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    purel y fanciful . The Legislature would not listen a moment to so strange a scheme as that of putting the sceptral riiace of Aeba . b and the Mahrattas into the hands of a cliild from Windsor Castle . The transT formation might ornament a pantotriiine , but is not to be noticed seriously . Anelective franchise for the Mohammedans , Hindoos , and other native races , mayv be among the possibilities of tbe future ; but the principle now to be established is that of undivided and

    irresistible British supremacy . To localize the government in aurespe : cts would be simply impract icable , go long as India is a dependency of Grreat Britain ; It bas not , like the Australian colonies , a powerful body of English residents , mingling with a few scattered aboriginal tribes ; the central

    authority springs from England , and rmist be metropolitan . To abolish the East India Company would be nothing more than to render necessary a government for India in another form ; the suggestion is only negative , and means nothing unless in conjunction with ii positive project ; such a project is the union of an Indian State Secretariat with a

    I / egislative Council . We wish to be understood as not submitting any pTogram me , still less as opposing any change , however coinprehensive . It is too soon to do more thaii inspect the administrative models submitted . ^ Perhaps , indeed ; it is not too late to say that the existing machinery inight not have broken down so irretrievably ha , d the right men been , employed to work it . The ! Board of Control itself hasnever bad ; a fair trial . The

    Presidents have seldom or never been efficient statesraen , ; and they have deteriorated ,- under successive administrations , until the dynasty has dwindled into the person Of MrV Vebn 6 n Smiths Without defending the cumbrous and complicated apparatus of our Indian government ^ we do not hesitate to say that the honest selection of the best men to fill the highest posts might have reserved the East India Companyand the Board of Control for a long career of success and reputation . Still ,

    tinder the most favourable influences , the organization must , in times of pressure or peril , have proved inefficient . As modified by the Act of 1853 , the double system Was one of anomalous and conflicting jurisdictions : the Board of Control , the Court of Directors , the Governor-General , the Supreme Council , tlie Presidencies , With their Executive Councils , the British Courts of Law , the Company ' s Courts , the Native Courts , remained , and the one could scarcely avoid being occasionally

    entangled among the others- The system is one of complication where simplicity is required , of delay where despatch is essential , of extravagance where every interest of the Indian Empire demands economy . It leaves unsettled a hundred embarrassments , deeply affecting the welfare and loyalty of the people —tenure of land , Zemindars , the village system , ryotwarry , the employment of the natives , the administration of the army— - indeed , almost every question in which the

    permanent interests of India are really involved . Now , those difficulties will not be removed simply by abolishing the double government . The Indian system must be penetrated with reform , and these must be carried out by experienced men . As to a single government , the principle may be carried too far . In constitutional countries , all

    government must be carried on , to a certain extent , by means of a double machinery . Every department in England lias its ministerial heads and its permanent heads . This must bo the case , also , in any new Indian branch of the administration ; the essential point is to have a government at one with itself , of harmonious jurisdiction , of direct action , of experience , under constitutional cliecka , and

    composed of men selected for their merit . We might establish considerable unity without establishing ari effective system . We might , for example , remove the entire mass of our actual machinery , create a Secretary of State for India , with four Under-Secretaries , render every civil servant in our Indian dependencies responsible to him , and find ourselves in a worse predicament than formerly . If the Cabinet is to iiave discretionary power and uncontrolled patronage together , such an

    innovation would be , not an Indian Reform , but a national danger . Some limit must be put to the prerogative of the Minister in this respect . Supposing the young department to be honest , however , it might not be capable ^ The office ^ of course , would be ministerial , and allowing for certain , possible contingencies , India might pass into three sets of hands within a year ; Whence are these Secretaries of State to come , who , at a day ' s notice , are to begin administering

    the affairs of a hundred and fifty millions of Asiatics ? It may be retorted that we could not have a less competent functipnary vested with the powers of peace or war than Mr . Vebnon Smiths but the Court of Directors act as a check upon him , and although they cannot cancel his appointments , he is unable to veto their dismissals ; . We must imagine Mr . Smith controlled before realizing a coneepfcion of that to which British India might be

    subected were the scheme bf a Secretary of State , pure and simple , approved by Parliament . As a- rule , of course , this ¦ Minister would be a man of high rank , or influential family connexions . Jf he were Earl of Ripon he could a ^ ffprd to stand alone ; if his name were ( Smith : he might give Iibrd liANSBow ^ NB as his •• . reference " , Our present -system supplies lio guarantee-- -nqt even the slightest- — that such a Minister would be better qualified to govern India than to sort letters at the Post-office . The transaction is avowedly one of personal or political convenience

