Results of the two Years' Inquiry into the Government of Ceylon. (From the Spectator)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume VI, Issue 432, 19 August 1851, Page 4

Results of the two Years' Inquiry into the Government of Ceylon. (From the Spectator )

"S^E have already men,tioned-that.an article on "the Mysteries of Ceylon," in the Quarterly Review for December, presents an admirably lucid sketch of the events which led to the Parliamentary Committee of inquiry into the bloodless "rebellion" of Ceylon in 1846, and the bloody rigours exercised by Lord Torrington after tranquillity had been fully restored there. The ! article is intended as some counteraction to that Fabian dexterity which has hitherto nearly smothered the main results of the inquiry, and which would yet veil its disgraceful termination. "We shall offer some assistance to this good object by epitomizing the article for our readers, as a preface to the further proceedings in Parliament which will no doubt be taken in the coming session. In 1846, when perhaps the resignation of Sir Colin Campbell, after a long, peaceful, j and prosperous administration, was already foreshadowed by signs in the official sky, Sir Emerson Tennent had signalized himself by the preparation of an elaborate report on the financial and social position- o£ Ceylon; the remarkable ability of which Earl Grey confessed himself struck with. Sir Emerson had been equally happy in history, in illustration, and in pi*ospective advice. He had concluded that the time had at last arrived for removing " the old and vicious system of colonial taxation, and for imposing " a sounder and healthier system," which if prudently matured would render Ceylon " the most wealthy and independent colony of,the <3rown ." An experienced and masterhand would, however, be necessary in the delicate task of reformation; for " nothing could be more dangerous or prejudicial" then rash or theoretical meddling, unguided by local experience and a thorough acquaintance with the habits and genius of the people, "who although enervated and apathetic, are remarkable even amongst the various races of India for their adherence to ancient habits of immemorial customs." To encourage the beginner, these were the cardinal facts, —that the treasury had " a large accumulated fund actually in hand," and that the revenue would yield " a considerable annual surplus.'! The experienced and master-hand selected was a nobleman who had spent his youth in the Seventh Fusiliers as a subaltern, and some maturer years as an amateur experimentalist in the rearing of commodious cowsheds in Kent, varied by severer financial exercises as chairman of one of the most criticised of the railway schemes which were extemporised in 1845; but who at the age of forty had manifested no disposition to take a part in the unpaid public business of the nation. Viscount Torrington, the first cousin of the Premier, was selected to try his ' prentice-hand at government in the distant and lucrative post .of Governor of Ceylon. But on reaching Ceylon, his Lordship discovered a state of financial affairs the very reverse of that which the ardent and imaginative Sir Emerson had described. The "accumulated fund" consisted of promises to pay —partly in the hands of the public, and therefore liabilities and not credits, and partly unissued at all, and therefore on no better footing as money than the blank paper on which they were printed; and the yearly surplus was a fond imagination. A state of things "so contrary to banking principles and to commercial policy" must be remedied promptly. For remedy the quondam railway-director invented seven new taxes: of which four only need be alluded to; —a road-tax, a shop i tax, a gun-tax, and a dog-tax. It so hap- j pens that you could scarcely select four taxes ! comparable with these for violating " the \ genius and habits" of the Ceylonese, and those "immemorial customs" which the Ceylonese are " remarkable even amongst | the various races of India for their ad-, herence to." Sixteen of the leading firms: of Colombo immediately presented a peti- \ tion to Lord Torrington correcting his! errors by their local experience, and respectfully praying the revocation of his' steps. They explained that the roadlabour would be regarded as a renewal of the odious Rajakaraya, a system of compulsory labour only recently abolished by the chiefs in concession to the universal ■feeling of the people; and furthermore, that the Buddhist priests, who were equally subjected to the law, are forbidden by their religion from labouring, or from possessing money. They showed that the shop-tax would be an addition of twenty per cent, to the rent of some shops ; that the gun-tax, with other taxes on guns recently imposed, would take' away as much as the whole value of the gun ia the third year ; and that the dog-tax would be .totally impracticable in the country districts. Lord Torrington forwarded this petition to Earl Grey, with the simple statement that it proceeded from deluded natives or disloyal and bankrupt Europeans, and was altogether unworthy of notice, On the 6th of July, 1848, however, a large body of unarmed Cingalese flocked into the town of Candy with the avowed object of complaining to the Government agent residing there. The police, panic- ' stricken, called in the military. The Cingalese went home quietly, on receiving a promise that Sir Emerson Tennent would receive a deputation. The deputation was met on the 7th, and Sir Emerson so completely pacified •them by his interpreted

