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    THE ANNEXATION 03? OUDE

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    the Hyde Park Palace , and now take the Sydenham Palace as a fashionable lounge , —a place for assignations a little more sheltered than Kensington Gardens , and rather more convenient than St . Paul ' s Cathedral . The audience at Manchester was of a very different breed from these . Of course there was a sprinkling of fashionable visitors . The reporters told us , that on the opening , and certain gala days , the palace was a perfect flower-garden from the blooming splendour of its visitors ; but these were not thelearners at the Manchester Exhibition . The learners

    were the busy crowds who spared one day from labour , and caine to " drink in visions of truth with their great wondering , staring eyes — visions of which they had never before dreamed . It is said , and we believe rightly so , that the Great Exhibition of 1851 has exercised a marked influence over the national taste ; that our ¦ women dress better than before it happened , that houses are more tastefully furnished , and that the purveyors to luxury find it necessary to wed expense to Art , in order to make their labours popular . That mueJi of this is due to the iufluence of the Great Exhibition we cannot for one moment doubt ; but , valuable as it is , it is only an education of the purchasers . The Manchester Exhibition , on the other hand , has been an education of the producers . These cotton-dressed and be clogged lads and lasses who thronged from all parts of industrial Lancashire to bask for a few hours in the sunshine of Art , have not gone back to their spindles and their looms without carrying with them exalted and expanded ideas of truth and beauty . If c a thing of beauty is a joy forever , ' it is so unexceptionally , for it never vanishes from the ruind to which it has once become apparent . "Without taking any account of the moral influence which such lessons have over the imedueated ( an influence from which the employers of labour cannot but reap infinite advantage ) , we may , without being too sanguine , expect to find one of the results of the Manchester Exhibition in the direct improvement of the worker . We shall find the exquisite minuteness of Mabttse and Yan ErcK faintly reproduced in our calicoes , the grace of UAPFAELiiE sliming through our jaconets , and the l gemmy surface' of Sir Joshua giving a value to our madapolama . This is , of course , putting the matter figuratively ; but we are grievously mistaken if the projectors of the Art Treasures Exhibition had not some such expectation when they devised their scheme .

    It is not too much to say that the Collection of Treasures which is now leaving Old Trafford can never be brought together again —at least , not -within the present century . It is impossible that the owners of so many priceless works will again be persuaded to part with objects which must be the most valued of their possessions . l ? or months past , the walls of many a noble mansion have been , despoiled of their most treasured ornaments . Things which are not to be bought with gold , and which , if lost , can never be replaced , have been trusted out of their owners' hands . That may happen once in a century , but scarcely twice . We may say , therefore , that , as the Manchester Art Treasures' Exhibition was an event perfectly unique , it is likely to continue so .

    The Annexation 03? Oude

    THE ANNEXATION 03 ? OUDE . The partisans of the dethroned dynasty of Oude liave attempted to malio capital out of the Indian mutiny . They have auccceded bo far as , by exparte representations , to induce n good many writers to attribute the insuircction of the Sepoys almost wholly to the

    annexation dj Lord DaiiHousie of "Wajtd Ai / EE Shah ' s dominions . That the rebellion was thus originated is matter of history , we are told . History will not take that view of the matter . No one cause produced the revolt of a hundred tlio usaud soldiers of various classes , creeds , aud nationalities . Observers in India , transmitting home their opinions , have enumerated at least eight different influences which , acting upon the Hindoo aud Mohammedan , mind , have

    resulted in this tremendous explosion : —a suspicion , of ¦ a . systematic design ' to Europeanize and Christianize the native army ; the unhealthy pampering of the high-caste Sepoy ; the greased cartridges ; the absence of European officers from their regiments ; a longmeditated Mohammedan scheme to subvert the English government ; a suddeu frenzy of patriotism kindled by the spoliation of Oude ; the General Service Order ; the indiscreet behaviour of certain Europeans towards Hindoo women . We have been at the paius to

    collect and compare the evidence in support of all the assertions . We have weighed opinions , aud traced eacli one of the alleged causes from the point at which it appears to that at which it is lost amidst the confusion of the conflict ; and the theory which appears to us the least tenable is that * which ascribes the outbreak to the political absorption of Oude . Had that country remained in a state of semi-independence , we do not believe that the allegiance of a single man ¦ would thereby have been secured to the East India Company . On the contrary , it is probable , as we many weeks ago suggested , that ILuckiiow would have become a centre of the seditious movement ; that , instead of a simple revolt , we should have had a revolt and a war at once upon our hands ; aud that the King- ot Oude would have set an example to the other provinces of India , of allying himself in the field Avith our mutinous Sepoys , with the hope of restoring the inheritance of his ancestors . As it is , the deposed family of Oude , having a vast store of documents at hand , and a number of Young Indians to believe in them , has ingeniously mingled its complaints with the groans of Bengal , and

