For pure devotion's highest sigh, For heavenly compassion's glow,- What is the minstrel strain without thee? The palace, whence the day-god springs Up from the bosom of eternity; Thy own high hour, for this gave birth to thee. What is the preacher's?-let them say, The hopes of heaven, the threats of hell, Could human hearts such chillness own, That fain would carry all above, Nor leave one erring breast behind. 7 ་ ti S. E. H. ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND PRESENT STATE OF THE CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS IN INDIA. THE last arrivals from India bring accounts of the suppression of another Public Journal in Bengal THE CALCUTTA CHRONICLE,' and of the establishment of the Censorship in the small settlement of Singapore. It would seem, therefore, that all the efforts hitherto made to stay the progress of Despotism, as exercised over the thoughts and words of men, have been hitherto wholly unavailing in that enslaved quarter of the globe; and that its power and influence is on the increase rather than on the wane. It is time, therefore, that we should renew our endeavours to draw public attention in England once more to this painful subject; and that we may execute our task with greater effect, we think it necessary, in the present instance, to go back to the origin of this degrading and ignominious curse. We propose, therefore, to examine the right, expediency, object, and occasion, of establishing a Censorship of the Press, or an absolute despotism, in India, of which we have already witnessed so many of the calamitous results. If it should be asked, what, in the absence of all efficient responsibility, can be the use of discussing the measures of public men ?—we reply, that if, by connivance, great state delinquents are exempt from formal and official punishment, their names are still liable to be branded with infamy in the opinion of their contemporaries, and to be handed down to the just execration of posterity, a warning to deter others from imitating their nefarious example. Even in a view of retribution, is it nothing, that thirty years after their perpetration, the political sins of the great should, in a permanent form, be brought up in judgment against them? For the edification and lasting benefit of mankind, is it not important that the records of crimes against the freedom of communities should be multiplied in every possible way, and transmitted through every possible channel, to distant climes, and to future ge nerations? First, then, as to the right of laying a previous restraint upon publications in any part of the British dominions, the power of King, Lords and Commons, is not an arbitrary power. They are the trustees, not the owners of the estate. The fee simple is in us. They cannot alienate, they cannot waste. When we say that the legislature is supreme, we mean that it is the highest power known in comparison with the other subordinate powers established by the laws. In this sense, the word supreme,' is relative, not absolute. The power of the legislature is limited, not only by the general rules of natural justice, and the welfare of the community, but by the forms and principles of our particular constitution. If this docOriental Herald, Vol. 16. F trine be not true, we must admit that King, Lords and Commons, have no rule to direct their resolutions, but merely their own will and pleasure. They might unite the legislative and executive power in the same hands, and dissolve the constitution by an act of parliament.'* How absurd is it, then, even in imagination, that powers which are not constitutionally possessed by the higher authorities of the state, may be delegated by them to subordinate agents; or that those agents may constitutionally assume powers which are not of right possessed by their superiors? When the governor of a colony or a province exercises a despotic power, his conduct is equally unwarrantable, whether it be by virtue of his own authority, or of an unauthorised delegation. In establishing an absolute control over the Press in India, and consequently annihilating every other species of liberty, of which a Free Press is the sole efficient guarantee, the Marquis of Wellesley, the original forger of these fetters, committed high crimes and misdemeanors, which cannot be wiped away, or in the smallest degree diminished, by the approbation of his conduct, supposing him to have received it, by the Court of Directors, the Board of Control, or the Legislature, or all of them united. By sanctioning his measures, these bodies, without being able to legalise them, would merely render themselves participators in his crimes. Next, with respect to the expediency of such a measure, it is obvious, from the existence of the liberty of the Press, unquestioned for the centuries during which we had previously held possession in that country, that there was even no direct pretext, and much less any necessity, for its adoption in India. If a Free Press could have existed without injury during the whole of that long period, surely it could not have become dangerous at the moment when improvement had arrived at so advanced a stage. There is, indeed, no country in the world where the perfect freedom of the Press would be more useful, whether to the governors or to the people. It would have prevented the Vellore and Barrackpore mutinies-the Benares and Cuttack rebellions, and many other of the calamities which have happened in India since the establishment of the Censorship. If that country were invaded by a ferocious and despotic enemy, what motive of resistance could be so powerful as the knowledge among the inhabitants that they had the very palladium of freedom, a Free Press, to contend for! Even in our West India colonies, of which the inhabitants are chiefly in personal bondage, no restrictions on the Press exist, or have ever been attempted to be imposed; and we hear of no mischiefs arising from its licentiousness, Thus, then, whether in countries possessing entire freedom, in those where personal bondage exists, or in those enjoying intermediate * Junius's Dedication