance, perhaps, may be oe e . To
tendency to centralisation which is said to have Ws st i
authority and damped the zeal of commanders of ] atta
Yet, if the regimental organisation of the army : as pe vel
faulty, how admirably have not its administrative epar AW
worked! No cries have been heard from our We 2 ;
Delhi or Lucknow like those that reached us from the ( ne
Notwithstanding the prevailing disturbance, the WE b
aided by the civil and political authorities, has proved equa

Tr gency.
hr i but one great want to be supplied,
of a good working native army.

an this indispensable force together, care will, of

* Reports of cases decided by the Sudder Courts used to be phobia;
nuall series was begun by the late Sir W. Memon. fu Wk
ns its republication in England would probably furnish the best reply
much that is said against the Company's judicial officers.

 
44

course, be taken not to fill it with too many men of the same
class. Geographical circumstances tended to introduce this evil
into the now dissolving army. -

The Bombay army, being drawn from the motley population
of. a sea-board, partook of the character of those from among
whom it was raised. The Bengal army, on the contrary, was
formed far inland, and drew its recruits mainly from the agri-
cultural class. This may account for the sort of family feeling

that pervades the whole body. Henceforward we must enlist

from various classes, not, perhaps, mixing them promiscuously in
the ranks, but forming them into separate battalions or compa-
nies, according to their tribe.

Goorkhas and Sikhs will, of course, be largely employed ;
yet we must not overdo this, lest, in extinguishing one evil, we
should give birth to another. Every mercenary army has its
dangerous aspect ; and it is possible that even our own coun-
trymen, if stationed permanently in large bodies on the Ganges,
might catch the Praetorian cohort feeling, by some believed to
have been at the bottom of our Sepoys’ recent misconduct. A
great, but not an extravagant, increase to the permanent Euro-
pean force will be desirable. In Oude, Rohileund, and perhaps
in Bundlecund, new stations for European troops will be wanted ;
but in the rest of Gangetic India (apart from the Punjaub), it
will probably be thought enough to add the fortresses of Alla-
habad and Delhi, and the town of Dacca, * to the posts to be
in future occupied by that description of force.

Leaving, however, the resuscitation of a native army on the
Ganges to be discussed by those professionally familiar with the
subject, let us now consider how the civil and political branches
of the public administration are likely to be affected by the dis-
turbing influence of the late explosion on the minds of our
subjects abroad, and of our countrymen both at home and

* In the Cossyn hills to the east of Dacca, at an elevation of about 5000 feet
above the level of the sea, there is, at a place called Myrung, a high table-land
admirably suited for a European cantonment. The situation is a most command-
ing one, with Assam on the north and Sylhet on the south. There is water-
carriage to the foot of the hills on both sides, and the spot is to be reached in
three marches from Assam, and in two from Sylhet.

45

abroad. Of all the perils in prospect, none are so formidable
as those to be dreaded from the last-mentioned of these two
sources. If we could keep our countrymen within bounds, the
difficulty of correcting or guarding against the suspicions and
alarms of our native subjects would be wonderfully diminished.
It is a hard thing to calm the minds of a very sensitive people,
who are constantly told by Englishmen of authority and weight,
that what the Local Government assures them will not be done,
must, and shall, be attempted. It is true that these declara-
tions are, for the most part, qualified by a disavowal of any
desire to see coercion or bribery employed to effect the desired
end. But when in the course of any discussion the mode of
stating facts is calculated to make but one impression, it
matters little whether the object be expressly acknowledged or
not.

Detached declarations, disclaiming the only rational coneclu-
sion deducible from the premises, will, in such cases, only
excite a suspicion that the real object is one that cannot,
without inconvenience, be clearly and explicitly avowed.

The preceding remarks bear more immediately on the
writings and speeches of the proselytizing bodies in England,
who, though enjoying the fullest liberty of persuasion, are still
discontented ; but they may be often found to apply to those of
political speculators also. Two specimens of startling lucubra-
tions of the latter class have already been given, but as neither
of these derive any weight from the quarter whence they pro-
ceed, it seems desirable to adduce another sample, having the
sanction of the well-known name of the Member for Sheffield.
This gentleman and his friends cannot be said to have courted
discussion, for in the report of what passed at a meeting held
in St. Martin’s Hall, on the 17th December, it appears that all
the speaking was on one side, and that a gallant captain who
tried to make himself heard was, “by a unanimous vote of the
meeting, expelled the room.”

