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    T echnically , these appointments are already derived from Downing-street , Cannon-row , or the Horse Guards , but the power of recal has been the independent safeguard that is now to be taken away . The Cabinet aims at concentrating in itself the supreme authority of India , and at vesting the Horse Guards with the irresponsible administration of a vast European military establishment in the East . Here ,, the lordly departments have a prospect of almost boundless patronage—not only the old patronage of the Company , but a new

    patronage , still to be created . And how will they exercise it ? The Daily News has warned us that , unless public opinion be strongly expressed , Lord Geoegk Paget will go out to India as Inspector-General of Cavalry , a job which , we do not hesitate to say , insults and disgraces the service , and leads the way to the ultimate deterioration of our Indian army . That army has not been governed upon the same principles as the Queen ' s . It has been less favoured , but it has been better organized , and has produced , within the passing century , a far larger proportion of able and energetic commanders . Surely , the Pagets might be satisfied with

    the honours already bestowed upon Lord George , the noble author of a Treatise on Equitation ; as a cavalry colonel at home he is said to have converted a fine regiment into a corps of ' irregulars ; ' he was promoted in the Crimea to the command of the Light Brigade , and wears the Inkerman . clasp for being in the neighbourhood of a great battle . Then , he housed himself in England while the Light Brigade rotted on the Balaklava-road during the ' horrible and heartrending' winter of 1854 , and , as the Daily News very justly adds , he had a right to do all this , and is not to be blamed if his friends have rewarded him above his merits ,

    but what Indian officer is to have justice done to him if Lord George Paget is to be Inspector-General of Indian cavalry ? Hundreds of more deserving men are known to the Horse Guards , but they are not the sons of marquises . We may well be alarmed when it is announced that the Crown is to make itself responsible for the entire admir nistration of British India , and that the six thousand commissions in the Company ' s army are to be handed over to the Horse Guards for distribution .

    " The Indian Empire , " says the Saturday Review , "is the creation and the heritage of the middle classes . " We are glad to find ourselves in agreement on a . question so vital with our independent contemporary , which avows itself to be ' not only an organ without a ' party , but an organ without a patron , ' a position incomprehensible , perhaps , to the familiars of Whig sophistry and servility . We have from the first made a stand against the attempt to load the East India Company with the entire responsibility of the Indian disasters ; we have written justly , we think , of that political and administrative corporation ; and while willing to remove the encumbrances and

    remedy the deficiencies of the double Government , we have uniformly declared against a change that would degrade our Indian Empire into a Whig department , with its chief honours and profits absorbed by the aristocracy . To this view the most liberal and intelligent of our contemporaries adhere , and we are persuaded that it will not be without tfoejiupport of an enlightened public opinion , ^¦ entieiirven Troiri I lid la w"i'fiir "" pergoTTfil "" gri ' ©' vances , and platform spoutera , may paas x'eaolutions at turbulent tavern meetings ; but the verdict has not yet been pronounced , and there ia still time to repel this Whig aggression upon the middle-class government of British India . The equivocations of the Whig organs aro

    not the mosfc consistent or ingenious . We have heard them declare that the G-overnment merely desires to establish in name that which now exists in f act , and . that , so far as patronage is concerned , very , little change is to be expected . They have India already . Another turn of the wheel brings up the assertion that they would not have it if it were obtainable . It is too remote for their younger sons ; the climate is too disagreeable . The argument of distance goes for nothing , being disposed of by the- overland journey ; while

    that of climate is dissipated by a glance at the delightful hill stations , whieh are at least as alluring as many of our colonies , whither the cadets of patrician houses flock without hesitation . Salary is the emollient mitigation of the ' bore ; ' pension is the consolation of a distended Hver . At least , we do not find a Paget reluctant to visit Bengal ; nor was a young lord indifferent to the advantages of the Military Secretaryship- at Calcutta under Viscount Canning , until the fluttered virtue of a ball-room induced a

    premature resignation and a return , over the waters blue , to his native shore . We anticipate that the hard work , the study of the Indian vernacular , the rainyseason vigils at lonely stations , the long expatriations , and the exhausting labour of the Indian service , will continue to be the portion of the middle classes . All thia we concede . But the high prizes of patronage hitherto reserved as rewards would , under the proposed system , be gifts , and they would reap who had not sowed .

