CHAPTER XXXVI.

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THE END OF JOHN COMPANY."

WHILE these things were passing in India, it is needless to say that the public opinion of England was distracted by agitation and by opposing counsels. For a long time the condition of Indian affairs had been regarded in England with something like absolute indifference. India was, to the ordinary Englishman, a place where men used at one time to make large fortunes within a few years; and where lately military and civil officers had to do hard work enough without much chance of becoming nabobs. In many circles it was thought of only as the hated country where one's daughter went with her husband, and from which she had, after a few years, to send back her children to England, because the climate of India was fatal to certain years of childhood. It was associated, in the minds of some, with tiger-hunting; in the minds of others, with Bishop Heber and missions to the heathen. Most persons had a vague knowledge that there had been an impeachment of Warren Hastings for something done by him in India, and that Burke had made great speeches about it. In his famous essay on Lord Clive, published only seventeen years before the Indian Mutiny, Lord Macaulay complained, that while every school-boy, as he put it in his favorite way, knew all about the Spanish conquests in the Americas, about Montezuma, and Cortes, and Pizarro, very few even of cultivated English gentlemen knew anything whatever about the history of England's empire in India. In the House of Commons a debate on any question connected with India was as strictly an affair of experts as a discussion on some local gas or water bill. The House in general did not even affect to have any interest in it. The officials who had to do with Indian affairs; the men on the Opposition benches, who had held the same offices while their party was in power; these, and

two or three men who had been in India, and were set down as crotchety because they professed any concern in its mode of government - such were the politicians who carried on an Indian debate, and who had the House all to themselves while the discussion lasted. The Indian Mutiny startled the public feeling of England out of this state of unhealthy languor. First came the passion and panic, the cry for blood, the wholesale executions, the blowing of rebels from guns; then came a certain degree of reaction, and some eminent Englishmen were found to express alarm at the very sanguinary methods of repression and of punishment that were in favor among most of our fellow-countrymen in India.

It was during this season of reaction that the famous discussions took place on Lord Canning's proclamation. On March 3d, 1858, Lord Canning issued his memorable proclamation; memorable, however, rather for the stir it created in England than for any great effect it produced in India. It was issued from Allahabad, whither the Governor-General had gone to be nearer to the seat of war. The proc lamation was addressed to the Chiefs of Oudh, and it announced that, with the exception of the lands then held by six loyal proprietors of the province, the proprietary right in the whole of the soil of Oudh was transferred to the British Government, which would dispose of it in such manner as might seem fitting. The disposal, however, was indicated by the terms of the proclamation. To all chiefs and landholders who should at once surrender to the Chief Commissioner of Oudh it was promised that their lives should be spared, "provided that their hands are unstained by English blood murderously shed;" but it was stated that, "as regards any further indulgence which may be extended to them, and the conditions in which they may hereafter be placed, they must throw themselves upon the justice and mercy of the British Government." Read by the light of literalness, this proclamation unquestionably seemed to amount to an absolute confiscation of the whole soil of Oudh; for even the favored land-owners who were to retain their properties were given to understand that they retained them by the favor of the Crown, and as a reward for their loyalty. This was the view taken of the Governor-General's act by one whose opinion was surely entitled to the highest

consideration from every onee-Sir James Outram, Chief Commissioner of Oudh. Sir James Outram wrote at once to Lord Canning, pointing out that there were not a dozen landholders in Oudh who had not either themselves borne arms against us or assisted the rebels with men or money, and that, therefore, the effect of the proclamation would be to confiscate the entire proprietary right in the province and to make the chiefs and landlords desperate, and that the result would be a "guerilla war for the extirpation, root and branch, of this class of men, which will involve the loss of thousands of Europeans by battle, disease, and exposure." Lord Canning was not ready to admit, even in deference to such authority as that of Sir James Outram, that his policy would have any such effects. But he consented to insert in the proclamation a clause announcing that a liberal indulgence would be granted to those who should promptly come forward to aid in the restoration of order, and that "the Governor-General will be ready to view liberally the claims which they may thus acquire to a restitution of their former rights."