The speech thus guarded against any immediate contradiction
opens with a fair and true description of the empire established in
India ; but goes too far in its adulation of the people of England,
when it asserts the fabric to be one of their rearing. The people

 
46

of England as a nation, acting through its legitimate organs, the
Parliament and Ministry of the day, contributed little to the
completion of the work beyond furnishing the East India Com.
pany with a body of European troops, which that Company
could, if permitted, easily have raised for itself. There is, of
course, no question as to the power of the nation to deal as it
likes with whatever may have been acquired by any of its mem-
bers; but every argument adduced to defend the seizure of the
imperial estate created by the East India Company through the
agency of its own servants, may be used to justify the laying
hands on all the property of every railway or joint-stock com-
pany in this kingdom. It was by an accident, rather than by
any deep design, that a trading company was from the first
interposed between Great Britain and its dependency ; but to
that accident is it mainly owing that the present generation
has got any Eastern empire to dispute about. France started
at the same time as England in the Indian race, but the French
ministry directed the operations of the French officers ; while a
trading Company, presided over by men of the middle order,
imparted their own homely vigour to the founders of the
English dominion in the East.
Thus the great talents of Bussy, and other French officers
“on the spot, were neutralised by courtly influences emanating
from Versailles ; while Clive, with his coadjutors, were screened
by the intervention of their commercial employers from what
would have proved the equally baneful interference of the
British Cabinet and Parliament.

All this is evidently perceived by the Member for Sheffield ;
but, in his anxiety to avoid ascribing any merit to the Fast
India Company, he speaks of Clive as if he had received his
mandate direct from the people of England.

The force of truth soon after extorts an admission that the
British, which means the Company’s, rule in India, has been a
blessing to those under its sway, though the blessing might, it
is urged, have been greater than it has been, if it were not for
that double government, which seems to be the béte noire of all
Indian reformers.

If, however, it be true that the President of the Board of

47

Control can ““ do exactly as he pleases,” what would be gained
in point of vigour by the transfer of his duties to a personage
with another designation, to whom it would be impossible to
impart more power than is already possessed by the functionary
who is styled “the real ruler of India ?” :

As to responsibility, unless we mean to revive the terrors of
Tower Hill, it 1s a term of little meaning. Will the author of
any blunder in these days sleep the less soundly for knowing
that he is personally responsible for the measure {

But why should a constitutional Englishman feel such a
horror of a system of double government? Is it not by checks,
sometimes a source of inconvenience but more often of safety,
that all limited Governments must be carried on? To the
despot or the democrat they may be odious, but no good rea-
son can be shown for their proving hateful to the intelligent
member of a really free community, even in the regulation of a
conquered dependency. A few instances of the vicious working
of the system in force would be of more avail here than any
general declamation. Where any evil has been done, or good
omitted, there never will be much difficulty in determining
whether the controlled or the controlling authority is to blame.
We may all, even now, find out, if he who caused an unjust and
impolitic war has his seat in Leadenhall Street or in Cannon
Row ; and if the existing partition of power does not shroud him
from detection, what would be gained by placing him in a more
exposed position, while he is at the same time to be freed from
the wholesome restraint imposed by the mere necessity of
answering, even when determined to overrule, the objections of
a body of able and well-informed men? Those who think such
restraint to be of no use, need only peruse the correspondence
that passed in the year 1833 between the Court of Directors
and the Board of Control, on the subject of what was called
the Dosses’ claim upon the Nawab of Oude, to perceive into what
fearful errors a home-bred statesman, if entirely unchecked,
might fall in dealing with an Indian question. The sketch
that follows of the character of our Indian subjects is too
sweeping in its conclusions for the induction on which it rests.
There is no good to be done by exasperating the hatred of

 
48

race against race. After an allusion to the barbarous acts of
the Indian insurgents, it is asked whether Englishmen could
“in their wildest fury have done such deeds ?” Until we sce
order overthrown, the jails broken open, and St. Giles’s let
loose, we cannot say of what Englishmen may or may not be
capable ; but the passages cited below,* from Lord N ormanby’s
recent account of a “Year of Revolution in Paris,” show that
other Europeans can be guilty of acts equalling in atrocity all
that we read of the enormities committed by the Sepoys or the
liberated convicts in Upper India.

The next topic touched upon is the capacity of the Hindoos
for self-government. Here the Hindoos are spoken of as if they
were the sole inhabitants of India, no account being made of
the millions of Mahommedans residing in that land. The
Hindoos are pronounced to be incapable of self-government,
and perhaps, if tried by a European standard, they may appear
to be so. Yet the people whose ancient system of village com-
munities is thought to have contained the germ of our own
municipal institutions, cannot be so entirely destitute of all

administrative capacity as the Member for Sheffield supposes. t
Long subjection may have deadened the governing faculties of

* «“T am sorry to hear every hour fresh accounts of the barbarities committed
by the insurgents upon those who fell into their hands; all tending to show that
no savage tribe could have been more sure to abuse power, should they unhappily
have obtained the upper hand. Every one of the Garde Mobile —many of them
lads from sixteen to eighteen, who were taken by them, were frightfully mutilated.’’
—Vol. ii. p. 67.

