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    324 ^ THE ^ LBADEB. [No. 419, April S, 1...

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    THE INDIAN COLONIZATION COMMITTEE. The d...

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    TURKEY SINCE THE WAR. Three Continental ...

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    Women And Wills. A Wiitti Case In The Ch...

    to have it should she marry without the unanimous consent of four guardians . > A gallant officer saw her , loved her , and was loved in return , but when lie came to consider his chances of bringing the guardians to a unanimous assent , he found that one of them had a strong prejudice against military men , and that another haa a son who was himself a pretender to the lady ' s hand ( and fortune ) . This was a difficulty for the two ardent lovers : the will was positive , and the gallant lover was poor . A young lawyer read the will , drawn up in short stern sentences " the father himself , and nothing could be more clear than that the young lady was to lose

    the property should she marry without the consent of the four guardians . But the document omitted -to specify any person to whom the property was to T revert on the daughter ' s disobedience . " You may get married to-morrow , " exclaimed the lawyer to the young pair . " Yes , " rejoined she , " and hy the will lose the property . " " Yes , lose it by the will , but retain it as only child , and , therefore , heirat-law . The will falls to the ground , and you sueceed as if your father died intestate . " The lovers were mamed , and were doubtless as happy as the honeymoon was long . A similar defect may lurk in Mr . Barkworth ' s forbidding will .

    There is a serious side to the question . __ Should the will be set aside on the ground that it is immoral and unreasonable , how may the rale act as regards other classes of wills ? In the great Thelusson case , a will which set aside for several generations an enormous sum of money to accumulate at compound interest was declared null and void , on the ground that the money at the expiration of the time would amount to a sum so large € hat the owner of it might make his power dangerous to the State . In the case of the Bridgewater will , the testator gave his property only on condition that the legatee should obtain a Marquisate , and the condition was declared null and void , as it was considered detrimental to the interests of the State to induce any person , by offer of material

    advantage , to compass the attainment of a title , as it might prompt him to use corrupt means . These $ ie instances where , on grounds of public polity , the wishes of testators were unceremoniously set aside . Conditions incompatible with the primary , or principal , intentions of testators have also been declared null and void , as in the case of Oxford Colleges , to which money was left for the encouragement of learning , but on the condition that masses were said for the founder ' s soul . There is a class of wills which , though they offend no public feeling , and do not militate against the interests of the

    State , yet are , in the full sense of the word , contra bonos mores . There are cases where old men , marr ied to young wives , have prohibited a second marriage ; and if the widow be young and childless we know of nothing so decidedly against good morals as prohibitions to marry , unless the will or the law could at the same time secure the young widow against loving . We have heard , though on no better authority than the talk of private circles , that such wills have in some instanoes been set

    aside , and we should certainly approve any action of the law which would interpose to set aside provisions dictated by this curious dog-ia-the-manger jealousy of dying husbands . Where children , deprived of their father , are left in the charge of the mother , there is a good ground for providing against a second marriage , or at least of securing that the interests of the children shall not suffer by such event . But to shut up in compelled celibacy a young widow is a barbarous device of malicious testators , is , in fact , as directly against good morals as the excess of nunneries in Spain , and . should be discouraged by the law .

    324 ^ The ^ Lbadeb. [No. 419, April S, 1...

    324 ^ THE ^ LBADEB . [ No . 419 , April S , 185 & -

    The Indian Colonization Committee. The D...

