The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8

Nothing could be more clear and positive than these assertions. Not only did the governor-general announce that the Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Berar, and Oude had been completely annexed, bringing a large accession to the British revenues; but that in every case a scheme of administration had been framed and established, conducive to the lasting benefit of the natives, the honour of the British name, and the development of the natural resources of the several districts. Not a whisper of discontent, of spirits chafed by change of rulers, did the marquis recognise: if they occurred, they reached not him; or if they did reach him, he passed them by as trifles.

Nor was it alone in the newly acquired territories that credit for these advantageous changes was claimed. Improvements in the government of India were pointed out in every direction. The governor-general had been relieved from an overwhelming press of duties by the appointment of a lieutenant-governor for Bengal. A Legislative Council had been organised, distinct from the Supreme Council: the public having access to its deliberations, and its debates and papers being printed and issued to the world. The Indian civil service, by an act passed in 1853, had been thrown open to all who, being natural-born subjects of the British sovereign, should offer themselves as candidates for examination and admission. Young cadets, who previously had been allowed nearly two years to ‘idle and loiter’ at the presidencies while studying for examination as civilians, were by a new regulation required to complete their studies in a much shorter period, thereby lessening their idleness and rendering them sooner useful. Periodical examinations of the civil servants had been established, to insure efficiency before promotion was given. A board of examiners had been founded, to conduct examinations and superintend studies. All officers of the Indian government had been formally prohibited from engaging in banking or trading companies; and any bankruptcy among them entailed suspension from office. In many of the civil offices, promotion, before dependent on seniority alone, had been made dependent on merit alone. A pension or superannuation list had been established in many departments, to insure steady and faithful service. Three boards of administration for salt, opium, and customs had been replaced by one board of revenue, simpler in its constitution. The annual financial reports, transmitted to the home government, had gradually been made more clear, full, and instructive. All the salaries throughout India had been placed under the consideration of a special commissioner, for equitable revision; and the authorities had determined that, in future, no salaries, with a few special exceptions, shall exceed fifty thousand rupees (about five thousand pounds) per annum.

Nor had legislative reform been wholly forgotten. During the eight years under review, laws had been passed or rules laid down for the punishment of officials guilty of corruption, or accountants guilty of default; for allowing counsel to prisoners on their trial; for abolishing the semi-savage custom of branding convicts; for rendering public officers more amenable to public justice; for vesting a right of pardon in the supreme government; for improving the procedure in all the civil and criminal courts; for rendering the reception of evidence more fair and impartial; and, among many less important things, for ‘securing liberty of conscience, and for the protection of converts, and especially of Christian converts, against injury in respect of property or inheritance by reason of a change in their religious belief.’ For the amelioration of prison-discipline, inspectors of prisons had been appointed in all the three presidencies, as well as in Oude, the Punjaub, and the northwest provinces.

Equally in moral as in administrative matters did the Marquis of Dalhousie insist on the manifold improvement of India during the eight years preceding 1856. Schools for the education of natives had been established; the Hindoo College at Calcutta had been revived and improved; a Presidency College had been founded in the same city, to give a higher scale of education to the youth of Bengal; similar colleges had been sanctioned at Madras and Bombay; grants-in-aid to all educational establishments had been authorised, subject to government inspection of the schools aided; a committee had been appointed to consider the plans for establishing regular universities at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras; a distinct educational department had been formed at the seat of government, with director-generals of public instruction in all the presidencies and governments; and the East India Company had, by a dispatch framed in 1854, sanctioned a most extensive educational scheme for the whole of India, to be rendered available to all the natives who might be willing and able to claim its advantages. The delicate subject of female education had not been forgotten. Instructions had been given to the officers of the educational department to afford all possible encouragement to the establishment of female schools, whenever any disposition was shewn by the natives in that direction. There is a peculiar difficulty in all that concerns female education in India, arising from the reluctance which has always been shewn by the higher classes of natives to permit the attendance of their daughters at schools. Mr Bethune commenced, and the Marquis of Dalhousie continued, a delicate and cautious attempt to overcome this unwillingness by establishing a Hindoo ladies’ school at Calcutta; and the minute gives expression to an earnest hope and belief that the female character in India will gradually be brought under the elevating influence of moral and intellectual education. As the native mind was thus sought to be ameliorated and strengthened by education; so had the prevention or cure of bodily maladies been made an object of attention. Additional advantages had been granted to natives who applied themselves to the study of the medical sciences; the number of dispensaries had been greatly increased, to the immense benefit of the poorer classes of Hindoos and Mohammedans; plans had been commenced for introducing a check to the dreadful ravages of the small-pox; admission to the medical service of the Company had been thrown open to natives; and, as a first-fruit of this change, one Dr Chuckerbutty, a Hindoo educated in England, had won for himself a commission as assistant-surgeon in the Company’s service.

