.3 
 AGS 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/debateonindiaineOOmontrich-" 
 
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THE ONLY AUTHORIZED AND COMPLETE TRANSLATION. 
 
 m 
 
 DEBATE OK INDIA 
 
 LN THE 
 
 ^nglb]^ IParliammt. 
 
 BY M. LE COMTK DE 
 
 ^MOTfTALEMBERT. 
 
 LONDON: 
 PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE 
 
 CONTINENTAL REVIEW, 
 
 lA, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND; 
 
 AKD SOLD BY 
 
 "W.JEFFS, FOREIGN BOOKSELLER, 15, BURLINGTON ARCADE 
 AND 69, KING'S ROAD, BRIGHTON. 
 
 1858. 
 
 W 
 
 f 
 
 ij Translated by permission op M. de Montalembert erom the c 
 " Corresjoondani" of October 29, 1858. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
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DEBATE ON INDIA 
 
 ^jijglis]^ IParliameiti 
 
 BY M. LE COMTE DE 
 
 MONTALEMBERT. 
 
 Translated hypermisgian oj M. de Montalembert from the ^^Correspondant" of 
 October 29, 1858. 
 
 LONDON: 
 PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE 
 
 (IDontinental Bebiefo, 
 
 lA, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND. 
 
 AJSD BOLD BY 
 
 W. JEFFS, FOEEION BOOKSELLER, 15, BURLINGTON ARCADE, 
 AND 69, KING'S ROAD, BRIGHTON. 
 
 1858. 
 
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M« Berryer 
 
 [owever powerful the effect which would have been 
 iced on the Court bj the frank and eloquent language 
 3 Count de Montalembert, delivered with that good 
 for which he is so distinguished, and although nobody 
 so well explain to ywi, gentlemen, the consistency of 
 pinions, we would not permit him to undertake the 
 as he could not speak of himself in thetermsin which h 
 i to be spoken of. It is for us to fulfil that duty ; it is 
 (, who have been mixed up [miMs) with him in the great 
 iion and the great scenes of political life ; for us, 
 n different camps, on opposite benches, have some, 
 not been able to agree as to the course to pursue, but 
 lold it an honour to declare that on all occasional a^ 
 IS to-day, we have desired to maintain the fundamental 
 Iples of order and liberty, of which he was the eloquent 
 der. Yes, in the midst of political terrors we were 
 united. We had the same feelings— to save society, 
 ave liberty likewise, and it is with the same motto, 
 kme battle-cry, that I come here to repel an unjust, nn« 
 led, imprudent, and ill-timed accusation : I was going 
 l—rash. It will be an easy task for me, gentlemen, to 
 you to the fulfilment of your duty, as I shall 
 vour to perform mine. We need not fear that 
 g this total, the first, you are told, which 
 »cciirred during the Empire, any consideration could 
 ie you to forget the sanctity and independence o^ 
 ajesty of justice which is intrusted to you. The publi- 
 i of M. de Montalembert, *A Debate upon India in the 
 h Parliament^* is the object of a prosecution taken all 
 tier in its details. Assuredly, when it is intended to try 
 k 80 extended and of so serious a character we should 
 op at a single word or a detached phrase, that may b*^ 
 terpreted, altered, disfigured, and exaggerated— it 
 1 be taken all together. To judge of a work it is not 
 ent to place yourselves in the point of view of the pro* 
 on ; you must try the man himself, his principles, and 
 Ife. That life has been engaged in every struggle for 
 \n, and that life has been exposed to the gaze of all. 
 as still young when France escaped from the sufferings^ 
 isgrace which the three tyraimies of the Convention, 
 >irectory, and the Empire had inflicted on her, and was 
 ig under a constitutional monarchy— a Grovernmeat 
 g ana free.'* 
 
 . Berryer then recounted the early life of M. de 
 talembert, his progress in the noble cause he had 
 red upon, and the service he rendered to hk 
 try ; he enlarged on hi» great talents, which he 
 ired, and his character, which he ever did 
 ce to even when sitting on the benches of the 
 >sition. 
 
 iDslation of which is given 
 29th of October, 1858, in 
 he Liberal Catholic party 
 
 the ground of a prosecu- 
 j Montalembert and the 
 
 ad to the manager of the 
 Icle, are, according to the 
 ranged under four heads, 
 d what are the points on 
 ceed to state what these 
 ^ferences to the passages 
 (indictment), as falling 
 accusation. 
 
 impt of the Emperor's 
 
 . . free England.'* 
 erican federation." 
 the habits .... of the 
 
 iiions generous 
 
 J,WS. 
 
 he habits . 
 
 of the 
 
 awaits them." 
 lication .... results of 
 
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 ^ L^o-^^g S>,SJ British Bank/«2 .^22^:^^^ ^ 
 
 ;o'S'|*'^S^dgS'^ot Insolvent Court; jtilU r dp^iea mlli S.cx«.-^ J"^ 
 
 S '^ v^ o o 2 **^ 'S ^ n npon him at the suit of the Royal British Bank. 
 
 rS^ fe^'^'dW'S'*^*'3'^c bound over to keep the peace towards him, and he m 
 
 ^ m « ^ 'B "^ «, ^ p -a- o el in the street ana said he would get my^ recogni2 
 
 * 9k^ is Oi-^ o 4» "S ^"^^"l estreated. When I have been with people in the strt 
 
 ^'^'-•■«o-5rfo-*<ff) (, has called me a rogue and abused me, and on one oc< 
 
 ' he spat in my face. There were cross stmimonses, ai 
 went to the police court on the 23d of August, 1858. 
 summons was heard first, and, after he had given evic 
 I was called upon. I went into the witness-box, an 
 sworn. He said to the magistrate, " Your worship 
 man is not to be believed upon his oath. Hi 
 committed perjury in the County Court of Whitecl 
 He has robbed his nephews and would rob anybody, 
 was spoken loudly so that all the people in the court 
 hear him. The same words were repeated several timi 
 have been engaged in a lawsuit in which my nephews 
 interested, and obtained a verdict in my favour, 
 given evidence in a plaint in the County Court of "V 
 chapel. The words are false. 
 
 Cross-examined.— I had given my acceptance once 1 
 February, 1856. He was superintendent of the JewE 
 pital, where I had four nephews, and that led to th( 
 macy. He banked with the British Bank, and that 
 broke in 1856 after I had lent my acceptance. 
 
 Mr. Justice Crompton suggested that this was re 
 ease which ought to be settled. 
 
 Mr. Locke said, a proposed arrangement went off ( 
 question of costs. 
 
 Mr. Henry James said, the plaintiff had offered i 
 the costs out of pocket. 
 
 Mr. Locke rejoined that the spitting in the face 
 have been brought before the County Court as an as 
 but the plaintiff chose to bring an action for slander, 
 could not be taken in the County Court. 
 Mr. Justice Crompton said, if it had not been f 
 
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 ugly words imputing perjury he should have th 
 nothing of the charge of robbery ; but he did not v 
 that the plaintiff required the words imputing perjurj 
 retracted. 
 
 Mr. Henry James said, he now offered to settle 
 fixed sum for costs. 
 
 Mr. Locke declined to agree. 
 
 The plaintiff, on further cro88>examination, said, — 
 I found Mr. Myers had been discharged from his sit 
 for misconduct I applied to him to get my bill back 
 gave evasive answers, and I went to the British Ban 
 told them it was an accommodation bill. The action 
 V a? brought against me was brought at the instigatio 
 nejhew whom I was obliged to turn out of doors, 
 nofc brought actions against my relatives. 
 
 Mr. Locke.— Have you had a suit with your bi 
 Jacob Ansell ? 
 
 The plaintiff.— Not that I know of. 
 
 Mr. Justice Crompton.— -What can that have to d< 
 
 tl.is nasft ? 
 
 S w S%f* >»'3 ^. The plaintiff.— Nothing. I must appeal to your 
 ■S^5gai£'g'2;§3' ship for protection in this case. 
 ^^&^ o^S °.2 P J, ^« Justice Crompton.— I think I and the jury ai 
 ««,._.. ^ ^^^ want to be protected. (Laughter.) 
 
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NOTICE. 
 
 The article by M. de Montalembert, a traDslation of which is given 
 in the following pages, appeared, on the 29th of October, 1858, in 
 the Gorrespmidant, a monthly organ of the Liberal Catholic party 
 in France. 
 
 Since its appearance it has been made the ground of a prosecu- 
 tion by the Government against M. de Montalembert and the 
 manager of the Correspondant. 
 
 The offences imputed to the author, and to the manager of the 
 periodical, in the publication of this article, are, according to the 
 laws relating to the Press in France, arranged uuder four heads. 
 In order that the reader may understand what are the points on 
 which the prosecution is rested, we proceed to state what these 
 heads are, and to place under them references to the passages 
 which are set down in the assignation (indictment), as falling 
 within the scope of these several heads of accusation. 
 
 L Exciting to the hatred and contempt of the Emperor's 
 Government. 
 
 1. Page 1. — "I honestly confess .... free England." 
 
 2. Page 5. — " In Canada .... American federation." 
 
 3. Page 11. — "We possess not only the habits .... of the 
 
 mob." 
 
 4. Page 52. — " Whilst these reflections generous 
 
 minds." 
 
 II. — Attack on the respect due to the laws. 
 
 1. Page 11. — "We possess not only the habits .... of the 
 
 mob." 
 
 2. Page 45. — " I for my part .... awaits them." 
 
 3. Page 53. — " This is but the application .... results of 
 
 1789." 
 
IV 
 
 III. — Attack on the rights which the Emperor derives from the 
 Constitution, and on the principle of Universal Suffrage. 
 
 1. Page 2. — "Besides, I readily grant .... madmen, per- 
 
 haps, like myself." 
 
 2. Page 52. — " In a word, moral force .... intelligent 
 
 energy." 
 
 3. Page 57. — " I have in these pages .... spontaneous 
 
 sacrifice." 
 
 IV. — Exciting to the hatred and contempt of the citizens one 
 against another. 
 
 1. Page 2. — "Besides, I readily grant .... madmen, per- 
 
 haps, like myself." 
 
 2. Page 12. — " But if by chance .... reflections and facts." 
 
 3. Page 52. — "Whilst these reflections generous 
 
 minds." 
 
 A condemnation renders the periodical liable to be entirely 
 suppressed, and subjects the author to a penalty of fine and 
 imprisonment. He may also be at any time afterwards forced 
 to remain (interne) in the provinces of France or in the colonies, 
 or may be expelled from the French territory altogether. 
 

 f^(o3 
 
 A DEBATE ON INDIA 
 
 IN THE 
 
 ENGLISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 I. 
 
 There arc some unhappily constituted minds for which repose 
 and silence are not the supreme good. There are persons who 
 feel, from time to time, a longing to dejmrt from the tranquil 
 uniformity of their ordinary life. There are soldiers who, con- 
 quered, wounded, in chains, condemned to deadly inaction, gain 
 consolation and a new life from seeing the struggles and dangers 
 of othei-s. That which attracts them is not the sad and paltry 
 feeling of secure selfishness which Lucretius has depicted in his 
 famous lines — 
 
 * * Suave, man magno, turbantibus sequora ventis, 
 E terra magaum alterius spectare laborem. 
 Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 
 Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli." 
 
 No, it is a purer and a higher motive. It is the effort of the 
 disarmed gladiator, who, looking with emotion on the arena 
 whither he will no more descend, claps his hands at tlie exploits of 
 his more fortunate rivals, and sends forth to the combatants a cry 
 of sympathy, which is drowned, though not wholly extinguished, 
 in the midst of the generous shouts of the attentive crowd. 
 
 I honestly confess that I am one of those persons ; and I add 
 that for this evil — from which it is so little the fashion to suffer 
 now-a-days — I have found a remedy. When I feel that the 
 stifling malady is gaining on me, when my ears ring, now with 
 the buzz of the gossips of the antechamber, now with the din 
 of the fanatics who think themselves our masters, and of tlie 
 hypocrites who think us their dupes ; when I choke with the 
 weight of an atmosphere charged with the pestilential vapours of 
 servility and corruption, I hurry to breathe a purer air, and take 
 a bath of life in free England. 
 
2 
 
 The last time that I gave myself this relief chance served me 
 well. I came exactly in the midst of one of those great and glorious 
 straggles where play is given to all the resources of the in- 
 telligence, and all the movements of the conscience, of a great 
 people ; where there are started, to find solution in the open day 
 and by the intervention of noble minds, the greatest problems that 
 can agitate a nation whose days of tutelage are past j where men 
 and things, parties and individuals, orators and writers, the 
 depositaries of power and the organs of opinion, are called to re- 
 produce in the heart of a new Rome the picture painted long ago 
 by a Roman fresh from the emotions of the foinim : — 
 
 " Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, 
 Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore, 
 Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri." 
 
 At these words I see some brows grow dark, and express the 
 repugnance inspired in the followers of the fashions of the day 
 by all that seems a remembrance of, or a regret for, political life. 
 If among those who have opened these pages there are any who 
 are governed by these fashions, I say to them plainly, — " Pause, 
 and go no further. There is nothing in what I am going to write 
 which can possibly please or interest you. Go and ruminate 
 peacefully in the fat pasturages of your happy tranquillity, and do 
 not grudge to those, who do not grudge you anything, the right to 
 remain faithful to their past, to the disquiets of mental life, and 
 to the aspirations of liberty." Every one takes his pleasure where 
 he finds it ; and we are in a fair way, not, indeed, to undei*stand 
 one another, but to come to an end of dispute, when we have no 
 ambition or affection in common, and when our notions of happi- 
 ness and honour are perfectly different. 
 
 Besides, I readily grant that nothing, absolutely nothing, in the 
 institutions or the political personages of France in the present 
 day has any resemblance to the things of which, and the men of 
 whom, I wish here to give a rapid sketch. Certainly I make no 
 pretension to convert those disciples of progi*ess, who regard 
 Parliamentary Government as advantageously replaced by Uni- 
 versal Suffrage, or those political optimists who maintain that the 
 final triumph of democracy consists in abdicating into the hands 
 of a Sovereign the exclusive direction of the external and internal 
 afiaire of a country. I write for my own satisfaction, and that of 
 a small number of invalids, of triflers, of madmen, perhaps, like 
 myself. I study contemporary institutions which are no longer 
 ours, but which have been ours, and which seem still to a person 
 so behindhand as I am, to be worthy of admiration and envy. 
 The eager sympathy which men of high ability have awakened for 
 the fair ladies of the Fronde, for the equivocal personages of the 
 great English Rebellion, or for the obscure and barren struggles 
 
3 
 
 of our old Communes, — may we not ask that it shall once in a 
 way be bestowed on the acts and deeds of a nation which is living 
 and moving in its strength and its greatness at seven leagues' 
 distance from our northern shores ? I think we may; and more- 
 over, I fancy that this study of foreign statistics, or rather, of con- 
 temporary archaeology, may beguile our idle hours as well as a 
 commentary on the Comedies of Plautus, or a narrative of an 
 exploring expedition to the sources of the Nile. 
 
 II. 
 
 At the end of last spring the state of Hindostan and the issue 
 of the revolt, which during a whole year had been raging in the 
 northern provinces of that immense region, were still the topics that 
 most preoccupied the attention of England. How could it be other- 
 wise ? I, myself, was astonished and alarmed at seeing the English 
 people, after the consternation and anger of the first few months, 
 so soon abandon itself, not, certainly, to a criminal indifference, 
 but to a premature secui'ity as to the issue of the struggle. I 
 wished to learn from really competent judges what were the true 
 causes of the insurrection, and at the same time what were the 
 means, on the employment of which reliance was placed, in order 
 to triumph definitively over a danger so formidable, so little fore- 
 seen, and so aggravated by the threatening complication which 
 from day to day might rise from the politics of Europe. I carried 
 with me into this inquiry a deep sympathy for the great nation, 
 at once Christian and free, on which God had imposed this terrible 
 trial ; and I felt this sympathy redoubled in presence of the in- 
 human animosity of so many organs of the continental press, 
 and, alas ! of the press that calls itself conservative and religious, 
 against the victims of the Bengal massacres, I should have liked 
 to tell every Englishman I met that I did not belong in any way 
 to the parties whose organs had applauded and jvistified the cut- 
 throats, and who daily pour forth solemn vows for the triumph of 
 Mussulman and Pagan hordes over the heroic soldiers of a Christian 
 people, and a people allied to France.* 
 
 I felt, also, what every intelligent liberal feels and knows, that 
 from the attitude of the continental press there results one more proof 
 of a great fact, which is the immortal honour of England in the pre- 
 sent day. All the apologists of absolutism, ancient or modem, mon- 
 archical or democratic, are against England ; for her, on the other 
 
 ♦ I am aware that praise has little worth or dignity when free criticism is 
 not permitted. But I feel protected from every suspicion of servility when I 
 pay a just homage to the courageous perseverance with which the Grovemment 
 of the Emperor maintains an alliance, the rupture of which would certainly 
 increase his popularity, but would carry with it a fatal blow to the independence 
 of Europe, and the true interests of France. 
 
4 
 
 liand, are all those who still remain faithful to that tempered liberty 
 of which she has been the cradle, and of which she remains to 
 this day the invincible bulwark. That is natural and just. It is 
 sufficient to make us forget certain sympathies shown in the pre- 
 sent policy of England, sympathies more easy to explain than 
 justify, and to make us pardon her for wrongs which, in a different 
 state of the world, would deserve the severest reprobation. 
 
 I venture to say that no one knows better, and no one has pointed 
 out more plainly than I, the many instances in which, in the course 
 of the last few years, the policy of England has been thoroughly 
 wrong and mistaken. I think I was the first to denounce, even 
 before 1848, the policy of Lord Palmerston, too often overbearing 
 to the weak and truckling to tlie strong, and signally imprudent, 
 inconsistent, and faithless to all the great traditions of his country. 
 But, in truth, when one reads the pitiable invectives of the 
 Anglophobes of our days, when one compares with their complaints 
 against England the ideas they trumpet forth, and the systems 
 which they praise, one feels involuntarily led to an indulgence for 
 all against which they fight — even for Lord Palmerston. It would 
 be, besides, the height of unreasonableness and of unfairness to 
 look on England as alone guilty, or as the most guilty, among the 
 nations of the earth. Her policy is neither more selfish nor more 
 immoral than that of the other great States of ancient or modern 
 history. I even think that it would be quite possible to j)rove 
 that a judgment exactly opposite to this was the true one. It 
 is not charity, but strict justice that begins at home, and in 
 speaking of national shortcomings, no French writer has a right 
 to denounce the policy of England before he has passed judgment 
 on the crimes of the policy of France during the Kevolution and 
 the Empire, looking at this policy, not as it is represented by its 
 adversaries, but as it is revealed by its apologists, for example, by 
 M. Thiers. It is in vain to search the darkest corners of English 
 diplomacy to find even a distant parallel to the destruction of the 
 Venetian Republic, or the treacherous plot of Bayonne. 
 
 Beside.s, we are not now speaking of the general policy of Eng- 
 land, but of her Colonial policy. And it is precisely here that all 
 the brightness of the English genius shines forth. Not certainly 
 that the English have been always and everywhere irreproachable ; 
 but everywhere and always they have equalled, if not surpassed, in 
 wisdom, justice, and humanity, the other European races who have 
 engaged in similar undertakings. It is not, we must own, a very 
 noble page of history that records the relations of Christian Europe 
 with the rest of the world since the crusades. It is not, unfor- 
 tunately. Christian virtue or Christian truth that has presided 
 over the successive conquests of the powerful nations of the 
 West in Asia and in America. After the first burst, so full 
 of nobleness and piety, in the fifteenth century — which gave 
 
birth to the great, the saintly Christo2:)her Columbus, and all 
 the heroes of the maritime and colonial history of Portugal, 
 who were worthy to rank in the ungrateful memory of man- 
 kind with the heroes of ancient Greece — we see all the vices of 
 modern civilization take the place of the spirit of faith and self- 
 sacrifice, here exterminating the native races, there yielding to the 
 enervating influence of the corrupting civilization of the East, 
 instead of regenerating and replacing it. It is impossible not to 
 own that England, especially since she has gloriously expiated her 
 participation in the negro slave-trade and in colonial slavery, may 
 pride hei-self on having for the most part escaped those lamentable 
 errors. To the historian, who asks her to give account of all her 
 commercial and maritime efforts for the last two centuries, she 
 may justly answer, '' JSi quceris monumenturn, circunispice.''' Are 
 there in history many spectacles greater, more wonderful, more 
 honourable to modem civilization than that of this company of 
 English merchants, which has lasted two centuries and a half, and 
 which but yesterday governed, at a distance of 2000 leagues from 
 home, nearly 200,000,000 souls by means of 800 civil officers and 
 of 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers? But England has done something 
 better even than this. She has formed not only colonies but peoples. 
 She has created the United States. She has made them one of the 
 great Powers of the world, by endowing them with those provincial 
 and personal liberties which have enabled them to free themselves 
 triumphantly from the yoke itself, always so light and easy, of the 
 mother country. " Our free institutions," it was said, in 1852, in the 
 annual Message of the President of this great Eepublic, " are no t 
 the fruit of the Pevolution ; they existed before ; they had their 
 roots in the free charters imder which the English colonies had 
 grown up." 
 
 In the present day England is in process of creating in Australia 
 new United States, which will soon detach themselves from the 
 parent stem to become a great nation, imbued from the cradle with 
 the manly virtues and the glorious liberties which are eveiywhere 
 the heritage of the Anglo-Celtic race, and which, let me once more 
 assert, are more favourable to the propagation of Catholic truth, 
 and to the dignity of the priesthood than any other political system 
 under the sun.'^ 
 
 In Canada a noble race of French Catholics, torn unhappily from 
 our own country, but still French in feelings and manners, owes to 
 England the preservation or acquisition, not only of religious 
 liberty, but of all the political and municipal liberties which France 
 has rejected. Canada has seen her population increased ten- 
 
 * See in No. 179 of the '* Annates de la Propagation de la Foi" (July, 1858) 
 the interesting letter of the Eev. Father Pou^)inel to Cardinal de Bonald on the 
 progress of the Churcli and the freedom it enjoys in these Vivst countries. 
 
6 
 
 fold* in less than a century, and will serve as the basis of the new 
 federation which from the mouths of the Oregon to those of the 
 St. Lawrence, will be one day the rival or the companion of the 
 great American federation. 
 