    THE INDIAN COLONIZATION COMMITTEE . The duties of the committee appointed , on the motion of Mr . William Ewart , to inquire into the propriety of colonization in India , are of vast importance at this moment , for the results may go -- ^ far'to-a 8 Bbt-or ^ to-retard-a ^ moYemopt . B < p ! pond ^ jnjt | i influence only to the transfer of the government to the British Crown . From whatever causes , India has remained to the present time a Held closed to British enterprise ; the masters of the aoil have been the last to seek to reap the harvest . The first vant of India has been overlooked ; wo have held Irat not scoured our possession . The one thing necessary to make it ours , and to give us the full advantages of so noble an acquisition , wo have kept from it—English mind . The service which Mr . Ewart ' a committee has to perform is to demonstrate

    the practicability of supplying to India what has hitherto been denied to it ; that the practicability of doing this is demonstrable we entertain not the smallest doubt . _ Objections such as those urged by Mr . Baillie and Colonel Sykes in discussing Mr . Ewart ' s motion , as to the insalubrity of the climate and the consequent impossibility of establishing a large European population in India , are of no account . It is not necessary to assume that a large European population is needed to work out the ends of the colonization absolutely necessary to develop the resources of the country . It is not a question

    of numbers , but of quality . Field labour and skilled labour are in demand in our colonies of Australia and America , but the demands of India are of a totally different sort . There , the demand is for intellect , knowledge , the power of applying to the productivity of the earth and of the native mind the scientific and moral advantages of Western Europe , and , before all , of England . The great articles of Indian produce are—opium , cotton , and indigo . The cultivation of these has never been placed upon a reasonable footing . The land has been held often by a tenure amounting to little more than villainage , farmed with insufficient capital , and with an utter lack of any butthe most primitive apparatus ; the products have always found their way into the hands of a class of traders not very unlike the middleman of Ireland , whose interest it is rather to

    keep the cultivator poor and needy than to enable him to attain the means of large and independent action . One of the main objections urged against attempts to develop the natural products of the country is , that such development can ^ only be looked for in the employment of large capital ; precisely so , and the furnishing of that element would be one of the natural consequences of a proper colonization . The chief hindrance to the cultivation of cotton , according to Mr . Mangles , is the dishonesty of the Natives in whose hands it has to be transferred from the spot where it is grown to the seaport , the only remedy for such a state of things being the employment of European agents . Why should they not be employed ? But , doubtless , it would be found that not only European agents but European system is what is required to obviate this obiection . It is admitted that almost any amount

    of cotton may be grown in India , the obvious advantage of the development of this great faculty being to make us , by means at our fingers' ends , independent of America . If the Manchester cottonmerchant wants Indian cotton , let him go to India and grow it—if he can , say the opponents of Indian colonization ; but the merchant is not called upon to step out of his own province : what he wants is , to find cotton grown for him , in quantity and quality equal to his needs , and he wants everything to be done that is needful to assure him against disappointment . How ready India herself is to meet large demands upon her even at the present time

    and under the pressure of great disadvantages , is to be judged by the effects produced by a rise in the price of cotton , consequent on the falling' off of the American crop : 220 , 000 bales of cotton were obtained from India last year more than had ever before been obtained—a sufficient proof that the powers of India have still to be developed . Whatever the views of the East India Company at the present moment , it is certain that they have in past times put every possible impediment in the way of an extensive European colonization . Their supreme dread , as Harriet Martineau has said , was

    of the colonization of India from Europe . They have never appeared competent to the management of the finance , or the commerce of their vast possession . " Several of the best men in India—among whom was Metcalfe—testified that tho plainest ana shortest way of obtaining a revenue was to develop the resourced of the country by the utmost freedom of trade and colonization ; while others , among whom was Malcolm—preferred debt and difficulty to any experiment whioh should throw open tho country to European residents , by whom ( they took -fekgrautcdUUe natives ^ Yqiild be oppresaed imd

    insuited , so tliat tho English would bo driven from the country . The events of the day , " remarks Miss Martineau , " spare the necessity of rebuke or reply . " But with the removal of the India Company wo have no longer to look for a policy of oxclusivonoas . That groat impediment has been removed , or ' rather , has crumbled with ago . We have railways , telegraphs , vast canals , already at work ; wo now want men to turn to best account nil those advantages , and to bo ready to apply a thousand more .

