VISIT TO A MISSION SCHOOL.

69

thority, and signifies to the native mind that there is one whom the authority of England delights to honor. There was nothing of this in Lucknow. The people are Mussulmans, of the fierce, conquering race, on whom the yoke of England does not rest lightly, who simply scowled and stared, but gave no welcome. Pleasant it was to visit a mission school, under the charge of American ministers. The clergymen directing the mission received the General and his party at the mission, a spacious old house in the suburbs. The scholars-all females-were seated under a tree, and as the General came to the gate they welcomed him by singing "John Brown." The pupils were bright, intelligent children, some of them young ladies. There were English, natives, and children of English and native parents. The missionaries spoke of their work hopefully, and seemed enthusiastic over what would seem to be the most difficult of tasks, the education of women in India. Woman has so strange a position in India that if she becomes a Christian her fate is a hard one. The Hindoo gives woman no career beyond the harem, and in the harem it seems that nothing would be so much a disadvantage as education. Caste comes in as an insurmountable obstacle. The gratifying fact about missionary work is that many of these children are outcasts, waifs, abandoned by their English fathers and native mothers, and saved. So that while nothing could apparently be more hopeless than, in a land where woman has no other resource than to live in seclusion and eat sugar-plums, to attempt to teach woman the higher aims of existence, I feel sure that the seed that is sown will not fall altogether on stony ground. I have seen no phase of the English experiment of governing India more interesting than the apparently forlorn missionary enterprises of our American clergymen. It is a work of self-denial. The result will scarcely be seen in this generation, but, among a people so much controlled by religious sentiment as the Hindoos, it must in the end have a beneficial effect.

We have been spending these past few days amid scenes which have a strange and never-dying interest to Englishmen. -the scenes of the mutiny of 1857. Among the men we meet

every day are men who did their share in the defense of the English empire during that dreadful time. What an interest it adds to your knowledge of any famous place to be able to see it with men who were there, to have them recall what they and their comrades suffered in defense of their lives, in the rescue of the lives of others, to save to England this rich and precious heritage. "Here is where I saw poor Lawrence die." "Here is where they buried Havelock." "Here is the cellar where our women hid during that fearful summer, with shot and shell falling every moment." "That is the position captured by the English, where they killed one thousand seven hundred Se

THE MARTINIERE.

poys." "Here

is one of the trees where we hanged our prisoners. It used to be great fun to the old sergeant, who would say, as he dragged up the prisoners, 'What a fine lot of plump birds I have brought you this morning!"'" "Here is where we used to stand and pot the rebels, and go to bed angry if we did not make a good bag." "Here is where we learned the terrible fascination blood has to our human nature, the delight of killing

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

71

that so grew upon us that I shudder now to recall it." You gather up remarks like this that have been made to you by various gentlemen and officers in Lucknow, Delhi, and other places visited by us in passing through the sections of India. where the mutiny was in force.

If the history of the mutiny were confined to the events of the years 1857 and 1858 it would give you a vague idea of its causes and consequences. The mutiny was the end of the rule of the East India Company and the beginning of the rule of England. I think history will record that it was the end of one of the worst governments that ever existed, and I hope the beginning of one of the best. The rise and success of the East India Company, like that of slavery in America, is an incident in the development of Anglo-Saxon civilization that no Englishspeaking man can view without regret. It seems like carrying out an inscrutable decree of Providence that this rule should end in blood; that those who sustained the company and condoned its crimes, like those who sustained and condoned the crimes of slavery, should suffer the terrible penalty of suppression. I am afraid I could write nothing more objectionable to many of the best friends I made in India than the opinion here expressed. But so I could write nothing more unpleasant to some of the best friends I have in Virginia and Louisiana than what I have said about slavery. There were features in the rule of the two powers that attracted those who saw it. There was an audacity of resource and a success in the achievements of men like Clive and Hastings, Wellesley and Dalhousie, which blinded the eyes of men to the morality of their deeds. But there was the same in the career of Napoleon, and men who will show you how necessary it was to suppress that magnificent freebooter, how immoral were his conquests and spoliations, will glory over the English genius and the English pluck of a freebooter like Clive, who descended to forgery for success, or of a freebooter like Hastings, who allowed no moral scruple to interfere with the triumphs of his administration and the revenues of the East India Company. This is not the spirit in which history should be written, and the mere fact that what

72

the servants of the company did happened in another generation should not allow us to pass it by without regret and condemnation.

The history of the company has many romantic phases. As a triumph of English skill and courage it is memorable. It began as a company of merchants in London who gained a foothold in Asia for purposes of commerce, and who kept on growing and increasing until the factory stores at Bombay and Calcutta have become an empire, and the government of the empire is the proudest task that can be given to an EnglishI pass over those portions of the company's history that are familiar to all readers, made so by the genius of Macaulay, and come to a period less known, the generation that preceded the mutiny. I have seen an ingenious parable on the subject of the company's conduct, written by an Englishman high in its service, which I will summarize. This writer supposes a company of African merchants to receive permission to build a facA defaulter takes tory on the southern coast of England.

man.

refuge in the factory and the Africans refuse to give him up, and the African government send a fleet and punish the English for daring to demand one of their escaped criminals, and take a small portion of territory as a penalty. The Africans take part in English politics, inducing the Pretender to claim the throne. They place the Pretender on the throne, depose him, restore the old king, and again restore the Pretender, receiving in each case large bribes from the contending aspirants. They demand the right to trade, and insist that their goods shall come in free of duty, and that English goods shall be heavily taxed. They force the people to sell them goods at their own price to such an extent that general distress supervenes, and the sovereign abolishes all duties. This act of the sovereign, in protection of his people, is treated as a crime, and he is deposed. The Africans persuade the new sovereign to disband his troops and rely on the Africans, who offer him support, he alone paying expenses. By and by they claim that their pay is in arrears, and gain the interest of the higher classes by promising them protection. The result is, the king gives them territory for their

THE EAST INDIA SERVICE.

73

claim, and they at once confiscate the estates of the noblemen living on the territory on one plea or another. They give pensions to these disinherited noblemen, which in time they reduce and disallow. A land tax is created which reduces the proprietors to beggary, and nearly all the estates are sold, the purchasers being in many cases clerks and menial servants who had been attending on the Africans. So they push on their increase of territory until in time they have all England, and they give the king a pension and lock him up in Windsor Castle.

This parable of a supposed occupation of England by an African trading company is the manner in which an officer in the East Indian

THE EGG DANCE.

offices of emolument. Trifling offices were thrown to them now and then, but the company wished all the revenues to come to England, and not be wasted on Hindoos or Mussulmans. There was no sympathy between the governed and the govern