eloquence, that on the 12th Lord. Torring-| ton wrote to him that the colony was peace- 1 ful, prosperous, and contented. Mr. Haves, in the House of Commons, especially lauded the taut and eloquence of Sir Emerson as the instrument of this delightful consummation. But on the 9th of August arrived Lord Torrington's despatches, stating, that Ceylon, with its million and a half of natives, was in full insurrection, under a " pretender" to the national sovereignty, who with twenty thousand armed bloodthirsty rebels had already met her Majesty's forces in the field. Five days afterwards, came word that Lord Torrington had sent a police inspector into the interior to see what was the matter. On his way, l the inspector had met Mr. Waring the resident Magistrate and his police, in full retreat, and fortunately all uninjured : these fugitives reported that the rebels were sacking the public stores, and destroying the public buildings. Her Majesty's armies were at once set in motion, on the apparently forlorn business of defending the British Executive from an insurgent nation in the midst of which it stood. Two hundred soldiers marched all night ; there was a battle in the jungle ; in a few minutes upwards of two hundred of the rebels were killed, and the British supremacy had been upheld at the cost of one Englishman wounded in the thigh by a spent ball. •« from the field of battle"— after the battle one supposes, one friendly native was found tied neck to heels " in a very disagreeable manner,;' and a few buildings and plantations plundered after they had first been abandoned by their protectors or owners. At Kurnegalle, whence the police retired " under an understanding" with Mr. Bernard, the private Secretary of Lord Torrington, that the natives should be unchecked " till they had committed some disturbance which would enable the authorities to bring them to justice," [a parenthetical point which suggests the flagitious principle of the whole proceedings,] there was a similar display of English chivalry : at that place " one officer and twelve men of the Ceylon Rifles" killed twenty-six, wounded several, and took twenty-three prisoners, out of a host of *' four thousand armed insurgents." Thus the Cingalese insurrection was subdued by British arms ; and that the military credit of the feat should be duly apportioned. Major-General Smelt, the commanding officer of Ceylon, remained quiet at Colombo during the whole campaign; four or five field officers, all senior to Lieutenant-Colonel Drought, all acquainted with the localities and with the character and language of the natives, were equally unemployed; it was all done by Lord Torrington and Colonel Drought alone : the performance is the more striking, considering that neither had the assistance of two years' experience in the country which they so completely subdued. After military subjugation, there succeeded the vindication of 'transgressed law. For between two and three months after the rebellion had been crushed, the state of martial law was preserved^ The result was that eighteen persons were shot to death, nineteen were transported across the sea, (a more terrible sentence than death to the Asiatic,) seventy-two were imprisoned with hard labour, and fifty-eight were flogged. One of the most brilliant of the vindicatory exploits was the execution of "an influentialpriest, in full robes," for administering orirbeing privy to the administration of treasonable oaths. But this very exploit, which Lord Torrington paraded with exultation before Lord Grey, and which Lord Grey declared to be "highly satisfactory," was one of the atrocities which first astonished and aroused public opinion at home. The Queen's Advocate for the colony had become satisfied that the witnesses against the priest -were perjured, and that the very identity of the priest was totally unestablished : he had remonstrated, but Lord Torrington had said, "By God, sir, if all the lawyers in Ceylon said that the I priest was innocent, he should be shot to- , morrow. The priest was shot, and shot in i official robes. When the echo of English indignation had swelled over the East, and entered Lord Torrington's ears, he<proposed, measures to his Council for the indemnification of himself and his military ; and one of, the points he made was that "it was utterly impossible at the time to be always certain : who were the exact parties implicated or not." . Indeed, there seems to have been a total uncertainty not only as to who ought} to be shot, but as to who was or was not shot. Twice did Lord Torrington officially comma- j nicate to Earl Grey that "the pretender" had' been shot — that he had been shot to death on two occasions j yet it proved at last that "the pretender" had never been killed even once; and it being found that he still remained on hand, he was flogged and transported for life." The Council passed the act of indemnification only by a majority of one vote, the casting-vote of Lord Torrington himself. As the indemnity act was in a sense his sole act, it was fitting he should be in a sense the sole administrator of it: its essential clause therefore established that his Lordship and Colonel Drought — himself and himself — were to be the sole parties who should decide what acts should come within its indemnifying scope. Having thus subdued rebellion, vindicated the outraged law, and indemnified the vigorous actors who had stepped beyond the law, Lord Torrington turned to prospective policy. Communicating to his Council -Earl Grey's approval of the four objectionable taxes, he