 All this is forgotten, misunderstood, or evil spoken of by certain 
 royalist and Catholic wi'iters, who pour daily the flood of their 
 venom on the greatness and freedom of England. They must be 
 strange royalists, and very ungrateful, who forget that England is 
 the only country in Europe where the prestige of royalty has re- 
 mained unimpaired for nearly two centuries, that it is also the 
 only country that has given an inviolable shelter to the august 
 exiles of France, and has lavished with unheard-of munificence its 
 succour on the French nobility of the Emigi'ation, and on the 
 French clergy prosecuted for not having been willing to make a 
 bargain with schism. t Still more strange are the Catholics who 
 do not fear to compromise not only all the rights of justice and 
 truth, but even the interests of the Church, by obstinately insisting 
 on establishing a radical hostility between Catholicism and the free 
 prosperity of the vastest empire now existing in the world, whose 
 every victory over barbarism opens an immense field for the preach- 
 ing of the gospel and the extension of the Roman hierarchy. One 
 of the darkest pages of the history, already so little edifying, of our 
 religious press, will be the cruel joy with which the disasters, true 
 or false, of the English in India have been hailed, those strange 
 sympathies for the butchers of Delhi and Cawnpore, those daily 
 invectives against a handful of brave men battling against innu- 
 merable enemies and a murderous climate, in order to avenge their 
 brothers, their wives, and their infants, and to re-establish the 
 legitimate and necessary ascendency of the Christian West over the 
 Indian peninsula. One is revolted by such sanguinary declamations, 
 accompanied by constant attempts to provoke to war two nations 
 boimd together by a happy and glorious alliance, while the pious 
 promotei-s of tliis war know that they would be the last to imdergo 
 its dangers and sustain its sacrifices. And when these declamations 
 inundate the columns of certain journals specially devoted to the 
 clergy and encouraged by it ; when they show themselves between 
 the narrative of an apparition of the Holy Virgin, and the picture of 
 the consecration of a church to the God of pity and love, the result 
 is that every Christian soul, untainted by the passions and hatreds 
 
 * It was less than 65,000 at the date of the treaty of Paris in 1761 : it was 
 695,945 in 1851. Chakles DupiN. Force Productive des Nations. 
 
 + Eight thousand priests, two thousand laymen, and six hundred French nuns 
 sought in 1793 a refuge in England. In 1806, they had received from the Eng- 
 lish by private subscriptions, and Parliamentary grants, the sum oi forty- six 
 million francs. A Catholic Joumal of London, the Rambler of August, 1858, 
 borrows these figures from the book of the Abbd Margotti, called Borne and 
 London, of which it publishes in the same number an amusing and complete 
 refutation. 
 
of a retrograde fanaticism, feels a painful repugnance which may be 
 reckoned among the rudest trials of the life of an honest man. It 
 is as if one heard in an Eastern night the cry of the jackal between 
 the cooing of doves and the freshening murmurs of running water. 
 
 Besides, this evil breath is familiar to me. I have breathed and 
 detested it in the days of my childhood, when a considerable 
 portion of those who styled themselves the defenders of the altar 
 and the throne were loud in their disapproval of the generous sons 
 of Greece in arms against the Ottoman rule, and triumphed over 
 the disasters of Ipsara and Missolonghi as at so many blows 
 inflicted on schismatics and revolutionists. Happily, nobler 
 inspirations canned the day in the counsels of the Kestoration, as 
 in the naturally generous hearts of the Eoyalists. The genius of 
 M. de Chateaubriand ground to dust the unfortunate preferences 
 of his old party for the butchers of the Peloponnese. And now 
 there is no Legitimist who does not consider it as a title to glory 
 for Charles X. to have taken a principal part in the enfranchisement 
 of Greece, and who does not repudiate with horror the opinions 
 professed five-and-thirty years ago by the chief members of the 
 Koyalist party. Let us hope that a day will come when there will 
 be no Catholic who does not repudiate with equal horror the 
 hateful tokens of encouragement lavished at the present time by 
 the religious press on the cut-throats of India. Happily no voice 
 that is authorized to speak in the company of the faithful, no 
 pontiff, no prince of the Church, has joined in this cry. On the 
 contrary, it is pleasant to see that throughout the numerous 
 pastoral letters published on the subject by the Catholic bishops 
 of the British Islands there is shown a patriotic sympathy 
 for the affliction of their countrymen. The letter of M. Gillies, 
 vicar apostolic at Edinburgh, deserves to be quoted as the 
 most eloquent lamentation inspired by this national catastrophe. 
 And it is especially delightful here to recall the liberal and 
 paternal subscription of Pius IX. on behalf of the English sufferers 
 in India. It was at once a touching gage of the unconquerable 
 gentleness of his pontifical soul, and the most conclusive refutation 
 of those prophets of hate, who preach an irreconcileable enmity 
 between the Church and the greatness of Britain. 
 
 For my part, I say plainly, I feel a horror for the orthodoxy 
 which takes no count of justice and truth, of humanity and 
 honour, and I never weary of repeating the forcible words lately 
 uttered by the Bishop of Rochelle ; " Would it not be well to give 
 " instruction to many Catholics on the virtues of natural law, on the 
 " respect due to a neighbour, on loyalty due even towards adversaries, 
 " on the spii'it of equity and charity ? The virtues of natural law 
 " are essential, and Uie Church herself does not dispense with them."* 
 
 * Letter to the Editor of the Univers, 10th Augiigt, 1858. 
 
8 
 
 How, again; can any one fail to understand that by these blind 
 denunciations against a nation which is reproached at once with 
 the crime of its fathers and the virtue of its children, with the 
 protestantism of the sixteenth century, and the liberty of the 
 nineteenth, we expose ourselves to a most cruel and dangerous 
 retort"? Ah !if it had been given to France to accomplish the great 
 colonial destinies which were opening before her in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, we should have doubtless a great and 
 consolatory example for all Catholic nations to be proud of. If we 
 had remained with our missionaries and our bold but humane adven- 
 turers on the banks of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, where 
 he genius of France would have found such a vast career to un- 
 fold itself in at ease ; if we had but been able to keep the empire 
 of the East Indies, which seemed at one time assured to us, and 
 had caused to reign there the social and Christian virtues which 
 are the heritage of our race, we could brave all criticism and all 
 comparison. But we have lost all these noble possessions, and lost 
 them in the good time to which people wish to bring us back, 
 when the monarchy was subject to no parliamentary control, and 
 when error had not the same privilege as truth. This being so, 
 ought we not, when brought face to face with history, to own that 
 all the Catholic nations except France have miserably failed in the 
 great task imposed on them by Providence on behalf of the races 
 they have conquered ? Does not history with ai)pealing voice cry 
 out to Spain, " Cain, what hast thou done to thy brother?" What 
 has Spain done with the millions of Indians that peopled the isles 
 and the continent of the New World 1 How many years did it take 
 the unworthy successors of Columbus and Cortes to annihilate 
 them, in spite of the official protection of the Spanish crown, and 
 in spite of the heroic efforts, the fervent and indefatigable charity 
 of the religious orders. "■ Have the Spaniards shown themselves less 
 pitiless than the Anglo-Americans of the North 1 Can it be that 
 the lamentable pages, written by Bartholomew de Las Cases, are 
 effaced from the memory of men 1 The English clergy are re- 
 proached with not having protested against the exactions of Clive 
 and of Warren Hastings. We admit it is not given to Protes- 
 tantism to give birth to such men as Las Cases and Peter Claver ; 
 that is the exclusive and immortal privilege of the Catholic Church. 
 But what are we to think, when those orthodox nations, with the ad- 
 vantages of such apostles and of such teaching, have depopulated 
 
 * It is said of a Governoi* of Mexico, that lie caused the destruction of two 
 million Indians during the seventeen years of his administration. If there yet 
 remain some relics of the aborigines of Mexico, and if a sort of fusion has been 
 effected between them and their conquerors, this is due to the Dominicans and 
 Franciscans, whose marvellous exploits should be read in the new Histoi'y of 
 the SpanisJi Conquest in America, by Mr, Arthur Helps, (London, 1856-7,) a 
 book in which an impartial Protestant renders the most striking justice to the 
 devotion and the intelligence of the Catholic clergy. 
 
9 
 
 half the globe ? And what was the society which the Spanish con- 
 quest substituted for the races which had been exterminated instead 
 of having been civilized 1 Must we not turn away our eyes in sad- 
 ness, no entirely are the first elements of order, energy, discipline, 
 and legality wanting everywhere, except, perha])s, in Chili, to 
 Spanish enterprise ; so wholly has it been stript of the strong virtues 
 of the ancient Castilian society, without having been able to acquire 
 any of the qualities which characterize modern progress 1 In 
 Hindostan itself what remains of Portuguese conquest? What 
 remains of the numberless conversions achieved by St. Francis 
 Xavier 1 What remains of the vast organization of that Church 
 which was placed under the protection of the Crown of Portugal 1 
 Go, ask that question at Goa; measure there the depths of the moral 
 and material decrepitude into which has fallen an empire immor- 
 talized by Albuquerque, by John de Castro, and by so many others 
 worthy to be reckoned among the most valiant Christians who 
 have ever existed. You will there see to what the mortal influence 
 of absolute power can bring Catholic colonies as well as their 
 mother countries. 
 
 What must be concluded from this 1 That Catholicism renders 
 a people incapable of colonizing 1 God forbid ! Canada, the ex- 
 ample which wo have quoted above, is there to give the lie to 
 any such blasphemous assertion. But we are bound to conclude 
 this much — that it is well, when people constitute themselves the 
 champions of Catholic interests, to look behind and around before 
 heaping up invective on invective, calumny on calumny, in order 
 to throw discredit on those nations which are unfortunately foreign 
 or hostile to the Church. When people have for ever in their 
 mouths the dictum of M. de Maistre, " History has been for three 
 centuries a great conspiracy against truth," they should not begin 
 afresh, when history is written for the use of Catholics, a great con- 
 spiracy against truth as well as against justice and liberty. On 
 the contrary, there is another dictum of M. de Maistre which 
 should be called to mind, " The Church is in need of truth, and 
 is in need but of that." Falsehood, under either of the two forms 
 which law and theology recognise — namely, the suggestio falsi and 
 the suppressio veH, is the saddest homage which can be rendered 
 to the Church. She cannot be served well by borrowing the 
 method and adopting the proceedings of her worst enemies. No, to 
 renew for her profit the tricks and the violences of error is 
 not to defend the truth. The spirit of modem times has begun to 
 perceive that a great deal of falsehood has been in circulation 
 during three centuries againsb God and His Church ; it has begun 
 to shake off the yoke of that falsehood. Do people, then, wish to 
 plunge it back again into the hatred of good ? Do they wish to 
 repel it towards the intellectual excesses of the eighteenth century 1 
 For that end one infallible means is at hand — to practise or 
 
10 
 
 pardon falsehood, even involuntary falsehood, for the greater glory 
 of God. 
 
 III. 
 
 But has England herself been irreproachable in the foundation 
 and administration of the immense empire which she possesses in 
 the East Indies ? Certainly not ; and, if we were tempted to at- 
 tribute to her a degree of innocence or of virtue to which she has 
 never pretended, we might be easily undeceived by looking 
 through the numberless works which have appeared on the 
 Government of British India, not only since the breaking out of 
 tlie insurrection, but previously to that event. In all this moun- 
 tain of publications, panegyric and apology are exceedingly rare ; 
 the most vehement philippics and accusations abound ; but what 
 is of far more consequence than systematic pi*aise or blame, is the 
 profound and supremely sincere investigation of the faults, dangers, 
 difficulties, and infirmities of British rule in India. 
 
 I shall not cease to repeat that it is in this extensive, and, in- 
 deed, unlimited publicity, that the principal strength of English 
 society consists — that this is the essential condition of its vitality 
 and the sovereign guarantee of its liberty. The English press, at 
 first sight, seems to be nothing but a universal and permanent 
 indictment against every pei*son and every thing; but, upon a 
 closer inspection, we perceive that discussion, rectification, or 
 reparation, follow closely on denunciation and abuse. 
 
 Mistakes and injustice are, no doubt, frequent and flagi'ant ; 
 but they are almost always amended immediately, or excused 
 in consideration of the salutaiy truths or indispensable lights 
 which reach the public mind by the same road. Not a 
 general, an admiral, a diplomatist, a statesman is spared. They are 
 all treated in the same manner as the Duke of Wellington, when, 
 at the outset of his victories in the Peninsula, he was prepaiing the 
 emancipation of Europe and the preponderance of his country, in 
 the midst of the clamours of the Opposition, both in the press and 
 in Parliament. And all, like him, resign themselves to this, 
 confiding in the final justice of the country and of opinion, which has 
 hardly ever disappointed them. The public, accustomed to the din 
 and to the apparent confusion which arises from this permanent 
 conflict of contradictory opinions and testimonies, ends, after the 
 lapse of a certain time, by coming to recognise the truth. It 
 possesses, above all, a wonderful tact for unravelling the true 
 nature of certain purely individual manifestations, however noisy 
 they may be, and for attributing to them that degree of importance 
 which they really merit, while respecting and maintaining the 
 right which every Englishman asserts for himself to judge 
 and criticise everything, and even to deceive himself at his own 
 proper risk. 
 
11 
 
 Those who feel themselves offended — not without reason — by 
 the coai-se form, or by the evident falsity of certain opinions ex- 
 pressed by some English orators or writers with respect to foreign 
 affaii*s, should never forget two things — first, that this species of 
 cutting and unbridled criticism is poured forth more coarsely, more 
 freely, and more habitually on English men and things ; secondly, 
 that it is always the act, as well as the opinion, of an individual 
 member of a society, in which the progress of civilization has con- 
 sisted up to the present hour in the unrestrained development of 
 individual power and liberty. This is what is continually forgotten ; 
 and the result is that so many opinions, either absurdly false or 
 exaggerated, appear in the continental press respecting the true 
 bearing of certain speeches or Avritings, which are quoted and 
 commented on as possessing a quasi-of^oiid value. Notwithstanding 
 our numerous and long-continued relations with that country — not- 
 withstanding the slight distance which separates France from 
 England, and the brief interval that separates us from our own 
 past, we have lost the art of understanding the position of a great 
 free nation, where each individual is free, and gives free scope to all 
 his fancies. We jwssess not only the habits but even the instincts 
 of those sober and orderly peoples, doomed to an eternal minority, 
 who sometimes indulge in frightful outbreaks, but who speedily fall 
 back into that state of civil impotence, where no one dares to speak 
 except by order, or by permission, with the salutary terror of a 
 warning from authority hanging over his head, if he should be so 
 rash as to oppose ever so little the ideas of Government or the 
 ideas of the mob. 
 
 In England, and throughout its vast colonial Empire,* it is quite 
 the reverse ; eveiy one in the world of politics says what he thinks, 
 and does what may please him, without pennission from any one, 
 and without subjecting himself to any other repression than that 
 imposed by geneml opinion and by the public conscience, when 
 these may have been braved with too great a degree of boldness. 
 Under the impulse of the moment, in a fit of spite, ill-humour, 
 or vanity, any English subject, any isolated individual, without a 
 mission from others, without authority, influence, or responsibility 
 to any one, but seldom without sympathy, expresses, by word of 
 mouth or in writing, whatever may pass through his mind. Some* 
 times it is the triumphant accent of justice and truth which thus 
 makes itself heard, universally undei*stood, speedily accepted, and 
 everywhere repeated by the thousand echoes of an unrestrained 
 
 * The press is absolutely free in all the English colonies, even in Hindostan ; and 
 this libei-ty is perhaps one of the most serious embarrassments of the English 
 Government iu India. Nevertheless, the measure adopted in the first moments 
 of the insurrection, by which a partial censure was established for one year, has 
 not been renewed after the expiration of this first year ; and it is in the journals 
 which appear in Calcutta and Bombay that are found the most hostile criti- 
 cisms on the conduct of the civil and military aflfeirs of the English. 
 
12 
 
 publicity ; and it is in order not to destroy this chance, which may 
 be the only one in favour of right and of national interest, that the 
 English are unanimous in resigning themselves to the serious in- 
 conveniences attaching to liberty of speech. 
 
 At other times we encounter ridiculous or oflensive exaggerations, 
 gratuitous insults to foreigners, or, again, in a contrary direction, 
 a direct appeal to their interference in the internal affairs of the 
 United Kingdom.* Oftener still, there is a pleasantry, a sally, a 
 puerile boast, a jDlatitude ; and on the morrow it is contradicted, 
 refuted, abused, and forgotten. But if by chance it has been taken 
 hold of by one of those translators, authorized by the censoi'ship, who 
 feed in so strange a manner the continental press, instantly all the 
 privileged detractors of liberty transcribe it, take note of it, get 
 furious over it, and cry aloud, " See how England thinks, and what 
 she says ;" and they proceed to deduce consequences of an absurdly 
 alarming cast, now for the peace of the world, now for the security 
 of British institutions, although they are sure to be promptly and 
 shamefully exposed in their falsehood by reflection and facts. 
 
 Let us hazard the passing remark that the great evil of absolute 
 Governments is, that their faults are kept secret. Like a sore 
 that is never opened, never dressed, never reduced, these faults 
 spread, and little by little corrupt the entii-e body of society. On 
 the contrary, as has been observed with reason, an evil is never 
 irreparable in a country where people know how to preach them- 
 selves a stern lesson without fearing to wound national pride 
 or to humiliate the Government. Publicity in England, rash, 
 imprudent, coarse, often apparently compromising the dignity of the 
 country, and sometimes capable of endangering international rela- 
 tions, constitutes at once the daily bread of the majority, the last 
 refuge of the minority, the pivot of universal existence. 
 
 Publicity is the remedy for all the evils insepai-able from a civiliza- 
 tion so far advanced, a remedy hard to bear, but salutary and infal- 
 lible, and which, above all, proves better than any other argument 
 the strong constitution of the patient. This remedy has never yet 
 failed ; witness what came to pass during the Russian war, and 
 the comparative state of the two allied armies in the course of their 
 second winter in the Crimea. Happy the nations who can so 
 undergo the fire and the sword. They may be truly called manly, 
 for they find nothing to envy in any one, and have to fear only 
 an excess of confidence in their own strength. 
 
 The preceding observations serve to explain the fact that there 
 exists no kind of reproach or of abuse which the English and the 
 Anglo-Indians have not addressed to their Government, to their 
 generals, above all, to the East India Company, that great cor- 
 poration, which, after a hundred years of success and of increasing 
 
 * See concluding note, p. 68. 
 
13 
 
 prosperity, belioltls itself attacked at the close of its glorious career 
 by that cowardly complicity of human nature all the world over 
 with fortune, when she abandons those whom she has long loaded 
 with her favours. But if we duly weigh the worth of all tlie.se 
 accusations, if we hear the evidence on the other side, if we con- 
 sult the past state of things as compared with existing facts, we 
 cannot feel inclined to ratify in every point the sentence pronounced 
 against the Company. The future will tell whether it was right to 
 profit by the present crisis to suppress the " Double Government," 
 and to displace the multitude of wheels which ever since Pitt's 
 famous Bill of 1784 have never ceased to render more compli- 
 cated the action in India of the home Government, by restrain- 
 ing more, and more the independence of the Company. Meanwhile, 
 it would be the height of injustice to pass a condemnation on its 
 whole history. 
 
 Certainly, it has committed more than one fault, perhaps more 
 than one crime. It has not done all the good it might have 
 done. But I assert, without hesitation, that the East India Com- 
 pany, now defunct by virtue of the Act of the 2nd of August, 
 1858, is, of all powers known in the colonial history of the ancient 
 or modern world, that which has done the greatest things with the 
 humblest means, and that which, in any equal space of time, has 
 conferred the greatest amount of good, and inflicted the least of 
 evil on the peoples subject to its rule. I assert that it delivered 
 the different populations of India from a yoke, which, in general, 
 was atrocious, in order to subject them to a regime incomparably 
 milder and more equitable, although still imperfect. It employed 
 for the improvement of the conquered race, not certainly all the 
 efforts which it ought and might have made, and which the English 
 themselves unceasingly called for, but a hundredfold more solici- 
 tude and devotion than any of the native Powers whose place it 
 took upon itself to fill, or than any of the European nations 
 invested by conquest with a similar mission. 
 
 Admitting, even, that the immoral selfishness of a corporation of 
 merchants has but too often signalized its debuts in the Peninsula 
 of Hindostan, still, for more than fifty years its generals and prin- 
 cipal agents, the Wellesleys, the Malcolms, the Munros, the Ben- 
 tincks, fully displayed all the zeal and all the activity becoming 
 their high functions, to expiate the evil deeds of their predecessors, 
 and to lead every impartial observer to avow that, in the present 
 state of things, British domination is at once a benefit and a neces- 
 sity for the inhabitants of India. 
 
 The Company has not known how to correct or repress every- 
 where the hauteur, the reserve, the insolence which is natural 
 to Englishmen, but it has constantly fought against the lament- 
 able results of that mixture of selfishness and energy which, 
 in the Anglo-Saxon race, degenerates too often into ferocity, 
 
14 
 
 and of which one sees in the United States too numerous 
 examples. 
 
 In the coimtries where it has been invested with territorial 
 sovereignty, it has everywhere done away with slavery and forced 
 labour : in most cases it has respected all vested rights, and even 
 too often the abuses established before its advent. It is thus that 
 the European agents, incessantly deceived by the native employ ea 
 who necessarily act for them as subordinate agents with the people, 
 liave been regarded as accomplices in the cruelties and tortiu-es made 
 use of by the collectors of taxes; but this is to ignore the fact that 
 it is the Indians who were the torturers, whilst it is the English who 
 have discovered, denounced, and punished the native oppressors.* 
 
 With regard to the question so much discussed, and yet under- 
 stood so imperfectly, of the territorial constitution of Hindostan, 
 the Company has always prevented the dispossession of the landed 
 proprietors by English colonists or speculators — either confirm- 
 ing, according to the policy of Lord Cornwallis, the feudal tenure 
 of the great Mussulman and Hindoo proprietors in Bengal, or 
 recognising and regulating the vested rights of the peasantry, as 
 in the presidencies of Bombay and Madi'as, or those of the rural 
 communities, as in the provinces of the North-West. 
 
 Esj)ecial fault has been found with the Company for the haste 
 with which it annexed to its immediate sway States, the suzerainty 
 of which it had accepted or conquered, according as these States 
 were its allies or vassals.t But we do not sufficiently inquire 
 whether it was not led necessarily and against its will, in most cases, 
 to absorb these independent States. Judging from what we our- 
 selves have experienced in Algeria, and from what has occurred in 
 China up to the present time, it is clear that nothing is more diffi- 
 cult than to hold relations with Eastern races, either as allies or 
 auxiliaries; and that their good faith, and even their understand- 
 ing, apprehends no other condition than either war or complete 
 subjection. Every one seems to agree to regard the recent annex- 
 ation of Oude, under the government of Lord Dalhousie, as an 
 unjustifiable act, which has furnished a legitimate pretext for the 
 revolt of the Sepoys. One might still more justly blame the EnglisJi 
 Government for having too long thrown the shadow of its protection 
 over the crimes and excesses of the court of Lucknow, and of the 
 great feudal aristocracy which crushed the country to pieces with its 
 civil wara and its exactions. One ought to read in the work entitled 
 FrivOfte Life of cm Eastern King, published in 1855, the picture of 
 
 * See the Parliamentary Inquiry in 1866 and 1866 on the Employment of 
 Torture in India. One plainly sees from it that not one Englishman lias been 
 shown to have had any share whatever in these atrocities. 
 
 f This grievance was set forth with great clearness and power in a speech 
 made in Parliament, on the 18th of April, 1856, by Sir Erskine Perry, one year 
 previous to the outbreikk which has verified his predictions. 
 