    We want to have the means of bringing cotton safely to the seaport ; of raising crops of indigo and sugar , and opium , with all the advantages of a large and systematic cultivation ; we . want to grow tea to the full extent of the power at land ; to , want to open up trade with Thibet ; and we -want to do other things , all promising profit to ourselves ; the good of the native population , the stability of pur empire in India , and all within the scope of British intellect , perseverance , and capital . ' By means of a large and intelligent European colonization we say that all we want to do can be done by us , if we have a fair field laid open . Now it is precisely the determination of the best means of opening tliis field that falls to the task of Mr . What it is most

    Ewart ' s committee . desirable to obtain from the gentlemen forming it is , not a big blue book , exhausting the subject , and useless from its very completeness ; but such a clear , well-defined statement of the present agricultural and commercial condition of the country as may enable us to judge of the remedies needed for obvious defects ; the feasibility of applying capital in this or that direction ; the nature of the tenure under which land is held , with the quality of the laud in reference to the uses to which it is obviously most applicable . In short , if they will furnisli us with a well-digested and well-arranged handbook , they will do exactly that which is required to enable us to decide the feasibility of what we term most vital to the interest of Indfa , morally and commercially —its European colonization .

    Turkey Since The War. Three Continental ...

    TURKEY SINCE THE WAR . Three Continental tourists have visited the Turks in their European encampment since the Peace ol Paris , and M . St . Marc Girardin has compared their rep orts . * What we are told is , in substance , what we believed when , during the Russian war , grand theories were afloat concerning the possible regeneration of the Ottoman Empire . Turkey , as a Power in Europe , is condemned to dissolution , and the only question is , how rapidly will her Christian population reclaim the dominion now held by a race of foreign conquerors who have never been naturalized during the four hundred years of their ascendancy upon the soil . The question is : will she merge under a great Christian government representative of her several provinces and populations , or will she part into detached states , which , unless united by a political confederacy , will become the prey of her natural enemies and unnatural protectors ? That , in process of time , the Turk must abdicate , every circumstance of his history appears to prove . He is a soldier , altogether unfitted for citizenship . When he no longer wields the sword , he bennmns infWim- to the merchant , the agriculturist ,

    or the priest of another religion . For a century , at least , he has been corrupting himself in the belief that to French-polish a Tartar is to render him a civilized being . The experiment has been tried , and failed . A bad Asiatic does not make a good European . To wear Paris boots to eat pork , to wallow in wine-bibbing , to substitute one form of sensuality for another , to ape Western fashions and trample upon Moliamedauism without embracing Christianity , is not to progress but to recede , and this has been the policy of the Turks in Europe . Their immense territory lies under a weight of heterogeneous despotism ; then borders

    Paohalicshang loosely together ; their a em a chronic state of insurrection ; and their & uuan , devoting one-sixth of the public revenue to his personal expenditure , personifies tho atrophy ana atony of his empire . Tho classes under nis rule characterized by activity , energy , industry , scientific culture , courage , hope , and public spin * , are tho Christian ; the indolent , fatalistic , and improvident subjects of the Porto , are the religionists of Islam . If the late war was undertaken to promote tho regeneration of Turkey , it was a g » gftn " ° failure . However , it was not undertaken witn uiav vifiw . nor was it altogether inoperative It was »

    check to Russia ; it saved tho Danubian A jrooipalities from immediate absorption ; it n > ° a 1 " ™ a mortal though a lingering wound toTthc Ottoman Sultanate . mr ~ x . „ o < The Hfttti Humayoun and tho Magna plmrtft w Gulhane - aro among tho Christian titles to posaw sion , after tho Turkish ascendancy has dwuppon ca . They benefit without conciliating tho mnjoiiiy , they are Christian charters and : jnonumcnw « Turkish humiliation . Not that they arc notoa upon , except in tho spirit in whioh they wcro _ con * Jicvua de * Deux Mondw , March , 1868 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 3, 1858, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03041858/page/12/