“ All that has been said of the cruelties practised on the Garde Mobile is true.
In one place they took four or five of these children, who had surrendered as
prisoners, stuck a pike through their throat under the chin, tied their hands down,
and placing them in front of a window, fired between their legs, thinking the
soldiers would not return the fire when they saw the Mobiles. They cut also off
a head from one, filled the mouth with pitch, lighted a match in it, and danced
round to the tune of ¢ Les Lampions.” Having surprised a small Corps de Garde
filled with Mobiles, they killed them all in cold blood ; and some female monsters
amused themselves with cutting out their tongues and stringing them upon a
cord.”’—Vol. ii. p. 75.

T See on this subject, General Briggs’s ¢ India and Europe compared,” p. 5,
with the extract from Sir John Malcolm’s letter on the subject of * Village
Government,’ written during a day’s detention on the banks of the Godavery, as
he was proceeding to join the army in the field in 1817.

49

those under our rule, but many of the independent Hindoo
states, both in Bundlecund and Rajpootana, exhibit every
outward sign of being ruled with moderation and wisdom.
The Hindoos being pronounced to be by nature placed in a
state of pupilage, are of course to be provided with suitable
curators and guardians, who, it may be presumed, are to be
taken from among the “English traders and missionaries,”
these being the only individuals accounted worthy of trust in
matters connected with India.

The members of the Company’s service, both civil and
military, are all lnmped together under the name of ¢ Old
Indians,” and to be cast aside as useless. Yet it may be well,
with the accounts of their skilful management in the Punjaub,
at Delhi, in Oude and Upper India, before us, to pause a little
before we postpone them to either of the respectable classes to
whom alone the people of England are advised to apply for
information. Traders or planters, and missionaries, are both
in a situation calculated to warp their judgment regarding the
capacity and conduct of the officers of Government. Both must
at times labour under a galling sense of subordination, for both
carry about with them the feeling that their complexion alone
entitles them to rank with their official countrymen, to whose
authority they are, nevertheless, obliged often to submit. Both
are liable to disappointments and failures, and these it is a relief
to impute to the mismanagement of the local officers, under
whose control they chafe. It is right, therefore, to listen to
their statements, for their opportunities of acquiring information
ere great ; but in weighing their testimony, the circumstances of
their position should ever be kept in mind.

There was a time when the independent Europeans affected
to make common cause with the people of the country; and
though even then they never cried out about the natives being
oppressed so loudly as when they had themselves been checked
in some act of oppression, still their now openly avowed
hostility to the whole dark-skinned race must greatly simplify
the task of the legislator. No one can now deceive himself
into a belief that he is promoting the happiness of the native
population of India by subjecting it to the authority of legisla-

D

 
50

tive or other chambers, in which the unofficial European element
is to predominate.

Let us_hope, therefore, that whatever may be the changes
to be made in the controlling authority at home, the adminis-
trative power in India may be allowed to remain in the hands
of an official body, set apart from their youth for this special
duty, and whose primary object it may be to administer the
country for the benefit of its inhabitants, trusting thus best to
promote the real interests of their own parent-land. It is im-
material whether the body into whose hands the internal go-
vernment is to be intrusted shall be called the Civil Service, or
receive any other appellation, provided the principle be main-
tamed of employing in the territorial government of India
those only who have been educated and trained expressly for
that duty. Ifa knowledge of English law shall really prove to
be a requisite for the effieient discharge of civil functions, the
addition of a few years to the prescribed age of admission will
probably bring what is wanted into the ranks of the Civil
Service.

The prevailing impression at the present moment seems to
be, that the mutiny, with the collateral insurrection in Oude, is
suppressed. A careful revision of the last accounts received may
warn us against being too hastily assured of this conclusion.
Much, in a military point of view, remains to be done; and
there will be still more of civil ard political work to be per-
formed before that province, wherein alone we have as yet en-
countered a hostile nationality, can be reduced even to the state
of tranquillity enjoyed by it at the time when it was annexed to
our possessions.

In one of those admirable letters signed “A Civilian,”
lately inserted in “ The Times,” we are told the sceret of much
of the resistance encountered in Qude.

