mutineers, laden with plunder and red with the blood of our countrymen, have found their way to their homes.
I shall then ask if the people of England will permit this policy to be further carried out; whether they will allow India still to remain an appanage of the Civil Service? This noble country has been under the rule of that service for a century: the present insurrection is the inevitable result of that domination. They have had no root in the land; their interests have not been the interests of the people of India. We have lately seen how, in many parts of the country, the Indigo planters, men like Mr. Venables, Mr, Saunders, Mr. Chapman, have actually not only held their own factories, but have rescued the magistrates and others from the insurgents: in some instances the Commissioners have been compelled to invest them with magisterial powers. Whence was their authority derived? In what lay the secret of their immunity from outrage? The answer is plain: they are owners of the soil; their interests are the same as those of the population. These, then, are the men who ought to be made magistrates, in place of unfledged boys, ignorant of the people and imperfectly acquainted with the language of the country.
The last act of the Government has, as much as any other, exposed the "courage and capacity" of our civil administrators. So long as there was real danger they pretended to ignore it; but no sooner had the crisis passed away, than, looking back at it, appalled at its magnitude, they fell into a panic. They determined on a vigorous demonstration, one which should strike terror into the hearts of all. The question was, Whom they should attack? The rebels, unfortunately, were beyond their reach; Barrackpore was quiet. But a demonstration was necessary. They could not attack the national enemy, so they resolved to assault the declared antagonists of the principle, "India for the Civil Service;" and in pursuance of this plan, they actually persuaded Lord Canning to go down to the Legislative Council, suspend all the standing orders, and in the course of forty minutes to abolish the freedom of the Press!!!
Take the present members of the Government of India, the Members of Council, and the Secretaries; try their powers, analyse their abilities, and with the single exception of Mr. Edmonstone, there is not one of them whose capacity can be rated higher than that of an average lawyer's clerk; had their lot not been cast in "the pleasant places" of an exclusive service, few of them would have been able to earn an independent livelihood!
It is easy, therefore, to imagine why they should have been jealous of a Press which did not recognise their pretensions to an exclusive possession of intellect, but that such men should have subordinated Lord Canning to their views appertains to the marvellous. Lord Ellenborough would have used them to his own purposes; they have moulded Lord Canning to theirs!
With terrible anxiety do the independent Europeans wait the decision of the people of England regarding the future government of India. It is a most momentous question, fraught with all-important results for good or evil, not only to the independent Europeans, but