16 
 
 the conduct of one of these monsters who reigned at Lucknow before 
 the annexation, and one ought to read in Colonel Sleeman's book, 
 who was himself a resident at this Court, the account of the outrages 
 and daily spoliations which the population of the open country had to 
 submit to in consequence of the feuds carried on between one strong- 
 hold and another. The English have not sufficiently taken to heart 
 the responsibility which their protectoral authority has imposed on 
 them, the nature of the suzerainty which they have exercised since 
 1801, the date of their military occupation of this state, but likewise 
 the date of their committing the mistake of re-establishing the native 
 dynasty under the patronage of an English resident. They ought 
 either not to have meddled at all with the affairs of these too-near 
 neighbours, or else not to have allowed the excesses and abuses of 
 former times to be continued under the English rule. What ai>pears 
 certain is, that the population is really less ill-treated in the coun- 
 tries completely united to the English empire than in those where 
 there still exists the nominal authority of rajahs and nabobs tribu- 
 tary to England. Nevertheless, the efforts of the Company to 
 introduce the regularity and completeness of European systems, so 
 little in accordance with the habits of the East, as regards the 
 administration of justice and the assessment and levying of taxes, 
 have led to the breaking up of a multitude of private interests, and 
 have created a feeling of hostility amongst the masses. Although far 
 less burdened than under the native princes, the people are none 
 the less led to fear lest the interest of proprietorship, as they under- 
 stand and practise it, may be sacrificed and made subordinate to 
 the interest of the revenue. Furthermore, the Governor-Generals, 
 sometimes in spite of the Company itself, appear to have deeply 
 wounded the national feeling of the Indian races, by disowning, in 
 the order of succession to the thrones of the rajahs and nabobs, the 
 titles of adopted heirs to whom the laws and immemorial customs 
 assign the same rights as to heirs by blood. 
 
 It is especially on the head of religion that the accusations 
 made against the Company seem unjust and contradictory. One 
 party bitterly reproaches it with having done nothing to propa- 
 gate Christianity in India ; others attribute, on the contrary, the 
 recent outburst to the system of proselytism which it had en- 
 couraged or tolerated amongst the missionai'ies and certain officers 
 of too evangelical a zeal. These^ accusations fall equally to the 
 ground. Originated for a purpose exclusively commercial, the 
 East India Company has never pretended, as the Spanish and 
 Portuguese conquerors did, to labour for the increase of the gloiy 
 of God ; but, on the other hand, it has never attempted to force the 
 truth upon nations fanatically attached to their errors, and it has 
 not seen any of the races in subjection to its laws disappear or 
 become extinct. It has made war slowly and prudently against 
 certain social crimes which are identified witli the Hindoo religion, 
 
16 
 
 such as the sacrifice of widows, infanticide, and thuggism ; but, in 
 the main, it has scrupulously respected the religion of its subjects. 
 By its example, still more than by its direct measures, it has 
 repressed the spirit of blind and riish proselytism, which would 
 only have served to increase the natural antipathy between the two 
 races, and which might have led to the horrors too justly imputed 
 to the Spaniards of Mexico and Peru. But, far from presenting 
 any obstacle to the preaching of the Gospel, it has, from the very 
 first, organized the national system of religion for the English 
 employes; and, moreover, in opening the gates of the immense 
 regions of India on both sides of the Ganges to Christians of all 
 creeds, it has guaranteed to all efforts of individual zeal that liberty, 
 which is the first and only need of true missionaries. Those who, 
 amongst ourselves, make a periodical apology for the revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantes, and who praise Charlemagne for having con- 
 demned to death the Saxons who were audacious enough to steal 
 away in flight in order to avoid baj)tism, would find, without 
 doubt, that it would be the better plan to slaughter people 
 whilst baptizing them, as the Spaniards did in America. But the 
 immense majority of the Christians of our day will be of another 
 opinion, and no man of sense will attribute it as a crime to the 
 East India Company, that it has followed in Hindostan the same 
 system which we ourselves pursue in Algeria, and the introduction 
 of which into the Ottoman Empire and into China we claim as our 
 own work. 
 
 Those who reproach England with not having been able to make 
 Protestants in Hindostan, had perhaps better get some informa- 
 tion as to the number of Catholics that we make in Algeria. I go too 
 far in instancing Algeria, for, if I am well informed, the preaching 
 of the Catholic religion to the natives and the efforts made to 
 convert them meet there with very serious impediments on the 
 part of the civil and military authorities. We have never yet 
 heard, as far as I know, of Catholic missions being encouraged, or 
 even tolerated, by the French Government, amongst the Arabian, 
 Moorish, and Kabylic subjects of France. People have imputed 
 it as a crime to the English magistrates, that they have preserved 
 the properties which were set apart to maintain the absurd and 
 often obscene rites of .Brahminical idolatry, and that they liave 
 sent guards of police to preserve order during the celebration of 
 these ceremonies. This has not taken place in India since the 
 Act of 1840 \ but it is precisely what the French Administration 
 believes itself bound to do in Africa ; and, in truth, one would not 
 find in the works of any English functionary so complete a de- 
 claration of sympathy and protection on behalf of Mahommedan 
 woi-ship, as the speech of M. Lautour M6zeray, Prefect of Algiers, 
 in 1867, to the Muftis and Ulemas, where he quotes the Koran 
 profasely, in order to exalt the imperial munificence towards 
 
17 
 
 Islamism. I do not remember having read a single word of criti- 
 cism on this speech in the French papers, which are most profuse 
 in invectives against the pretended complicity of the English in 
 India with the worship of Juggernaut.* 
 
 The new Secretary of State for India, Lord Stanley, son of the 
 Prime Minister, has solemnly declared that the Home Government, 
 just now invested, under the control of Parliament, witli all the 
 powers of the old Company, would persist in the errors of the 
 Company upon the question of religion. In the official interview 
 which he had with the delegates of the Protestant missions on the 
 7th August, 1858, he declared that, whilst allowing every liberty 
 to missionaries, the authorities would maintain the most faithful 
 and complete neutrality in religious matters, by preserving equality 
 in the eyes of the law between persons of every faith. 
 
 What could there be more favourable to the progress of Catho- 
 licism in India than this system 1 What competition has it to fear, 
 since it appears an unvarying facb that the distribution of Bibles, 
 to wliich the missionary effiarts of Protestantism are confined, has 
 as yet produced only illusory results 1 Is it not evident that, if 
 the Government were to interfere in a more direct manner, it 
 could not do so except for the benefit of Anglicanism ? All that 
 is to be demanded is, that it carry into eflfect this progi-amme 
 with sincerity, and that it put an end to the flagrant injustice 
 which has for a long time prevailed with regard to the respective 
 allowance to Catholic and Protestant attached to the difierent 
 regiments, and with respect to the facilities accorded to the reli- 
 gious services of the prisons and regimental schools. But here, 
 again, when you compare the pecuniary favours conferred upon the 
 schools and churches of the English Church, with the manner in 
 which Catholic undertakings are entirely left to themselves, you 
 forget that the English establishments in India were founded at a 
 time when, in the mother country, all Catholics were groaning 
 
 * A very curious proclamation, published at Bareilly on the 17th of Februarj', 
 1858, by one of the principal insurgent chiefs, gives, in order to encoui-age the 
 natives to resistance, a detailed enumeration of all that the English should have 
 done, had they wished to prevent any possibility of revolt. They should, according 
 to this document, have annihilated the races of the ancient kings and nobles, 
 burnt all rehgious books, robbed the ancient princes of the last blswa of land, 
 not have allowed arms to the Indians, not have taught them the use of cannon, 
 should have thrown down all the mosques and Hindoo temples, hare forbidden the 
 Brahmins, the Mussidmans, and the Hindoo fakirs to ji reach, should hare com- 
 pelled the natives to be 'married by English clergymen, to be treated by English 
 doctors, and, lastly, aUoxcedno midwivesbut Englishwomen. If the English had 
 taken these steps, said the proclamation, the natives would have remained 
 subject for ten thousand years. But it goes on to say this is what they reckon 
 on doing for the future, and this is why we must extirpate them for ever from 
 our land. 
 
 In the Times, of the 17th of May, may be seen this code of persecution — a 
 unique manifesto of its kind, which only enumerates against foreign tyrants the 
 grievances they have never committed. 
 
 O 
 
IS 
 
 under odious penal laws just as all Protestants were in France. 
 Both of them owe their emancipation to the entirely modem 
 principle of liberty of conscience. 
 
 The East India Company has had the honour of recognising this 
 principle in Hindostan, even before it had triumphed in England. 
 Although composed of Protestants exclusively, it has never opposed 
 Catholic preaching. Now-a-days one demands of it, and with 
 reason, not only liberty, but also equality for the different modes 
 of worship, and the point is being gradually attained. The 
 English Government has already entered into the same equitable 
 policy; since 1857, the Company has doubled the salary of the 
 Catholic army chaplains, and, by an order of the 24th June, 1858, 
 emanating from the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief 
 of the English army, nineteen new posts of Catholic chaplains 
 to the army were created, with precisely the same pay as 
 that which Protestant chaplains receive. A general order from 
 General Peel, Secretary of State for the War Department, 
 dated 23rd June, 1858, introduces, into the system of mili- 
 tary schools some admirable reforms, and such as would serve 
 for a model in Prussia and in other countries of mixed faith. 
 But, besides these favours, which are only acts of justice, the pro- 
 gress of the Catholic religion in India has been for a long time 
 back identified with the maintenance and existence of the British 
 rule, solely by reason of the liberty which it guarantees to the 
 preaching of the Gospel, and of the ascendancy which it exercises 
 for the benefit of Europeans and their ideas, even in the countries 
 which are not in subjection to it. Just suppose that the English 
 were driven out of India, and the country again placed under the 
 yoke of restored Mussulman and Hindoo princes, is it not evident 
 that it would be necessary to go there soon to support our mis- 
 sionaries by force of arms, as has been the case in China and in 
 Cochin China ? " Our hope of success lies in the prestige which the 
 power of the English maintains throughout the countries which 
 we are about to cross," writes a French missionary just starting 
 for Thibet, on the 16th July, 1857.* The numerous Catholic 
 bishoprics established in the peninsula of Hindostan since the 
 English conquest testify more strongly than all other argu- 
 ments to the importance of the services rendered by this con- 
 quest to the true faith.t Were you to consult the Congregation 
 of the Propaganda at Rome, you would learn from it how delighted 
 the priests and missionaries were with the absolute liberty which 
 they enjoyed in the dominions of the Company, whilst at the same 
 time they did not meet with those difficulties which resulted from 
 the former patronage of the Portuguese Crown, and fi-om the too 
 
 * Annales de la Propagation de laPoi, November, 1857. 
 + The last report gives, in the English possessions in India, a total of 19 
 bishops, 780 priests, and 764,349 Catholics.— Taft^rt, 25th of September, 1858. 
 
19 
 
 generous concessions made not long ago by the Holy See to a State, 
 whose spirit of chicanery and usurpation dates from neither to-day 
 nor yesterday, but goes back to the time of theii- first settlements, 
 and forms a sad contrast to the title of Most Faithful accorded 
 by the Popes to the Portuguese Kings. The sworn calumniators 
 of modem liberty, the retrospective admirers of orthodox and 
 absolute monarchies, will find nothing in the annals of the Anglo- 
 Indian Government which calls to mind, even in the remotest 
 degree, the ten years of imprisonment inflicted at Goa upon the 
 apostolic vicars sent by Urban VIII. to Japan, nor the penalfi/ 
 of death, which was still in force in 1687, against all those who 
 should attempt to penetrate into China without being previously 
 authorized by the Governor of Macao.* 
 
 And, fui'thermore, the Indian rebels, less enlightened, no doubt, 
 than their advocates in Paris and Turin, made no distinction 
 between Catholics and Protestants at Delhi, at Agra, at Cawnpore ; 
 they sacked our convents and slaughtered our missionaries just as 
 if they were Anglicans ;t and these Martyrs had earned their 
 glorious fate by the indefe,tigable devotion and the generous charity 
 which they had lavished on the sick and wounded of both creeds. J 
 
 One thing is certain, namely, that in all this flood of accusations 
 brought against the British administration by the home and foreign 
 press, and especially by that of India, which spares nobody, and holds 
 its tongue on no subject whatever, no one has yet brought to light, 
 with regard to the time immediately preceding the outburst of the 
 revolt, one single act of cruelty, corruption, or perfidy, which can 
 be imputed individually to an English functionary, either civil or 
 military. This is the explanation of a fact of great importance, 
 and one which of itself acquits the English rule of the charges 
 brought against it. During the period of nearly eighteen months 
 which the revolt has lasted, it has been a pure military rebellion ; 
 the civil population has taken no serious part in it. Except in 
 
 * See F. DE Champagny, in the CoiTespondant, vol. 19, July, 1847. Le P. 
 Bertrand, Mission du Madure, p. 321. Mgr. Luquet, Letters on the State of 
 the Missions^ in the Universite Catholique, vol. 31, p. 240. L^on Pages, A 
 Catholic Question in India and China, in the Ami de la Eeligion, July, 1858. 
 
 + Mgr. Persico, apostolic vicar of Agra, related to the Assembly General of 
 the CoiSerences of St. Vincent de Paul, held at Paris on the 19th of July, 1858, 
 that, in his vicariat alone, the insurgents had destroyed a magnificent cathedral, 
 twenty-five churches, two colleges, two asylums for orphans, five nunneries, 
 besides schools, day-schools, houses of refuge, &c. One can see by this list alone, 
 whether English rule has been prejudicial to the propagation of Catholicism or 
 not ; for not one of these establishments dates from before the British conquest. 
 
 J See the touching testimony rendered by the chaplain of the Protestint 
 garrison at Delhi to Father Bertrand : "The services and sacrifices of Father 
 Bertrand will live in the memory of the English army till the last day of the 
 last survivor of this army." — The Chajdain's Narfative of the Siege of Delhi, 
 by John Rotton, M. A. Numbers of correspondents from Cawnpore and other 
 places, in the Times, pay the same homage to the Catholic chaplains attached to 
 the English troops. 
 
 c2 
 
20 
 
 some few localities, it lias refused all co-operation with the insur- 
 gents,* in spite of the opportunities, and the numerous temptations 
 which the partial defeats of the English, and the very limited 
 number of their troops, ofi'ered it. Far from that, we know 
 that it is owing to the assistance of the Indian princes and mer- 
 cenaries from races different from those composing the Bengal 
 army, that England has been able to contend successfully against 
 the rebels. The revolt has been exclusively the work of the 
 Sepoys enrolled by the Company; and again, in this case, one 
 cannot instance the smallest act of severity or violence on the part 
 of the English officers in authority, which could have provoked the 
 revolt. In order to induce them to revolt, it was necessary to 
 have recourse to fictions, none of which attributed severity or 
 injustice to the English officers, but which turned wholly 
 upon the pretended dangers which the religious faith and tra- 
 ditional customs of the Sepoys were incurring. Their credulity 
 on this point is all the more inexplicable, as the most compe- 
 tent observers are agreed in acknowledging that the English had 
 extended to the utmost limit their consideration for the preju- 
 dices of caste, and for the haughty assumption of the Brahmins, who 
 formed the majority in the Bengal regiments. Indulgence and par- 
 tiality for the Indians have been carried so far as to cause the 
 suppression, in all the native army, of the corporal punishments 
 which are still in force for the English troops, and of which so 
 revolting a use was made in Europe, at the time of the insurrection 
 in the Ionian Isles, in 1849, at the very time when the workmen 
 of London were pursuing with their insults the Austrian General 
 Haynau, whom they reproached with having caused some women 
 in Hungary to be flogged. + 
 
 Having devoted this large space to the defence of a people 
 unjustly decried, because it has the honour to be almost the sole 
 representative of liberty in modern Europe, it is necessary to bear 
 witness to the just indignation which ought to be excited by the 
 excessive severity of the punishments inflicted by the English upon 
 
 * This is what the Tablet, an Irish paper, very hostile to England, frankly 
 acknowledges ; and while reproaching the Company with frauds, with ex- 
 cesses and innumerable abuses, it adds, "Posterity will not believe that a 
 revolt of soldiei-s in the pay of the Company, who had sworn fidelity to it, 
 and who commenced by cutting the throats of their officers, and by slaughtering 
 the women and children, and who had for their avowed end the extirpation of 
 Christianity in India, could have been spoken of by certain newspapers in terms 
 of sympathy and admiration." — 31st July, 1858. 
 
 + As to the motives that led to the revolt of the Mussulmans embodied at 
 the same time as the Brahmins in the English army, it is difficult to find any, 
 except in the universal revival of Mahometan fanaticism that has everywhere 
 shaken the Ottoman empire, and which has produced the massacres of Djeddah, 
 of Candia, and of Gaza, and that breaks forth even at the very gates of ihe most 
 civilized countries of Christendom, in Bosnia, and in Herlz^^ovina, only twQ 
 steps off Vewco and Vienna, 
 
2i 
 
 the vanquished rebels and the prisoners. I know all that can be 
 said in excuse of reprisals only too legitimate against savages guilty 
 of the most monstrous excesses against so many officers taken by 
 sui*j)rise and unarmed, and, above all, against so many noble 
 Avomen, pure young girls, and poor little infants slaughtered by 
 hundreds, without there being any provocation to such horrors. I 
 can understand the rallying cry of the Scotch Highlanders, at the 
 storming of Delhi, " Remember tlie ladies — remember tlie babies.''* 
 Again, I admit that severities exercised in the case of soldiers 
 taken with arms in their hands, whose enlistment was voluntary, 
 and who were bound by a spontaneous oath to respect the chiefs 
 whom they had massacred, cannot be compared with the cruelties 
 inflicted on innocent and hospitable races by the conquerors of the 
 New World, nor even with the severities decreed by our French 
 generals of the Empire against the natives of Spain and the Tyrol,* 
 who were engaged in the most legitimate of all revolts ; and much 
 less still with the atrocities practised in La Vendue by the butchers 
 of the Convention. But I am not, for all that, the less convinced 
 that the just measure of suppression has been overstepped, and that 
 these executions of conquered Sepoys en masse, continued systema- 
 tically after the first outburst of grief and indignation caused by 
 unheard-of atrocities, will imprint an indelible stain upon the history 
 of the English Empire in India. This is no longer justice — it is 
 vengeance. A people tndy free ought to leave the sad privilege of 
 cruelty to revolted slaves. A Christian people ought to know that 
 it is at once forbidden and impossible to contend by means of retri- 
 bution with unbelieving races. It behoves the English gentlemen 
 who direct the military and political operations between the Indus 
 and the Ganges to resist the hateful promptings of the Anglo- 
 Indian press. They have before them the example of the noble 
 Havelock, who, in the proclamation which he addressed to the 
 soldiers whom he was leading against the murderers of Cawnpore, 
 declares, that it becomes not Christian soldiers to take heathen 
 butchei-s for their pattern. 
 
 This name of Havelock recalls and sums up all the virtues which 
 the English have exercised in this gigantic strife, and on which 
 there would be cast a stigma for ever by an obstinate perse- 
 verance in too cruel a measure of chastisement. Havelock, a per- 
 sonage of an antique grandeur, resembling in their most beautiful 
 and irreproachable aspects the gi-eat Puritans of the seventeenth 
 
 * Take, for example, the order of the day, dated 15th May, 1809, published 
 by Marshal the Duke of Dantzic against the insurgents in Tyrol. This decrees 
 in the name of the Emperor Napoleon, Protector of Religion, that every Tyrolese 
 taken with arms in his hand should be shot or hanged ; and that in every public 
 place or canton where they should find a soldier dead, all the houses should be 
 buraed, and the principal inhabitants hung on a neighbouring tree. 
 
 This passage is to be found in Mayc)', JDer Mann vonRinn. Innspruck, 1851, 
 p. 84. 
 
22 
 
 century, who had arrived at the portals of old age before he shone out 
 to view, and was thrown suddenly into a struggle with a great peril 
 before him and insignificant means wherewith to overcome it, 
 surmounted everything by his religious courage, and attained by a 
 single stroke to glory and that immense popularity which resounds 
 everywhere where the English tongue is spoken ; then died before 
 he had enjoyed it, occupied, especially in his last moments, as he 
 had been all his life, with the interests of his soul and the propaga- 
 tion of Christianity in India, and saying to his son, who ran to 
 receive his last sigh, " I have been forty years preparing for this 
 day. Death is to me a gain." He figures worthily at the head of a 
 group of heroes who have shown themselves equal to all difficulties, 
 all dangers, and all sacrifices. Amongst them, grateful England 
 loves especially to mention the names of Nicholson, Barnard, and 
 Neil, likewise taken away in the midst of their victories of ven- 
 geance ; of Sir Henry Lawrence, the first of the heroes of Luck- 
 now, and the man whose energy has preserved the recent con- 
 quests of the North-West ; finally, to confine myself to speaking 
 of the dead, of Captain Peel, that young and noble son of the gi*eat 
 Sir Robert, equally valiant on land as on sea, Vhose premature loss 
 has been a sort of national calamity. Victims of a strife waged 
 between civilization and barbarism, they are not foreigners to any 
 Christian people : all can admire them without restriction and 
 without reserve. They do honoui* to the human race. 
 
 And it is not only these extraordinaiy names which we must 
 admire ; it is the whole conduct of this handful of Englishmen, 
 surprised in the midst of peace and prosperity by the most fright- 
 ful and unforeseen of catastrophes. Not one was prostrated or 
 trembled before the butchers; all, civilians as well as military, 
 young and old, chiefs and soldiers, resisted, fought, and perished, 
 with a coolness and intrepidity which never failed. It is there that 
 the immense value of a public education shines forth, such as we 
 have represented it in the pages of our Review, which calls the 
 young Englishman from his youth to make use of his strength 
 and his liberty, to form associations, to make resistance, to fear 
 nothing, to be astonished at nothing, and to extricate himself by 
 his own efibrts from all the misadventures of life. But above all, 
 the English women, condemned to share the sufferings, the anguish, 
 and, so many of them, the cruel death of their fathers and their 
 husbands, have shown the same Chi'istian heroism. The massacre 
 of Cawnpore, where, before being slaughtered, men and women 
 bound with cords, obtained as a solitary favour permission to hear 
 on their knees the prayers of their Liturgy read by the chaplain 
 who was about to perish with them, seems like a page torn from 
 the acts of the first martyrs. One loves to place this scene beside 
 the day oifast cmd national humiliation appointed by the Queen, and 
 everywhere observed on the 7th October, 1857, when was presented 
 
23 
 
 the noble spectacle of a whole people prostmte before God, to ask 
 of Him pardon and mercy. It is from such examples and from 
 such memories, and not from the revolting and puerile excesses 
 of a bloody system of repression, that England ought to derive 
 the strength to resist its enemies, and the certainty of conquering 
 them. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In what I have already said, I have not pretended to explain 
 everything, or to justify eveiything in the recent events in India ; 
 I have not wished to pass judgment on the past, still less to inspire 
 in regard to the fiiture of that empire a sense of security which I 
 am far from sharing. I have wished solely to express my own 
 impressions upon a class of events and ideas to which it is impos- 
 sible not to pay attention when one feels some interest in the 
 future of liberty and justice here below. All this will serve, besides, 
 to explain the spirit with which I took part in the principal par- 
 liamentary debate on the subject of India during the last session. 
 