In so far as concerns superstition and religion, the minute narrates a course of proceeding of which the following is the substance. Among the extraordinary social customs – atrocities they are unquestionably considered in Europe – of India, those of Suttee, Thuggee, Infanticide, and the Meriah Sacrifice, are mentioned as having undergone much amelioration during the eight years to which the minute relates. The suttee, or burning of widows, had been almost suppressed by previous governor-generals, and the marquis had carried out the plans of his predecessors: remonstrating where any suttees occurred in independent states; and punishing where they occurred in the British and protected territories. Thuggee, or systematic murder of travellers for the sake of booty, had been quite suppressed east of the Sutlej; but having unexpectedly made its appearance in the Punjaub in 1851, it was thoroughly put down there as elsewhere; those who turned approvers or king’s evidence against their brother Thugs now form – or rather did form in 1856 – a peaceful industrious colony at Jubbulpoor, where they spun and wove muslins of exquisite fineness, instead of cutting the throats of unsuspecting travellers. Female infanticide, the result of pride of birth and pride of purse – parents murdering their infant daughters either because they cannot afford the marriage expenditure which must one day be incurred on their account, or because they see difficulties in marrying them suitably – had been greatly checked and discouraged. In the Punjaub a most signal and singular conquest had been achieved; for the British representative, calling together the chiefs of tribes in 1854, unfolded to them a plan, ‘the observance of which would effectually secure that no man should feel any real difficulty in providing for his daughter in marriage;’ whereupon the chiefs, as well as those of the Cashmere tribes, promised that, as the motive for infanticide would thus in great measure be removed, they would cheerfully aid in suppressing the practice. Lastly, the Meriah sacrifice– a horrible rite, in which young human victims are sacrificed for the propitiation of the special divinity which presides over the fertility of the earth – had been nearly rooted out from the only district where it was practised, among the hill and jungle tribes of Orissa. In religious matters, the ecclesiastical strength of the established church had been largely increased; clergymen had been occasionally sanctioned, besides those acting as chaplains to the Company; places of worship had been provided for the servants and soldiers of the Company; Protestant churches had been built in places where the worshippers were willing to contribute something towards the expenditure; Roman Catholics serving the Company had been provided with places of worship; salaries had been granted to three Roman Catholic bishops, one in each presidency; the salaries of the priests had been revised and augmented; and a wish was manifested to observe justice towards the Catholic as well as the Protestant who served his country well in the East.

Thus – in the acquisition of territory, in the augmentation of revenue consequent on that acquisition, in the administrative organisation, in the spread of education, in the provision for religious services, and in the plans for improving the moral conduct of the natives – the Marquis of Dalhousie claimed to have done much that would redound to the honour of the British name and to the advancement of the millions under British rule in India. The problem still remains unsolved – Why should India, or the native military of that country, have revolted from British service? Let us see, therefore, whether the governor-general says aught that throws light upon the matter in connection with trade and commerce; and in order to understand this subject clearly, let us treat separately of Productive Industry and Means of Communication.