repealed, one as ineffectual for its objects, abandoned a second as impracticable, surrendered a third on the remembered representations of the respectable deputation which had been previously contemned, and amended the last in the very mode suggested by the memorialists — whom he had called deluded, or disloyal and bankrupt. The rapid transition of policy was not more mystifying to the Council at Ceylon, than inexplicable and irritating to Lord Grey at home; for his Lordship had written many pages in didactic approbation of these very taxes, and of the vigorous policy by which they had been enforced. Earl Grey could not restrain a rebuke : "lam compelled to say, thaVon comparing your present despatch with your original explanations of the grounds upon which the taxes now abandoned were adopted by you, I cannot reconcile the decision you have now come to with the supposition of your having well weighed beforehand the advantages and disadvantages of these taxes, since the objections which you report as having induced you to repeal them are in a great measure such as a preliminary investigation would have elicited." When, Parliament met in February, 1849, Mr. Henry IJaillie, M.P. for Inverness-shire, moved for a Select Committee on the conduct of Lords Torrington. Mr. Under-Se-cretary Hawes defended the excellent Governor in the Commons; and scattered invective against Mr. Baillie ,and Mr. Hume, as vindictive, ignorant, and *weak puppets in the hands of designing conspirators in Ceylon. Lord Grey declared in the House of Lords, that he should be prepared to defend his nominee on all points whenever the proper time should arrive. The Committee was appointed. It could discover no opinions whatever by the law-officers of Ceylon on the necessity for the martial law which had been proclaimed, or the need for prolonging its operation so long after tranquillity was restored. Lord Grey loftily refused to vouchsafe any light ; so the Committee recommended a Royal Commission to inquire at Ceylon. This recommendation Ministers got rejected by a majority of 57 in a thin House: but Lord John Russell promised that such witnesses should be fetched to this country as the Committee would nominate. The Committee unanimously requested i Mr. Baillie, as their Chairman, to take the ! task of selection ; and Mr. Hawes and Mr. j | James Wilson, the Ministerial nominees in j | the Committee, consented that he should name the witnesses required ; but when Parliament rose Earl Grey objected that Mr. Baillie was constitutionally incompetent to , do the .duty of the Committee, and he refused to summon the witnesses on the score of expense. In the session of 1850 the dodge was thoroughly exposed; and the Minister being nearly left in a minority— 109 to 100 — on a motion to send for the witnesses by return of post, he promised they should be forthcoming. About this time> Sir Emerson Tennent had arrived in England. Mr. Baillie complained that Earl Grey had not only kept back the adverse witnesses, but had brought forward his own. Mr. Hawes declared that Sir Emerson Tennent had not been sent home or brought home at all; he was at home on,Jiis own affairs — " quite permiscuously, as it were," and on private leave. Yet in the account, since published, of expenses for bringing the witnesses from Ceylon who were examined before this Committee, the largest sum appears opposite the name of Sir Emerson Tennent— £l,7o3 13s. Id. But either he was sent for, and Mr. Hawes said the thing which is not ; or he was not sent for, and he was allowed a large sum to which he had no right claim. (Sir Emerson has since been promoted to the Governorship of St. Helena.) One now arrives at two episodes of personal scandal, Captain Watson's proclamation, and Mr. Wodehouse's confidential communication. Every one will remember the indignant horror of Captain Watson at the bloody Cingalese proclamation he disowned ia a well-written letter to the Premier; which Lord John read with due emphasis to the House of Commons. The Royal Commissioners from Madras have reported that the proclamation which so awakened the Captain's horror was really of his own- issuing, and was signed by his own undoubted hand ; and it has come out in addition, that the spirited letter to the Premier was composed for the unliterary Captain by no less a person than Sir Emerson Tennent himself : Mr. Wodehouse having impartially exposed the financial position of the colony for some years p^ast, and so shown the delusions under which Sir Emerson had laboured in the preparation of his celebrated report to Siir Colin Campbell, the " Knight of the Grecian order of Christ," complained to the Committee that all the civil servants of the colony had banded to annoy and thwart him ; and he asserted that Mr. Wodehouse in particular had disavowed and censured acts which during the rebellion he had approved. Mr. Wodehouse rebutted this by quoting a passage from a letter addressed by Lord Torrington to himself. The late Sir Robert. Peel objecting to quotations, and the Committee insisting that all or none of the letter should be before it, Mr. Wodehouse was*«ompelled to disclose all : in then appeared that Lord Torrington had proceeded to say* in coarser, terms than the * Quarterly Review' cares to transcribe, " that he chiefly attributed his embarrassments and failures to the underhand misrepresentations of Sir Emerson Tennent."

