From The Economist.

HE COMMERCIAL RESULT OF AN IM-
PROVED POLICY IN INDIA.

lately were, or which still are, under native rule, so far as the people are concerned, the contrast is so striking in all that secures their real happiness and progress, that we may be quite certain they will never willingly abandon the one for the other. As far as there is design at all in these mutinous outbreaks, it is obvious that they proceed from a futile ambition to effect a military despotism through the instrumentality of a corrupted army. The only actors or even abettors that can be traced in the movement are ambitious native chiefs and a depraved and pampered highcaste soldiery, who are by habit, by nature, by prejudice, and by tradition, further removed from nine-tenths of the population of India, and from those who constitute all that is valuable in a productive, industrial, and sound sense, than the settled foreigners of whatever country they may be. If ever a great nation is to be formed out of native elements in India, it will not be by reducing the privileged castes to a useful amalgamation with the rest of the population, but by raising the social status and self-respect of the middle and industrial classes. It is, therefore, above all things necessary, in making

AT a time when there is so much doubt and wavering as to the policy upon which India should be governed-when there is so much disposition to regard the people as so peculiar, the circumstances of the country as so exceptional, that no ordinary principles can be applied to them-when a detail of horrors and atrocities such as never before darkened the history of this or any other country may predispose the public mind to listen to doctrines which its good sense would otherwise regard as dangerous and unsound, it may be well to recall attention to the best proofs which we can have of the real progress and condition of the masses of the people, and to the utter failure of predictions based upon the narrow principles which were long advocated in respect to India. At the present moment it is particularly needful not to confound two things which are altogether disconnected-the mutinous element and the mass of the population. If there be one thing more apparent than another in the events which have latterly been witnessed in the North-West Provinces, it is that the an-up our minds to the best plans for the future tagonism to English rule is confined to the army, and almost exclusively to that portion of it which is composed of high-caste natives, who have deeply seated in their minds the traditions of ancient rule and power, divided between the Mahometan and the Brahmin,and to such small portion of the population as they can immediately influence or coerce. It is certain that if there had been any general disaffection to English rule among the masses of the people, it must have exhibited itself in a far more general and unmistakeable form than it has done upon this occasion. On the contrary, the great masses of the population know well that the real issue at this present juncture is the ascendancy of the Mahometan or the Brahmin rule on the one Again, we must beware how we fall into hand, or the maintenance of English authority the error of believing that the course which on the other; and they still know enough of we have hitherto pursued in India has been the leading characteristics and main aim of based upon false and erroneous principles both to know which to desire, and, as far as only in consequence of this military outthey can, which to support. Taken abstract- break. The better principles which have edly, the English rule in India may be as latterly prevailed in our government of India faulty and capable of as much improvement date only from a very recent period. True, as its worst enemies assert; but taken com- we have held India for a century; but it is paratively with the ancient rule of our oldest only since 1834-little more than twenty possessions, or with those provinces which till years-that full effect has been given to the

government of India, that we should not commit the grave error of confounding these two elements of native society; but that we should distinguish between the restless ambition of the few who constitute the privileged castes, and the great mass of the people who constitute the productive and industrial classes, and whose condition must be improved in proportion as good government affords security for person and property, and as wise laws tend to develop the marvelous resources of their soil. Our policy should be by the sternest means to suppress the ambitious designs of the one, and by a firm but mild and just administration to encourage the improvement and prosperity of the other.