Cotton is destined, according to the ideas of some thinkers, to mark a great future for India; but meanwhile we are told in the minute that, by the acquisition of Nagpoor and Berar, many fertile cotton districts were brought under British rule; and that since the acquisition of Pegu, an examination of the cotton-growing capabilities of the northern part of that kingdom had been commenced. The tea-culture in Assam had prospered greatly during the eight years from 1848 to 1856; the plant had been largely introduced into the upper districts of the northwest provinces; plantations had been established at Deyrah Dhoon, Kumaon, and Gurhwal; Mr Fortune had brought large supplies of Chinese seeds and Chinese workmen to India; many of the native zemindars had begun the cultivation on their own account in districts at the foot of the Himalaya; and every year witnessed a large increase in the production of Indian tea, which was excellent in quality, and sold readily at a high price. In agriculture generally, improvements of all kinds had been made; an Agricultural and Horticultural Society had been established in the Punjaub; carefully selected seeds had been procured from Europe; the growth of flax had been encouraged; the growth of the mulberry and the rearing of silkworms had been fostered by the government; and a grant had been made in aid of periodical agricultural shows in the Madras presidency. In relation to live-stock, plans had been formed for improving the breed of horses; merino and Australian rams had been introduced to improve the breed of sheep; and sheep had been introduced into Pegu, to the great delight of the natives and the advantage of all; ‘for the absence of sheep leads to a privation in respect of food, which is severely felt, not only by European soldiers in the province, but also by all of every class who are employed therein.’ The forests had been brought under due regulation by the appointment of conservators of forests at Pegu, Tenasserim, and Martaban; by the careful examination of the whole of the forests in the Punjaub; by the planting of new districts, hitherto bare; and by the laying down of rules for the future preservation and thrifty management of these important sources of timber and fuel. The inestimable value of coal being duly appreciated, careful researches had been made, by order of the government, in the Punjaub, Pegu, Tenasserim, Bengal, Silhet, and the Nerbudda Valley, to lay the groundwork for careful mining whenever and wherever good coal may be found. Practical chemists and geological surveyors had been set to work in the Simla Hills, Kumaon, Gurhwal, the Nerbudda Valley, Beerboom, and Jubbulpoor, either to discover beds of ironstone, or to organise ironworks where such beds had already been discovered; and an experimental mining and smelting establishment had been founded by the government among the Kumaon Hills, to apply tests likely to be valuable in future.

Next, in connection with means of communication, the channels by and through which commerce permeates the empire, the governor-general had a very formidable list of works to notice. Surveys, irrigation and canals, rivers and harbours, roads, railways, electric telegraphs, and postal communications – had all been made the subjects of great engineering activity during the eight years of the Dalhousie administration. A few words must be said here on each of these topics; for it becomes absolutely necessary, in order to a due appreciation of the narrative of Revolt about to follow, that we should, as a preliminary, know whether India really had or had not been neglected in these elements of prosperity in the years immediately preceding the outbreak.

Measures, we learn from the minute, had been taken for executing exact surveys of all the newly annexed territory in the Punjaub, Pegu, Sinde, Nagpoor, and Berar in the same careful manner as the survey of the older territories had been before carried out; and in Central India ‘the consent of all the native states has been obtained to the making of a topographical survey, and to a demarcation of all the boundaries between the several native states, and between the British territories and those of native states:’ a proceeding expected to lessen the frequency of feuds concerning disputed boundaries.

The activity in irrigation-works and canal-cutting had unquestionably been very great. In 1854 the Ganges Canal was opened in its main line, for the double purpose of irrigation and navigation. A mighty work this, which no mutiny, no angry feelings, should induce the English public to forget. It is 525 miles in length, and in some parts 170 feet in width; and considered as a canal for irrigation, ‘it stands unequalled in its class and character among the efforts of civilised nations. Its length is fivefold greater than that of all the main lines of Lombardy united, and more than twice the length of the aggregate irrigation lines of Lombardy and Egypt together – the only countries in the world whose works of irrigation rise above insignificance.’ Nor is this all. ‘As a single work of navigation for purposes of commerce, the Ganges Canal has no competitor throughout the world. No single canal in Europe has attained to half the magnitude of this Indian work. It nearly equals the aggregate length of the four greatest canals in France. It greatly exceeds all the first-class canals of Holland put together; and it is greater, by nearly one-third, than the greatest navigation canal in the United States of America.’ Pausing for one moment just to observe that the writer of the words here quoted seems to have temporarily forgotten the great canal of China, we proceed to state, on the authority of the minute, that when all the branches are finished, this noble Ganges Canal will be 900 miles in length. It will then, by its periodical overflowings, irrigate a million and a half of acres, thus lessening the terrible apprehensions of famine or dearth among millions of human beings. We may doubt or not on other subjects, but it is impossible to doubt the sincerity of the Marquis of Dalhousie when he says: ‘I trust I shall not be thought vain-glorious if I say that the successful execution and completion of such a work as the Ganges Canal would, even if it stood alone, suffice to signalise an Indian administration.’ But this work did not absorb all the energies of the canal engineers; much of a similar though smaller kind had been effected elsewhere. An irrigation canal had been begun in the Punjaub, which, when finished, would be 465 miles in length, fed from the river Ravee. All the old canals formed in the Moultan district of the Punjaub, 600 miles in length, had been cleansed, enlarged, and improved, and the distribution of the waters for the purpose of irrigation placed under judicious regulation. Irrigation canals had been made or improved in the Derajat, in the provinces east of the Sutlej, in Behar, and in Sinde. A magnificent work had been executed for carrying an irrigation canal over the river Godavery; and canals of much importance had been commenced in the Madras and Bombay presidencies.