    declared that we are suffering for the wrongs we permitted Lord Da .: liiousie to inflict upon the successors of Saadat Aiii Khan . ] STow , who have been the rebels ? Hindoos of the higher castes , Mohammedans , and Sikhs . The Sikhs had no sympathy with Oude . AVhat did the Chhatris care whether they were governed by Mohammedans or Christians ? If they had a political object to attain ifc surely was not the perpetuation of that power which had enthralled , their race and subordinated their religion . Besides , the Mohammedans of 0 ude are for the most

    part Shiahs who havo a feud with other sects . In like manner , Madrasecs , Pursees , Bengalees , Punjabees , Hindoos , and Mussulmans of every denomination have assisted to swell the murderous anarchy of the Eastern and North-Western Provinces * , or to propagate in the West and South the paaa-worda of the conspiracy , and the princes of Oudo pretend that tlio tempest has broken out to avenge their deprivation . Oudo was a cancer in the heart of British India until Lord Daluousie removed the cause of the disease from Lucknovv . In

    weakness and profligacy , says Thornton , Wajid Alee Shah aurpansod even his predecessors ; the territory was in a state perpetually threatening combustion . Bad faith provoked the English ; bad government irritated the natives . A traveller lias described tlio taxgatherer lighting hia way , m the neighbour ^ hood of liucknow , amid the flames of forty burning villages—the method , of distress adopted by the officers of tlio lioyaL

    Exchequer . The choice lay between employ mg an English army to coerce a miserable people , or putting an end to a Government which was only a . reality when it tortured and plundered its subjects . " We were responsible for the administration of Oude before we deprived its hereditary Carnifev of the priyilego of defying three millions of a wretched population , under cover of a British contingent . He was , in one respect our viceroy ; we were at least not guiltless when , by ouv assistance , he was enabled to

    devastate au ancient and once prospero us dominion . It was in the midst of a failing revenue , a riotous army , the disaffection oi the territorial chiefs , the starvation of the cultivators , the rapid relapse of the soil into a state of nature , the extension of slavery , the wholesale disappearance of ploughs the surest sign of exhaustion in India—that Lord DaIiKOUSie interfered to bring the province under British jurisdiction . This was effected in fulfilment of conditions which , long previously , had been laid down .

    Bishop Heber wrote a favourable report upon Oude ; but that was more than thirty years ago . Had Reginald Heber travelled in the country shortly before it was annexed , his picture would have been differently coloured . A degraded sovereign , sunk in excesses amidst a rabble of eunuchs and singers , and distributing his attention between dancing-girls , iirewocks , pigeons , fiddlers , and cats , would form the central figure of the scene . Around him would be extensive

    districts m which revenue and finance had fallen into indescribable confusion , the army being maintained as much by plunder as by legal levies of taxation . The courts of law . would be -represented . as ¦ shamelessly ' corrupt and ridiculously inefficient ; the soldiery as rapacious , undisciplined , brutal , and a tcwov to the peaceful population . There would be one respectable road— -that from Cawnpore to Lucknow—traced across the panorama , a solitary highway of 11 fty-three , miles in a country nearly three hundred mile 3 from frontier to frontier . Even this was constructed at the requisition of the East India , Company . But it is unnecessary to enter into categorical details . It is impossible to get rid of the fact that the Government in behalf of which a hundred thousand men arc said to have risen , far and near , was one of the worst that ever existed , even in Asia . The Delhi rebels , in their proclamation , have never mentioned Oude . The jNt ana Sailtb sent for instructions to Delhi . The majority of the native princes , avIio might have been expected to make common cause with Wajxd Alice Suaii , have stood aloof from him . Bub there are circumstances which account for the prominent part played by troops from Oudo in the military rebellion . An immense proportion of the old native army was transferred , en bloc , under the British flag . This was , perhaps , one ot the moat remarkablo errors of policy ever committed in India . AVe took into our pay a host of men who had been accustomed to outrage and riot . Had we embodied tlio defeated Khalsa regiments after our conquest of the Punjab , we might have had a general insurrection from Lahore to Patna , iind " might then have been asserted that India was rising to punish the severity of the Hnglisn towards tlic descendants of Kunjicet Sinoii . ' Whether annexed or not , Oucle would havo 1 smouldered in the centre of a dis : illcctea Mohammedan soldiery ; ' but , with n king al liucknow , surrounded by a set of ambitious commanders and an organised army , w Bhould probably havo had to contend a ^ unsi dangers evon more Herious than tliosi ) y which ouv ascendancy has actually » cC " I threntonod .

    Untitled Article

    102 fr THE LE 1 DEB . [ No . 396 , October 24 , 1857 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 24, 1857, page 1022, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2215/page/14/