    Out of ten thousand civil and military appointments the best would be bestowed to suit the private or political interests of the Minister , and the residue of small salaries and heavy duties would remain with the classes that have built up the Indian Empire . It answers no purpose to urge that the East India Company has not prevented Peers from becoming Governors-General , or Governors of Madras and Bombay , and that the Whigs long ago grasped the patronage of the Indian bench and staff ; such an argument proves too

    much . So far as they have had the power , they have excluded the middle-class element- ; , but is this a ground for increasing their privileges ? On the contrary , we may argue from the past to the future , and , admitting that the Crown is practically paramount in India , we may deduce thence the strongest reasons against a scheme that would render it not only the paramount but the sole authority . If the Affghan war was a disaster , it was one for which the Crown was responsible . " I ordered that war , " said Lord BitotrGUiTOK ,

    whosotintheCabinet . Andhowdid Parliament control him , either in his policy or in hits appointment of governors and generals ? Who will dare to move the House of Commons on the question of Lord Ci . a . nr . 1-oawjde ' s promotion P Who sought to keep Mr . Vjsunon Smith out of the Board of Control ? These are matters of Crown and Ministerial prerogative , in which no direct interference is tolerated . The Whigs might instal Sadleiriam in the Treasury of India , and no one would be responsible . So might

    the East India Company , it may be said . But such has not been their practice . Never was a great country governed by abler men or upon purer principles than the East Indian Empire under the rule , complicated and defective as it is , of Leadenhall-street . This i tH s ~ proposed—t o—abol i sh y-4 o-o i'cle r—that _ a Whig peer may be made Secretary of State fov India , with the good , easy Duke of f Cambridge in command of an enormous Indian army , and millions sterling of civiland military emoluments in the gift of the Crown , to be shared among tue heaven-born and the obsequious .

    CRIME-COMPELLING CONDITIONS . The discussion at the meeting of the Surrey Society for the Employment and Reformation of Discharged Prisoners at Kingston last week , is deeply interesting . It is at least evidence how the best intellects and stoutest hearts of the country are struggling with one of our most difficult problems . The Society itself has been before the age hitherto , but now we cannot help thinking that it is behind the age . It was started in 1824 , for the purpose of assisting penitent prisoners , especially the young , on their discharge from prison . It has done a great deal of work during the interval , but it fails to be effectual for want of funds . During the last three years it sold out all its stock in order to meet the demands

    upon it , and , nevertheless , last year it rejected thirty-nine applications ' want of funds . ' The Society , therefore , is languishing because society at large does not appreciate its object . We can scarcely wonder at that when we see some uncertainty of opinion still prevailing amongst the leading men at this meeting . Lord John Uussem , was ehairman , and Lord St . Leonards was one of the most conspieuous speakers . Lord Join * expressed an opinion that , ' the State cannot undertake the management of criminals to a further extent than it now does ; ' a supposition which is refuted by proceedings which the State is ' ' StLeonard

    actually carrying on : Lord . s believed the true recourse to lie in transportation ; an astounding mistake for so clearheaded a man ; but evidently he has the faculty of limiting his view to the single country in which he lives , or he would know that convict transportation results in an enormous manufacture of vice . We get rid of one criminal , or one crime , in this country , to make ten in the colony . He gave , however , some remarkable examples of the manner in which society , through its individual members , is endeavouring to get at some equitahfe punishment which shall not subject the criminal to the contaminating influences of the gaol as it is at present conducted : — " There was a gardener at Hampton Court named Johnson , who , when he detected any person stealing flowers —making a nosegay as it was called—was in the habit of giving to the party the choice either to be taken before a magistrate or to wheel the garden roller for an hour . It waa no doubt amusing to see the culprit wheeling the roller amid the laughter of hia companions and the visitors—and , no doubt the punishment was effectu . il , but it was illegal . " — " A magistrate had ordered two boys to be whipped ,, but on being told they were sixteen , whereas the law did not allow boys over fourtet'u to undergo that punishment , he sentenced them to be imprisoned . Suddenly , however , he called them back , and gave them their choice , either to receive the whipping or go to prison . Ultimately they preferred the former , were whipped by the gaoler , and discharged . Now a more illegal act was never committed by a criminal judgo than that of which this magistrate was then guilty . " But lie mentioned even a more preposterous case : — " He heard lately of a lady who wan charged with shoplifting , and some of the utolon goods being found upon hur person , the shopkeeper told her to state whether aho would be given in custody to u polioem . in , or go up-rttaira and submit to a whipping suoh a 9 a child would receive . They migiit luugli at thia , but in hia opinion it was frightful . They had heard of c / woa whore u woiiiuii ' h droi-m had cnuyht up articles , making t , hem appuar guilty of tmoplifting whon they wore innocent . Suppose , in rtuch a case , tho woman , lightened by tho tlirout of boing sent , to gaol as a criminal , suljmitted to tho whipping—h « could not imagine anything more awful ; certainly thoro could not bo anything more illegal . " , „ None of these pci-sons moan badly ; on . tb ^ cjojUiUVKy ., Ji ! lsJti «! ± ll _ * J *; x * 8 M hL > . ? , St . Lkonauds , aiul tl 7 o ~ menTbDrB ~ ol- ~ t ; Ue" - Surrev Society , they nro anxious to repress evil-doing without creating inoro m tho proccsh . In ' despair of seeing transportation renewed , Lord St . Leonauhs pointed to tho true recourse . To hoisso tho criminal , to puniali him , i \ nd then to turn him looae in

    Untitled Article

    Ho . 40 $ Jasttjaby 23 ,, 1858 . ] T JBC ^ L E E A T > E B . 83

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 23, 1858, page 83, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2227/page/11/