"Tbefeader'wiirbearin mind' the loft] indignation with which Earl Grey an nounced that he should be ready to mak< good at all points the conduct of his nomi nee "whenever the proper time shouli come," and the histrionic and perfunctor agitation with which Mr. Hawes rushed t( hold his little shield between the delinquent and the public ; he will also remember hog the witnesses who were withheld wen dragged forth with their evidence — how the marshalling of the evidence failed to pervert its real effect — how the episodical weapons of calumny which were prepared against the characters of the independent members of the Committee only exploded in the hands of their concocters; and shattered the reputations they were intended to defend : accustomed to official discomfiture and deceit, when he beholds the complete failure of the official defences in the open Parliamentary field, he will not be surprised to find that some further dodges of "transaction" are attempted, to hide the defeat that could not be prevented. The sequel is of this consistently honest sort. After a severe struggle, and the rejection of many draft-reports., a report was agreed to by the Committee, calling the serious attention of Her Majesty's Government to. the evidence which the Committee had taken, and again recommending that a Royal Commission should be sent out, "unless some step should forthwith be taken by the Government which might obviate the necessity of further investigation." This was the coup-; de-grace. Lord Grey never came forward with the proffered defence; the "proper time" never came, and now it scarcely ever can come; the little shield of Mr. Hawes must be lowered in silent, unacted grief. The officers who were summoned over here to upset, but who fatally established, the most incredible charges made against the locaT government, have been! allowed by the Colonial Office to return to Ceylon, to resume the execution of their responsible duties. Sir Emerson Tennent is despatched to succeed the worthy Sir! Patrick Ross in the secluded government of the ocean rock of St. Helena. Viscount Torrington is quietly dismissed.

Origin of Ambergris. —The substance of ambergris, so highly prized in perfumery, is obtained from the sperm whale, being formed, it is thought, in that state of the system which calls for a cathartic. — From the ' Materia Medica' we leara that j in Asia and parts of Africa, ambergris is j not only used as a medicine and a perfume, but considerable use also is made of it in cooking, by adding it to several dishes as a spice. A great quantity-ol^n also is constantly bought by the pilgrj^ms^^ travel to Mecca, probably to offer it^CTo|in< fumigations, as frankincense is in > the I %orship of the Church of Borne. Suffering from the state of disease which causes the accumulation of this secretion, a whale, when struck by the harpoon, will often throw up or discharge the substance, and it will be found floating about him. It is said to have been a Nantucket whaler that thus accidentally ascertained the origin of a substance which had been known before but vaguely as an unaccountable product of the sea. Pieces have been picked up by sailors about a dying whale worth nearly five pounds ; and masses of it have been found of from sixty to two hundred and twentyfive pounds weight floating on the surface of the ocean, in regions much frequented by the sperm whale. We were not so fortunate as to light upon any.— The Whaleman's Adventures in the Southern Ocean. Oedrone Seed, recently discovered in the valleys of Costa Kica, Central America, and said to possess the property of curing madness, and of neutralizing the virus of the bites of dogs and venomous serpants, is attracting the attention of the Faculty in Paris. A Medical Congress, including representatives from the different states of Europe, is shortly to be held, to test the efficacy of Cedrone Seed in mental disorders and epilepsy. From experiments on various animals, great hopes are entertained of its high remedial value. Some of the seed is to be sown in the Jardin dcs Plantes.

Foot-Ball Match of the 93d Highlanders.—A very spirited match at football by the men of the 93d Highlanders ' came off on the afternoon of Thursday, is Sparks' cricket ground. The sides were chosen by Lieutenant Macdonald and Ensign Dalzell, the latter having thirty-seven men and the wind side, against thirty-one. Ensign jDalzell won the first game, after a contest of an hour and twenty minutes. The sides being reversed, or, in foot-ball parlance, 'changing ground,' Lieutenant Macdonald won his game cleverly in about thirty minutes* which proved the superior tactics of the over the thirty-seven*

thirty-one Admitting Criminals to Bail before Trial bt the Judges.—The judges have at length come to the important determination, in all cases where applications are made to them to admit to bail persons committed for trial on criminal oharges,-to order the depositions taken by the committing magistrate to be produced before them by the magistrate's clerk, so that they may be read as part of the proceedings. This is a most important decision, and will be the means of preventing some of the most desperate thieves escaping from justice with the impunity the former practices encouraged.—2teW* Weekly Messenger, Feb. 2. ==_