Rivers and harbours had shared in the attention bestowed on irrigation and canal navigation. The Ganges had been opened to river steamers before 1848, and it only remained to advance in the same line of improvement. The Indus, by the conquest of the Punjaub, had been made a British river almost from the Himalaya down to the ocean; steamers had been placed upon it; and it had become a direct route for troops and travellers to many parts of Northern India, before attainable only by the Calcutta route. All the rivers in the upper part of the Punjaub had been surveyed, with a view to the determination of their capabilities for steam-navigation. No sooner was Pegu acquired, than steamers were placed upon the Irrawaddy, the great river of that country; and short canals of junction between various rivers had been so planned as to give promise of a complete line of river-steaming from Bassein to Moulmein. Arrangements had been made for placing steamers upon the river Burhampooter or Brahmaputra, to connect Assam with the Bay of Bengal. Extensive works had been commenced to improve the navigation of the Godavery. The channels that lead from Calcutta through the Sundurbunds to the sea had been enlarged; and a great bridge over the Hoogly near the city had been planned. The port of Bombay had been greatly improved, and large works for water-supply commenced. At Kurachee, at Madras, at Singapore, at Rangoon, and at other places, engineering improvements had been made to increase the accommodation for shipping.

We follow the Marquis of Dalhousie from the river to the land, and trace with him the astonishing length of new road constructed or planned during his administration. A great trunk-road from Calcutta to Delhi had been extended nearly to the Sutlej; and when the Punjaub became a British possession, plans were immediately marked out for prolonging the same road to Loodianah, Umritsir, Lahore, Jelum, Attock, and Peshawur – thus forming, if all be completed, a magnificent road 1500 miles in length from Calcutta to the Afghan frontier, available both for commercial and military operations. The difficulties of crossing so many broad rivers in Northern India is immense, and the cost great; but the road, as the minute tells us, ‘will repay a thousandfold the labour and the treasure it has cost.’ Then, fine roads had been formed from Patna to Gya, from Cuttack to Ungool and Sumbhulpore, from Dacca to Akyab, and thence towards Aracan and Pegu; while vast systems of roads had been brought under consideration for Pegu, the Punjaub, Sinde, and other newly acquired regions. Engineers had been employed to plan a road from Simla up to the very Himalaya itself, to connect India with Tibet; as it would greatly improve the social position of all the native tribes near it. When Pegu was attacked, and when a military force was sent thither overland from Calcutta, hundreds of elephants were employed to force a way through the forests and roadless tracts between Aracan and Pegu; but by the spring of 1855 a road had been formed, along which a battalion could march briskly on foot.

The Marquis of Dalhousie was not in a position to say so much concerning railways in India as ordinary roads. Although railways were brought under the consideration of the Company in 1843, nothing was done regarding them till 1849, when a contract was entered into with a separate company to construct a certain length of railway which, if continued, would connect Calcutta with the north and northwest of India. In the spring of 1853 the marquis recommended a bold line of policy in these matters: the sanction and support, in every available way, of great lines of railway to connect Calcutta with Lahore, Bombay with Agra, Bombay with Madras, and Madras with the Malabar coast. A qualified approval of these schemes had been accorded by the East India Company, and engagements to the extent of ten millions sterling had been made for a railway from Delhi to Burdwan: a line from Burdwan to Calcutta having been opened in 1855. The governor-general, not dreaming of mutinies and rebellions, named the year 1859 as the probable time of finishing the iron route from Calcutta to Delhi. Besides these engagements with the East India Railway Company in the Bengal presidency, contracts had been made with the Great India Peninsula Company for a railway from Bombay to the Ghaut Mountains; and another with the Bombay and Central India Company for a railway from Bombay to Khandeish and Nagpoor, and for another from Surat to Ahmedabad. On the eastern coast, the government had arranged with the Madras Railway Company for lines from Madras to the Malabar coast, viâ Coimbatore, and from Variembaddy to Bangalore. The English nation has long blamed the East India Company for a dilatory policy in regard to railways; but all we have to do in this place is, on the authority of the governor-general, to specify in few words what had been done in the years immediately preceding the outbreak.