Our first administrative act has there been to suppress the
upper class of landholders, called the Talookdars, and thus to
convert them into foes. It would be tedious to explain the
nature of their tenure, and it may be enough to say, that it is
not easy to reconcile the maintenance of the order of Talookdar
with the preservation of those village communities, which present

51

the most pleasing feature in the old Hindoo system of rural
polity. Still, as the whole of Oude seems to have been for a
length of time divided into Talooks, under which, by some
sort of compromise, the village proprietors still held their ground,
one would have thought that the danger of abruptly reducing
the former class must have been apparent from the first ; yet
such was the confidence felt in the inherent power of a favourite
measure to command the assent even of those whom it injured,
that no precaution whatever was taken against this most obvious
risk. In Oude, moreover, it ought to be borne in mind, that
all who oppose us are not rebels.

A letter, dated 23d November, and bearing in every line the
true Calcutta stamp, tells the readers of the first “Times” of
the opening year, that the three million opposed to us in Oude
were composed of feudal retainers and bad characters, or what
in Europe would be called adventurers.

“These,” he says, “have nothing to lose, are fighters from
boyhood, and detest the English, who prohibit plunder.”

Instead of nothing to lose, it would be more correct to say
that they have everything to lose — all upon which they prided
themselves; and although it may not be consistent with our
ideas of the general good that they should retain what they
possessed, still, as they owe us no allegiance, they have an
obvious right to resist our establishing ourselves in their
country.

The hatred of all native independence that runs through
this letter shows, that however great their ability, the unofficial
Calcutta politicians would, if invested with power, soon involve
us in a war of races. \

Notwithstanding the fidelity under trying circumstances of
the great bulk of the states to the west of the Jumna, the
correspondent calls this part of India “a pestilent nest of
rajahlings, nawabs, chiefs, independent zemindars, and titled
vagabonds of every kind.”

Let any one reflect on what the position of our army
before Delhi would have been if the native chiefs in its neigh-
bourhood had only applied the means at their command to stop
supplies, and he will perceive how much was owing to the wise

 
52

policy which had made them our friends. It was a remark
made by the two most intelligent Eastern potentates with whom
we have of late years come into contact, Dost Mahommed and
Runjeet Sing, that the secret of our power lay in our not having
reduced the native princes of the country to despair. Let us
take this saying to heart, and couple it with what both Welling-
ton and Malcolm have said on the strength derived from a
reputation for good faith, and our position may be improved by
the very struggle through which we are passing.

The perils recently encountered have been fearful, but they
are slight in comparison with what would have assailed us if the
counsels of the more violent party among ourselves had in
former years been adopted. The extinction of all native inde-
pendence was, as may be seen from Malcolm's reflections (for-
merly quoted *), long since a favourite doctrine of one class of
politicians, who maintained our dangers ever to have arisen from
the armies of independent states. That occasional wars did
arise from that source was true enough ; but these wars only
kept our troops in exercise, and averted the very perils to which
we are now exposed. We must ever remember, that it is not
only the reigning prince who is reduced to despair by our occu-
pation of his country, but every man among his subjects who,
from hereditary pretensions or personal character, is susceptible
of the impulse of ambition, even in its most subdued and best-
regulated mood.

If our conquests had embraced (as many desired) the terri-
tories of all those who have lately been standing by, or abstain-
ing from injuring us, what a terrible addition would have been
made to our embarrassments !

Even now the furious prejudice against colour, which pre-
vents many of the English in India from discriminating between
the rebellious Sepoys and the natives of the country, who have
in many instances suffered as much as ourselves from their
violence, is producing a most pernicious effect.

The people at large, it is said in many quarters, hardly know
which to dread most, their own miscreant countrymen or the

% Ante, p. 13.

53

revengeful Europeans. It is for contending against this spirit,
and striving to avert the consequent risk of arousing a nation-
ality of many millions into hatred and active resistance, that
Lord Canning and his coadjutors have been so fiercely and
wantonly abused. Two classes combine to keep up the outery
against any pause in the career of vengeance. The vaguely
vindictive, who, to use the words of the late Sir Charles Napier,
“ mistake rigour for vigour,” and who, to ensure the punishment
of every criminal, would make complexion the criterion of crime;
and the more methodically sanguinary, who dread lest any relax-
ation of the estrangement resulting from indiscriminate severity
should lead to the firmer establishment of government on its
previous footing, and so balk their hopes of seeing their own
favourite schemes speedily introduced.

