THE NELSON EXAMINER. Saturday, November 28, 1857.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, Issue 70, 28 November 1857, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Saturday, November 28, 1857.

Journals become more necessary as men become mote equa and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they serve only to terure liberty: they maintain civilization. Db Tocodeville, Of Democracy in America, vol. V>,p.230.

If the geographical features of India are sufficiently simple and broadly marked, nothing can be apparently more confused and complicated than the state of its political relations. Inhabited by thirty distinct races, and those again split into interminable religious subdivisions by the operation of caste, composed of numerous states and kingdoms, which, one after another, have succumbed to British rule, by conquest, by treaty, by alliances and annexations, by forcible and sudden seizure, or by the slower but equally efficacious method of protection, and which yet retain in a great measure their own separate institutions, customs, and even the administration of their own internal affairs, subject to the will and overriding authority of the supreme Government, it would require a volume, and that not a small one, to give any clear or connected idea of its general policy. But for the purposes of this slight sketch, it may be sufficient to look upon the natives as divided into three great classes — Mahomedans; Hindoos, with their innumerable idols and distinctions of caste ; and the various tribes, who, less intolerant than the one, and less childishly addicted to their own superstitions than the other, offer more points of resemblauce aud sympathy with ourselves ; such as the gallant Seiks of the Punjaub, and the hardy, brave little mountaineers, the Ghoorkas of Nepaul.

Again, whether the British Government has a Resident at the Court of a Native Rajah who still keeps up his own little army, or one who administers affairs in the name of a pensioned puppet, retaining the mere name of a King, or has his Collector of Revenue over districts as large as some European kingdoms, the effect is the same ; the English power reigns supreme, backed up by the forces which, concentrated in a few commanding positions, send out their detachments and have their advanced and subordinate posts in all directions around them. Thus Calcutta has its Fort St. George, its artillery force at Dum-dum, and the bulk of its military force at Barrackpore. Between Patna and Benares the station of Dinapore, in addition to its home duties, watched the independent kingdom of Nepaul. Further on, a great arsenal existed at Allahabad, which with Agra, under a Lieutenant-Governor, curb the warlike hill tribes of Rajpootana; Cawnpore observed Oude ; Delhi had its arsenal and a military station 2o miles off, at Meerut ; and lastly, a strong force held Lahore, the capital of the lately-conquered country of the Seiks.

The composition of this great array, thus in military occupation of the country, differed in some important particulars from that of the forces iv the presidencies of Madras and Bombay. In these latter the prejudices and distinctions of caste seem to be comparatively unknown. "We are all of the same caste as the English," they say; and their freedom from any tendency to revolt during the present outbreak seems to countenance the idea that it has, after all that has been said about foreign emissaries, its source iv religious fanaticism, a new phrase in fact, of the " odium theologium." For the Bengal army appears to have been composed almost entirely of men of high caste, Brahmins and Rajpoots, Hindoos, and Mahomedans with some of the Hindoo arities, men of gentlemanlike and dignified bearing, courteous in language, grave and composed in general demeanor ; looking down with disgust and even contempt on the rude vices of their European fellow-soldiers ; and most probably with something of the same feeling on their own officers, as hateful Feringhees, using the bristles of the unclean animal for the mouth, for the head, and even his flesh for the table as food ; and carrying the feeling to such an extent, that even the shadow of his officer falling on the food he had prepared, would make the soldier throw it away as polluted and unfit to be eaten.

And it seems that the broad line of demarcation which Englishmen everywhere seem so fond of keeping up among themselves and between themselves and others, had of late

years become sensibly wider. The times had passed, when an officer might, as one of them once said in our hearing, pass ten years without seeing the face of a countrywoman. Steam and the overland route had opened India to them also ; and our officers with their wives and families formed a society of their own, more select possibly, and better regulated morally, than under the old state of things ; but at the same time more estranged from native intercourse aud community of sentiment, as well as more ignorant of its workings. And yet with an army so composed and so officered, there seems to have been a feeling of the most thorough seem ity; and our countrymen and their families lived in India with as little apprehension as they would here or in England itself. To be at last indeed fearfully awakened.

Whether foreign influence had indeed been it work among the soldiers; whether the drawing off of the Queen's regiments for the Persian expedition and the Chinese war, and the taking away so many of the best regimental officers for civil duties, that in one instance we read of 1,000 men led by one captain and two subalterns only, had made the native troops feel themselves in real truth the masters of the situation, we have no certaiu knowledge ; but it must have been an idea both widely diffused and generally entertained, which, when once the revolt had begun, spread it like wildfire from station to station and from city to city, till the whole country was in conflagration from Lahore to Calcutta, and every native regiment was either in open rebellion, disbanded, or disarmed.