The electric telegraph – perhaps the grandest invention of our age – found in India a congenial place for its reception. Where the officials had no more rapid means of sending a message to a distance of a thousand miles than the fleetness of a corps of foot-runners, it is no marvel that the achievements of the lightning-messenger were regarded with an eager eye. An experimental line of electric telegraph was determined on, to be carried out by Dr (now Sir William) O’Shaughnessy; and when that energetic man made his report on the result in 1852, it was at once determined to commence arrangements for lines of immense length, to connect the widely separated cities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and Peshawur, and the great towns between them. It was a grand idea, and was worthily realised; for by the month of March 1854 an electric wire of 800 miles was established between Calcutta and Agra; by the month of February 1855, the towns of Calcutta, Agra, Attock, Bombay, and Madras were placed in telegraphic communication by 3000 miles of wire, serving nearly forty towns on the way; and by the beginning of 1856 another length of 1000 miles was added, from Attock to Peshawur, from Bangalore to Ootacamund, and from Rangoon to the Burmese frontier. Many works of great magnitude were required; there were few good roads for the workmen to avail themselves of; there were few bridges; there were deadly jungles to be passed; there was every variety of foundation, from loose black soil to hard rocky wastes; there were seventy large rivers to be crossed, either by cables in the water, or by wires extended on the tops of masts; there was a cable of two miles required to cross the Toongabudra, and one of three miles to cross the Sone – and yet the entire work was comprised within a cost of 500 rupees or £50 per mile: perhaps the wisest expenditure ever incurred in India. Repeatedly has a message, relating to news from England, been transmitted 1000 miles, from Bombay to Calcutta, in less than three-quarters of an hour; and it has become a regular routine that the government at Calcutta shall be in possession of a considerable body of telegraphic news from England within twelve hours after the anchoring of the mail-steamer at Bombay. Who can conceive the bewilderment of the Hindoo mind at such achievements! It is certainly permissible to the governor-general to refer with pride to two or three among many instances of the remarkable service rendered by these telegraphs. ‘When her Majesty’s 10th Hussars were ordered with all speed from Poonah to the Crimea, a message requesting instructions regarding their despatch was one day received by me at Calcutta from the government of Bombay, about nine o’clock in the morning. Instructions were forthwith sent off by the telegraph in reply; and an answer to that reply was again received at Calcutta from Bombay in the evening of the same day. A year before, the same communications for the despatch of speedy reinforcements to the seat of war, which occupied by the telegraph no more than twelve hours, could not have been made in less than thirty days.’ Again: ‘When it was resolved to send her Majesty’s 12th Lancers from Bangalore to the Crimea, instead of her Majesty’s 14th Dragoons from Meerut, orders were forthwith despatched by telegraph direct to the regiment at Bangalore. The corps was immediately got ready for service; it marched two hundred miles, and was there before the transports were ready to receive it.’ Again: ‘On the 7th of February 1856, as soon as the administration of Oude was assuredly under British government, a branch-electric telegraph from Cawnpore to Lucknow was forthwith commenced; in eighteen working-days it was completed, including the laying of a cable, six thousand feet in length, across the river Ganges. On the morning on which I resigned the government in India, General Outram was asked by telegraph: “Is all well in Oude?” The answer: “All is well in Oude,” was received soon after noon, and greeted Lord Canning on his first arrival.’ Little did the new governor-general then foresee in how few months he would receive painful proof that all was not well in Oude. However, the Marquis of Dalhousie was justified in adverting with satisfaction to the establishment of telegraphic communication during his reign of power; and he insists on full credit being due to the East India Company for what was done in that direction. ‘I make bold to say, that whether regard be had to promptitude of executive action, to speed and solidity of construction, to rapidity of organisation, to liberality of charge, or to the early realisation and vast magnitude of increased political influence in the East, the achievement of the Honourable Company in the establishment of the electric telegraph in India may challenge comparison with any public enterprise which has been carried into execution in recent times, among the nations of Europe, or in America itself.’