the law stood upon the subject. The gentleman acting in that capacity, (Mr. Turton,) declined answering him viva voce, but said, that if his opinion were asked in writing, he would not object to give it in the same manner, for that the affair was a very serious one. This was accordingly done, and the opinion reported to have been given was, that Government had already gone a great deal too far, and they had now better let matters take their course; so that his Majesty's 14th regiment were for this time, at least, prevented from treating Calcutta as they had done Bhurtpore. The only remaining point in the history of this transaction is the unlooked-for proposal of Mr. Charles Prinsep, a merchant of Calcutta, and a relative of the Government Secretary, suggesting the appointment of a local Legislature. This idea, if properly expanded, may lead to important results. Certain it is, that there are many and great objections to the present composition of the Indian Councils, without any one consideration that can be urged in their favour. The Civil Members, and, occasionally, the Governor-General himself, being servants of the East India Company, the door is open to all sorts of partiality, prejudices, jealousy, and caprice. Every individual has some ancient attachmen to reward, some longcherished resentments to gratify, some rivalry to punish, or some indiscreet assertion of merit to mortify and coufound. Look at Mr. Adam's administration; look at the opposite results of Commissions of Inquiry, where one man is punished, although declared innocent, whilst another is absolved, though solemnly pronounced unfit for his post, because the one is connected with members of the Government, whilst the other was suspected of too close an alliance in a less favoured quarter. Much importance is given to the local experience of persons selected from the service, but, certainly, without sufficient reason, since all necessary information could be afforded by the Secretaries of departments, assisted by the numerous Boards sitting in Calcutta and in the interior. This is the proper channel through which the pure and undefiled stream of official intelligence should be conducted; all besides that is generally contaminated by private feeling and personal association. It is impossible for the Ministers of England to examine with minuteness every measure relating to the Government of India; they must of necessity leave almost every thing to the Board of Control, and the Board, in their turn, must rely, in matters of local reference, on the Directors. Upon the latter, then, will devolve the blame of having misrepresented the general character and feeling of the public of India, and it may not be out of place to remind all parties, that it was this misrepresentation, combined with contemptuous treatment, that in less than eight years after Dr. Franklin complained of it, caused the total loss of our North American colonies! In a former part of this article, we have given it as the opinion of legal men, that the Indian Government had no right to impose additional taxes in the interior,-an opinion which is, as we have al ready observed, supported by Mr. Prinsep, a Government Secretary, in his Financial Review.' We should not, however, be doing justice to all parties, were we not to add, that some of the law authorities of Calcutta maintain an opposite doctrine, and assert the right of the Company to do whatever they may think proper with an estate, which, in fact, they hold from the Crown upon no other condition than that of paying the stipulated rent! But whether this opinion be right or wrong, it does not at all affect the question at issue, which is the right of taxing Calcutta. The opinion itself is very likely to be what is called a technical one, and to rest entirely upon the circumstance of the Supreme Court having no jurisdiction in the interior. Where there is no law to appeal to, there can, in this sense, be no acknowledged right; but in Calcutta, the case is very different; and besides the historical explanation of the distinction between the Company's settlement and the subsequent conquests, which the very terms of the charter will admit of, there is the King's Supreme Court on the spot, and a formal declaration in various acts of Parliament, that the inhabitants of Calcutta are placed under its protection. Should, however, the opinion just cited, of the right of the Company to squeeze all they possibly can out of the miserable inhabitants of the interior, be generally espoused, what a theme ought it not to afford to all public writers to descant upon! Surely no doctrine in the world could show a more shameful disregard of the rights of humanity, a more disgraceful compromise of national dignity than that which would make the Parliament of the day consign so many millions of their fellow-creatures to the unprincipled exactions of bankrupt speculators, and trading politicians. India has had the misfortune to be always overrun-to have been always enslaved; but in this, her lot is not very different from that of other regions inhabited by an effeminate race of mankind. In one respect, however, she stands pre-eminent in misery: she is, probably, the only nation that was ever