 It was in the first days of May. Two months had scarcely rolled 
 by since the accession of the new Ministry presided over by Lord 
 Derby, and the unforeseen fall of Lord Palmerston. The causes of the 
 change are well known. To the universal horror excited in England, 
 as elsewhere, by the execrable attempt at assassination of the 14th 
 of January, had succeeded a lively irritation produced by the steps 
 of the French Government, and by sundry documents inserted in 
 the MoniteuVy which seemed to regard English society, where there 
 is no State police, as responsible for the preparations for a crime, 
 which all the power and vigilance of the French police had not 
 been able to prevent. The Government of King Louis Philippe 
 might just as well have held England responsible, in 1840, for the 
 Boulogne expedition. We believe we can speak on this incident 
 so much the more freely, as our Government, with a wisdom 
 that does it credit, has since spontaneously given up all idea of 
 insisting upon the points which were then occupying it.* The 
 right of asylum is regarded by the English people as one of their 
 national glories ; and this people is the one of all others which is 
 the least inclined to sacrifice a right to the abuse which can be 
 made of it. Besides, this right has been of service to French- 
 men of all opinions and all parties throughout the numerous revo- 
 lutions which have torn modem France ; it has been of especial 
 use to the difierent dynasties which have ruled France, and the 
 present Sovereign has used it with more freedom than anybody. 
 There existed, therefore, a feeling of resentment against Lord Pal- 
 mei'ston and his colleagues on account of the kind of subservience 
 
 * See for infomxation on this delicate subject, M. de Persigny's speech to 
 the General Council of the Loire, inserted in the Monitew of the 29th of 
 August, 1858. 
 
mth which they had replied to the Imperial demands. There 
 resounded throughout the country the old rallying cry of the wars 
 of the English crown against the Papacy of the Middle Age : 
 " Nolmnus leges Anglice inutarV The House of Commons had read 
 for the first time a Bill, otherwise perfectly reasonable and legiti- 
 mate, designed to facilitate the application of legal penalties against 
 the authors and accomplices of crimes committed against a foreigner. 
 But this assembly could not resist the current of public 
 opinion ; and on the 19th of February, it adopted a vote of censure 
 directed against the conduct of diplomatic relations between the 
 two countries. Under the weight of this solemn censure Lord 
 Palmerston retired with all his colleagues. 
 
 But it would be strangely to deceive oneself if one were to seek 
 in this ephemeral difierence between France and England the true 
 causes of the fall of a Minister who had enjoyed till then so long- 
 continued and powerful a popularity. These causes go deeper, and 
 are at once more honourable and more natural. With an old and 
 established popularity, after a great war speedily and happily ter- 
 minated under his auspices, after a quite recent dissolution of the 
 House of Commons, which had supported him on the Chinese 
 question against the formidable league of his adversaries, and had 
 placed him at the head of a larger majority than ever, one would 
 have believed him quite certain of power for many years to come. 
 But the high position in which he found himself seems to have 
 made him giddy. For a long time a shrewd courtier of public 
 opinion and its caprices, one would have said that he believed 
 himself thenceforth free to despise it and even to brave it. 
 Although he had always succeeded in obtaining the support of 
 the majority in the Commons on the question of his foreign policy, 
 he had not the less excited amongst a multitude of liberal and 
 sensible minds a lively and increasing antipathy to this quaiTel- 
 some and blustering policy, without dignity and without logical 
 consistency — now aJBfecting a zeal for liberty which did not recoil 
 before any revolutionary sympathy, now adoring and flattering 
 absolute monarchy ; a policy which certainly has done more 
 hann to the good name of England than all the abuse of her 
 calumniators. To these discontents so justly provoked by 
 his foreign policy were added those produced by his disdainful 
 indifference to the majority of the reforms at home which were 
 occupying the attention of the new parties. As too often 
 happens with statesmen grown old in the exercise of power, 
 he had accustomed himself to overlook all superiority but his 
 own, to suiTound himself with mere honest tractable medio- 
 crities, and to imagine that the quantity of his adherents would 
 always sufficiently compensate for their quality. He only sum- 
 moned to public office the members of a family coterie, and of a 
 party of which the public had long shown itself weary, and one 
 which the Prime Minister seemed to take pleasure in narrowing 
 
25 
 
 day by day. In short, that constant good-humour, that cordial 
 joviality, that gaiety of high and refined society, by which he 
 shines and fascinates in his private life, and which have rendered 
 him so much service in the most thorny public debates, appeared 
 now to forsake him. One would have said that lie took pleasure 
 in enraging his adversaries and in annoying his friends, by the 
 arrogant and sarcastic tone of his answers to questions in the 
 House. It is stated that nothing contributed more to increase 
 the majority that was formed suddenly against him than the con- 
 temptuous irony with which he met, some days before the vote of 
 censure, the question of Mr. Stirling'^ respecting the famous bequest 
 of the Emperor Najioleon I. to the soldier Cantillon, who is 
 accused of having attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. 
 All these causes, great and small, when put together, resulted in 
 the lessening and overthrow of the ascendency which Lord Palmer- 
 ston had acquired by his rare capacity, his indefatigable ardour, 
 his eternal youthfnlness, his incontestible patriotism. All seemed 
 solid and intact outside in this great position ; it was nevertheless 
 really regarded by many minds as undermined, and an unforeseen 
 and momentary shock sufficed to crumble it. The facts which I 
 am about to recount have made this ruin much more complete and 
 lasting than it at first appeared to be. 
 
 In fact, neither Lord Palmerston nor the public believed the 
 defeat was final. Lord Derby had received commands to form a 
 new Ministry in his capacity of chief of that ancient Conserva- 
 tive party which has never recovered from the blow which it 
 inflicted on itself by refusing to follow Sir Robert Peel in his course 
 of legitimate progress, and which has never regained a majority 
 either in the country or in the House. Lord Derby had a staff, 
 which had already been in office, with more or less success, for 
 some months in 1852, and it was necessary to recruit it with 
 younger, more active, and more intelligent elements, so as to pre- 
 sent a much more interesting and imposing front of battle than 
 the somewhat used-up colleagues of Lord Palmerston. By the side 
 of powerful orators, such as Mr. Disraeli and Lord EUenborough^ 
 and hard-working and popular administrators, such as Sir John 
 Pakington and Mr. Walpole, one saw shine out above all the 
 young son of Lord Derby, Lord Stanley, whom all parties seemed 
 agreed to salute as the future- popular chief of a great new party, 
 and of a great ministry of conciliation and action. Nevertheless, in 
 spite even of the happy debut of the new Ministry, its existence 
 could not be looked upon as secure. Only two-thirds of the majority 
 which had overthrown Lord Palmerston consisted of the partisans 
 of Lord Derby; the other third contained, besides the brilliant but 
 luimerically insignificant personages who bear the name of Peelites, 
 
 * Mr. William Stirling, M.P., is honourably known in the literary world by 
 his work on the Cloister Life of Charles V., which was published before M. 
 Mignet's, M. Gachard's, and M. Pichot's works on this interesting subject. 
 
26 
 
 all the Indej)etideifit Liberals, and especially the Kadicals, much 
 more advanced in politics than the ordinary Whigs of Lord 
 Palmerston's army, and of course still more so than the Tories 
 ranged behind Lord Derby. This majority might well suppoiiifor 
 some time a Government which owed its birth to the vote which it 
 had given ; but it had not promised it any permanent support. Lord 
 Palmerston and his friends were reckoning on the speedy dis- 
 agreements and weariness which such a situation could not fail to 
 engender. They only waited for a favourable opportunity to put 
 themselves in battle array, and regain a position temporarily com- 
 l^romised by faults which it was easy to mend, and one which 
 they knew how to make strong in profiting by the lesson they 
 had received. This occasion was not long in presenting itself, 
 under as important and as favourable circumstances as possible. 
 
 Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, had at length 
 yielded to the British arms. The attention of England had been 
 for a long time fixed on this great town, where six hundred Eng- 
 lishmen, and two hundred Englishwomen, besieged in a palace, 
 scarcely fortified at all, by sixty thousand murderers and a hostile 
 population of a hundi-ed and fifty thousand souls, had shown during 
 four months an example of courage as heroic as, and more triumphant 
 than, that of the defenders of Saragossa. Delivered by Havelock, 
 they had not been able to keep the fortress immortalized by their 
 valour, and it had been necessary for a new army, under Sir Colin 
 Campbell, to march to wrest from the rebels this city, which was 
 at once the citadel and the capital of the revolt.* The taking of 
 Lucknow seemed as if it would ensure the entire submission of the 
 kingdom of Oude, the annexation of which to the States under 
 the immediate government of the country, has been regarded as the 
 principal cause of the revolt, owing to the discontent which this 
 measure had inspired in a great number of Sepoys, who had 
 originally come from this country, and enlisted voluntarily in the 
 Bengal army. In order to ensure this submission, Viscount Can- 
 ning, Governor-General of India, thought fit to publish a pro- 
 clamation, dated 14th Mai'ch, 1868, which declared, under the 
 title of annexation to the British territory, the penalty of absolute 
 confiscation of all right of property belonging to the Talookdars,! 
 to the chiefs and to the landed proprietors of the kingdom of Oude, 
 with the exception of six of them, mentioned by name, who had 
 aided the English authorities during the rebellion. He reserved 
 to himself the power of restoring the whole or part of the property 
 
 * We refer the reader for details of the siege of Lucknow to the excellent 
 description that M. Forgues has given in the Remie des Deiix Mondes, 1st and 
 15th of July, 1858. 
 
 t These are the great feudatories of the country ; they appear to have been 
 originally the keepers of the public treasury, who made themselves hereditary, 
 and owners of the soil, as the jvdices and the comites of the Lower Empire, and 
 the times previous to Western feudalism. 
 
27 
 
 thus confiscated to those who should show a prompt submission, 
 or an anxious desire to aid the efforts of the Government for the 
 restoration of order and peace. 
 
 Such an act was of a nature to Avound deeply, not only the 
 dearest interests of an indigenous population of five millions of souls, 
 but also the public conscience of England, tardily, but profoundly 
 convinced that respect for the right of property is the base of every 
 social right. Above all, astonishment was felt at seeing this pro- 
 clamation come from Lord Canning — Lord Canning, who, surprised 
 in the second year of his administration by the explosion of a revolt 
 the most unforeseen and the most formidable which had ever broken 
 out against a foreign domination, had shown himself until then 
 superior to the terrible difiiculties of his situation, and had resisted 
 with a constancy the most noble and the most Christian, the san- 
 guinary incitements of the English in Calcutta against the rebels 
 and against Hindoos in general. The Anglo-Indian press, exas- 
 perated by the inflexible moderation of the Governor-General, had 
 fixed upon him, by way of injurious soubriquet, the surname of 
 " Clemency," and called him nothing else but " Clemency Can- 
 ning." And it was this man who now decreed, against a people 
 en Tiiasse, a chastisement as impolitic as it was excessive, as ini- 
 quitous by its imiversal application as by its falling so cruelly on 
 the posterity alike of the guilty and the innocent. 
 
 Thus, scarcely had the proclamation become known in London 
 ere it excited a general emotion, which found vent on the very day 
 of the publication — the 6th of May — in an interrogatory put by 
 Mr. Bright to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Disraeli 
 replied that the Government had already expressed to Lord 
 Canning a formal and complete disapprobation of the measure in 
 question. But two days later the attention of the public was again 
 absorbed by the appearance, in a London journal, of a document 
 still more strange and surprising. This was a dispatch, in which 
 the Earl of EUenborough, President of the Board of Control — that 
 is to say, the Minister of the Department of India — had, on the 
 19 th of April, signified to the Governor-General the solemn censure 
 of the Home Government.* 
 
 Lord EUenborough, himself an ex-Govemor-General of India, 
 who had been distinguished by the conquest of the vast provinces 
 of Scinde and Gwalior, had been removed by the Dii-ectors of the 
 Company, whom the ardour of his ambition and the imprudence of 
 his of&cial language had disquieted. It was the sole instance, I 
 believe, in which the East India Company had actually used the 
 
 * This dispatch emanated nominally from the Secret Committee of the Court 
 of Directors of the East India Company ; but the Committee acted only under 
 the orders and on the responsibility of the Minister. All these complications 
 of authority have disappeared, as a consequence of the recent suppression of the 
 East India Company in its govemmental capacity. 
 
supreme veto reserved to it with regard to the Viceroy of India, 
 the nomination of whom had belonged, since 1784, to the Crown. 
 A rival of Lord Derby in his oratorical talent, and one of the most 
 considerable personages of that statesman's Ministry, Lord Ellen- 
 borough had always preserved an independence of manner and a 
 brusquerie of speech which had made him distrusted by his allies 
 as much as by his adversaries. Those who have had the good 
 fortune to meet him in society at the same time with Lord Canning, 
 can judge whether a more complete contrast was ever offered than 
 that between the character and attitude of these two viceroys. 
 They belong both to history, which has rarely registered a docu- 
 ment more significant than the letter of the one to the other : — 
 
 ** 0. We cannot but express to you our apprehension that this decree, pro- 
 nouncing the disinherison of a people, will throw difficulties almost insurmount- 
 able in the way of the re-establishment of peace. 
 
 ** 7. The landholders of India are as much attached to the soil occupied by 
 their ancestors, and are as sensitive with respect to the rights in the soil they 
 deem themselves to possess, as the occupiers of land in any country of which we 
 have a knowledge. 
 
 " 8. Whatever may be your ultimate and undisclosed intentions, your pro- 
 clamation will appear to deprive the great body of the people of all hope upon 
 the subject most dear to them as individuals, while the substitution of our rule 
 for that of their native sovereign has naturally excited against us whatever they 
 may have of national feeling." 
 
 Then, in a series of paragraphs which do not appear to have 
 been intended for immediate publicity, the Minister, without any 
 circumlocution, censures the annexation of Oude effected by the 
 English Government under Lord Dalhousie, as well as the fiscal 
 measures which followed that annexation. He draws the conclu- 
 sion that the war made in Oude had rather the character of a 
 legitimate and regular war than of a rebellion, and that conse- 
 quently the inhabitants of that country should rather be treated 
 with indulgence than subjected to the most rigorous penalty 
 which can be inflicted on a conquered people. 
 
 The dispatch ends thus : — 
 
 '* 15. Other conquerors, 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. 
 
 "16. You have acted upon a different principle. You have reserved a few 
 as deserving of special favour, and you have struck with what they will feel as 
 the severest of punishment the mass of the inhabitants of the country. 
 
 " 17. 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. 
 
 " 18. We desire that you will mitigate in practice the stringent severity of 
 the decree of confiscation you have issued against the landholders of Oude. 
 
 " 19. We desire to see British authority in India rest upon the willing 
 obedience of a contented people ; there cannot be contentment where there is a 
 general confiscation. 
 
 '*20. Government cannot long be maintained by any force in a country 
 where the whole people is rendered hostile by a sense of wrong ; and if it were 
 possible so to maintain it, it would not be a consunimation to be desired." 
 
29 
 
 History, I am convinced, will corroborate these noLle words ; 
 but history will also say that he to whom they were addressed 
 was worthy to comprehend and to apply them. Policy, however, 
 is not always of accord with history, and justice itself demanded 
 that this solemn act and memorable reprimand should not be sent 
 to its destination, nor given to publicity, before the high func- 
 tionary who was incriminated had the opportunity of justifying or 
 explaining his conduct. Consequently there was a sudden explo- 
 sion of surprise and of discontent. All the world at once per- 
 ceived that, at the least, an excessive imprudence had been 
 committed, in thus disavowing, while the war was still going 
 on in Oude, all the antecedent policy relative to that country, 
 and in paralysing by a public reprobation the authority of 
 the man who represented the supreme British power in India. 
 The public was, moreover, ruffled by the haughty and somewhat 
 emphatic form in which Lord Ellenborough conveyed his censure ; 
 a kind of writing which is the very antipodes of the simple and 
 dry style which the English affect in their official documents. 
 It contributed much to rouse the minds of men against the 
 author of the dispatch. 
 
 Lord Palmerston and his friends perceived that the opportune 
 moment had arrived for taking the offensive and commencing against 
 the new Ministry a pitched battle, of which the only issue must 
 be to place in less imprudent and firmer hands, a power so 
 strangely compromised. The natural resentment at their defeat, 
 and the natural ambition of old statesmen supported by a great 
 party, suffice, if need were, to explain their ardour. But we 
 have no right to doubt that they were also guided by a sentiment 
 more exalted and more disinterested, and that the desire of preserving 
 British India from a twofold degree of dangei-s and of mischiefs, 
 inspired the greater number of the chiefs, and, above all, of tlie 
 private soldiers in the army of the opposition. However that may 
 be, the signal of a decisive campaign in the two Houses was given. 
 On Sunday, the 19th of May, Lord Palmerston convoked all his 
 supporters to a private meeting at his residence at Cambridge 
 House. His predecessor and rival, the ever-respected chief of the 
 old Reform party, Lord John Russell, who had broken witli him 
 since the negotiations of Vienna, in 1855, and who shielded Lord 
 Derby's Ministry by his neutrality, now promised his concurrence. 
 The day of attack was fixed, and officially announced in Parlia- 
 ment ; the parts of the principal assailants were carefully dis- 
 tributed and studied; the chances of victory and its probable 
 consequences, were turned to good account. All announced a 
 certain defeat for the Government, when a new episode changed the 
 whole face of affairs. 
 
 Lord Ellenborough, apprised by the growing storm of public 
 opinion as to the mistake which he had committed in publishing his 
 
so 
 
 dispatch, conceived the generous idea of taking upon himself alone 
 the responsibility and the punishment of that mistake. Without 
 apprising his colleagues, he sent to the Queen his resignation ; and, 
 on the 11th of May, he announced in the House of Lords the part 
 which he had taken, in language too noble not to be quoted : — 
 
 " I wished, he said, that my dispatch should be published at the same time as 
 Lord Canning's proclamation, because I thought it was the only fit answer to 
 be made to the act of the Indian Government, and to the commentaries sure to 
 be passed on it in England and in India, the only means of proving that the 
 Home Government was determined to follow a policy of mercy. My dispatch 
 is a message of peace to the people of India ; it will be a source of consolation 
 to all who are now trembling ; it will force all officials to act in the spirit of the 
 Government. It is from a love of public peace that I have written this letter, 
 and that I have published it. I ought, perhaps, to have taken the advice of 
 my colleagues on the question of publication. I have not done so, and I alone 
 am responsible. I felt bound to think of my duty not only to the Ministiy, of 
 which 1 form a part, but to the people of India. I have devoted thirty years of 
 my life to promote the real interests of this people, and I did not wish to close 
 my career by sacrificing them. This question will be looked at in a different 
 manner in India from that in which it is regarded here ; here it is a part}' 
 question between Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston, there it is a question of 
 principle between confiscation and mercy. The choice which Parliament shall 
 make between these two principles wUl sow in India the seeds of an endless 
 war or the hope of a necessary peace. But as I know that even in the most 
 important cases it is impossible to hinder personal questions from playing an 
 excessive part, I have determined, so far as I am concerned, to get rid of 
 every private consideration, that the real point at issue may alone form the 
 subject of discussion. I have tendered my resignation to her Majesty, and it has 
 been accepted." 
 
 A sacrifice made so spontaneously and so nobly, should naturally 
 have disarmed opinion; but the Whigs — thus we designate for 
 brevity the different elements which group themselves around 
 Lord Palmerston and Lord John Kussell — had too well contrived 
 their plan of attack to renounce it so easily. The opportunity 
 seemed to them too good, too unlikely to recur, not to make 
 the most of it in an attempt to take the direction of public 
 affairs from a Cabinet already discredited, and only able to exist by 
 the tolerance of a majority, of which it was not the natural repre- 
 sentative. Two hundred members of the House of Commons 
 reassembled anew at Lord Palmerston's and pledged themselves to 
 support the motion of a vote of censure against the Minister. The 
 combat which had been announced, therefore took place in the two 
 Houses on the 14th of May. 
 
 V. 
 
 In the House of Lords the vote of censure was moved by the 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, son-in-law of Lord Palmerston, so long known 
 for his zeal for the religious interests and the charitable associations 
 of the Anglican Church. Never had that illustrious assembly been 
 more full or animated ; never had a greater concourse of strangers 
 crowded that imposing and magnificent interior ; never had a more 
 brilliant galsucy of peeresses occupied the upper gallery which 
 
31 
 
 surrounds the hall, and from which rise the statues of the barons 
 who signed the Great Charter. The terms of the censure proposed 
 by Lord Shaftesbmy had been composed with pi-udent reserve. 
 It in no degree implied approval of the confiscation decreed by- 
 Lord Canning, and it reserved the judgment of the House until it 
 should be informed on the motives of that act ; but it formally 
 reproved the premature publication of Lord EUenborough's 
 dispatch, as tending to enfeeble the authority of the Governor- 
 General and to encourage the rebels. The author of the proposi- 
 tion developed it with modei-ation ; he was supported, among other 
 orators, by the Dukes of Somerset, Argyle, and Newcastle. One 
 loves to see these great names, which fill the feudal, political, and 
 military history of England, recover and maintain their place at the 
 head of a people completely free, and of a community so profoundly 
 changed. After them, and according to the English usage, which 
 reserves to the heads of the great parties or of the administration the 
 last word in debate, the case of the Opposition was summed up by Lord 
 Granville, President of the Privy Council, and leader* of the Upper 
 House under Lord Palmerston's Ministry, so well adapted to fill that 
 part by the graces of his language and the conciliatory cordiality 
 of his character. All these speakers, inw:ardly aware of the injury 
 done to their case by the resignation of Lord EUenborough, invi- 
 diously insisted on the collective and absolute solidarity of a 
 Cabinet, and pretended to deny a Ministry the power of 
 freeing itself, by the sacrifice of one or more of its members, from 
 the responsibility of a fault committed and acknowledged. 
 
 The Government, said they, must be one, homogeneous and indi- 
 visible, and it cannot be allowed the power of appointing within 
 itself a scape-goat. I was struck, in attending the House, with 
 the danger of these abstract theories, so absolute and extravagant, 
 which are, through the interests of party or through circum- 
 stances, imported into the discussions of free Governments, 
 and which, by little and little, become erected into inviolable 
 dogmas. Nothing, in my view, could more seriously contribute 
 to enfeeble and discredit the representative system, already 
 sufficiently complicated and difficult to maintain in equilibrium ; 
 as are, indeed, all systems adapted to communities which 
 are determined to sustain the rights of intelligence. It is 
 to the adversaries, and not to the partisans and workers of 
 free institutions, that the task belongs of deducing from a false 
 
 * This name of " leader " is given either to the conductor of the debates, or 
 to the Minister who is more specially charged with representing the Govern- 
 ment in either of the two Houses. The first Minister is naturally the 
 leader of the House to which he belongs ; in the other, the function is delegated 
 to the best speaker amongst the Ministers who sit there. Under Lord 
 Palmerston, who is not a peer of England, Earl Granville was the leader of the 
 Upper House ; under Lord Derby, it is Mr. Disraeli who is the leader of the 
 House of Commons. 
 