The immediate cause of the outbreak was the introduction of the Minie rifles with greased cartridges. The grease was said to be lard, a part of the unclean animal ; and in biting the cartridge, this pollution would attach to the biter. He would lose caste ; would be, as far as we can understand it, much in the position of a man who had been in the pillory ; possibly very innocent and unfortunate, but universally shunned and avoided. Remonstrances were made ; as it appears, in some cases attended to, in others evaded or met with harshness ; and at last at Meerut, a large station, five miles long by two and a-half broad, twenty-five miles from Delhi, on occasion of some severe and perhaps injudicious punishments, the native regiments broke out in open mutiny on the l Oth of May. Here Colonel Furnis met his death endeavouring to quell the tumult, with many others ; the officers 1 residences or bungalows behind the men's quarters were pillaged and burnt and their inmates murdered ; and finally ou the approach of the small European force from the extreme end of the cantonments, where it was quartered, the mutineers in a confused mass made off towards Delhi, and after being followed a few miles and a few shots exchanged, allowed to pursue their way ; the night falling, and the station itself being without protectio.i. During the night the mutineers appear to have reorganized themselves, for an eye-witness describes them as moving on Delhi, horse and foot in military order. Here pluuder and murder were again let loose ; the native regiments turning on their officers, or allowing them to be massacred, the few Europeans defending themselves obstinately, and at last, under the orders of Lieutenant Willoughby, firing the powder magazine, destroying hundreds of their assailants, and yet nearly one-half of their own party escaping. But the city was in the hands of the native regiments ; and whilst some of our countrymen got safe away, all who remained were murdered, male and female, and with circumstances of the most revolting cruelty and atrocity. And here it may be said that the electric telegraph saved India. The news was flashed along the wires from one end of the country to another ; and while the mutiny spread from regiment to regiment, from station to station, accompanied with pillage, assassination, and worse ; whilst some regiments quietly melted away, others sent away their officers unhurt, and helped themselves to the money in the Government chest ; Avhilst others again cut them to pieces, and set off to join their comrades at Delhi, the telegraph had put the Europeans everywhere upon their guard, and almost universally they appear to have met the emergency most resolutely and manfully. Far to the west, in the Punjaub, under the energetic rule of Sir John Lawrence, the disaffected troops were summarily put down, disarmed, disbanded, and examples made of the most guilty; so that in three days the whole country was secured ; and not only that, but a force despatched to join the small army now assembled before Delhi under General Barnard. From Calcutta reinforcements were moved up, the troop 3 destined for China having been stopped en route, and directed on India ; and as they moved on, reassuring and relieving the various harassed parties and weak garrisons on their way. One great disaster, that at Cawnpore, they we^e too late to anticipate; they retook the station, once the finest and largest in India, but now a heap of ruins, and defeated the insurgents : but after advancing towards Lucknow in order to relieve Sir Henry Lawrence, in command there, who with a small force was making head gallantly against his enemies, they were forced to return to Cawnpore, where they remained at the date of our last advices. General Havelock, their commauder, found it too arduous an undertaking with 900 men, struck down by cholera and the intense heat at the rate of 30 or 40 a day, to force his way through 50 miles of hostile country, with 30,000 men in the field against him.

Relief, however, it appears, was likely to reach Sir Henry from another and unexpected quarter : Jung Bahadoor, without waiting for an invitation, marched 10,000 Nepaulese into Oude ; and although his offers of service were at first politely declined, and he himself requested to vetire, they had shortly after been accepted, and, if his own published letter is to be trusted, he was prepared to act as an efficient ally, although rather disgusted with our previous vacillation or distrust. We had intended to chronicle some further

particulars of the struggle going on in various localities ; but on second thoughts have considered it would interfere with and obscure the main object we proposed to ourselves ; which was to give such a general view of the subject, taken from various trustworthy sources, as would enable our readers to follow more clearly the various accounts we have received, as well as those we may shortly expect to follow. The interest is mainly concentrated on two points, the siege of Delhi, and the Seld operations of General Havelock against the Cawupore mutineers and the revolted army of Oude. At all events the most important would be the taking of Delhi, which would break the heart of the insurrection at once ; and this will not be long delayed, if the intelligence we have received be true ; that the rebels are already discouraged by defeat, have quarrelled among themselves, the Mahomedans with the Hindoos, the rich regiments with the poor ones ; that they are getting short of ammunition, have already offered to treat, and would most of them get quietly away, if they only knew how to do so. We hope shortly to be in possession of facts confirming these impressions ; and to hear that our rulers, having first put down revolt, and reorganized their military power on more secure bases, are employing it not only merely for the purposes of revenue, but for the real good and benefit of the millions thus entrusted to their governance.