to the English nation. degrees of liberty, the danger of a Free Press to the state is always chimerical; whilst to evil-doers only is its terrors real. To protect evil-doers, great state delinquents, from the only species of responsibility now existing in the British dominions, was the undoubted object of the Marquis of Wellesley's efforts to extinguish the liberty of the Press, and, consequently, every other species of freedom, in India. It was the first of a series of conspiracies, which were contemplated for the purpose of upholding the existing system of oligarchic misrule against the influence of increasing knowledge and civilization; and which, it was hoped, would create less alarm, and excite less attention, from the scene being laid in the remotest portion of the empire. It was a deep-laid scheme to familiarise the mind to restraint in the colonies, and to serve as a precedent, which might afterwards be applied, in due season, at home. Is it not notorious, that projects for establishing a Censorship of the Press in England were seriously discussed in the cabinet about the period of passing those odious laws, known by the name of the Six Acts? And upon those insensate and liberticide plans being abandoned, as too hazardous an experiment upon the patience of the people, the principle was attempted to be acted upon, in a less direct and more insidious manner, in 1821, by a self-constituted body, calling themselves 'The Constitutional Association,' but better known to the public, from the place of their assembling, and their odious functions, as The Bridge-street Gang.' The object of their association was, by prosecutions, persecutions, and other foul and indirect means, to stifle all discussion that might not suit them, every thing, in short, which did not sing the praises of corruption and abuse; and, in a moral view, the means did not reflect disgrace upon the end. The body consisted of 500 or 600 members, lords, commoners, clergymen, lawyers, officers, and women, a sixth part of the whole being ministers of the Established Church. The warfare between them and the Press commenced in the spring of 1821, and was not of long duration. On the one side, it began by prosecutions against editors and writers for alleged libels; on the other, by an analysis of the gang, and an exposition of their objects and motives. The attack on the Association was led by a weekly journal, called 'The Independent,' which was soon joined by the periodical press of England in general; and this phalanx, formidable from their rank, number, and wealth, with the Great Captain of the Age at their head, was speedily discomfited, dispersed, and annihilated. It was about this period, and in the mayoralty of Mr. Alderman Atkins, that the progress of disloyalty and sedition appeared so alarming to that venerable person, as to give rise to the expression of apprehensions, that the inhabitants of London might, upon getting up some morning, find their throats cut, and the city laid in ashes ! These terrific recollections were doubtless the creation of a conspiracy; and an article from the weekly paper named, published at that period, thus concludes: That a plot does actually exist for destroying the freedom of the Press, under the very stale pretext of restraining its licentiousness, and that this plot has nothing less for its object than the imposition of a previous censorship, (in England,) we have now, we think, fully proved; and it remains for the public to inflict justice upon the conspirators. The Press has "bound them, and dragged them to the altar.' The identity of views manifested by the Asiatic transactions of the Marquis of Wellesley respecting the Press in 1798, which we are now about to narrate, and the domestic proceedings of The Constitutional Association,' or Bridge-street Gang, of 1821, of which his brother, the Duke of Wellington, was a leading member, is not a little remarkable. It is also an extraordinary coincidence, that this Association should have presented a bill (which was thrown out with indignation by the Grand Jury) against the same individual, whom the noble Marquis had twenty-three years before expelled from India, (without a trial,) as constituting, at that time, the only obstacle to his establishment of a Censorship on the Press of that country,we mean Dr. Maclean. Whether we view the more recent or intermediate transactions of these two brothers, or the general tenor of their political conduct through life, we shall find them to have been invariably the enemies of freedom, and the friends of despotism. When, in the contest against Napoleon, it was wished to call forth the energies of the Spanish nation, every encouragement was given by Britain to the Cortes, seeing that by a representative government this object could be most effectually accomplished. These brothers were the principal agents employed. When, by the re-action which Bonaparte had created against himself, he was overthrown, the Cortes and the representative government of Spain, which had the most powerfully contributed to that event, were, without scruple, left to be sacrificed to the despotism of Ferdinand VII. The treachery by which Spanish freedom was overthrown, and arbitrary power restored in the Peninsula, upon this occasion, must have been at least connived at, if not actually promoted. Did either of these brothers, when so many of the representatives of the Spanish nation, who would not have exposed themselves to the dangers of such a situation but for British encouragement and promises of support, were dungeoned, transported, tortured, or otherwise destroyed, ever interpose their good offices with Ferdinand in favour of humanity? Did they ever raise their voice in the British Senate in reprobation of his barbarities; or suggest any means for rescuing the Spanish patriots, victims to British seduction, from the persecutions of tyranny and fanaticism? Not that ever we have heard of. And it is of essential importance at all times, but at a moment like the present especially, that the British people, not judging from a few trivial circumstances, wherein men |