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GOOD AND EVIL OF OUR RULE IN INDIA. Ther...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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America On India And England. Tarn Ameri...
the Vmoi ^ that the TeljeHion , - India _ wni eventuate " in a successful revolution . Ever since the days of Xebxes , small European armies have sufficed to keep Asiatic multitudes in check . Were- England to suffer , Christendom must suffer . Allowing that the English hare been fillibusters in India , says the Herald , not sorry to retaliate the epithet on an unmistakable occasion , " they have conferred some benefits on India by their rule . England , however , can and will recover her ground ; she could not lose India and retain her position in Europe ; but were she to sink , like Portugal after the loss of her foreign dependencies , to a fourth-rate power , America would suffernot gain .
, " The United States would in both eases be affected injuriously . Hme need not be spent in argument to show that we Bheold . be losers by the relapse of Eandostan ittto barbarism . Our trade with East India is not large , though it is large enoug h for its withdrawal to be felt . But every year , as our capacity to . produce and the capacity of iihe Hindoos to eonsume increases , 4 t would swell and become more important . Moreover , as
a leading nation of the world , we are , to a certam extent , partners of every other race , and sharers in their prosperity and their reverses . The relapse of Hindostan into barbarism would affect us as injuriously as , for instance , a commercial convulsion in England , and -with more permanent results . But the decline and fall of England would be a far . more serious matter . . . The fall of England might quench European liberty for a whole century . "
We could have ventured to state exactly the same view as the opinion of the Americans in the Republic , from north to south , partly because it necessarily results from the facts , but chiefly because it is an Anglo-Saxon view . There are two episodes in the question , however , on -which we take leave to qualify the opinions of our American contemporaries ; and we believe that the statement of our grounds will obtain for us no small degree of concurrence on the other side of the Atlantic . Perhaps even the contemporaries with whom we differ will accept the qualification which we now suggest . " England and
Prance , " says the Washington Union , with much truth , " have for years past been engaged in spasmodic but vain endeavours to retrieve the error of West Indian emancipation ; " they have been seeking in other quarters cheap cotton and cheap sugar . The Indian revolt frustrates the search in one direction— " and even should England , as we believe she will , succeed in suppressing the outbreak , she will hare no spare capital , or energy , or industry , while the war lasts , with which to increase her supplies of cotton and sugar , and to ward off that famine with which she is imminently threatened from a deficit of those articles . " Even if the
Tevolt shall be suppressed , years must elapse before industry in India resumes its ordinary oha / nnels ; and from these disturbances , says the Union , " all Christendom 'will suffer alike , except the slaveholders of America . " We do not except the slaveholders , nor any othor persons interested in the growth of American cotton . It is necessary to their welfare that the looms of England should he Icept in full activity at the largest expansion of our factory system ; necessary , there-fore , that the loom should have continuous and ample supplies from
America or elsewhere . The United States need never fear the competition of other lands . The vast amount of their own supply , the quality of the cotton , their nearness , the facility of the voyage , the machinery that they can employ in its trans-TOTOBwrn , are guarantees for their power of retaining our market . Any other supplies that com © as supplements to theirs do but operate as securities that our cotton-consuming maehi- ^ TQfcry shall bo kept at work at its widest atrotch . Anything which threatens to deprive our cotton-consuming power of its supplies
tinquestiotmTbly militates against the profits of Sew York , "the revenues of USew Orleans , and the income of every man growing or transmitting cotton . We believe that not many years , perhaps not more than one year , will elapse before industry in India will return to its wonted channels with new vigour and enlarged facilities ; and we believe that in this prospect the interests of the TTnited States form no exception to those of Great Britain . The JUTew York Herald makes a suggestion which looks as handsome as it is cunning . Our contemporary calculates that we shall want more recruits than England will
produce . " The United States contain far more men who are ready to serve as troops in actual warfare than Great Britain ; and as we have no treaties with the nations or peoples with whom the English are fighting in India , none of our laws would be broken by enlisting them . To gain their good-will it would , of course , be necessary to satisfy this community that , in return for our sympathy the entire
abroad , the English were willing to cede to us control of the aflkirs of this continent and its dependencies ; and this would not be an easy thing either for so unbending a politician as Palmerston to achieve , or for so incredulous a people as ours to credit . But were it accomplished there might doubtless be awakened a strong feeling here in favour of the British in India ; and very likely , with proper measure and a suitable outlay , 50 , 000 men could be enlisted in a few weeks . "
We may take several exceptions to this exposition . England will have no lack of recruits , should the Grovernrnerit rise to a consciousness of the public necessity , and offer those sufficient motives which every soldier ought to feel in accepting the military service of his country . Americans , if sufficient inducements were offered , would , we believe , not wait for any such bargain as our contemporary anticipates ; and the bargain itself is not at present on the cards . But
we believe that if England were to ask America for recruits , they would not be refused . Were they granted , one consequence would necessarily follow ; the friendship as well as the interests of the people would be closely , openly , and avowedly knit together . The alliance between England and America would be consolidated ; and it would become more difficult than ever for any Government in Downing-street to set two great nations by the ears , for the advantage or amusement of a coterie or a cabinet .
