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    tha Vnioaiy tna * rebellion ; in India will eventuate ; in a successful revolution . Ever since the days of Xeexjss , small European armies have sufficed' to . keep Asiatic , multitudes in check . Were England to suffer , Christendom must suffer . Allowing mat the English have been filibusters in India , says the H erald , not sorry to retaliate the epithet on an unmistakable occasion , " they have conferred some benefits on India by their rule . England , however , can and will recover her ground ; slxe could not lose India and retain her position in Europe ; but were she to sink , like Portugal after the loss of her foreign dependencies , to a fourth-rate power , A merica would suffer , not gain .

    " The United States would in both cases t > e affected injuriously . Tittae need not be spent in argument to show that weBhomld . be losera by the relapse of Hindogtan iaio barbarism . Our trade -with East India is not large .,, though it is laj rg * enough for its withdrawal to be felt . B » t every year , as our capacity to produce and the capacity of the Hindoos to eonsume increases , * fe ¦ would swelt and become more important ; Moreover , as » leading nation of the world ,-we are , to a . certain extent ,, partners of every other race * and sharers in their prosperity and their reverses . The relapse of Hindostan into barbarism would affect us as injuriously as , for instancey a commercial convulsion in England , and with more permanent results . But the decline and fall of England ; would be a far more serious matter . ... The fall of England might quench European liberty for a

    whole century . " We could have ventured to state exactly the same view as the opinion of the Americans in the Republic , from north to south , partly because it necessarily results from the facts , but chiefly because it is an Anglo-Saxon view . There are two episodes in the question , however , on which we take leave to qualify the opinions of our American contemporaries ; and we believe that the statement of our grounds will obtain fonts no small degree of concurrence on the other side of the Atlantic . Perhaps , even the contemporaries with whom we differ will accept the

    qualification which we now suggest . " England and Prance , " says the " Washington Union , with much truth , " have for years past been engaged in spasmodic but vain endeavours to retrieve the error of West Indian emancipation ; " they have been seeking in other quarters cheap cotton and cheap sugar . The Indian revolt frustrates the search in one direction— " and even should England , as we believe she will , succeed in suppressing the outbreak , she will have no spare capital , or energy , or industry , while the war lasts , with which to increase her supplies of cotton and sugar , and to ward off that famine with which she is imminently , threatened from a deficit of those articles . " Even if the

    revolt shall be > suppressed , years must eliapse' before industry in India resumes its- ordinary channels ; and from these disturbances , says the Union , " all Christendom will' suffer alike , excepb the slaveholders of America . " We do not except the slaveholders , nor any other persons interested in the > growth of American cotton . It is necessary to their welfare that the looms of England should he kept in full activity at the largest expansion of our factory system ; necessary , therefore , that the loom should have- continuous and ample supplies from America or elsewhere . The United States need never fear the competition of other lands . The vast amount of thoir own

    supply , the quality of the cotton , their nearness , the facility of the voyago , the machinery that they can employ in ' its transmission , are guarantees for thoir power of retaining our market . Any other supplies that come as supplements to theirs do but operate as securities that our cotton-consuming machinery shall bo kept at work at its widest stretch . Anything which threatens to deprive our cotton-consuming power of its supplies un >

    questionably militates against the profits of Sew York , the revenues of New Orleans , and the income of every man growing- or transmitting cotton . ¥ e believe that not many years , perhaps not more than one year , will elapse before industry in India will return to its wonted channels with new vigour and enlarged facilities ; and we believe that in this prospect the interests of the United States form wo exception to those of Great Britain . The JSTetu YorTc Herald makes a suggestion which looks as handsome as it is cunning . Our contemporary calculates that we shall want , more recruits than England will

    produce . " The United States contain far more men who are ready to serve as troops in actual warfare than Great Britain ; and as we have no treaties , with the nations or peoples with whom the English are fighting in . India , none of our laws would be broken by enlisting them . To gain their good-will it would , of course , be necessary to satisfy this community that , in return for our sympathy to cede to the entire

    abroad , the English were willing us control of the affairs of this continent and its dependencies ; and this would not be an easy thing either for so unbending a politician as Palmerston to achieve , or for so incredulous a people as ours to credit . But were it accomplished there might doubtless be awakened a strong feeling here in favour of the British in India ; and very likely , with proper measure and a suitable outlay , 50 , 000 men could be enlisted in a few weeks . "

    " We may take several exceptions to this exposition , England will have no lack of recruits , should the Government rise to a consciousness of the public necessity , and offer those sufficient motives which every soldier ought to feel in accepting the military service of his country . Americans , if sufficient inducements were offered , would , we believe , not wait for any such bargain as our contemporary anticipates ; and the bargain itself is not at present on the cards . But

    we believe that if England were to ask America for recruits , they would not be refused . "Were they granted , one consequence would necessarily follow ; the friendship as well as the interests of the people would be closely , openly , and avowedly knit together . The alliance between England and America would be consolidated ; and it would become more difficult than ever for any Government in Downiug-street to set two great nations by the ears , for the advantage or amusement of a coterie or a cabinet .