    Certain ehiefs are wanted in the Cabinet , others can be spared ; one of the superfluities goes to Dublin , another to Calcutta . The Admiralty beiug already promised , a Yorkshire landlord heads the Board of Control ; the statesman with an eye to the "Foreign Office is soothed by being made Chancellor of tfie Exchequer . This we must tolerate , we suppose . There appears no help for it . A Peer ; admitted , some months ago ^ before a Committee of the House of Commons , that no person below a certain rank was considered qualified to sit at " a council-table among noble lords . He would not command sufficient

    respect . Perhaps , then , the grand Indian post must be abandoned to the governing classes , to be filled , as chance determines , by a doctrinaire or a dummy ; but the Board for India ? ] N " o reform will be worth acceptance that does not seat at this Board men like the IJAWitENCES , and we much doubt whether fewer than twenty or thirty members would adequately represent the growing interests of the empire . Such a deliberative Council would act as a check upon corrupt

    patronage , as well as upon empirical legislation ; but now that public opinion has adopted India , there will remain no reason why any important measure should ever be decreed without the direct intervention of Parliament . The subject is intricate , but not a mystery . A few years will familiarize it to the thinking classes of tho nation , and it will become a topic of tho hustings . The Legislature , it is said , will not listen to Indian debates . But the Jjesialatuve must listen . G-entlemen who

    vote the welfare of bo vast a proportion of the British dominions a bore , will find it necessary to dissemble their sense of fatigue , or to seek social honours elsewhere .

    . The Cabinet had not come to any decision with respect to the future government of India when the announcement appeared that the double government was to be abolished . We detect in this circumstance another proof of the kind and mode of influence brought to bear on the Premier by certain of his colleagues . We were warranted , as the Queen ' s Speech shows , in denying that the attempt to sneer dovm Reform represented LordPai > merston ' s views . And now , it is plain that the Government has no accredited organ in the Press . ' s ¦" ¦ ¦ ' ¦• ¦' : ¦ ¦ ¦ : ¦; ; ' .. - - . - ¦ . ¦ - : : ; :

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    MILITARY OPINION IN INDIA . Fob several months , probably , the -work of Indian "Reformers will consist chiefly in the collection , scrutiny , and arrangement of evidence . There is one point which it will be difficult to establish j udicially—the amount of blame attributable to the Government of India , on account of the warnings it received before the Sepoy rebellion broke out , and its neglect after the first rinutiixies had

    demonstrated , even to the dullest eye , the debauched state of the Beng ; al army . The whole pressure of Government influence will be exerted to keep back the testimony in support of the charges brought especiall y against Lord CA . N'NiBra . Oar readers will remember what those charges are , as urged by the Leader . If they forget ¦; thera , the Times of Thursday last will refresh their memories . The counts of the same

    indictment , which the Times had been supposed to treat ; with scorn ; are there enumerated , and nothing is offered beyond an apology , and an attempt to shpwthat ^ if iiord Qaix ~ king was blind , every ones else was blind also . Now , this is not true . ^ For years the Indian Government had been warned

    to take precautions against a mutiny of the Sepoys . The whole of this evidence may not yet have been published ; but it implicates the departments in India as well as at home , and we are now in possession of private documents w ^ ic ^ batablisli the fac t that officers of high rank have been threatene d with dismissal fro m the service for

    agitating questions concerning the spirit and organization of the native army . Much has lately been written on the policy of Lord Canning- in endeavouring to place TSuropeana and natives upon an exact level , notwithstanding a thousand natural and acquired distinctions . The system was not originated by him , but it was he who carried it to its extreme limits even before the rebellion broke out , and he was emphatically told that his acts endangered the empire . We will not go further , at

    present , into these charges ; our immediate object is to set forth the views held among some of the principal military authorities in India' in connexion with the mutiny ; the writer of the passages we quote is an officer of very high rank , of conspicuous services , and of indisputable reputation , who long ago pointed out to the responsible rulers that they were digging an abyss , in which the Bengal army would be engulphed . The points we

    select will give an idea of the sort of correspondence passing between officers in command of divisions and brigades , while members of the Cabinet at home , instructed from Calcutta , were assuring Parliament tbafc no one was to be blamed for the Bengal mutiny . We say nothing of the opinions expressed ; they are , at all events , the opinions of men who are officially presumed to admire the energy and wisdom of the Council at Calcutta : — - " In Bengal , for twenty ycara past , to nriy knowledge , and for how much longer I know not , tho wholo Europenn mind has boon aoduloualy engaged in a speciea of deception , In concealing faults instead of remedying them . Tho practiuo is perfectly Asiatio « nd perfectly un-Engliah .

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    No . 4 OS 5 , December 5 , 1857 . ] THE Ii E A D E R . 1165

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 5, 1857, page 1165, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2220/page/13/