S2 
 
 logic those cliimerical embaiTassmeuts. I compreliended and liked 
 far better those testimonies of lively aud affectionate solicitude which 
 all lavishly expressed for the honour and good name of liord Can- 
 ning. There was something touching and peculiarly equitable 
 in this devotion to the absent, especially as he was charged, 
 at a distance of 3000 leagues from his country, with the care of 
 governing millions of souls ; a man whose courage, wisdom, 
 and humanity had done honour to the office which he fills, and 
 which is assuredly the most imposing that in our days a free 
 .people can confide to mortal hands. Son of the great orator who 
 was the first Minister of George IV., — the contemporary and rival 
 of our Chateaubriand, — Lord Canning has shown himself worthy 
 to bear the name of his father; and every one instinctively shared the 
 feeling which animated his friends, when they said to the Govern- 
 ment : " You have the right, it is your duty, to recal him if he 
 has done ill ; but you have no right to strike him through his 
 honour and his dignity before he has been able to explain himself, 
 in presence of a country still moved by gratitude for his services." 
 None amongst the ministerial speakers made any show of con- 
 testing the services rendered by Lord Canning ; but Lord 
 Ellenborough, disengaged from all fear of compromising his col- 
 leagues, replaced the question, with all his energy and his habitual 
 eloquence, on its true basis. If the publication of the dispatch 
 was wrong, he said, he alone must be responsible for it, since his 
 colleagues knew nothing of it, and as he was no longer Minister, 
 there was nothing more to say or to do on that point ; but the 
 dispatch in itself was useful and necessary : — 
 
 "The confiscation pronounced against the proprietors of Oude is not a simple 
 menace ; it is a retro-active act, striking at a whole people. Nothing like it has 
 been seen in England for 800 yeai's, nothing since the time of William the Con- 
 queror. But, it is said, we have had confiscation in Ireland. Certainly there are 
 portions of that island that have been thi*ee times confiscated. Ancl what has 
 been the result ? Is it peace ? Ts it prosperity ? Is it not precisely to confisca- 
 tion that all the disasters of Ireland have been attributed by all reflecting minds ? 
 In Hindostan, which has been the scene of so many conquests and so many 
 changes of dynasty, piivate property has always been respected. I have been 
 reproached with having'myself confiscated the territory of the -Ameers of Scinde. 
 My Lords, I struck a blow at the princes of that country because they were 
 guUty of treason to the English Crown, because they had attacked the British 
 Resident immediately after the conclusion of a treaty. Not an arm was raised 
 against us after the battle, when the last of the Ameers succumbed to us. 
 Two months sufficed to bring the country into subjection ; and at the present 
 moment there is no country in Hindostan which acknowledges our Empire more 
 peaceably, or which furnishes us with more faithful allies. Why ? Because 
 
 property has been respected I have acted in accoi-dance witlx 
 
 the example and the advice of my great and noble friend the late Duke of 
 Wellington. His son has lately communicated to me an unpublished letter of 
 the late Duke's written by him when he commanded in India, in which I find 
 the following words : — * I am for an amnesty as regards all inferior agents. 
 We shall never succeed in this country if we persevere in a perpetual hostility 
 towards all the small agents compromised in the struggle carried on against ua 
 
33 
 
 and our allies.' It is said that we ought to wait for the explanation of Lord 
 Canning, I answer that Lord Canning, who was perfectly aware that Lucknow 
 would be taken, ought to have given his explanation before taking this step. 
 But, my Lords, tliere arc things that admit of no explanation ; and confisca- 
 tion is one of them. You have confiscation before you in its naked hideous- 
 ness, which nothing can cover over or excuse. It is the most cruel punishment 
 that can be inflicted on a country, I am told that ray dispatch tends to 
 weaken the authority of the Goveinoi'-General. Certainly it takes from it a 
 great power for evil, but it gives it a greater still for good. When Lord 
 Canning receives my dispatch, T Iiope he will change his advisers. I do uot 
 believe that this proclamation is the work of Lord Canning ; it is too contrary 
 to all that I know of him. He must have been led away by those who have 
 learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and who think that after this terrible 
 convulsion no change is to be made in the abuses of the civil power in India. 
 I have wished once for all to teach these persons that justice and a respect for 
 popular rights are the chief principles which our Government will insist on 
 all its agents in India observing. It is said that I shall encourage the rebels 
 in their resistance. It is exactly the opposite of this that I have intended, 
 and that will really happen. The one-and- twenty regiments of Sepoys recruited 
 in Oude, who are at present scattered over the country, and all the other rebels, 
 will fight desperately to the last man, and like persons who have a rope on their 
 neck, when they hear this proclamation, robbing them of their homes, I have 
 wished to take the rope from oflT their neck, I have wished to make them once 
 more hope, I have wished to offer them the chance of returning into their villages 
 and finding there their homes untouched. It is a message of peace and mercy 
 
 that I have thrown into tins sea of fire It remains to be seen whether 
 
 you wish that the war in India should never have an end. If Parliament, by 
 the vote proposed to it, allows the people of India to suppose that you approve 
 the principles of the proclamation, and that you disavow the principles of my 
 dispatch, you will have in India a social war. You have succeeded in all your 
 wars that have been merely political, but I do not hesitate to declare, that in 
 a social war we shall end by being conquered." 
 
 The Earl of Derby, the Prime Minister, while paying his homage 
 to the character and to the services of Lord Canning, and while in- 
 sisting on the fact that the Government had been no party to the 
 publicity prematurely given to Lord EUenborough's dispatch, was not 
 the less explicit in his adhesion to the doctrines laid down by Lord 
 Ellenborough on the subject of the confiscation, and on the system 
 which ought to be pursued with regard to the native populations. 
 *• The question is raised," he said, "between pardon and confiscation, 
 with regard to a country where every landed proprietor is a soldier, 
 and every soldier is a proprietor. We are for pardon. If you con- 
 demn us, England will not have enough troops to assure the safety 
 of English rule in India." In the discourse of the noble lord, who loves, 
 as all know, to employ against his antagonists personal argument 
 and sarcasm, one remarks a trait of manners thoroughly English. 
 He thought to make it a reproach against the religioics Lord 
 Shaftesbury, that he became the organ of a Parliamentary meeting 
 held at the house of his father-in-law on the preceding Sunday, — 
 a day which had not been, according to Lord Derby, exclusively 
 consecrated to religious occupations. Lord Shaftesbury felt so com- 
 promised by this reproach, that he thought himself obliged to insert 
 in the journals an exact compte rendu of the manner in which he 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 had employed the whole day of Sunday, during which the frequency 
 j)f his liturgical occupations left hiai not the least place for a recrea- 
 tion so profane as that of which he had been believed guilty. 
 
 At two o'clock in the morning the House divided. Until 
 the last moment the result of the debate appeared doubtful ; but 
 after the votes had been taken of those Peers who were present, and 
 of those who were absent and voted by proxy,'"" it was ascertained 
 that the censure moved against the Ministry had been rejected by a 
 majority of 167 against 158. This feeble majority of nine votes, 
 in an assembly where the Conservative party, of which Lord Derby 
 is the acknowledged leader, has always been in the ascendant, suf- 
 ficiently indicated the extreme danger to which his administration 
 was exposed. A victory obtained with such difficulty in a House 
 where he believed himself sure of a majority, promised an almost 
 certain defeat in the one where two-fifths at the most acknowledged 
 him for their leader. Far from being discouraged by the issue of their 
 first encounter, the followers of Lord Palmerston only saw in it the 
 forerunner of the success, on the results of which they already counted. 
 The most carefully prepared calculations as to the issue of the 
 debate, showed the number of the probable majority to vary from 
 fifty to eighty ; and this, according to the antecedents or known 
 predilections of various members of the House of Commons, ought 
 at once to restore the compromised authority of Lord Canning, 
 and to avenge the recent defeat of Lord Palmerston, by renewing 
 against his successors the vote of censure under which he had suc- 
 cumbed three months previously. Within a week, whispered the 
 newspapers of the late Ministry — energetically seconded by the 
 passionate attacks of the Times — within a week, the Ministry of 
 Xjord Derby will have ceased to exist. Nevertheless, in these 
 hypothetical calculations they lost sight of the eventual disposition 
 of the new party, which, under the name of the Independent Liberal 
 party, was gradually separating itself from the old party of Whig 
 and Reformers, too easily bound in vassalage to the ascendancy of 
 Lord Palmerston. A tendency to join this party had been dis- 
 played more and more every day, not only by those uncertain and 
 fastidious spirits who are to be found in the bosom of every 
 assembly, but also by a leading portion of the followers and col- 
 leagues of the late Sir Robert Peel, and by more than half of the 
 Irish Catholic members, who were justly irritated by the indiffe- 
 rence and enmity of the great Whig leaders to the interests of 
 their country and their religion. These outsiders moved and com- 
 bined, on their side, in expectation of the decisive conflict ; and the 
 journals signified pretty clearly that their support had not been 
 promised without reserve to the plans of the OiDpositiou. 
 
 However, in these preliminary agitations, as in the official 
 
 *- This proxy can only be entrusted to a Pe©r present at the discussion, who 
 employs it at his pleasure. 
 
35 
 
 deliberations, everything is done with an openness and freedom 
 that nothing alters, and it is obviously not a question of plots and 
 intrigues, but of loyal and legitimate struggles, in which the whole 
 public is bound to aid and to participate. It is not alone a knot 
 of politicians, it is the nation whom these struggles divide and 
 arouse. Parliament and the press, the aristocracy and the 
 public — the spectators and the actors, are equally interested and 
 led away. Political vitality circulates in every part ; in every part 
 glows the feeling of a great community of free and enlightened 
 men, who deliberate directly or indirectly upon interests the most 
 worthy to occupy them, who do not imagine that any one can 
 regulate their affairs better than they can themselves, and who do 
 not in any way understand how any one could charge himself to 
 govern for them, amidst them, and without them. But if these 
 questions passionately animate everybody, they embitter no one. 
 In this case, as in others, I found it proved even to satiety, how 
 the reciprocal courtesy of parties and individuals overcomes and 
 outlives the asperity of politics. In the fii'st place, intentions 
 and plans of attack are frankly communicated, down to the 
 documents which are to form the basis or the pretext of the 
 discussion. All tactics which turn upon a stealthy coup-de- 
 main, or upon masked batteries, would be defeated by the universal 
 rising of public opinion. Moreover, the most openly- declared 
 adversaries, the most exasperated rivals, make it a point of honour 
 not to prolong and to carry into private and social life the hostili- 
 ties of public life. Things the most disagi-eeable and the most per- 
 sonal are exchanged across the floor of the House of Lords or Com- 
 mons—exaggerated accusations, banterings d, outrance — but in the 
 evening the combatants dine with each other and meet in the same 
 drawing-room. Above all things, they hold to being gentlemen and 
 men of the world, and of the same world, and to the principle 
 of not envenoming the whole of existence with the animosity of an 
 unpleasant conflict. It was not so in Fi-ance, as we may remember, 
 when a public life existed and agitated our minds. From what does 
 this difference arise 1 Without doubt from this, that the whole world 
 of England is of one mind, not only upon fundamental questions of 
 the constitution and social organization, but also upon the con- 
 dition and the result of the contest of the day. People combat with 
 ardour and passion ; but the prize and the issue of the combat never 
 change the ground on which they combat, nor affect the conquest-s 
 happily and definitively achieved for all. Politicians dispute the 
 temporary possession of power, and they hotly pursue the triumph 
 of a debate or of an opinion ; but no one thinks of imposing his 
 opinion upon his opponents, or even on his neighbours, whether 
 they will or not, on pain of exiling them from public life, and 
 driving them back into nothingness if they have the temerity to 
 be neither convinced nor cowed. 
 
 d2 
 
36 
 
 The motion of censure presented in the House of Commons was 
 drawn up with the same prudence as that in the House of Peers. 
 It was not an express approval of the proclamation of Lord 
 Canning, but a direct and formal disapproval of the judgment 
 pronounced by the Government on that act. Its author was Mr. 
 Cardwell, one of the most distinguished members of the Peelite 
 party ; a faithful and devoted friend of Lord Canning, and a man 
 so universally esteemed that no one could suspect him of being 
 unduly influenced by Lord Palmerston, or capable of sacrificing 
 moral and national interests to the spirit of party. 
 
 The first day of the discussion — the 14th of May — offered 
 nothing remarkable save the brilliant debut of a Government 
 speaker — Sir Hugh Cairns, the Solicitor-General, one of those 
 rising men of liberal stamp with whom Lord Derby had the 
 tact to reinforce his Government. He occupied himself in 
 showing that the discussion having once been opened, it was 
 impossible to abstain, as the Opposition wished, from passing 
 judgment on the measure taken by Lord Canning. If that measure 
 was wise and just, how was it that the Opposition refused to 
 approve of it ? If it was not so, how make it a crime in the Govern- 
 ment to have blamed it 1 But those who have not the courage to 
 approve of the confiscation should at least abstain from blaming 
 those who condenni it. The Government, at least, has a firm 
 conviction, and expresses itself openly; its adversaries have not 
 any conviction, and they dare not put their opinion in a clear 
 shape. Becoming the aggressor in his turn, Sir Hugh Cairns 
 keenly reproached Mr. Vernon Smith, the Indian minister 
 under Lord Palmerston, and the predecessor of Lord Ellen- 
 borough, for not having communicated the private letter which 
 Lord Canning had addressed to the statesman whom he believed 
 to be still Minister, announcing his intention of publishing 
 the famous proclamation. A. standing and a natural usage 
 demands that the outgoing ministers shall, without reserve, com- 
 municate to their successors all documents relative to their func- 
 tions which may come into their hands after their resignation. 
 Lord Clarendon had quite recently done this with regard to 
 Lord Malmesbury. In violating this custom Mr. Yernon Smith 
 had severely wounded public feeling, and had provoked many 
 recriminations within the House and out of doors; and although 
 the letter itself contained nothing really important, the somewhat 
 malignant and derisive receptions given to the explanations which 
 Mr. Vernon Smith repeated, must have presented to attentive ob- 
 servers the first symptom of the confusion amongst the majority, 
 the first sign of the uncertainty of the result so confidently announced. 
 It was, however, in this first sitting that Lord John Russell stood 
 forwai'd to reinforce the Opposition with his important suffrage in 
 suppoi-ting the motion of censure. He insisted that the Ministers 
 could not separate themselves from the conduct of Lord Ellen- 
 
37 
 
 Korough, he dwelt on the danger to which this conduct would 
 expose the security of the British possessions in India, and, finall}^, 
 on tlie moral strength which our advei-saries must derive from the 
 blame poured upon the annexation of the kingdom of Oude. For- 
 tified by an adhesion so desirable within the House, and assured of 
 a still more efficacious support out of doors through the immense 
 circulation of the Times, the double cause of Lord Canning and of 
 Lord Palmerston still had every chance of a speedy and complete 
 success. 
 
 Nevertheless, at the next sitting — the 17th of May — a member 
 who sits on the same side with Lord John Kussell rose to resist 
 him. In his person the fraction of independent Liberals made its 
 appearance in the debate. This was Mr. Roebuck, one of the most 
 daring, the most listened to, and the most popularly eloquent of 
 English speakers. It was he who had inflicted the rudest blows on 
 the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston in the hour of his triumph, 
 and he now stood forward in the attempt to defeat his tactics and 
 to thwart his plans. Mr. Roebuck too often makes the mistake of 
 compromising the success of his ideas, and the authority of his 
 voice, by enunciating opinions in themselves excessive, and what 
 is more, expressed with a stiffness and exaggeration that add to 
 the repulsion which they inspire. He took no pains to avoid this 
 unlucky habit in this memorable discussion. In making allusion 
 to a Bill already before the House, which had for its object to 
 remove from the East India Company the Government of 
 Hindostan and transfer it to the Crown, he thought fit to say that 
 " the Crown" was no more than a chimera, and in reality meant 
 the House of Commons, since the power attributed to the Crown 
 was virtually exercised by the House. 
 
 This doctrine was at once imprudent and inexact; for it is 
 dangerous thus to condense under the form of abstract maxims the 
 gradual and qualified consequences of the development of liberty ; 
 and if the preponderance for centuries past of the House of 
 Commons is incontestible, it is not the less untrue to say that the 
 power of resistance in the Peers has been annihilated, and that the 
 Crown does not preserve an immense prestige and an authority the 
 stronger since it is reserved for great occasions and solemn deci- 
 sions. In this discourse, however, Mr. Roebuck lifted himself far 
 above the vulgar pre-occupations of personal or national politics. No 
 one had as yet entered upon the question with so much frankness \ 
 no one had as yet marked so clearly the importance of this question, 
 the sacred character of the principles which it involved, and the 
 danger of subordinating those principles to the interests of party. 
 
 "We remember," he said, "that magnificent sketch, in the History of Gibbon, 
 where he traces the picture of Roman greatness, and where he shows that the 
 hundred and twenty millions of Italians and provincials conquered by Rome, 
 formed the vastest union of men who have ever obeyed one and the same rule. 
 Our Indian Empire is still more vast, it counts nearly two hundred millions of 
 subjects ; and it is for us now to decide whether this immense empire shall ba 
 
38 
 
 governed according to the principles of honoui' and virtue, or with the sole end 
 of increasing the power of England. 1 am an Englishman, hut there are things 
 u-hich to vie are more sacred and greater than the greatness of England, and 
 among these things I reckon the ^wogress of manlcind in instruction and in the 
 
 f.ractice of virtue and honour We are asked to make the happiness 
 
 of two hundred millions of men subordinate to a party manoeuvre. I will not 
 lend myself to this. I wish to look at the interests of all these millions of my 
 fellow-men without regard to the ministerial question. We entered India as 
 simple merchants ; little by little we have conquered all this vast region ; but 
 we have not been able to do this without sacrificing too often the principles of 
 justice. We have been rapacious, we have been cruel, we have been unjust. 
 
 Those are truths disagreeable to say, but they are truths. We have 
 
 a great interest in ruhng over India, we have a still greater interest in the rule 
 of justice and of truth ; there is a way of making our Empire lawful, and there 
 is only one : it is to labour for the happiness of the people whom we govern, and 
 the first condition of this happiness is to be indulgent and merciful." 
 
 Let US say to the honour of the assembly which listened to these 
 words, pronounced with emotion and effort by a speaker visibly 
 suffering from illness, that each phrase which we have just quoted 
 was interrupted by energetic cheers, " and that not a murmur 
 rose to betray the susceptibilities of an unquiet or wounded pa- 
 triotism. After liaving established and confirmed the distinction al- 
 ready enunciated by Lord Ellenborough, between the rebellion of the 
 Sepoys and the war made upon the inhabitants of Oude, Mr. 
 Roebuck enlarged upon the folly and crime of the confiscation, 
 and thus summed up his opinion : — 
 
 " Lord Ellenborough has been reproached, first, for having made an answer at 
 a'd to Lord Canning's proclamation ; then, for having made an answer which 
 ouglit not to have been made ; and lastl}', for having published this answer. I 
 maintain that he was bound to send an answer, that his answer was a good one, 
 and that it is on us and not on him that falls the responsibiUty of publication. 
 It was in this House that the question regarding this proclamation was put to the 
 Government, and when once the question was asked, it was right that the 
 answer should be known ; and it was very proper to wish to know it. It is 
 a duty of our Government to let the public know all that happens, and as j'ct 
 this is not sufficiently done. It would be better that the public knew day 
 by day what the Government is doing ; for want of that we are led blindfold 
 into all sorts of mistakes. AVar takes us by surprise, and we are told that wo 
 must not compromise the country by our curiosity. Then comes peace, and we 
 are told that we take up the point too late ; when it is really important that we 
 should know everything, we are stopped short in the name of the public in- 
 terest ; and we are not told all until it is useless to know it. You wish to 
 pacify India. You vail not succeed, excepting by the system indicated in Lord 
 EUenborough's dispatch. This dispatch ought to be printed in letters of gold, 
 for it is the act, and expresses the thought, of an honest man. I know England 
 very little, if one day or other she does not think so. As to the party question, 
 why should we call to power a minister whom we have very lately ejected from 
 ofl&ce becaiise the honour of England had been in danger in his hands ? The 
 people of England has nothing good to expect from that quarter. The progress 
 and the libei*al i-eforms which we dchirc for the welfare of the masses, will be much 
 more easily obtained from the weak and dependent Government which now sits 
 on the ministerial benches, than from powerful and arrogant men who sit 
 Acre." 
 
 And with his finget he pointed out, in the midst of cheei-s, 
 
m 
 
 the bench on which safe, impassible and serene, Lord PalmerstoD, 
 surrounded by his old colleagues in office. 
 
 Many of these, and especially the late Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, Sir Cornewall Lewis, and tlie late First Lord of the 
 Admiralty, Sir Charles Wood, exerted themselves, not without 
 talent, to replace the question on the more restricted ground from 
 which the rough frankness of Mr. JEloebuck had removed it. But 
 with the best desire to be impartial, I find nothing to cite in their 
 speeches. Like all the advocates of the vote of censure, they dwell 
 on the position in which Lord Canning had been placed, and on 
 the ingratitude displayed towards a man who had saved and done 
 honour to the English rule in India. Less reserved than the 
 terms of the motion itself, they allowed themselves to defend the 
 proclamation, inasmuch as, according to them, the confiscation 
 which it pronounced did not apply to the mass of tlie rural 
 population, but to those rebel lords whose violence and usurpation 
 alone had put them in possession of their estates.'"' The Minis- 
 terial speakers, on the contrary, maintained that, besides the 
 great talookdars and zemindars, who represented a territorial aris- 
 tocracy, there were in Oude a host of small landed proprietors 
 handling alternately the plough and tlie sword, who would evi- 
 dently be injured at the same time with the great feudatories by 
 the absorption of all right of property in the State. 
 
 It must be admitted that these observations, so contradictory, 
 but so important, were less attended to than the eccentricities of 
 the young Sir Robert Peel, who, since he has entered into public 
 life, has used the great name which he bears to arrogate to him- 
 self the privilege of saying disagreeable truths to everybody, 
 with an unceremonious liveliness, against which defence is dif- 
 ficult. This time, nevertheless, the violent invective which he 
 addressed to Lord Palmerston, to whom he had been so long a 
 subordinate in diplomacy and in the Government, injured his 
 illustrious adversary less than himself. But he had more success 
 when without circumlocution he pointed out to the opponents 
 of the Ministry the danger that began to show itself in the liorizon. 
 This danger was the dissolution of the House of Commons ; an 
 extreme measure, no doubt, after a dissolution still so recent, but 
 one which the Earl of Derby had the right of projiosing to the 
 
 * A return, cited in the course of the discussion, shows that in the kingdom 
 of Oude there existed two hundred and forty- six feudal fortresses, armed with 
 four hundred and seventy-six pieces of cannon, and belonging to tlie talookdars 
 threatened with confiscation. It will be perceived that feudality as an insti- 
 tution, proper and natural to the In do -Germanic races, exists in the nineteenth 
 century on the borders of the Ganges under the same form which it still assumed 
 in the sixteenth century on the borders of the Rhine. Nothing indeed surprised 
 me more, during the whole of this debate, than to find among all the speakers 
 a total absence of notions precise and universally accepted on the nature of real 
 property in Hindostan. 
 