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    GOOD AND EVIL OF OUR RULE IN INDIA . Tmjjp : are certain provinces of India which prove that Englishmen are capable of governing au Asiatic population . This must be admitted for the sake o justice , since it would be a positive misfortune wore the public mind at homo to be inculcated with the doctrine preached in certain quarters , that our rule m . the East has been an unmitigated curse , blunder , and burden . Compared with that of the Moguls it has been an actual and general blessing . When those Mohammedan invaders poured out of the Tartar deserts into the valleys of the . Indus and the Ganges , they found themselves in the midst of an ancient and decaying civilization , a sacred polity swaying a submissive multitude , and the great cibies of the Brahminical realm already touched with the rust of time . The Hindu dynasties were arbitrary , cruel , and extortionate : but the Mohammedans were

    worse . They attempted no social reforms ; they allowed the firos of suttee to blaze , the blood of children to flow , and the forms of a murderous idolatry to bo practised ; but they also added to the atrocious criminal code of the Brahmins ; they wrung from tho cultivator the chief part of his produce , and left him no peaco in tho enjoyment of tli © rest ; thoir courts of justice within a century became infamous throughout Asia . Under * their auspices flourished tho system of

    putting to death all prisoners of war ; of puttiiig suspected persons 1 to the torture——a © rime never connived 1 at by the British Government—of inflicting impalement and Saying alive as the penalties of secondary offences , of hunting the poor like wild beasts with dogs and cheetahs . One king whom the English , deposed , was in the habit , -when he

    took a city , of cutting off the lips and noses of the principal inhabitants , women and children included ; Nadie . Shah ordered a seven days' massacre in . Delhi ; in fact , it may safely be affirmed that the Moguls ,, while they built marble palaces 1 and tombs , drained the blood o India , and exhausted and oppressed the population , Tho lesser independent princes have been for the most part incomparable despots . nourished

    The British Gtovecnmeiat has not the domestic prosperity of India in all its provinces . It delayed the abolition : of suttee ; it has paltered with infanticide ; it has failed to extirpate altogether that superstitious horror of the widow ' s second marriage , which formerly drove thousands to suicide or prostitution ; only recently did it prohibit the inhuman orgies of Juggernaut ; but it cannot be blamed for interfering cautiously with the ceremonies and customs of a people so profoundly imbued with the spirit of a vast , shadowy , proud religious system . But India has been released from Mahratta and

    Pindaree devastations—a reform which might be appreciated could we imagine Middlesex exposed to the periodical inroad of Prince GrOBTSOHAKOFJF at the head of a hundred thousand intoxicated Cossacks . To a great extent the Thugs and Phansegars have been cleared from the highways ; commerce has increased ; and so great is the popular feeling of security , that village fortifications have long begun to disappear . The piratical tribes along the coast have also been suppressed .

    We have in , many cases repaired , the vast tanks upon which the peasantry rely as upon the sources of life ; we have constructed numerous roads , aqueducts , and canals ; we have superseded the jungle b y the rice-field in extensive districts ; within three years after the British conquest , upwards of two thousand villages were rebuilt and repeopled in Hoekak ' s country alone . Let us refer especially toMairwara , a highland district among the Araballa Hills , between Marwar and Ajmeer . " A population of robbers converted into an industrious peasantry , a police organized among them , female infanticide—once the habitual

    custom—abolished , the sale of women prohibited , the land-tax reduced , gifts of tools and money made to tho cultivators , employment general among the people , a new capital sprung up , numerous hamlets increased ; jbo towns , a hundred and six new villages built within twelve years ; nearly six thousand tanks and wells , with two hundred and ninety embankments , constructed—such are the works of peace in that little district alone . " A recent historian supplies this picture ; but we might point to other administrators no less energetic and successful than Lieutonamt-Oolonel Dixon , who effected these changes

    in Mairwara . It is necessary to bring out these aspects of our Indian rule , since it would bo impossible to discuas the whole subject in the midst of a din of misrepresentation . Tho evil is conspicuous and undeniable . Wo have imported into India a clumsy contraLization j have allowed civilians to tamper with the sacred social laws of the pooplo ; have subjected tho army to a capricious and oiten ' reckless authority ; have permitted sbattv officers to neglect thoir military functions ; havo treated the natives as strangers ; have resisted and conceded upon no regular principle whatever ; havo noglcck'tl our own into-

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• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 22, 1857, page 807, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2206/page/15/