In truth, it was never the intention of Lord Canning to put in force any cruel and sweeping policy of confiscation. The whole tenor of his rule in India, the very reproaches that had been showered on him, the very nickname which his enemies had given him—that term of reproach that af terward came to be a title of honor-might have suggested to the sharpest critic that it was not likely "Clemency Canning" was about to initiate a principle of merciless punishment for an entire class of men. Lord Canning had come to the conclusion that the English Government must start afresh in their dealings with Oudh. He felt that it would be impossible to deal with the chiefs and people of the province so lately annexed as if we were dealing with revolted Sepoys. He put aside any idea of imprisonment or transportation for mere rebellion, seeing that only in the conqueror's narrowest sense could men be accounted rebels because they had taken arms against a power which but a moment before had no claim whatever to their allegiance or their obedience. Nevertheless, Oudh was now a province of the British Empire in Hindostan, and Lord Canning had only to consider what was to be done with it. He came to the

conclusion that the necessary policy for all parties concerned was to make of the mutiny and the consequent reorganization an opportunity, not for a wholesale confiscation of the land, but for a measure which should declare that the land was held under the power and right of the English Government. The principle of his policy was somewhat like that adopted by Lord Durham in Canada. It put aside the technical authority of law for the moment, in order that a reign of genuine law might be inaugurated. It seized the power of a dictator over life and property, that the dictator might be able to restore peace and order at the least cost in loss and suffering to the province and the population whose affairs it was his task to administer.

But it may be freely admitted that on the face of it the proclamation of Lord Canning looked strangely despotic. Some of the most independent and liberal Englishmen took this view of it. Men who had supported Lord Canning through all the hours of clamor against him, felt compelled to express disapproval of what they understood to be his new policy. It so happened that Lord Ellenborough was then President of the Board of Control, and Lord Ellenborough was a man who always acted on impulse, and had a passion for fine phrases. He had a sincere love of justice, according to his lights; but he had a still stronger love for antithesis. Lord Ellenborough, therefore, had no sooner received a copy of Lord Canning's proclamation than he despatched, upon his own responsibility, a rattling condemnation of the whole proceeding. "Other conquerors," wrote the fiery and eloquent statesman, "when they have succeeded in overcoming resistance, have excepted a few persons as still deserving of punishment, but have, with a generous policy, extended their clemency to the great body of the people. You have acted upon a different principle; you have reserved a few as deserving of special favor, and you have struck, with what they feel as the severest of punishments, the mass of the inhabitants of the country. We cannot but think that the precedents from which you have departed will appear to have been conceived in a spirit of wisdom superior to that which appears in the precedent you have made." The style of this despatch was absolutely indefensible. A French Imperial prefect with a turn for elo

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quent letter-writing might fitly thus have admonished the erring maire of a village community; but it was absurd language for a man like Lord Ellenborough to address to a statesman like Lord Canning, who had just succeeded in keeping the fabric of English government in India together during the most terrible trial ever imposed on it by fate. The question was taken up immediately in both Houses of , Parliament. Lord Shaftesbury, in the House of Lords, moved a resolution declaring that the House regarded with regret and serious apprehension the sending of such a despatch through the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors " -an almost obsolete piece of machinery, we may remarkand its publication; and that such a course must prejudice our rule in India by weakening the authority of the Governor-General, and encouraging the resistance of rebels still in arms. A similar motion was introduced by Mr. Cardwell in the House of Commons. In both Houses the arraignment of the Ministry proved a failure. Lord Ellenborough at once took upon himself the whole responsibility of an act which was undoubtedly all his own; and he resigned his office. The resolution was, therefore, defeated in the House of Lords on a division, and had to be withdrawn in a rather ignominious manner in the House of Commons. Four nights of vehement debate were spent in the latter House. Opinion was strangely divided. Men like Mr. Bright and Sir James Graham condemned the proclamation and defended the action of the Government. The position of Mr. Cardwell and his supporters became particularly awkward; for they seemed, after the resignation of Lord Ellenborough, to be only trying to find partisan advantage in a further pressure upon the Government. The news that Sir James Outram had disapproved of the proclamation came while the debate was still going on, and added new strength to the cause of the Government. It came out in the course of the discussion that Lord Canning had addressed a private letter to Mr. Vernon Smith, afterward Lord Lyveden, Lord Ellenborough's predecessor as President of the Board of Control, informing him that the proclamation about to be issued would require some further explanation which the pressure of work did not allow its author just then to give. Lord Canning wrote this under the belief that Mr. Vernon Smith