40 
 
 Quceo, in order to make the country itself judge between his policy 
 and the hostile majority in Parliament.* In this Sir Robert Peel 
 gave expression to an apprehension which gained ground more and 
 more ; and he pronounced distinctly, in the name of the advanced 
 liberalism which he professes, the hope and the certainty of seeing 
 the Liberal electoi-s sustain the gi-eat principles of justice and 
 humanity proclaimed in the dispatch of Lord EUenborough, rather 
 than the manoeuvres of a party which sacrificed those principles to 
 the feverish impatience for a new tenure of office. 
 
 VL 
 
 Nevertheless, in the midst of these debates, which in so gi'eat a 
 degree absorbed the attention of all England, which called for the 
 intervention of all the eminent statesmen of the day, and which 
 revealed a situation becoming more and more uncertain for the 
 parties, old and new, that divide the Government of the country, 
 there occurred an interlude, which too well paints the British 
 chai-acter not to find a place in this narrative. 
 
 At the opening of the sitting, on the 18th of May, a partisan of 
 Lord Palmerston, Captain Yivian, makes a proposal that the 
 House shall not meet on the following day. He counts upon 
 the whole Ministerial and Conservative party for the support of 
 his motion, and he presumes that Mr. Disi-aeli, Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, and leader of the House of Commons, who had so 
 often drawn from his quiver the barbed shafts of his eloquence 
 against his political advei'saries,. will readily assist in the exploits 
 of another archer on another arena. 
 
 AVhat can be the meaning of this strange interruption? It is, 
 that the following day Epsom races take place ; that these races 
 have for their principal object the grand annual prize called (it is 
 not very well known why) the Derby; that Lord Derby, who is afc 
 once the Prime Minister, the first orator, and the first sportsimui 
 in England, is one of the competitors for this prize ; and that the 
 horse upon which he relies to win is called Toxophilite (signifying 
 in Anglo-Greek, archer), and that, lastly, this race is the object of 
 popular, and it may be said national, interest, in which all classes, 
 high and low, political and industrial, take part with that univei-sal 
 and passionate anxiety, which the ancient Greeks, the Komans, 
 and the Spaniards at the present day, have shown for spectacles of 
 a similar nature but less innocent. *' These are the Olympic games 
 of England," Lord Palmerston once said ; and no more exact 
 definition can be given. 
 
 The House adopts unanimously the motion of Captain Vivian, 
 
 * It will be remembered that the House bad been dissolved by Lord Pal- 
 merston, in 1857, after the vote of a majority adverse to the China war. The 
 new elections had produced a large majority altogether favourable to the foreign 
 policy of Lord Palmerston, 
 
41 
 
 and it adjonms for the sake of repairing en masse to Epsom 
 Downs. Members put their well-conned speeches in their pockets, 
 and hang up their eloquence on a peg by the side of party spirit. 
 Everybody is agi-eed for one day to forget India and England. It 
 is no longer a question if India shall be governed by confisca- 
 tion or by conciliation, if England shall or shall not retain Lord 
 Derby as Prime Minister, but only if the hoi-se of Lord Derby 
 is to win the race which bears his name, and in which the Avhole 
 country is interested. 
 
 Since the Sovereign House bids adieu for one day to serious 
 affaii-s, let us do the same ; let us follow it to Epsom, and attach 
 ourselves to a group of members of Parliament quite resolved 
 to vote one against another to-morrow, but still more resolved 
 to amuse themselves together on this joyous eve of a decisive 
 battle. 
 
 It is well said that he who has not witnessed a Derby day has 
 not seen England; and it is the Derby day that leaves little 
 reason for incessantly repeating that the English know not how to 
 amuse themselves, and amuse themselves with spirit, and at the 
 same time with order and decency. Whoever has seen the two or 
 three hundred thousand inhabitants of London and its environs 
 assembled on a sunshiny day of spring upon the green slopes of 
 Epsom Downs, whoever has v;andered among those equipages of 
 every possible description, among those booths, those open-air 
 orchestras and theatres, those tents bedecked with flags, in that 
 ocean of bipeds and quadrupeds, will return fully convinced of 
 two things not generally admitted ; fii-st of the honest and expan- 
 sive gaiety of the great majority of that immense crowd ; then of 
 the great equality which draws together, on that day at least, the 
 most ditl'erent conditions of society. Princes of the Blood, Peers of 
 the oldest lineage, are cheek by jowl with donkey-drivers and 
 gil)sies, and mix even in the popular games whicli till the weary 
 intervals between the races. Nowhere, not even amongst us, is there 
 seen a confusion of ranks so decided. Nowhere, again, is there a 
 gaiety, a good humour, a decency more like that which so honour- 
 ably distinguishes our working classes, when engaged in their 
 periodical and oflicial entertainments. In the midst of this joyous 
 and animated crowd we might imagine ourselves in France. Bub 
 this illusion disappear the moment one recollects the absence of 
 any oflicial programme and of all intervention of the authorities. 
 It is private enterprise which has done all, announced all, fore- 
 seen and ari*anged all ; it is private subscrii^tion that has provided 
 for all expenses. Barely a handful of policemen, imarmed, and, as 
 it were, lost in the midst of the crowd, remind us of the slight 
 precautions taken against possible disorder. By these charac- 
 teristics we instantly recognise England. 
 
 On the journey to Epsom, as diuring the few previous days, all 
 
42 
 
 conversation turned on the strange coincidence between the poli- 
 tical destiny of Lord Derby and his chances on the turf. As on 
 the evening before in Parliament, his name is in every mouth ; 
 and in the issue of the race about to come off, people take pleasure 
 in seeking a presage of his victory or defeat in the vote of the 
 succeeding day. An opinion, rather generally credited, ascribed to 
 the noble Earl a more anxious solicitude for the success of his 
 horse than for that of his party. He is not supposed to have much 
 taste for the cares and fatigues of the premiership, an office he had 
 already held, and which seemed to inspire him with little regret. 
 It could scarcely add a new charm or additional brilliancy to his 
 lofty and unassailable position as a great Peer and a great orator. 
 Chief of one of the very few families among the English aristocracy 
 that date from the time of the Plantagenets, fourteenth Earl and 
 Peer of his name, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, placed by 
 the happy union of rank and talent amongst that handful of men who 
 are beyond rivalry, of whose names no one is ignorant, and whose 
 merit no one contests, there remains to him no social distinction to 
 acquire — not even the blue ribbon of the Garter. But the blue 
 ribbon of the turf (for so the prize at Epsom which bears his name 
 is called), this is what appears to all, and to him particularly, the 
 legitimate and natural object of ambition. Will he win — ^yes or 
 no 1 Such is the question the solution of which occupies every 
 mind, and draws into the thick of the crowd all the political and 
 diplomatic notabilities — amongst others. Marshal Pelissier, who so 
 nobly represents our country and army, and enjoys with our 
 neighbours so great and so just a popularity. 
 
 Let us follow them into the paddock ; that is to say, the reserved 
 enclosure, where, before the start, they exhibit the horses that arc 
 entered. Attention is allowed for a moment to wander on this or 
 that horse ; but it is above all on Lord Derby and the horse which 
 carries his fortune that all eyes are bent. There he is ! Which 1 
 the man or the horse 1 They are both there ; but scarcely has the 
 horse appeared when the man is forgotten. The famous animal 
 is paraded at a slow pace, as if to expose in detail all the advan- 
 tages which must assure the victory to him and his master, and 
 to the innumerable army of betters, who have risked their money 
 on his head. A numerous group of political men, mingled with 
 connoisseui's of another description, follow with a gravity quite 
 comical, and an attention almost religious, every movement of the 
 animal. I had the satisfaction of recognising there one of the most 
 ardent defenders of Church and State, on Anglican of the old 
 school, the same who was some time afterwards to do me the 
 honour of pointing me out to the House of Commons, as pleading 
 the cause of civil and religious liberty, with no other object than that 
 of reducing England and Prance under the dominion of the Jesuits.* 
 
 * Speech of Mr. Newdegate, in the House of Commons> 21st July, 1868. 
 
He seemed completely to have forgotten the dangei-s of the Esta- 
 blished Church, and the formidable progress of popery, so ab- 
 sorbed was he in the contemplation of the points of Toxo- 
 jjhilite. 
 
 After some insignificant preliminaries, the decisive race is to be 
 run — twenty-four horses start at once. How is it possible to de- 
 scribe the devouring anxiety, the swaying to and fro of tliis mass of 
 people, the poising on tip- toe, the rustle and murmuring of a crowd 
 of a hundred tliousand individuals with eyes and heart concentrated 
 on one single object. Tlie comparatively indifierent foreigner is 
 reminded involuntarily of his Yirgil, and the immortal lines of the 
 fifth book of the jEneid, wdiich have familiarized every well- 
 educated person and every cultivated mind with so many insig- 
 nificant details for ever ennobled by the epic Muse. The race, 
 which is run over three-quarters of a league, lasts less than three 
 minutes. At one moment, owing to a slope in the ground, all 
 the horees disapi)ear from the eyes of the spectatoi"s ; when they 
 reappear, the various chances of the competitors begin to discover 
 themselves. Still an instant of devouiing anxiety ; one hundred 
 thousand heads are turned towards the winning-post. The lot 
 is decided. It is not Lord Derby who has won. The blue ribbon 
 has escaped him ; the prize falls to the horse of an unknown 
 baronet, who clears by this single chance something like 40,000^. 
 
 In this unforeseen check experienced by the Premier, all the 
 world sees a prognostic of the political fall which awaited him at 
 Y/estminster. But friends and adversaries seemed to forget this 
 sad presage in the feverish excitement which prevailed on the 
 return of the crowd towards London. Every one v/ants to come 
 and go at the same moment. Every horseman, every vehicle, 
 great or small, public or private, starts off at full gallop along two 
 or three lanes which lead to the one high road ; every one makes 
 a rush towards the metropolis. It is impossible to conceive how 
 frightful disorder and numberless accidents do not entail some 
 catastrophe on this motley and unbridled mob, and so much 
 the more that there are seen only at a distance a few policemen, 
 always unarmed, who, by a motion of the hand, re-establish order 
 in the line, until aj'ain and a"rain it is thrown into confusion. I 
 smiled when contrasting these modest, but sufficient precautions, 
 with the furious charges of our municipal guards, helmet on head and 
 sword in hand, upon the three or four hackney-coaches adventurous 
 enough to break the line at a ministerial reception, in those 
 fabulous times when parliamentary people went on foot to see the 
 ministers whom we approved or opposed. However, no catastrophe 
 occurs ; no one knows how, but all arrive safe and sound. The three 
 hundred thousand spectators disperse, and return to tlieir homes 
 v/ithout any one hearing of a scuffle or an accident. Hardly are 
 we out of the varied and picturesque country around Epsom, than 
 
-4* 
 
 we traverse an interminable series of suburban villages, all verdant 
 and smiling, that form the faubourgs of the metropolis, aud where 
 is more evident than anywhere else the material prosperity of the 
 country, where houses, less sombre-looking and monotonous than 
 those in town, rise out festooned with flowei*s from gardens and 
 shrubberies, where the windows, the balconies, the parapets, are 
 filled with an innumerable and joyous crowd, remarkable for the 
 very general beauty of the women and children, and for the air of 
 sympathy and contentment visible in every face. It is a spectacle 
 unique in the world, this living river, of which we cleave at full 
 gallop the hurrying and roaring waves. It changes its nature a little 
 as we approach London, and a population more dense, but also of an 
 aspect more sad and more wan, reveals the presence of the labouring 
 classes ; but it leaves in the mind the ineffaceable remembrance of a 
 true popular fUe^ springing from the spontaneous impulse of its 
 actors, and ennobled by the masculine intelligence of a people who 
 know not only how to govern themselves, but also how to amuse 
 themselves unaided. Every one knows the bad pun Louls XIY. in- 
 dulged in to one of his couiiiiers — " Dvj: de Lauraguais, qiCavez vous 
 done etc /aire en Angleterre I Apprendre a i^enser, sire ! Qiioi ? jjanser 
 les chevaux ? Vun et V autre, sire.'" Lord Derby might have made 
 the same reply ; if indeed one could imagine a Lord Derby in 
 France, and at the court of an absolute monarch. 
 
 YII. 
 
 On the day after the races all the world returned to the ques- 
 tion of the previous evening, and again plunged into the great 
 contest, the issue of which was to exercise so vital an influence on 
 the destinies of England and of India, and on the future of those two 
 hundred million souls of whom Mr. Roebuck had so nobly 
 spoken. It was not only in Parliament, or in the ujjpcr circles, 
 or in the circles exclusively political, that an ardent curiosity 
 existed to guess the results of the discussion. The whole 
 country, represented by all it contained of intelligence and 
 knowledge, followed with a feverish anxiety the different phases 
 of the conflict, and identified itself with the slightest in- 
 cident, thanks to the powerful and useful aid of the press, 
 which caused to penetrate into the lowliest cottage the detailed 
 and perfectly faithful report of the debates, and added argu- 
 ments often more conclusive and more original than those of 
 the orators themselves. It is thus that the press awakens the 
 conscience of the country ; that it provokes and exercises the 
 intervention of all in the afiairs of all, and establishes, whilst it 
 regulates, the direct action of the country on its leaders and repre- 
 sentatives. What wit and science, what irony and passion, 
 what life and talent, have been expended during the last fifteen 
 
45 
 
 clays in the immense columns of the English journals ! T, for my part 
 was altogether amazed, so much had I lost familiarity with this 
 rolling and alternate fire of daily discussion, to which we ourselves 
 were once accustomed, and which we carried on, perhaps in excess, 
 but which is become impossible between organs, a few of which only 
 have the right to say everything, and are always led, more or less 
 invohmtarily, to lure their adversaries upon the ground where the 
 official gag awaits them. Whilst the Daily News, the Star, and 
 other Independent or Radical jouraals manifested a sympatliy more 
 and more lively for the maintenance of the new policy, the for- 
 midable artillery of the Times continued to thunder against the 
 Ministry, and against the famous dispatch. At its flanks the 
 little journals especially devoted to the cause of Lord Palmerston 
 strove with redoubled zeal and vigour to sustain the ardour of 
 his adherents in and out of Parliament. They always announced, 
 with the same confidence, the certain defeat of the Government, 
 and predicted a majority so considerable, and so significant, that it 
 would render useless and insensate any project of dissolution. 
 Nevertheless, some symptoms of disruption manifested themselves 
 already in the bosom of this majority upon which they so con- 
 fidently counted. Its chief, in running over the ranks of his 
 phalanx, could already remark the expressive silence of some, the 
 increasing hesitation of several. The debate had evidently shaken, 
 if it had not changed, many preconceived opinions. All its 
 brilliancy, all its force, had been on the side of the adversaries of 
 the motion of censure. The supporters of the motion had risen 
 little above the combinations and recriminations of party spirit. 
 The result was still more apparent in the sitting of the 20th of 
 May. Mr. Bright, who disputes with Mr. Gladstone the palm of 
 eloquence and the attention of the House, brought to the good 
 cause upon that day the powerful aid of his voice, and of his in- 
 creasing authority. Mr. Bright is a dissenter of the sect of 
 Quakers ; he is the brother-in-law of Frederick Lucas, who, born 
 a member of the same sect, became a Catholic, and was a most 
 energetic defender of his new faith. Immediately after his 
 entrance into the House of Commons, Lucas acquired there a 
 marked position ; everything announced in him an orator and a party 
 chief who would have equalled and perhaps surpassed O'Connell ; a 
 premature death has left of him nothing but the remembrance, still 
 most fresh, of his melodious voice and of the ardent uprightness of 
 his convictions. Mr. Bright, placing himself, as did his brother-in- 
 law, without the ranks of the old parties, and at the side of the 
 road leading to power, has not ceased to grow in public estimation, 
 in spite of the temporary unpopularity he suffered on account of 
 his opposition to the Crimean war. All the world blames and 
 regrets his exaggerated attacks against British manners and insti- 
 tutions, attacks of which he himself is a living and brilliant con- 
 
46 
 
 futation ; but each Session lias seen his ascendancy increase, and 
 this Quaker is become now one of tlie throe or four personages the 
 most interesting and the most listened to in Eugland. It was 
 he who had put the question which had provoked the publication 
 of the famous dispatch. It was right that he should appear to-day 
 in its defence. He did so with an energy, a clearness, a simpli- 
 city of argument and of proof sufficient to carry rapid and 
 triumphant conviction to impartial minds. He also knew very 
 cleverly how to find the v/eak point that the Whig resolution 
 presented by abstaining from all comments on the proclamation of 
 Lord Canning. 
 
 The native Princes and peoples of Ijidia do not understand your Parliamentary 
 tactics and political cabala. Wlion they shall hear that the English Parliament 
 has deliberated on the act of the Governor-General, they will want to know 
 whether Parliament approves it or not ; and if you adopt Mr. Cardwell's reso- 
 lution, they will naturally conclude that you approve confiscation. This is the 
 
 whole question People recoil before this necessary conclusion ; they 
 
 urge that the confiscation is not applicable to the masses of the population, but 
 only to certain unpleasant individuals called Talookdars, who are mere feudal 
 barons, robber chiefs, and oppressors of the people. It is not the first time 
 that after the consummation of a great iniquity the authors of the wrong have 
 tried to calumniate the victims. Lord Shaftesbury, one of the authors of this 
 great Parliamentary attack, has said that the confiscation would only apply to 
 600 personf! in the kingdom of Oude. Well, that country is less peopled by 
 four-fifths than the United Kingdom ; let us apply the same calculation to our 
 own countr}' ; let us suppose that it were intended to confiscate the property of 
 3600 principal proprietoi-s of the three kingdoms, and amongst them of the 700 
 great proprietors who sit in the two Houses ; would you not call that a revolu- 
 tion, and not only a political but a social revolution ? Let us take care ; for 
 we live in a country filled with great Talookdars, a country where there is a 
 whole county in Scotland belonging to a member of the House of Lords ;* a 
 country where there are other persons possessing territories of sixty to elghtv 
 miles square ; where there are Dukes of Bedford and Dukes of Devonshire. + 
 We must ttike care what measures we propose against the Talookdars and the 
 great proprietors of India. But, besides, the figures quoted are wrong ; the 
 best authorities prove that there are at least 40,000 landed proprietors in Oude. 
 Now there is a detestable system which Lord Canning has permitted himself to 
 encourage, and which already triumphs in the Presidency of Madras. It con- 
 sists in suppressing all intermediate persons between the Supreme Government 
 and the poor labourer that cultivates the soil. And what is the object of this 
 system ? It is to merge all classes of the population in one, and to admit to a 
 share of all the fruits of the earth only two parties — the State and the peasant, — 
 the State, directly and perpetually occupied in extorting the greatest possible 
 revenue ; and the peasant, having thrown to him, day by day, a handful of rice 
 to make him able to draw from the soil what the State is to swallow up. After 
 replacing the Royal Government of Oude by your own, you are not content 
 with seizing on the public land and on the revenue of all the taxes, but you 
 proceed to say to all the lords and proprietors of the soil, to all except the humble 
 and obscure cultivators of this soil, "Come down from the independence and 
 dignity that you have hitherto enjoyed ; submit to the lot of all whom we con- 
 quer ; two-fifths of you have taken no part in the revolt, but in a general con- 
 fiscation th« innocent must suffer with the guilty— it is the fortune of war, and 
 
 * The Duke of Sutherland. 
 t Both traditionally identified with the Whig party. 
 
47 
 
 that fortune shall be yours." There are journals in India which applaud the 
 proclamation because they say it will do with a single blow that wliich it would 
 have taken twenty years to do otherwise. It will at once overthrow all the 
 sources of individual strength that might create centres of resistance to the 
 British rule. There are others, more honest and better advised, who declare that 
 
 this proclamation will require a new army to enforce its application 
 
 I call the House to witness, when I and my friends, members of the Opposition, 
 learnt that the Government disapproved of this proclamation, we applauded 
 the Minister who expressed himself to that effect. Had we not applauded him, 
 we should be unworthy to be men, unworthy to be Englishmen, unworthy to 
 be legislators of England, We should be strangers and indifferent to the dis- 
 tinction between good and bad, between justice and injustice. Such was the 
 first feehng of all the world before Lord EUenborough's dispatch was known, 
 but afterwards rose up the fatal influence of party-spirit, which has worked this 
 dispatch to its own purposes, with all the art which party- spirit teaches. 
 
 Here, turning against tlie most redoubtable adversary of the 
 dispatch, against Lord John Russell, he justly and happily in- 
 voked against hiin the remembrance of his own misdoings and the 
 imprudence that he committed in criticising any one in bitter and 
 severe language. He reminded him ]io\y, on the occasion of the 
 re-establishment of the Roman hierarchy, and the appearance of 
 Cardinal Wiseman in England, he, Lord John Russell, had written 
 to the Anglican Bishop of Durham a public letter which had given 
 the signal of a serious agitation, and sown the seeds of a division 
 that still exists. " The noble Lord," says our intrepid Quaker (in 
 whom the Dissenter at this point appeared under the political 
 orator), " has found fault with Lord EUenborough's despatch for 
 its tone of invective and sarcasm, but the noble Lord ought to bo 
 very reserved on this head, for he lives in a house of glass more 
 fragile than any of ours. When he takes his pen in hand, no one 
 can foresee what he is going to give to the public. I recall a very 
 extraordinary letter of his, which he doubtless intended to clothe 
 in an irreproachable phraseology, as he addressed it to a Bishop. 
 I do not wish to be too severe on the noble Lord, but when fjo 
 grave a statesman v/rites to a reverend Bishop, one may hope that 
 he will at least avoid sarcasm and invective. And yet in this very 
 letter he did not fear to pour forth floods of sarcasm and invective 
 on six millions of his fellow-countrymen, and thus to seriously dis- 
 turb the peace of the United Kingdom." 
 
 The House received with a marked sympathy and prolonged 
 applause these passages, and many others besides, which we must 
 omit* in order to come to the conclusion of the speech, where this 
 honest and eloquent man, to whom we listened with so much 
 emotion, raised his voice at the same time against the tactics 
 
 employed by the fqrmer Ministry to regain power by aid of this 
 
 * We must at the same time be permitted to deplore in this admirable speech 
 the presence of a tirade in bad taste against the private receptions where Lord 
 Palmerston was in the habit of welcoming and entertaining his friends and 
 adversaines with a courtesy in striking contrast to the recent arrogance of his 
 manner in the House. 
 
48 
 
 complication in Foreign Afiairs, and against the inhumanity with 
 which the Anglo- Indian press urged fresh measures of punishment. 
 