wise, enlightened and free principles of gov-| expenditure, there is always a large balance ernment acknowledged by the Act of 1814. to be received in the precious metals. But Has the experiment been successful? Before the progress of India of late years is shown the termination of the Company's monopoly in every department of its trade and producthere were many who predicted the impossi-tion. Let us only look at the following facts bility of governing India upon free principles and consider their import. -who contended that exclusive control and 1. In 1834-35, when the East India Comstrict monopoly were absolutely necessary pany ceased to be a trading company, and equally for the administration of law, and for when the full benefits of a wiser policy were the conduct of trade. What are the facts of extended both to the external trade and intwenty years' experience? If we are to con-ternal administration of India, the value of sider the people of India in their masses, the entire imports from all quarters into and to throw out of consideration the privil- India was £4,261,000-the value of the exeged castes whose essential creeds teach them ports to all countries was £7,993,000; the that all the productive classes exist only for amount of treasure imported was £1,893,000 their uses and their benefit, then we shall find while that exported was £194,000, leaving a in all that is accepted as a proof of the con- balance of £1,699,000—the remainder of the dition of a people remarkable evidences of balance representing the portion of the Inimprovement and progress :-we shall find dian revenue remitted to England for the exevery encouragement to persevere in the penditure of the Government-that is, that enlightened policy of free intercourse, and in merchandize and treasure India received for every reason for not retracing our steps, all the surplus produce exported £5,960,000. whether with regard to the external policy It would be tedious to trace the gradual by which the trade of India has been made increase of the trade of India from year to free, or the internal policy by which the na- year. For the purpose of our present argutive population has been more and more ment it is enough to show what were th identified and brought into contact with the facts, in 1855-56, the last year for which the European settlers. The remarkable increase official accounts have been published. In in the trade of India during the last twenty-that year the imports of merchandize into two years is a proof not only of the enlarged means and the increased desire of the people to consume foreign luxuries, but even more so of their progress in the productions of the soil; for it is an essential fact to bear in mind that important to this country as the export trade to India may be, and greatly as it has increased, it is not to be doubted that our import trade is even more important and has increased even more rapidly. It must be borne in mind that the habits of the native population of India are not only of the simplest but of the most stationary character. Their food, their clothing, their dwellings remain unchanged, whatever their prosperity or increasing wealth. Their produce increases in quantity and as much so in value, but their expenditure remains nearly the same. The accumulation of wealth in the shape of the precious metals is, therefore, rapid whenever India is prosperous. It may be said, as a rule, that the exports of merchandise from India greatly exceed the imports, and that, even after allowing for the three millions of Indian revenue that is annually remitted to this country for a portion of the Government will perhaps produce a more vivid impression

India had increased from £4,261,000 in 1834-35 to £17,274,000;-but the exports of merchandize had increased from £7,993,000 to no less than £25,494,000,-the balance being adjusted by an importation of treasure to the amount of £12,356,000 against an export of treasure to the amount of £2,046,000. Instead, therefore, of India receiving in merchandize and treasure for her surplus produce £5,960,000 in 1834-35, she received in 1855-56 no less than £27,584,000; and the imports of treasure alone during the last five years cannot be stated at less than £40,000,000.

When we look at these facts simply in the mass, it is difficult to realize their consequenees upon the individual native producers in the remote districts of India:-nevertheless it is certain that they must be extensively felt. But the following table, taken from an article in a recent number of the Calcutta Review, showing the quantities of the principal articles produced in Bengal which had been received at Calcutta in the two years which we have been comparing

of the rapid strides which the Indian cultiva- | by studying the cons as well as the pros that tors have recently made :

the public is likely to arrive at the truth. Some extracts from Mr. Luard's work we shall 1855-56 lay before our readers, in order that they may see the notion as to the causes of the out27.995 break that he has formed. His introduction 20,221,000 is as follows:

4,788,000 "Whenever the reconstructors of our Indian
1,194,000
2,538,000 empire succeed in getting through the mass
1,307,000 of garble which will as usual be interposed
44.937 to mislead them, they will find that the
950.036 present disasters in India are the inevitable
consequences of the culpable apathy of the
British nation, the utter indifference it has
always manifested to the affairs of that coun-
try, and its consequent ignorance of what
population numbering one-seventh of the
most concerns the happiness and welfare of a
whole human race.

tyranny.