Both these classes are urging the Government upon what it
has not the power, and ought not to have the desire, to perform.
Notwithstanding the many questionable acts our rulers have
lapsed into since first they lent an ear to the counsels of those
who array conquest, even when unprovoked and aggressive, in
the garb of a moral and religious duty, there is still so much
reliance reposed in our good faith that we as yet retain many
powerful and valuable allies. Nepaul, with its army of 40,000
brave and well-trained soldiers, the lately conquered Sikhs, and
the hitherto unruly borderers beyond the Indus, the wealthy
protected chieftains of the Cis-Sutledge territory, almost all the
warlike tribes of Rajpootana, and even the two Mahratta princes
of Indore and Gwalior, have proved faithful to our cause in our
hour of extremest need. But they who thus far have stood by
us cannot but have many feelings in harmony with those of our
own mutinous subjects.

Community of religion, and other sympathies binding the
Asiatic family of mankind together, and disparting them from
the European, must, on an occasion like the present, cause those
thus connected by nature to gravitate towards each other.

This tendency has been hitherto counteracted by the prestige
of our uniform success, by the reliance placed in our good faith,
and by the diplomatic skill of those able members of the Indian

 
services who, under the name of Political Agents, have been the
objects of so much silly abuse.* But the resistance to a natural
impulse must have a limit, and should our conduct ever give real
disgust to the great body of our own native subjects, they would
certainly find sympathisers among our native allies; and thus a
combination might ensue too strong for us, with all our prowess,
to make head against. Now nothing is more likely to generate
a contagious feeling of hostility to us, as a race differing in reli-
gion, in language, in complexion, in habits, from our allies, as
much as from our subjects, than a continuance of such indis-
criminating severity as, it is to be feared, is still in practice in
Upper India,—not without direct encouragement from the press
on both sides of the water. The greater part of the favourite
measures of those who write in support of systematic vengeance,
would have a tendency to shake the confidence of our neigh-
bours in the safety of an alliance with us. An almost Judaical
hatred of them as idolaters has come in, to add sternness to the
feclings entertained towards the people of India by the British
public at home.

Judging by the tone of their speeches and writings, we might
imagine that our mission in the East is believed by some to be
like that of Joshua, and that we ought to go forth accordingly
to smite the obstinate worshippers of false gods wherever they
are to be found.

To contend by argument against such an impression would
be useless ; and it is here alluded to, only because it may account
for the very un-English apathy exhibited by the public in general
on the subject of the ““ wholesale hangings” which, as has been
shown in a preceding passage, excite the disgust even of the
youngest military men on the spot.

* It is instructive to observe how cordially the General Arthur Wellesley
co-operated with the Political Agent John Malcolm, when both were employed
together in the very early years of the present century. Itis also instructive to
notice how many of those whose wisdom and energy have saved the Punjaub, and
with it all Upper India, were included in the late Sir Charles Napier’s denuncia-
tions of the pestilent politicals who thwarted the plans of military commanders.

t See ante, p. 28.

55

The Gospel of peace has, it is true, often been heralded by
wars and tumults, yet it is not by spreading terror and dismay
among those whom we wish to bring under its benign influence
that we ought to pave the way for its advance.

“Our prayer therefore,” to use the words of one of the
ablest officers in Upper India, in a recent letter to a friend,
“should be, that God will overrule the passions of sinful men,
not of one, but of all classes.”

Let an earnest hope be added, that our rulers may not be
tempted to hurry on a change in the administration of our
Eastern empire at a moment like the present, when men’s
minds are unhinged, and each successive mail brings intelli-
gence of varying and deepening import.

London : Printed by G. BarcrLay, Castle St. Laicester Sq.

 
LETTERS FROM AN OFFICER IN INDIA.
Just Published, fcap. cloth, with Illustrations, price 4s. 6d.

OVER THE SEA ; or, Letters from an Officer in India to his
Children at Home. Edited by the Rev. S. A. Prars, D.D., Head
Master of Repton School.

“For young people whose parents are in India, or, indeed, for any who
have friends in the East, these letters afford pleasant and instructive reading.”’—
Literary Gazette.

“The tone of these letters is so manly, sensible, and affectionate, with a
pervading element of unobtrusive religious principles, that it is impossible to
read them without a feeling of regard for the anonymous writer,”’ &c.—
Guardian.

‘‘ We like the book, and so will every young person who reads it, especially
if he has relatives in India.” — Christian Times.

“These letters possess two valuable qualities — reality and simplicity.” —
Record.

Lately Published, 8vo. price Is.

SPEECH DELIVERED BY THE EARL OF DERBY IN
THE HOUSE OF LORDS, on Thursday, December 3, 1857, on the
Address in answer to Her Majesty's Speech from the Throne.

LONDON: T. HATCHARD, 187 PICCADILLY.

 
 

END
OF TITLE

   
 

END OF REEL
PLEASE
REWIND.