 All India trembles with the movement of volcanic fires. We should be 
 guilty of an extreme rashness, of an unpardonable crime against the English 
 monarchy, were we to give even the most indirect approval to the proclamation 
 of Lord Canning. I am asked to help in upsetting the present Ministers of 
 the Queen. When I take part in a struggle having as its object to replace this 
 Ministry by another, it will only be for an object which I shall understand and 
 approve myself, and which shall be understood and approved by the country. It 
 shall only be for a cause which shall bring a benefit to some portion of the great 
 British Empire. It shall only be with the chance of advancing the great principles 
 which the Liberal party — so far as we are a party— has undertaken to defend. 
 But in the present question the policy of the Government is a policy of mercy 
 and conciliation, and that policy is mine. Certain faithless, or at least ill-advised, 
 leaders of the Liberal party would wish to engage us in a different jwlicy — 
 a policy contrary to all our antecedents and to all our doctrines. For my part, 
 I remain faithful to the policy of justice and conciliation. Justice and mercy 
 are the supreme attributes of Divine perfection, but all men have everywhere 
 the right to invoke them and the faculty to understand them. Their voice 
 makes itself heard in every climate and in every language. And, amongst the 
 millions of docile and intelligent souls that people India, there is not one that 
 remains deaf to them. You have chosen another course, you have preferred to 
 conquer and reign by the sword. The sword is broken ; the shattered stump 
 alone remains in your hands ; you are humiliated and confounded. 
 
 Here, contrary to the ordinary custom of the House, mur- 
 murs were heard, and cries of *' No ! No ! " were raised from the 
 benches of the Opposition. 
 
 "Yes!" the speaker immediately replied, "you are humiliated and con- 
 founded in the eyes of civilized Europe. (Marks of dissent, and, at the same 
 time, cheers.) But you can regain what you have lost ; there are other chances 
 for you to try ; you have still the means to govern India, and to save it. I 
 conjure you to make use of those mean.'?, and not to suffer yourselves to be led 
 astray by a policy which would, perhaps, lead that great country to its ruin, 
 and which, even if you succeeded in it, would cover our name with eternal 
 disgrace." 
 
 After a speech so forcible, and so prodigiously applauded, one na- 
 turally expected to see appear at last on the opposite side an orator 
 capable of vindicating the motion of censure from the attacks by 
 which it had been shivered. But the expectation was vain. There 
 presented themselves only second and third rate combatants, whose 
 inferiority became more and more evident when Sir James Graham 
 rose to defend the same thesis as Mr. Bright. For a long time 
 exercising the highest functions in Ministries presided over by 
 Lord Grey, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, and lastly by Lord 
 Palmerston, he occupies with Mr. Gladetone the first rank in the 
 Peelite party. He commenced by declaring in the name of the 
 venerable Lord Aberdeen, the particular and bosom friend of Lord 
 Caiming, that Lord Canning — whose good reputation might apjxjar 
 compromised by the premature publication of Lord Ellenborougli's 
 dispatch — had received in the volunta.ry resignation of this 
 
49 
 
 Minister a reparation amply sufficient, and that the Government 
 had acted towards him with great moderation in not recalling him. 
 He then dwelt upon a fact, the news of which had arrived that 
 very day, that a strong disapproval by Sir James Outram had been 
 passed on the decree of confiscation ; that is, by the very English 
 general who had effected under Lord Dalhousie the annexation of 
 Oude ; who was in command there still ; and who in the last campaign 
 had attracted universal admiration by consenting, like our own 
 Boufflers at Malplaquet, and Lord Hardinge in Affghanistan, to 
 remain as a volunteer under the orders of his subordinate, because 
 this subordinate was Havelock, and he was unwilling to rob him of 
 the glory of a victory half accomplished. To such imposing testimony 
 Sir James Graham added all the weight of his own authority in 
 protesting against the theory and practice of political confiscation. 
 He recalled the warnings of the great teacher in matters of national 
 crimes, Machiavelli, who had taught that nations and individuals 
 pardon more willingly the murder of their ancestors than the de- 
 spoiling them of their patrimony; and he also quoted the Duke of 
 Wellington, who, in addressing himself to one of his successors in 
 India, had especially recommended a respect for private rights and 
 the property of individuals. Then contrasting the example of Napo- 
 leon I. with that of his conqueror, he recalled to mind, on the autho- 
 rity of a recent publication by M. Villemain, the energetic resistance 
 that the Emperor had encountered among his most faithful ad- 
 herents, when, during the hundred days, he desired to date from 
 Lyons a decree of confiscation against thirteen of his principal 
 adversaries. " The most honest, the most faithful of his friends, 
 the companion of his latest perils, and of his latest misfortunes. 
 Grand Marshal Bertrand, refused, in spite of the orders and solicita- 
 tions of his master, to countersign the fatal decree, and said to him, 
 * Those who counsel you to recommence a system of proscription 
 and confiscation are your most cruel enemies, and I will not be their 
 accomplice !' And Labedoyire added : ' If the system of pro- 
 scription and confiscation recommences, all this will not continue 
 long.' " Sir James recapitulated his opinions and, it may be said, 
 the whole discussion in these terms : — " The dispatch of Lord Ellen- 
 borough may be found fault with as to its form ; the proclamation 
 of Lord Canning deserved, and deserves to be found fault with 
 in its substance. The substance of the dispatch is good, but the 
 substance of the proclamation is bad. Those who ask us to censure 
 the present Government in order to put them in its place, ought 
 to state openly and at once whether they are for the proclamation 
 or the dispatch ; whether for confiscation or an amnesty. I am 
 removed by every memory and every party tie from the present 
 Government, but arrived as I am at the term of my career, and 
 no longer aspiring to power, I am in a position to express an 
 impartial opinion. And I reject every proposal to pass a censure 
 
50 
 
 on a Government which has only said the truth when it has said 
 that the principle of confiscation is incompatible with the mainte- 
 nance of the British Empire in India." 
 
 After these two speeches the cause of justice and of truth was 
 morally gained. The issue, however, of the deliberation was still un- 
 certain ; there yet remained some powerful voices to be heard ; on the 
 one side Mr. Disraeli, the leader of the House, and Mr. Gladstone, 
 the most eloquent of its orators ; on the other Lord Palmerston, with 
 the inexhaustible resources of his brilliant ease. Public anxiety 
 was at its height, and next day (May 21st), the last day of this 
 great contest, the concourse of members and spectators crowded 
 into the limited space of the House surpassed anything that had 
 hitherto been seen. From the gallery reserved for peers and 
 foreigners of distinction, Lord Derby and Lord Granville, side by 
 side, seemed to pass in review their two armies, awaiting the final 
 engagement which was to decide their common fate, and cause them 
 to change places in the other House. An electric agitation reigned 
 in the ranks of the assembly. But behold, at the commencement 
 of the proceedings an unlooked-for spectacle presented itself. A 
 member rises from the benches of the Opposition majority itself to 
 request the author of the vote of censure against the Government 
 to withdraw his motion. Mr. Cardwell, astounded at this hmsque 
 interpellation, refuses point-blank. Immediately, five or six other 
 members on the same side renew successively the same invitation. 
 This was the signal of the internal division that had been in opera- 
 tion from the commencement of the discussion, and of a defection 
 that was about to become more and more perilous. The army that 
 imagined itself so sure of victory began to waver. Mr. Cardwell 
 still hesitates. Then General De Lacy Evans, one of the oldest par- 
 tisans of Lord Palmerston, announces that he will propose on his 
 side a motion tending to blame directly the proclamation of Lord 
 Canning, and to denounce a policy of confiscation. Another member 
 of the Opposition declares that, if a division is persisted in he will 
 take no other part than that of wishing the author of the motion 
 good night, and will go away. Another member, with simpler 
 frankness, refers to the possibility of a dissolution, which will pro- 
 bably cost many partisans of the vote of censure their seats. An 
 hour passes in this strange and increasing confusion, and every 
 minute the certainty of humiliating defeat to the Opposition 
 becomes more apparent. To avoid this disaster, Lord Palmerston 
 takes his measures and decides on a retreat; to cover which, 
 he gives as a pretext the effect produced by the protest of General 
 Outram, quoted in the discussion of the previous night, and 
 officially published that very day, and then in his turn requests 
 Mr. Cardwell to withdraw his vote of censure. Mr. Cardwell at 
 last consents, amidst the derisive cheers of the Conservative party. 
 The day was decided and the campaign terminated without bring- 
 
51 
 
 ing up the reserves. The Ministers were victorious without one of 
 them, having risen to speak. 
 
 Nothing remained to the Cabinet but to register their victory 
 and determine beforehand its moral effect. This is what was 
 done by Mr. Disraeli with infinite address and a triumphant 
 modesty. He first showed that it was not the Ministry that had 
 either declined the combat or had any fears of the result ; but also 
 it was not the Ministry that had defeated its adversaries. He was 
 pleased to acknowledge that the battle had been gained by men who 
 neither belonged to the Government nor were among its adherents, 
 but by Mr. Koebuck, by Mr. Bright, by Sir James Graham, whose 
 independence, talent, and authority had carried into the debate 
 an invincible light, and modified the preconceived opinions of a 
 part of the House. Resolved, moreover, not to abuse his success 
 or to press too hard his adversaries, he declared that so far as Lord 
 Canning would conform to the policy of prudence and conciliation 
 that had been recommended to him, and of which he had so long 
 been the generous representative, the Government would continue 
 to him their confidence and support; that moreover, without 
 waiting for the result of the discussion, a telegraphic dispatch had 
 already carried to him this assurance. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, Lord John Eussell, and Mr. Bright rose in turn 
 to congi'atulate the House, according to their different points of 
 view, on this unexpected conclusion, and to place on record both 
 the justice rendered to Lord Canning, and the universal recog- 
 nition of the principle of clemency and moderation in India, After 
 which the House adjourned until after the Whitsuntide recess. 
 
 It is very rare in established political assemblies thus to see, 
 with regard to any important measure, the previously fixed opinions 
 of the majority changed by the sole and immediate influence of a 
 debate. I would even add that it ought seldom to be so ; and yet 
 this should not be taken as any proof against the sincerity or mora- 
 lity of representative Government. In questions relatively insigni- 
 ficant or suddenly arisen, public and improvised discussion will 
 naturally determine the decision. But it is otherwise in party con- 
 tests, in questions of a higher importance already abundantly de- 
 bated by a free press and by common opinion. Parliamentary dis- 
 cussion is thus more a result than a preamble. All legislative deli- 
 beration is a judgment ; the discussion which precedes, establishes 
 and produces the victorious argument ; it gives to the case of the 
 adverse parties the most complete and incontestible publicity ; but 
 it serves, above all, to declare, for the benefit of contemporaries and 
 of posterity, the grounds of the decree. I have seen often a majority 
 increase or diminish under the instantaneous effects of the words of 
 certain orators ; but I have never seen it yield in such a degree to 
 the gradually prevailing ascendancy of eloquent truth. 
 
 It was not wronglv, then, that so many different orators pon- 
 
 e2 
 
52 
 
 gratulated the House on the issue of the debate ; for what had come 
 to pass was the triumph of reason and justice — a triumph con- 
 solidated by the moderation and prudence of all parties — a triumph 
 obtained by the weapons only of discussion and eloquence. Party 
 spirit had been beaten down and defeated. All legitimate interests 
 had been nobly acknowledged and defended ; the honour of a gi'eat 
 functionary, absent and accused, had found faithful and zealous 
 champions; his character had been sheltered from all reproach with 
 an honourable solicitude by those even who had most severely con- 
 demned his conduct. The authority of Government had been 
 maintained by men as completely strangers to its responsibilities 
 as independent of its influence. The eloquent but imprudent Minis- 
 ter who had inflicted on himself his own punishment for the exag- 
 gemtion of his language, must have felt more than consoled in 
 hearing his doctrines victoriously sustained by the most powerful 
 voices, and implicitly approved by the legislative majority. Hu- 
 manity, justice, the rights of the conquered and the feeble, found 
 for their champions the most reputed and intrepid orators of an 
 assembly whose echoes resound throughout the whole world ; and 
 theii* voices would penetrate even to the Ganges, to establish there the 
 laws of fair warfare and the conditions of a civilizing conquest. 
 
 Hie super Gangem, supei- exauditus et Indos, 
 Implebit terras voce ; et furialia bella 
 Fulmine compescet linguae. 
 
 In a word, moral force had been openly and nobly preferred to 
 material force by the organs of a great nation, which is able and 
 desirous of conducting its own affairs — a nation that nothing 
 dejects or alarms ; that is mistaken at times, but which urges to 
 extremes neither men nor things ; that, lastly, knows how to arrange 
 everything, to repair everything without need of tutelage, or of seek- 
 ing safety in anything but her own masculine and intelligent energy. 
 
 Whilst these reflections were made around me, I left this grand 
 spectacle with feelings of emotion and satisfaction, such as any man 
 would experience who sees in a Government something besides an 
 antechamber, and in a civilized people something else than an indolent 
 and docile flock to be clipped and pastured under the silent shades 
 of an enervating security. I felt myself more than ever attached 
 to the liberal hopes and convictions which have always animated, 
 during the most painful periods of our history, that chosen band 
 of honest men whom erroi-s and defeats have never dejected, and 
 who even in exile, even on the scaffold, have preserved sufficient 
 patriotism to believe that France, even as England, could bear a 
 rule of justice, light, and liberty — a noble faith, worthy of 
 inspiring the most painful sacrifices, and which betrayed as it has 
 been by fortime, deserted by the crowd, and insulted by cowards, does 
 not the less hold its unconquerable emj)ire over proud souls and 
 generous minds. 
 
53 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Since my return to France, I have read in the principal organ of 
 the clergy and of the new alliance between the throne and the altar, 
 that all I had just seen and heard was " une farce joiiee ct grand 
 appareil,'^ such as is frequently seen in the history of deliberative 
 assemblies." Happy country, thought I, and above all, happy 
 clergy, to whom is presented such excellent teaching, and in 
 language so admirable. 
 
 In the meantime the debates of the month of May last have 
 exercised a benign influence on the conduct of afiairs in India. 
 Lord Canning has returned without trouble into his former ways, 
 from which for a moment he had been lured by evil counsels. 
 "Whilst making an apology for confiscation in that dispatch of the 
 7th of June which the journals have recently published, he has not 
 the less returned to an indulgent and moderate policy. If the 
 latest accounts are to be believed, the submission of Oude is gra- 
 dually being effected. The talookdars^ gained over hy the con- 
 ciliatory conduct of Commissioner Montgomery, submit, one 
 after the other, and return to their pro2)erties at the same time 
 that they return to their duty. In the other provinces of India 
 the insurrection, though still formidable, and more formidable 
 than it is thought in England, appears nevei-theless to be narrow- 
 ing and expiring. None of the sanguinary hopes which at the 
 same epoch last year were heard in the ranks of England's enemies 
 have yet been answered; none of their sinister predictions have 
 been as yet fulfilled. 
 
 The law which has put an end to the political existence of the 
 East India Company confides the government of the immense 
 peninsula to a Secretary of State, assisted by a permanent Council, 
 of which half the members are nominated by the Crown and half 
 are elected. An article of this law establishes that when a private 
 person has any complaint to make against the Indian Administra- 
 tion, he must proceed against the Secretary of State. This is but the 
 application of that grand principle of common law in England 
 by which every citizen can have recourse to a court of justice 
 against a public officer — an immense, but insufficiently known, 
 guarantee of British freedom, presenting a striking contrast 
 to the inviolability of the smallest of our functionaries ordained 
 by the constitution of the year VIII., which people have had the 
 simplicity, even under the constitutional system, to number among 
 the happy results of 1789. 
 
 This Secretary of State is Lord Stanley, whose vigorous youth 
 and solidity of understanding promise to the aifairs of India a 
 prudent and energetic guide, and insj)ire universal confidencci 
 He has nobly stated the programme of the new organization 
 of the Government of India, in his speech of 20th September 
 to one of the municipal corporations of London : — " We have to 
 
 * Tlnitievm O^rA Afav ^9.f\9. 
 
54 
 
 preserve India from the Huctuations of Parliamentary politics, 
 and to defend England against a danger more distant, but not 
 less real, the contact of our Executive with the administration of 
 a country that cannot be governed except by means of absolute 
 power." The Ministry of his father owes to the debate on 
 the motion of Mr. Cardwell the consolidation of its existence, 
 previously uncertain and wavering. Liberals of opinions the most 
 advanced are easily resigned to the temporary duration of a 
 Cabinet which gives to the great reforming and independent party 
 time to seek leaders younger and safer than Lord Palmerston; 
 whilst, in the meantime, it enters itself into the path of useful 
 reforms and legitimate progress. The leaders of the Conservative 
 Administration suffer in this moment the chastisement inflicted by 
 Providence on statesmen whom political passions — I say passions, 
 not a servile and factious lust of power — have led into injustice and 
 exaggeration. The power they have so coveted is granted to them, 
 but on the condition of following precisely the same conduct as 
 their predecessors. Since their second advent to power. Lord 
 Derby and Mr. Disraeli are engaged in doing all they stigmatized 
 as criminal in Sir Robert Peel : they accept, or they propose them- 
 selves, liberal reforms which they have, or certainly would have, 
 combated, had they remained in oj)position ; reforms which occa- 
 sioned the rupture with their illustrious chief, from whom they 
 separated themselves when he recognised the necessity of abandon- 
 ing the old Tory dogmas and of advancing with the age. The 
 admission of Jews into Parliament, the abolition of a property 
 qualification for members, the promise of a parliamentary reform 
 more thorough than any that has recently been proposed, indicate 
 the steps they have taken in this new path, and have naturally 
 gained for them the support of liberal sympathies ; whilst by 
 measures sincerely favourable to religious liberty in schools, in 
 prisons, and in the army they have secured a certain degree of 
 adhesion from the most militant section of the Catholic episcopacy 
 and press of Ireland. 
 
 But if for a time it has consolidated this Conservative Ministry, 
 the great debate on India has rendered a still more considerable 
 service to England and to Europe in confirming the defeat of Lord 
 Palmerston. In spite of the tardy skill he exhibited in retreat at 
 the close of the combat, this defeat was not less evident and 
 complete, and during the rest of the session the House seemed to 
 take pleasure in showing him that it had finally thrown off the 
 yoke. He may again, perhaps, arrive at power, so abundant are 
 the resources of his mind on the one hand, while on the other the 
 returns of popularity in a free country are so unforeseen and natu- 
 ral ; but he will return warned if not chastened, and convinced of 
 the necessity of being more careful in his treatment both of his 
 friends and of his adversaries. 
 
 Another power still more formidable than that of Lord Pal- 
 
55 
 
 mei-ston came out vanquished from the contest, the power of the 
 Times. For two yeai'S the vassal of the noble Lord, this journal 
 had devoted all its resources to the success of the plan of attack de- 
 vised by the ex-Minister. It is impossible not to see in the fact of 
 its defeat a conclusive proof of the national good sense of England. 
 The incontestable utility of this immense machine of publicity as the 
 potent organ of individual griefs and the bold stimulator of public 
 sentiment would be more than counterbalanced by its omnipotence, 
 were this omnipotence unchecked or did it not now and then re- 
 ceive a lesson. The balance of constitutional powers would be 
 seriously compromised by the exclusive preponderance of a single 
 journal, whose writers, without mission or responsibility, speak 
 every day as preceptors to a public the most numerous on earth ; 
 but, as I think I have elsewhere proved, freedom of parliamentary 
 discussion and its universal publicity are the necessary and efficacious 
 countei-poise to the dangerous omnipotence of the press. Of this 
 the debate on India has furnished a new and conclusive proof. 
 
 Let it be well remarked that, in all these vicissitudes of English 
 politics in the present day, there is nothing of that pretended 
 contest between aristocracy and democracy, in which superficial 
 observers fancy they have the key to the movements of opinion 
 amongst our neighbours. It is the middle class which in reality 
 governs England, but a middle class far wider in its basis, and 
 containing in itself more gradations of rank than that which has 
 governed in France at certain epochs of our ancient monarchy, and 
 during the continuance of the parliamentary rule. This middle class 
 never displays either the puerile infatuations, or the peevish and 
 envious pretensions, or the cowardly abdications, the inexcusable 
 panics, which disfigure the histoiy of our bourgeoisie. Intelligence 
 it esteems highly, but still more does it value moral strength. It 
 seeks and respects wealth, but only as the test of force and social 
 activity. It has a horror of indolence and weakness, and, conse- 
 quently of arbitrary authority imposed or acquiesced in. It desires 
 to exist for itself, and by itself ; hence its instinctive and tradi- 
 tional repugnance to centralization and bureaucracy. On the other 
 hand, it does not aspii*e to invade all political functions, and to close 
 at once from on high and from below every access to power against 
 all not of its own class. It opens its ranks to every aspirant, 
 without disputing any superiority anterior to or independent of itself. 
 It willingly consents also that an aristocracy of birth, which has 
 been recruited for ages from its own bosom, should represent at 
 home and abroad the public authority and national grandeur — as a 
 great sovereign enthroned in the tranquil and simple majesty of 
 his power leaves willingly to his great lords the care of being the 
 showmen of the State in distant embassies, and of intriguing for 
 the honour of burdensome offices. 
 
 But it takes good care that its wiU is done, and that with its 
 interest none other enters into competition, that no conviction over- 
 
56 
 
 rules its own. And it is not from to-day that is dated this hidden but 
 real sovereignty. Those who know English history well, are aware 
 that for two centuries it has always existed and always increased. 
 Throughout all superficial party divisions it is the mind of the 
 middle classes which has always directed those great currents of 
 opinion, of which dynastic and ministerial revolutions are but the 
 official interpretation. Never has the patrician body in England 
 been aught else than the active and devoted agent, the mouthpiece 
 and instrument, of that intelligent and resolute class in which is com- 
 pressed the national will and power. It is this class that Cromwell 
 and Milton personified when by the sword of the one and the pen 
 of the other the Republic was seated for a season on the shattered 
 throne of Charles I. It was for it and with it that Monk recalled 
 the Stuarts, and that, thirty years later, Parliament replaced them 
 by a fresh dynasty. It was it that with the two Pitts raised in the 
 eighteenth century the edifice of British preponderance, and that 
 with Burke prevented England from being infected and ruined by 
 the contagion of revolutionaiy ideas. It is it, finally, that with 
 Peel has in our day inaugurated the policy of a new era, that 
 of the ameliomtion of the condition and the extension of the rights 
 of the labouring classes. 
 
 Hence the imperious necessity of this transformation of ancient 
 parties which discovers itself in every incident of contemporaiy 
 politics, and which hovered over the great debate I have attempted 
 to describe. I hear great minds that I venerate groan over this 
 inevitable transformation ; I see them endeavouring to retard it. 
 Vain efforts and unfounded fears ! This dispersion of old Par- 
 liamentary parties is legitimate, natui'al, and desirable. Ancient 
 parties are extinct, and the necessity for them is gone. The Whig 
 j)arty is buried in its own triumph : to it be the immortal honour 
 of having installed by its initiative and perseverance those noble 
 and salutary reforms which have cost not one drop of blood, and 
 have caused liberal ideas to triumph by the only means that liberty 
 will assert — Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, the 
 Suppression of Slavery, Abolition of the Corn Laws. Its former 
 adversaries have now become its rivals, and they may outrun it in 
 the path of substantial and popular reforms destined to replace the 
 ancient routine by the blessings of rational and moral progress. 
 At the present time every one in England is desirous of progress, 
 and every one also desires it without betraying the memory of past 
 glories, and without disturbing the foundations of society. Of all 
 the questions which at present interest the safety and honour of 
 the country, there is not a single one which is connected with the 
 old divisions of "Whigs and Tories. What is there in common with 
 them in the Fi'ench alliance, the Indian revolt, the Russian ol- 
 Chinese war, the political and industrial emancipation of the Co- 
 lonies 1 Nothing, absolutely nothing. To govern the country well, 
 to draw from its colossal resources all that is possible for its honour 
 
57 
 
 and prosperity, that is the only problem which remains to be solved. 
 There is enough here to give a lawful field to all honest ambition, and 
 to call into play all men of established or rising reputation. There 
 is enough also to introduce from time to time into the regions of 
 power those periodical modifications, those salutary crises indispen- 
 sable in a free government, because they preserve majorities from 
 rusting, and statesmen from monopolizing the sweets of power. 
 