in obtaining justice it would induce numbers | government, and corruption that prevail. He of other natives to follow his example, and winds up these by telling us that one of his the India Board would then be besieged by own assistants, a Bombay civilian, caused the etitioners for redress; to find in short, that death of a native by beating him and having although the British Parliament enact laws they do not take care that these laws are not urine put down his throat by the lowest caste made, as they have been, instruments of that could be procured, having previously with his own hands dragged him to prison by a rope tied about his heels, beating him with a bridle on the back all the way. And for doing this he adds that the civilian escaped scot-free. He says that a commander-in-chief in India once ordered his aide-de-camp to shoot a trooper of the Bengal cavalry, and that the trooper was shot accordingly and the case hushed up. He affirms that he has known respectable native officers tied up and flogged before the whole regiment, and then dismissed, without any sort of inquiry; and that, though they complained, the commanding officer was related to Lord Dalhousie, and that of course there was no redress.

"So outrageous is the villainy which I have witnessed, that, next to the inhuman conduct of the natives in these mutinies, nothing gave me so low an opinion of their characters as the manner in which they quietly looked on and saw whole communities pillaged by the officers of Government, European and native. I was at one time judge and magistrate of a place so pillaged, and by such means reduced to an utter mass of moral and physical degradation; and Sir Charles Napier has proved that my experience was not, as it could not be, singular, by declaring that the GovernorGeneral of India did not know that his own camp was at once a scene and a cause of curses on our very name.

"Who, then, shall wonder at an outbreak which practical men declared imminent unless India were better governed? When we hear of outbreaks in native States (an opportunity which we always seize to appropriate them to ourselves), we invariably impute them to tyranny. If the people of a country throw off one Government, it is with the hope of obtaining a better; and I can take upon myself to say that a worse they never can have than that which has brought matters to this with us.

pass

per

"In no Government that ought to be mitted to exist, or that can possibly exist for any length of time securely, can outrages and judicial robberies, such as I have witnessed, be perpetrated and upheld. Yet the British Parliament and the British public have suffered such a Government to flourish unquestioned. Now, however, that the spectacle afforded by that country has at last turned the eyes of the world towards Indian matters, the truth may perhaps leak out, in spite of the Court of Directors and the Board of Control, who have been so long playing into one another's hands, and been corrupting everybody. At all events I will lend my assistance to the promulgation of the truth, and only regret that I cannot (to quote the language used of me in the London Mail of January 9, 1854) reveal, under circumstances which would insure a wide publicity and extensive perusal of my evidence, those monstrous perversions of justice to which I have been for years endeavouring to direct the public attention."

Such are some of the charges brought by Mr. Luard against our rule, and he winds up his pamphlet as follows:

"Colonel Sykes says an inquiry into the causes of this mutiny must take place. It ought; but no inquiry ever has taken place yet into Indian crimes, simply because they are too disgraceful and too numerous; but the affairs of India have now become history. Its people have thrown off our rule, and this they never would have done had we governed them better than their native princes: nor would anything have caused the Hindoos and Mahomedans to combine saving a great common cause; and no other cause yet assigned would affect the prejudices of both. This outbreak has been foreseen for years. Sir Charles Napier foretold it; so did the free press; so did the natives themselves; so did 1; so did every honest, practical man who had courage to speak his real opinions. The annexation of Oude was the last inciting cause of it by bringing so large a number of Bengal sepoys under our rule; but the origin of the revolt is to be found entire in these pages, and need not be sought for elsewhere.

"And now, reconstructors of the Indian empire, say what shall be done with this people of whom rightly or wrongly you have assumed the government and all its fearful responsibilities towards God and men? Shall the sun which never sets on our dominions only shine on this portion of them to display a scene of suffering, degradation, and brutality, on the one hand, and crime, corruption, and Mr. Luard then proceeds to make a num- rapacity on the other, which the world has ber of statements, as he avers, on his own rarely seen equalled and-in its atrocious deknowledge, regarding the iniquities, and mis-tails of misery-never surpassed? Shall we