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Good And Evil Of Our Rule In India. Ther...
GOOD AND EVIL OF OUR RULE IN INDIA . There are certain provinces of India whieh prove that Englishmen are capable of governing an Asiatic population . This must be admitted for the sake of justice , since it would be a positive misfortune were the public mind at home to bo inculcated with the doctrine preached in certain quarters , that our rule in , the East has been an unmitigated curse , blunder , and burden . Compared with that of the Moguls it has been an actual and general blessing . When those Mohammedan
invaders poured out of the Tartar deserts into the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges , they found themselves in the midst of an ancient and decaying civilization , a sacred polity swaying a submissive multitude , and the great cities of the Brahminical realm already touched with the rust of time . The Hindu dynasties were arbitrary , cruel , and extortionate ; but the Mohammedans were worse . They attempted no social
reforms ; they allowed the fires of suttee to blaze , the blood of children to flow ,, and the forms of a murderous idolatry to be practised ; but they also added to the atrocious criminal codo of the Brahmins ; they wrung from the cultivator the ohiof part of his produce , and left him no peace in . tho enjoyment of the rest ; their courts of justice within a century bocanie infamous throughout Asia . Under their auspices flourished the system of
putting to death all prisoners of war , of put-^ ting suspected persons to the torture— -aerime never connived at by the British Government—of inflicting im palement and flaying alive as the penalties of secondary offences , of hunting the poor like wild beasts with , dogs and cheetahs . One king whom the English deposed , was in the habit , when he took a city , of cutting off the lips and noses
of the principal inhabitants , women , and children included ; ^ Nadib Shah ordered a seven days ' massacre in Delhi ; in fact , it may safely be affirmed that the Moguls , while they built marble palaces and tombs , drained the blood of India , and exhausted and oppressed the population . The lesser independent princes have beea for the most part incomparable despots . .
The British Government has not nourished the domestic prosperity of India in all its provinces . Xt delayed the abolition of suttee ; it has paltered with infanticide ; it has failed to extirpate altogether that superstitious horror of the widow ' s second marriage , whieh formerly drove thousands to suicide or
prostitution ; only recently did it prohibit the inhuman orgies of Juggernaut ; but it cannot be blamed for interfering cautiously with the ceremonies and customs of a people so profoundly imbued with the spirit of a vast , shadowy , proud religious system . But India has been released from Mahratta and Pimdaree devastations—a reform which might
be appreciated could we imagine Middlesex exposed to the periodical inroad of Prince G-oktsohakoef at the head of a hundred thousand intoxicated Cossacks . To a great extent the Thugs and Phansegars have been cleared from the highways ; commerce has increased ; and so great is the popular feeling of security , that village fortifications have long begun to disappear . The piratical tribes along the coast have also been suppressed . "We have in many eases repaired the vast tanks
upon wbieli the peasantry rely as upon the sources of life ; we have constructed numerous roads , aqueducts , and canals ; we have superseded the jungle by the rice-field in extensive districts ; within three years after the British conquest , upwards of two thousand villages were rebuilt and repeopled in HoIiKAr ' s counr try alone . Xiet us refer especially to Mairwara , a highland district among the Araballa Hills , between Marwar and Ajmeer . * ' A population of robbers converted into an industrious peasantry , a police organized among
them , female infanticide—once the habitual custom—abolished , the sale of women , prohibited , the land-tax reduced , gifts of tools and money , made to the cultivators , employment general among the people , a new capital sprung up , numerous hamlets inereaeed to towns , a hundred , and six new villages b ^ ilb within twelve years ; nearly six thousand tanks and wells , with two hundred and ninety embankments , constructed- — such are the works of peace in that Hbtle district alone , " A recent historian supplies this picture ; but we might point to other administrators no less energetio and successful tlian Lieutenant-Colonel Dixosr , who effected these changes
in Mairwara , It is necessary to bring out these aspects of our Indian rule , since it would be impossible to discuss the whole subject in the midst of a din of misrepresentation . The evil is conspicuous and undeniable . We have imported into India a clumsy centralization ; mve allowed civilians to tamper with tho eacred social laws of tho people ; have subjected the army to a capricious and otteii reckless authority ; have permitted atafl-QfficerB to neglect their military functions ; have treated the natives as etrangors ; uavo resisted and conceded upon no regular principle whatever ; have neglected our own lute-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 22, 1857, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22081857/page/15/
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