 The ti-ue wants, the real dangers of the country, are no longer 
 where we have been accustomed to seek them. Fifteen yeai-s ago 
 it was pi*edicted that the abolition of the Corn Laws and Free 
 Trade would create an irreconcileable antagonism between the 
 agricultural and manufacturing interests. Quite the contraiy of 
 this has happened.* The gains of the agriculturists have exactly 
 followed those of manufactures, and have often surpassed them. 
 It was feared that the population of the country districts would 
 be sacrificed to that of the towns. On the contrary, it is always 
 the latter, which, by constantly increasing, inspires a soUcitude as 
 serious as legitimate, and constitutes the real social infirmity of 
 England.t To provide a remedy is not the aim of the Government 
 only ; it is the whole country which strives to discover the remedy. 
 Its generous efi'orts will be recompensed by success if, as there is 
 every prospect, while avoiding the scourge of pauperism, it knows 
 how to check those of bureaucracy and centralization which have 
 eveiy where on the Continent destroyed or enchained liberty with- 
 out either destroying or enchaining pauperism. 
 
 I have in these pages already indicated, and I again refer to it 
 with pleasure, the most significant and the most consoling symp- 
 tom in the actual state of England ; it is the persevering ai-dour 
 which induces the elite of the English nation to prosecute sociid 
 and administrative refoi-ms, to improve the state of prisons, of 
 unhealthy abodes, to propagate popular, professional, agiucul- 
 tural, and domestic instruction, to increase the resources of re- 
 ligious ministry, to simplify criminal and civil procedure, to labour 
 in everything for the moral and material welfare of the lower 
 classes, not by the humiliating tutelage of a power without control, 
 but by the generous coalition of every independent force and every 
 spontaneous sacrifice. 
 
 The danger of England is not, then, from within. People would 
 wish, indeed, to believe her to be the prey, like ourselves, of the 
 
 * The Workmen of the Two Worlds. A publication of the Society of Social 
 Economy, 1858, vol. i. p. 396. 
 
 + I recommend to all who wish to probe this sore, a work entitled : Dives aiid 
 Lazarus, London, 1858. Amongst a number of facts, interesting as they are 
 painful, there will be found in this book three things peculiarly significant : 1st, 
 The relative morality and charity that exists in the relations of the poor one 
 with another. 2ndly, The moral superiority recognised by an English Protestant 
 in the Irish Catholic poor. 3rdly, The noble and salutary boldness of a publicity 
 which descends torch in hand into the abyss of misery to reveal the evil and 
 invoke the remedy. 
 
58 
 
 meuaces of Socialism, and obliged to take refuge in autocracy. In- 
 genious panegyrists of absolute power have lately expended their 
 discernment in seeking, in unknown pamphlets and obscure meetings, 
 the proofs of the progress of revolutionary ideas on the other side 
 of the Channel. These learned people have forgotten, or probably 
 they have never known, all that was said and published of this 
 kind from 1790 to 1810, not by any means in a few obscure dens, 
 but in open day, with the tacit consent of a great parliamentary 
 party, and under the patronage of several of the most celebrated 
 men in the country, at a time when the nation was suffering 
 from the severest financial embarrassments, from frequent mutinies 
 in her navy, and from a dread of the formidable enterprises of the 
 greatest Captain of modern times. Every man who has the slightest 
 acquaintance with England must smile at these interested appre- 
 hensions. One might refer these authors to that honest shopkeeper 
 of London, who appeared the other day at the police courts to 
 demand of the magistrate how he was to repay himself the postage 
 of a Socialist pamphlet which had been sent to his address. Not 
 only does the nation itself ask for no organic change, but no real 
 political party, old or new, thinks of it. Never was the Constitu- 
 tion more universally respected, more faithfully practised, more 
 afiectionately invoked. After seventy years have passed it is still 
 true what Mirabeau replied in 1790 to the ill-omened birds who 
 prophesied the imminent ruin of the liberal nation par excellence 
 — " England lost ! In what latitude, I pray you, has she been 
 shipwrecked 1 I see her, on the contrary, active, powerful, coming 
 forth strong from out of a periodical agitation, and about to fill a 
 gap in her Constitution with all the energy of a great people." 
 
 No, the danger of England is not there j it exists, but else- 
 where. It is from without that the true perils of England 
 threaten her — perils to which she may succumb, and respecting 
 which she indulges in terrible illusions. I speak not only of the 
 Indian revolt, though I am far from being so satisfied as to its 
 ultimate issue as people appear to be in England ; but, to my mind, 
 it is Europe she has to fear more than Asia. At the end of the 
 first Empire, Europe, with the exception of France, was intimately 
 allied with England, and, moreover, filled with respect for the 
 recent exploits of her army in Spain and Belgium. It is no 
 longer so at the present day. The English armies have unjustly 
 but incontestably, lost their prestige. And besides, the gradual 
 progress of liberal ideas in England, and the retrograde march of 
 the great Continental States for some years past towards absolute 
 power, have placed the two policies on two roads altogether dif- 
 ferent, but parallel and sufficiently near to each other to make it 
 possible that a conflict may any day burst forth. 
 
 There is also in many minds a moral repulsion against England, 
 which is of itself a serious danger. The English consider as an 
 honour and as a compliment the invectives of a press that 
 
59 
 
 preaches fanaticism and despotism; but they would do very- 
 wrong to believe that there are not entertained against them in 
 Europe other hostile feelings than those of which they have reason 
 to be proud. The Comte de Maistre, one whom they ought to 
 reproach themselves for not knowing more of, who had never seen 
 England, but who had divined what it was by the instinct of 
 genius, and admired it with the frankness of a great soul, has 
 written thus : — " Believe not that I fail to render full justice to 
 the English. T admire their Government (without thinking I do 
 not say that it ought, but even that it could be, transplanted else- 
 where) ; I bow down before their criminal laws, their arts, their 
 science, their public spirit, &c.; but all this is marred in their ex- 
 ternal political life by intolerable national prejudices, and a pride 
 without measure, without prudence, which is revolting to other 
 nations, and hinders them from uniting for the good cause. Do 
 you know the grand difficulty of the extraordinary epoch in which 
 we are now living (1803 ) ? Itu that the catLse we love is defetided 
 by the nation we do not love J'' 
 
 As to myself, loving the nation almost as much as the cause she 
 defends, I regret that M. le Maistre is no more there to castigate, 
 with that anger of love which rendered him so eloquent, the 
 awkward effrontery which British selfishness displayed in the affair 
 of the Isthmus of Suez, the gate of which England would close to 
 all, though she possesses beforehand the key at Perim. He would 
 have been equally well worth hearing on the ridiculous suscepti- 
 bility of a part of the English press on the subject of the Russian 
 coal depot at Yillafranca ; as if a nation that is every day extending 
 her maritime dominion in all quarters of the world, and occupies 
 in the Mediterranean positions such as Malta, Gibraltar, and 
 Corfu, could complain with a good grace that other nations 
 should strive to extend their commerce and navigation. 
 
 On one hand, then, the legitimate resentment excited by the 
 imprudent and inconsistent policy of England in her relations with 
 foreign States; on the other, the horror and spite inspired in sei'vile 
 minds by the spectacle of her durable and prosperous liberty, have 
 created against her in Europe a common fund of animosity. It 
 would be easy for any one who was willing to take advantage of 
 this animosity to profit by it to engage England in some conflict 
 from which she would run a great risk of coming out vanquished, 
 or at least with diminished power. It would be then that the 
 popular masses, wounded in their national self-love by unforeseen 
 checks, might raise a tempest of which nothing in her history 
 hitherto has given an idea. To prevent this catastrophe, it behoves 
 her no longer to be blind as to the nature and extent of her 
 resources. Her military forces, and particularly the military 
 knowledge of her officers and generals, are evidently unworthy of 
 her mission. Her naval forces may be, if not surpassed, at least 
 equalled, as they have already been by our own under Louis XIV. 
 
60 
 
 and under Louis XVI. ; as they will be again when our honour and 
 our interest demand it. She trusts too much to her past glories, 
 and to the national bravery of her sons. Because she is essentially 
 warlike, she wrongly believes herself to be keeping pace with 
 modern progress in the art of war, and to be in a condition to resist 
 the superiority of numbers, of discipline, and the experience of 
 camps. Because in 1848 the bravest and best disciplined armies 
 failed to preserve the great Continental monarchies from a sudden 
 and disgraceful fall before an internal enemy, she continues to doubt 
 if an efficient and numerous army be the first condition of safety 
 against a foreign enemy. Because she is free, she wrongly thinks 
 she has nothing to fear from freedom's enemies. No ! her institu- 
 tions are not an impregnable bulwark, as was rashly said by Mr. 
 Boebuck, on his return from Cherbourg. Alas ! the experience of 
 ancient and modern times has proved that free nations can succumb 
 like the rest, and even more quickly than others. Liberty is the 
 most precious of treasures; but, like, all treasures, it excites the 
 envy, the covetousness, the hatred of those above all who do not 
 like that others should possess what they themselves have neither 
 known nor have wished to possess. Like all treasures, like beauty, 
 truth, like virtue itself, it must be watched and protected with a 
 tender solicitude and indefatigible vigilance. All the inventions 
 of which modern science is so proud, profit despotism as much, or 
 more than liberty. Steam and electricity will lend always more 
 force to heavy battalions than to sound reasoning. By more fre- 
 quently substituting mechanism for the moral spring of man's 
 individual energy, they induce and second the empire of force over 
 right. This is what the friends of England and of liberty should 
 never lose sight of. 
 
 This is the only point upon which we do not feel reassured by 
 the prodigies of that individual enterprise, and of those spontaneous 
 associations whose intrepid and inexhaustible energy creates the 
 force and supreme glory of England. In all other matters it is 
 evident that the whole power and fortune of autocracy must con- 
 fess itself vanquished and eclipsed by this incomparable fertility of 
 private industry which, in our own day, without either the initia- 
 tion or aid of the State, has constructed in the port of Liverpool 
 floating basins six times more vast than those of Cherbourg, raised 
 on the ground of the Crystal Palace the marvel of contemporary 
 architecture, sounded the depths of the ocean to deposit there the 
 electric cable, and thus united the two great free nations of the 
 globe by this voice of lightning the first words of which have carried 
 in an instant across the abyss, and from one world to another, the 
 song of joy of the angels at the birth of the Saviour : Olcmj to 
 God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will towards men. 
 
 But it is not only in the regions of vast industry, where they ar- 
 rest every eye, and extract testimonies of admiration from the most 
 adverse, that are produced these marvels of free and personal 
 enterprise ; for my part, I feel much more emotion and still more 
 
6Xi 
 
 reassured when I contemplate this spirit at work in the very bowels 
 of society, in the obscure depths of daily life ; and it is there we must 
 see it spreading far its roots and developing its vigorous growth, to 
 estimate all the value to the body and soul of a nation that lies in 
 the noble habit of providing for itself against its wants and its 
 perils. 
 
 I will adduce, and with them I must conclude this already over- 
 lengthy article, two characteristic instances worthy of awakening, in 
 my opinion, the envy of honest men in all countries, but which have 
 passed almost unperceived in England itself, so much do they re- 
 semble what is seen there every day, and what will be sought for 
 in vain elsewhere. 
 
 I open by chance an obscure provincial journal, the MancJiester 
 Examiner, of the month of July last, and I find the history of four 
 or five young people of the middle class, who, in 1833, imdertook 
 to found at their own expense a free school in Angel Meadow, one 
 of the wildest quarters of the immense manufacturing city of Man- 
 chester. They wished, according to their own expression, to get 
 at the paganism of the working classes. But, like all paganisms, 
 that of the Angel Meadow showed itself to be little accessible 
 and little grateful. Our young apostles were installed in a small 
 unoccupied house, and they attracted there a few children out 
 of the streets. By way of recompence, the people indulged them 
 with a noise and clatter every evening, broke theii* windows every 
 day, and flung dead cats and dogs through the apertures into the 
 school-room. They took care not to be angry, not to complain, 
 and to persevere in visiting, one by one, all the fathers of families 
 in the neighbourhood, to enlighten and reassure them. At the 
 end of five years they had conquered. They now receive the 
 sympathy of the population, as also the support of the clergy, and 
 they possess foiu' hundred pupils, of whom they are the voluntary 
 teachers ; and this does not prevent them from giving a course of 
 lessons to adults, in conformity with the programme of the great 
 Working Class Associations of the town. They have also become 
 the emulatoi's of that admirable institution called the " Bagged 
 School Union," because it has for its exclusive object to instruct 
 children of the meanest condition, and which counts already 
 in London alone 166 schools, 41,802 pupils, 350 paid masters, 
 and, what is still more praiseworthy, 2139 gratuitous mem- 
 bers, who impose on themselves the duty of going several times 
 a week to teach the children of the poor.* I shall be told 
 that this is what is done in Fi-ance by all our clergy and all our 
 sisters devoted to the instruction of the people, as well as by many 
 of the pious amongst the laity. Without doubt j and I will add 
 that this is what they do in England wherever they are found. But 
 there are not enough of them, even in France, much less in Eng- 
 land. Let us honour a sincere devotion to doing good in whatever 
 
 * DAVfesiiis DB Pontes. Les Eeformes Sociales en Angleterre, Rwm de 
 Deux Mondcd, 1st September, 185S< 
 
62 
 
 form it is manifested ; if it can ever prove formidable to any person 
 or any thing, it will certainly not be to the Catholic clergy, or to 
 Truth. Moreover, until it be affirmed and also demonstrated by 
 the new oracles of the Church that the state of the Indians of 
 Paraguay is the only ideal suited to European nations of the nine- 
 teenth century, it must be admitted that the civil and civic virtues 
 have their importance, and that religion, which is everywhere so 
 shorn of its strength in presence of poverty and materialism, has 
 at least the same interest as society in the spontaneous development 
 of the moral and intellectual force with which it has pleased the 
 Almighty to endow his favoured creatures. 
 
 My other example of this fortunate and consoling activity of in- 
 dividual effort is drawn from a different sphere ; and it strikingly 
 displays the faculty of self-government, and the happy relations of 
 the upper and lower classes of the English population. Not far 
 from Birmingham, another manufacturing metropolis of England, 
 there rises an old feudal manor-house, surrounded by a fine park, 
 and called Aston Hall. Charles I. had lodged there in 1642, and 
 the people of Birmingham, who took part with the Parliament, 
 came there to besiege it. In course of time the great town as it 
 grew had finally reached it, and had enclosed in its successive 
 ramifications the old domain, with its noble trees and verdant 
 slopes. The ancient and impoverished family who were the pro- 
 prietors found themselves obliged to sell it, and it seemed that soon 
 this fresh and healthy verdure would have to be converted 
 into new streets full of factories and forges. Then the idea occurred 
 to some persons of purchasing it, and transforming it into a People^ s 
 Fork, in conformity with the example already given in other towns. 
 We are all of \is acquainted with very enlightened countries where 
 such an enterprise has been regarded as impossible, except at least 
 after knocking at the doors of the public treasury, or getting at the 
 privy purse of the Sovereign by cleverly alternating the impor- 
 tunities of entreaty with the sweets of adulation. At Birmingham, 
 things are managed differently. A committee is formed ; it is 
 principally composed of workmen, with a certain number of patrons 
 and master manufacturers. The whole town joins in the under- 
 taking. A company is established, in which the workmen are 
 shareholders ; and it is supported by a subscription to which every 
 one contributes. The little charity-girl deposits her halfpenny be- 
 sides the bank notes of the wealthy manufacturer. The sum required 
 is soon found ; the estate is bought in the name of the association; 
 the old manor-house, carefully restored, is destined to receive a 
 permanent exhibition of the arts and manufactures of the district; 
 and the large park, with its aged trees, is transformed into a 
 promenade and place of recreation for the families of the working- 
 classes. Then, and then only, when nothing has to be done but to 
 inaugurate this happy conquest of intelligent and courageous enter- 
 prise^ they send to seek the Queen ; for all these little municipal 
 
63 
 
 republics are anxious to show that royalty is their keystone. This 
 great segment of society, so proud and secure in itself, knows well 
 that it has nothing to fear from the sovereign power, at once 
 its graceful ornament and its faithful agent, which has also on 
 its part nothing to fear from the active spontaneity of its subjects; 
 which does not pretend to thwart any emancipation, any develop- 
 ment of individual independence; which imposes neither submission 
 on any source of activity, nor silence on any contradiction ; which is, 
 in tnith, nothing but liberty crowned. On the 15th of June, 1858, 
 the Queen obeyed this touching invitation: she came, and six 
 hundred thousand artisans thronged to meet her, issuing by myriads 
 from all the industrial hives of the districts of the hlack land^ 
 that is to say, the counties of Stafford and Warwick, the col- 
 lieries of which supply the vast iron-works with fuel. They 
 brought to her the affectionate homage of their happy coun- 
 tenances, of their free souls, and their manly efforts to prosper 
 and be free. The Queen passed through this throng of enthu- 
 siastic people, and inaugurated the new Museum ; she knighted 
 the Mayor of Birmingham, by touching his shoulder, according to 
 the ancient ceremonial, with a sword handed to her for this pur- 
 pose by the Lord-Iiieutenant of the county ; then she caused to 
 approach the eight artisans whom their comrades had marked out as 
 the most usefully zealous in the common work. She said to them, 
 " I thank you personally for what you have done to preserve this 
 old manor, and I trust that the Feople's Pa/rk will for ever be a 
 benefit to the working classes of your town." As she went away, 
 forty thousand children of the free and national schools of different 
 secte, ranged in rows along the passage reserved for the Queen, 
 under the huge trees which had perhaps seen Charles I. pass under 
 them, sing in chorus, with an accent at once innocent and full of 
 feeling, that drew tears from more than one present, a hymn in 
 somewhat doggrel verse, but the refrain of which is — 
 
 Now pray we for our country, 
 That England long may be 
 The holy and the happy. 
 And the gloriously free. 
 
 Note to Page 12. 
 
 Eeaders may refer to the speech of the Rev. Mr. Fitzgerald, a Catholic Arch- 
 deacon in Ireland, in the Univers of the 25th of August. He there proposes to 
 his countrymen to have recourse to the Emperor of the French, in order to obtain 
 from the English Government the reform of the laws relative to the reciprocal 
 rights of farmers and landlords. Let us fancy what would happen in France, 
 in Austria, or in Naples if a Catholic priest were to speak publicly in tliis 
 fashion, and were to suggest to the faithful to address themselves to a foreign 
 prince in order to force the Government of their nation to do them justice. 
 
Some days later, at a meeting of ten thousand persons, held in the open air on 
 the 28th August, at Nenagh, for the purpose of addressing a petition to Parlia- 
 ment, praying for the revision of the trial of two peasants, condemned to death for 
 having assassinated a proprietor, the Eev. John Kenyon, a Catholic priest, address- 
 ing the people assembled, spoke as follows : — "I am indignant with myself when 
 I think that I lower myself to such a point as to propose to you a petition to a 
 Saxon Parliament, to those English who have their foot upon our necks, and their 
 hand in our pockets. People speak of our progress — of our new prosperity. No, 
 we are not prosperous, we cannot be; and even if we could, we would not ; for what 
 is prosperity without liberty ? Let us retain our grievances as a ti-easure, and let 
 no one deprive us of them until God has granted us the power, and pointed out 
 to us the means, of avenging them. If we should once more lower ourselves so far 
 as to petition, the only proper petition is to ask Parliament to hang Judge Keogh, 
 that vile and iniquitous judge (who had presided at the assizes at which the 
 sentence in question was pronounced). If the justice of the country %cm anything 
 hut a farcCy Judge Keogh would before now have been hung on a gibbet fifty 
 feet high." The hearers loudly applauded this language, which was published in 
 all the journals, and which no one thought of repressing. It must be added that 
 it alarmed no one, and it is that fact which at the same time shows the strength of 
 the English Government, and the liberty enjoyed by Ireland. Let it be recollected 
 what happened some time ago to an advocate of Toulouse, who published a 
 pamphlet on the condemnation of Bi-other L^otade, and it will be understood what 
 weight ought to be attached to the pretended oppression which at the present day 
 presses upon the Catholics of Ireland, according to the ignorant declaimers who, 
 at their pleasure, confound the past and the present. • 
 
 Besides this, it would be very false and very \mjust to attribute to the whole of 
 the Irish or English clergy the ideas or the language of Father Kenyon. The most 
 illustrious and most elevated member of the Catholic hierarchy in the United 
 Kingdom, Cardinal Wiseman, expressed himself as follows at a public dinner given 
 at Waterford, on the 14th September, 1858 : — "Everything seems to announce a 
 future more prosperous than the past of Ireland has been for several centuries. All 
 the material conditions of the people are improved. They have habituated them- 
 selves to find in an industrious activity and in the cultivation of the national soil 
 the resources which they sought in other countries and from mere chance. Every- 
 thing about them shows a more developed degree of intelligence, and a more ardent 
 desire for progress, without the slightest diminution of their moral or rehgious 
 sentiments. On the contrary, all that they have done for their religion in the 
 midst of diflBculties and famine has filled me with admiration. . . . The past 
 will soon belong to history ; and even in the present generation there are few men 
 who can figure to themselves what they were for so long a time when under the 
 empire of a policy which I shall call erroneous, in order not to style it in the terms 
 I have the right to use." 
 
 From all this we are permitted to conclude, without by any means wishing to 
 pardon the persecutions and spoliations of which England has rendered herself 
 guilty towards the Iiish, that nowhere in the world does the Catholic Church at 
 the present day enjoy, in fact, such complete and such absolute liberty as in 
 England and Ireland. Let us add that, cum. hoc, si non propter hoc, no nation 
 in the world is more insulted at the present day than Great Britain by the greater 
 number of the Catholic journals of France, Belgium, and Italy, and especially by 
 those which in former times affirmed that the liberty of the Church was inseparable 
 in their programme from general liberty. It will be objected to me, perhaps, 
 that liberty is not sufficient to obtain justice. So be it. But it is sufficient at 
 all events for the purpose of demanding it and of meriting it. Success is some- 
 times long waited for, but it almost always comes sometime or other, and it lasts. 
 None of the conquests gained since 1780 in favour of the liberty of the Catholics of 
 England and Ireland have yet been disturbed or even threatened. 
 
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