who proudly consider ourselves the salt of this revolt has been occasioned by their own the earth (how aptly do the words apply, if misconduct, incapacity, and neglect. But the salt have lost its savor wherewithal shall what may suit the purpose of the Ministers it be savored), the champions of Christianity, will be very adverse to the interests of the the promoters of civilization, shall we first commit by the hands of our Government and people of these realms. The Ministers are then wilfully ignore, and by ignoring sanchere to-day and gone to-morrow, and what is tion, the bribery, corruption, falsehood, mur- said of them is soon forgotten; but the characder, and tyranny of which these pages con-acter of the nation will be irrecoverable when tain an outline too scanty to convey the faintest idea of the fearful reality? What ever the late atrocities may have proved the natives of India to be, we have undertaken to rule them--and we cannot escape the re

once it has been allowed to pass away. If, then, it is the same England that it once was, let it do its duty manfully, be the consequences to the Cabinet what they will. Let it show that

to sin with its eyes open; and that if like Francis I. of France it has lost all besides its honor, it is not prepared at the bidding of a Premier to sacrifice that as well.

sponsibilities that rule imposes on us. The if it has erred in ignorance it will not continue day of reckoning must come, if it be not already at the doors. Our armies may reconquer Indian ground, but Indian hearts and the great object of our mission to India are lost forever. That object was to benefit our fellow-creatures, advance the interests of civFrom The Times, 7 October. ilization, and aid in the propagation of ChrisINDIA AND CHRISTIANITY. tianity. We have disgraced God's holy name in a heathern land; we have deliberately THE whole country meets on this day to made ourselves a curse to those whom it was deplore in the presence of GOD the national our duty to have protected and defended; we visitation involved in the Indian Mutiny. It have driven them to rebellion by our own is a day of National Humiliation, and its acts; and let us beware lest when the books suitable accompaniment, national self-examinare opened the blood of our countrymen and ation. We have had India now a hundred countrywomen slain at Delhi be not demanded at our hands; together with that of years, and what is the result? Is it good, the thousands our soldiers will slay, urged by bad, or indifferent? The nation is on this the stern necessity we ourselves have pro-day supposed solemnly to review its Indian voked! It is in vain to send out soldiers. policy, to ask itself what good it has done, Send out honest men, if any honest men can and what proportion such good bears to the be found, to undertake the task of purificameans it has had at its command. tion; let justice hold the balance with an equal hand; cease to shelve the just comThere can be no doubt that the object for plaints of those whom you have oppressed; which we ought to consider ourselves to hold abolish the torture whose existence no shuff- India is the future Christianity and civilization ling can dissemble; equalize taxation; pun-of the people. It will be said this is aiming ish bribery as you now punish honesty; and high, and so it is, but until it is proved that put down the reign of ignorance, incapacity, this result is impossible we must aim at it; and nepotism at home. So perhaps it may as a Christian nation we, have no other alter-. yet be time to save India. If not, hope not

to conquer her in any other way, but rather native. Some say this is impossible. There desire it to be expunged from the list of our are philosophical theories to this effect, theories possessions as the foulest blot that ever dis-about races and what they are susceptible of. graced the British name."

And even before the theory about races sprang up the institutions of Hindostan were thought by many to oppose an irresistible obstacle to

These are the statements made by Mr. Luard, and which are based, he says, on his own experience as a civil servant of the Com-Christianity. Sidney Smith adopted this pany for many years. If the nation desires ground in an essay 50 years ago. India has to maintain its character for honesty, it will in fact, acted like a Medusa's head upon many compel inquiry into them, for any attempt to persons, and some of those the most intelliIt has turned them into stone. blink the question can only be accepted as a gent thinkers. sign of conscious guilt. It may suit the pur- The sight of the stern features of that rigid pose of the Ministers to try and stifle discus-system, with the minds of the natives locked sion, both in India and in England, because in its iron grasp, has chilled their life-blood they know that the farther discussion pro-and deadened hope. What can we do against ceeds the deeper will be the evidence that such institutions acting upon such a race?