INDIA,

West Coast Times, Issue 555, 5 July 1867, Page 3

INDIA,

(I'ROM THE SATURDAY EEVIITW.)

An article on the foreign policy of Siv John Lawrence has rocentty 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 Governov-Generni is doing, and why he is doing il. The f eeret is that he is doing nothing, and the reason Is because lie 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 herself about her neighbors. For many years the 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 of the barbarous or semi-barbarous tribes that lie between the North-western of our Indian empire and tho South-eastern frontier pf Russia. We wore, if possible, to have our man on the throne, and to teach him that we were his real friends, and that all his interests lay in being true to us. If, unfortunately, our man happened to bo oft" the throne, then we were to back him generally in his attempts to 'get on again, and to give him all the help wo could without any very great expense, and without committing ourselves 'too openly, so that the Russian man might in his turn be sent into exile or disgrace, and we and our man might onjoy a little satisfactory triumph. All this is un end now. Sir John Lawrence hjis set his face iirnily

against these plots and counter-plots . Heitill have no dependents or allies beyond our borders. Many fttteiripts fyave been made to shake his resolution. Offer after offer has been made to him. This chief has sent to say he is our man, if we would but recognise him as such ; and the 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 sending lum a few stand of arms and a few lacs of rupees. But these wily chiefs asked and begged and explained in vain. They may do as they like, and be Russian or antiRussian as they may please. Perhapg sonle day Russia will swallow them up, and then the Russian frontier .will touch our own. If the Russians try to come any further it will be necessary to fight them. But if we have to fight them, it will be satisfactory to fight them on our own ground, with every advantage on our side, with rdilwttys and materials to help us, and with the sea a"t our command ; .whereas 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 fetreat in case of disaster 1 . Iv frict, tho odds are so much for us that We need n<?t fear having to fight them at all. The English public will, therefore, receivo with the greatest pleasure this announcement of the foreign policy of Sir John Lawrence. It is at once sensible, honorable, and cheap ; and lucky are the statesmen for whose foreign policy !&» much can be said. Bat it has been hinted in &oiftd 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 :is GovernorGeneral have awakened. There certainly may be points in his domestic administration thrtt are justly open to criticism; but some of those who most loudly complain of its inefficiency seem to have au essentially erroneous notion, of a Governor-Gen-eral's duties. Persons who were wholly unacquainted with India, aud 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 iio great . and' striking things, and that lie would )je 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 Hint 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 pro- j vented the Governor-Generalship from bemg again given as ihe highest prize of the profession to which he belongs. Indian civilians will scarcely rise in future to rule over India, and the line of Englishnoblemen aS Governor- Generals will once more be restored. This is a great result, and it is a result which maybe traced toa 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 British peers." It has set its mind on having an English nobleman in future as Governor-General ; 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 tins is a very small thing, and Sir John Lawrence has rendered India great services since he has been there as GovernorGeneral, onty 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 GovernorGeneral has set himself to make- important changes for the benefit of the public j health. He has diligently enquired into | tho state of prisons, asylums, barracks, and other public places under his control, and has endeavored 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 tho feudal chiefs and the- peasants in Oude as to their rights over land; and lie has settled it on a broad and equitable basis, and has done justice to both parties, which, considering, thai while he was iv tho 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 Crrtnborne's power of promoting public works in India is prematurely cut short. His predecessors were by no means favorable to public works. Lord Halifax had a wholesome horror of getting ludia into debt, and pushed a good theory too fur ; and Lord De Grey was as much Lord de Grey about public works as about anything else. But since Lord Cranborne came into office, the Indian Government has taken up the whole subject of Indian works with new energy aud with newbreadth of view ; nnu more especially irrigation on a large scale, and on a connected system, has attracted the attention it deserves. The recent famiuc in Orissa was entirely due to want of irrigation ; and some time ago the Indian authorities reported to the Home Government that, it' works of irrigation' were not established there, a great famine must some day come. It has come,- and England has been roused by the tidings from its usual indifference to all things Indian. Now that, the horse has been stolen, we shall most carefully lock the stable-door; and' irrigation works Mill be raised iv Orissa as a monument of respect; aud regret to the memory of the hundreds of thousands of human beings there who met a cruel death from want of food. Wo are waiting with very great interest for an explnnation of the absence of Sir Cecil Beadon from his Government during the wboloof this lamentable crisis. If Simla is to detain persons away from their duty simply because it is comfortable, there will soon be an end of these migrations of tho Indian Government to Simla, and this would be much to bo regretted on many accounts. The English nobleman for whom Anglo-In-dians are longing will scarcely be got to fo to India unless he may preserve his ealth by periodical visits to the hills. It is said that thirty, clergymen 'rcfusod the Bishopric of Calcutta, which does not tell much for the religious fervour and zeal of tho higher order of' English clergy, but tell much for their common sense. To bo Bishpp 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 unReftl,th!y, Englishmen of the stamp thai Indid r'ecsirea -Will decline , to be Go-vernor-General, or' io bY the legal ah'd financial member of the Cfot'erirorGeneral's Council, Simla is therefore & 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 he has not abused it.

Tho Btory of a " haunted house" in Tasmania is thus told by a correspondent of the " Cornwall Chronicle" :—"lt: — "It is not often we hear of ghosts and haunted houses in Tasmania ; for it is a populai belief that ghosts dre confined to the other side of tho world j but no doubfc in the course of time we shell inherit all the evils belonging to the parent country. They have already had a case of hydrophobia in Hobarfc Town j and I have now to report that a veritable ghost has been domiciled for the last month in the immediate vicinity of Campbell Town. He, she, or it, (the ghost), makes its presence known by a loud knocking at the front door. The knocks are quite distinct, and exactly the same as if some one \rere knocking for admittance. The police and numerous volunteers have watched the place, and, although they could plainly see the door, the knocking takes place without any visible agency. Numerous devices havo been tried to' discover the cause, but without success. There have been men stationed on the iiisido of the door, and immediately tho knocking was heard they have rushed out, but nothing was to bo seen. The door has been covered with a thick cloth, but it makes no difference, the knocking is just the same. The noi.«e i? heard afc intervals from nbout 6 p.m. up to 10 p.m".