conquered by a civilized race, and by them kept, for more than half a century, in greater darkness, penury, and physical degradation, than the most barbarous, bigotted, and unrelenting of her previous tyrants had ever subjected her to! In this part of the argument, it is important to keep in mind that when the Supreme Court was first sent out to India, it had jurisdiction over the whole of the Company's territories; it was not till 1781 that this jurisdiction was restricted, in respect to the Natives, to Calcutta; and the true reason of this restriction it would be well to ascertain. The Supreme Court, on its first arrival in India, was guilty of the greatest absurdities, not to say enormities; but there is reason to believe that Mr. Mill, in his eagerness to expose the folly of sending out a few second-rate lawyers, with a squadron of barristers, attorneys, and clerks, to cruise on a roving commission in the East, has allowed himself to overlook the real oppression and extortion prevailing in the interior, and which induced the unhappy Natives so anxiously to catch at every prospect afforded them of attaining some relief from their burthens. Nothing is more common than to hear the inhabitants of these regions stigmatised as the most litigious people on the face of the earth: but it may be questioned whether this characteristic, if it does fairly attach to them, be not a direct consequence of the system of Government under which they live. Such a litigious spirit is generally the accompaniment of great political wretchedness, and, like desperate gamesters, a people that have been deprived of almost all that binds them to existence, are easily led to stake the little that remains to them upon the hazard of the law, under the persuasion that, if they gain nothing, the misery they already endure is scarcely susceptible of increase. In this view, the history of those times is worth looking into, in order to ascertain the real motives of the representation made by the Indian Government, and its effect in prevailing upon the Legislature to curtail the powers of the Supreme Court, and forbid its interference in matters relating to the revenue. The revenue is, and always has been, the one thing needful in India; and a writer upon this subject, in one of the Calcutta Papers, seems to be of opinion, that the same feeling existed among the Ministers here, when the Act of 1781 was passed, and that their motive was, a hope of realizing the stipulated sum of 400,000l. premium, which the Company had agreed to pay for their vicegerency, but which was never paid for more than one year. But the subject is inexhaustible. We pause, therefore, here for the present, and shall return again to it in due season. One public journal in India, 'THE CALCUTTA CHRONICLE' has been already suppressed by the Bengal Government, for the general tenor of its bold and uncompromising censures of the rapacious contrivers of this odious tax and the same power would no doubt silence this Work by its suppression also, but, fortunately, we are beyond their power, and can defy, not merely them, but King, Lords, and Commons, to stay the issue of a single sheet from our press, while there exists British Courts and British Juries,—not in the shadow with which the people of India are mocked, the mere show of a Bench and Bar in Calcutta,-neither of which can prevent an innocent man from being made the victim of the Government, if he dares to speak his mind too freely,—but in the independent form in which, with all their defects, they still happily exist in England, to the terror of evil-doers, and the protection of those whom they would otherwise crush by their oppression. Let the people of India never cease their remonstrances till the protection of a Free Press, independent Courts, and honest Juries, safe in their persons and property, are secured to them, With these, they may defy arbitrary power, as we do in England; without them, their political degradation is as complete as that of the veriest slaves who bow their necks before the Sultan of Constantinople, or the Shah of Ispahaun. NAVARINO. No cloud t' obscure, on Hellas' shore There sleep in dust the chiefs who died And the Athenian's boasted numbers If worlds applaud, or worlds condemn; The thunderbolt would burst unheeded; As though the eternal hills were riven? As though their lightnings menaced heaven? Noon came in peace, the mid-day sun Saw not the work of death begun; Yet shall the beams of evening shine, In peace along each shattered line, And silent roll that troubled tide, O'er Egypt's host, and Turkey's pride. See Thucydides, bk. 4, chaps. 4. to 22, inclusive. Though still the Othman's banners fly, The sounds of war are hushed and over, The scene of blood night's shades shall cover; How have thy best and bravest fled ! And number, if they can, thy dead! Without regret, their sun hath set, : And, o'er their tombless fate,to sorrow, Shall light as gay and bright a morrow. Thy trust in war, thy boast in peace, They taught a monarch, that, nor throne, Nor sceptre could protect alone, Save with that spell, all thrones above, A nation's choice, a nation's love. Named and renown'd, in peace and war, Still may thy valour shine the same, H. W. J. |