INDIA.

Press, Volume XI, Issue 1433, 12 June 1867, Page 2

INDIA.

[From tho " Saturday Review."] An article on the foreign policy of Sir John Lawrence has recently appeared in the "Edinburgh Review." It is evidently semi-official, or, as the French say, inspired ; and its object is to let the English public know what the Grovernor-Greneral is doing, and why he is doing it. The secret is that he is doing nothing, and the reason is because he has made up his mind that nothing ought to be done. Sir John Lawrence has no foreign policy. He is all for keeping India to herself, and not thinking or troubling himself about her neighbours. For many years tho Anglo-Indian public has been in great alarm at the encroachments of Russia, and in old days it was thought advisable to keep Russia back, and to check and annoy her by thwarting Russian influence in the chief towns oi the barbarous or semi-barbarous tribes that lie between the North-Western frontier of our Indian Empire aud too South-Eastern frontier of iiussia. We were, if possible, to have our man on the throne, and to give him gans and money, and to teach him that we were his real friends, and that ajl his interests lay in being true to us. If, unfortunately, our man happened to be off the throne, then we were to back him generally in his attempts to get on again, and to give him all tnj help we could without any very great expense, and without committiug ourselves too openly, so that the Russian man might in his turn be sent into exile or disgrace, and we and our man might enjoy a little satisfactory triumph. All this is at an end now. Sir John Lawrence has set bis lace firmly against these plots end coonwr?

nlots. He will have no dependents or Jjlies beyond our borders. Many attempts have been made to shake his resolution. Offer after offer has been made to him. This chief has sent to ga y he is our man, if we would but recognise him as such ; and that chief has given the Governor-General to understand what a great amount of good could be done, and what vast political results might be achieved, by Bending him a few stand of arms and few laea of rupees. But these wily chiefs asked and begged and explained in vain. They may do. as they like, and be Russian or anti-Russian as they ulease. Perhaps some day Russia will gwallow them up, and then the Russian frontier will touch bur own. If the [Russians try to come any further it tfH be necesßary to fight them. But if we have to fight them, it will be satisfactory to fight them on our own ground, every advantage on our side, with railways and materials to help us, and with the sea at our command; \\ hereas they have to fight under the disadvantage of being at the greatest possible distance from their base of supplies, and with a very dangerous line of retreat in cage of disaster. In fact, the odds are B0 much for us that we need not fear having to fight them at all. The English public, will therefore receive with the greatest pleasure this announcement of the foreign policy of gir John Lawrence. It is at once sensible, honourable, and cheap; and lucky are the statesmen for whose foreign policy so much can be said. But it has been hinted in some English journals that the foreign policy of the Governor-General is his strong point, and that it may have been wise to draw attention to it in order to remove or weaken the disappointment which the other parts of his career as Governor - General have awakened. There certainly may be points in his domestic administration that are justly open to criticism ; but some of those who most loudly complain of its inefficiency seem to have an essentially erroneous notion of a Governor-Gen-eral's duties. Persons who were wholly unacquainted with India, and with what is possible in India, chose to ; fancy that, because Sir John Lawrence was known to them by having done a great and striking service in the days of the mutiny, he 'was always going to do. great and striking things, and that he would be quite different from all other Governor-Generals, and much more heroic and sensational. This was simply a dream of fanciful ignorance. The duty of a GovernorGeneral is not to be always doing great things, but to get through a large amount of daily routine work, to rule over society, and to watch over the general interests of the country. All this Sir John Lawrence has done, and for the most part he has done it well. It is true that at the outset of his career he made a mistake, innocent and small in itself, but likely to have results curiously disproportionate to its importance. He has probably prevented the Governor-Generalship from being again given as the highest prize of the profession to which he belongs. Indian civilians will scarcely rise in future to rule over India, and the line of English' noblemen as Governor-Generals will once more be restored. This is a great result, and it is a result which may be traced to a tiny origin. Sir John Lawrence made a most unfortunate choice in his Secretary, and Anglo-Indian society thought itself so little welcomed and so indifferently treated in the establishment of the Governor-General that they began to get angry and to howl out for "one of our own British peers." Tt has set its mind on having an English nobleman iv future as Govern or-Gene-ral ; and, as the ruling families in England will be only too ready to oblige it, it will probably have its own way in the matter. But this is a very small thing, and Sir John Lawrence has rendered India great services since he has been there as Governor-Gene-ral, only that they are services that do not happen to be of a showy and obtrusive kind. Two of those services, however, deserve more especial attention. In the first place, the Gover-nor-General has set himself to make important changes for the benefit of the public health. He has diligently enquired into the state of prisons, asylums, barracks, and other public places under hia control, and has endeavoured to stir up his officials to remedy the frightful evils that were disclosed, and to provide some security against similar evils in the future. In the next place, he has settled the long vexed question between the feudal chiefs and the peasants in Oude as to their rights over land; and he has settled it on a broad and equitable basis, aud has done justice to both parties, which, considering that while he was in the Punjab his prepossessions were certainly shown against the chiefs, was as creditable to him as it is, we will hope, satisfactory to the natives concerned. " Peace and Public "Works" was the motto of Lord Cranborne when he came into office, and England will have cause to regret if Lord Cranborne's power of promoting public works in India is prematurely cut short. His predecessors were by no means favourable to public works. Lord Halifax t . * wholesome horror of getting India into debt, and pushed a good theory too far; and Lord De Grey was as much Lord Be Grey about public works as about anything else. But since Lord Cranborne came mto office, the Indian Government has taken up the whole subject of Indian works with new energy and with new breadth of view ; and more especially "ligation on a large scale, and on a connected system, has attracted the attention it deserves. The recent famine in Orissa was entirely due to want of irrigation; and some time ago the Indian authorities reported to the Home Government that, if works ot irrigation were not established there, a great famine must some day come. It has come, and England has been roused by the tidings from it» usual

indifference to all things Indian. Now that the horse has been stolen, we shall most carefully Jock the {.tabledoor ; and irrigation works will be raised in Orissa as a monument of respect and regret to the memory of the hundreds of thousands of human beings there who met a cruel death from want of food. We are waiting with very great interest for an explanation of the absence of Sir Cecil Beadon from his Government during the whole of this lamentable crisis. If Simla is to detain persons away from their duty simply because it is comfortable, there will Boon be an end of these migrations of the Indian Government to Simla, and this would be much to be regretted on many accounts. The English nobleman for whom AngloIndians are longing will scarcely be got to go to India unless he may preserve his health by periodical visits to the hills. It is said that thirty clergymen refused the Bishopric of Calcutta, which does hot tell much for the religious fervour and zeal of the higher order of English clergy, but tell much for their common sense. To be Bishop of Calcutta is not a comfortable or a healthy thing, and if the higher official posts in the Indian service are made too uncomfortable and too unhealthy, Englishmen of the stamp that India requires will decline to be GovernorGeneral, or to be the legal and financial members of the Governor-General's Council. Simla is therefore a good thing in itself; but Simla, like other good things, may be abused, and we hope that Sir Cecil Beadon will be able to show that ho has not abused it.