complain of him to the government? Such | the very natural and probable effect of uniting were the views I took of that unhappy trans- them all in opposition to government. To action; and, as I foresaw serious mischief impose a test, or trial of opinions, is at all from the measure, not only to the discipline times an unpopular species of inquisition; and of the army, but even to the security of the at a period when men were hesitating whether civil government, it was my duty to state my they should obey or not, was certainly a very opinion to Sir G. Barlow, and to use every dangerous and rash measure. It could be no argument which my reason suggested, to pre- security; for men who would otherwise rebel vent the publication of the order. In this I against their government, certainly would not completely failed; the suspension took effect; be restrained by any verbal barriers of this and the match was laid that has communicated kind; and, at the same time that it promised the flame to almost every military mind in no effectual security, it appeared to increase India. I recorded no dissent; for, as a formal the danger of irritated combination. This opposition could only tend to exonerate myself very rash measure immediately produced the from a certain degree of responsibility, with- strongest representations and remonstrances out effecting any good public purpose, and from king's officers of the most unquestionable might probably be misconstrued or miscon- loyalty. ceived by those to whom our proceedings were made known, it was a more honourable discharge of my duty to relinquish this advantage, than to comply with the mere letter of the order respecting dissents. I explained this motive of my conduct to Sir G. Barlow."Statement of Facts, pp. 20-23.

After these proceedings on the part of the Madras government, the disaffection of the troops rapidly increased; absurd and violent manifestoes were published by the general officers; government was insulted; and the army soon broke out into open mutiny.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Vesey, commanding at Palamcotah, apprehends the most fatal conse quences to the tranquillity of the southern provinces, if Colonel Wilkinson makes any hostile movements from Trichinopoly. In different letters he states, that such a step must inevitably throw the company's troops into open revolt. He has ventured to write in the strongest terms to Colonel Wilkinson, entreating him not to march against the southern troops, and pointing out the ruinous consequences which may be expected from such a

measure.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart in Travancore, and Colonel Forbes in Malabar, have written, that they are under no apprehension for the tranquillity of those provinces, or for the fidelity of the company's troops, if government does not insist on enforcing the orders for the signature of the test; but that, if this is at tempted, the security of the country will be imminently endangered. These orders are to be enforced; and I tremble for the conse quences."-Statement of Facts, pp. 53, 54.

The following letter from the Honourable Colonel Stuart, commanding a king's regi ment, was soon after received by Sir George Barlow:

When the mutiny was fairly begun, the conduct of the Madras government in quelling it, seems nearly as objectionable as that by which it had been excited. The governor, in attempting to be dignified, perpetually fell into the most puerile irritability; and wishing to be firm, was guilty of injustice and violence. Invitations to dinner were made an affair of state. Long negotiations appear respecting whole corps of officers who refused to dine with Sir George Barlow; and the first persons in the settlement were employed to persuade them to eat the repast which his excellency had prepared for them. A whole school of military lads were sent away, for some trifling display of partiality to the cause of the army; and every unfortunate measure recurred to, which "The late measures of government, as cara weak understanding and a captious temper ried into effect at the Presidency and Trichicould employ to bring a government into con- nopoly, have created a most violent ferment tempt. Officers were dismissed; but dismissed among the corps here. At those places where without trial, and even without accusation. the European force was so far superior in The object seemed to be to punish somebody: number to the native, the measure probably whether it was the right or the wrong person was executed without difficulty; but here, was less material. Sometimes the subordinate where there are seven battalions of sepoys, was selected, where the principal was guilty; and a company and a half of artillery, to our sometimes the superior was sacrificed for the one regiment, I found it totally impossible to ungovernable conduct of those who were un-carry the business to the same length, partider his charge. The blows were strong enough; but they came from a man who shut his eyes, and struck at random:-conscious that he must do something to repel the danger; -but so agitated by its proximity that he could not look at it, or take a proper aim.

Among other absurd measures resorted to by this new eastern emperor, was the notable expedient of imposing a test upon the officers of the army, expressive of their loyalty and attachment to the government; and as this was done at a time when some officers were in open rebellion, others fluctuating, and many almost resolved to adhere to their duty, it had

cularly as any tumult among our own corps would certainly bring the people of Travancore upon us.

"It is in vain, therefore, for me, with the small force I can depend upon, to attempt to stem the torrent here by any acts of violence.

"Most sincerely and anxiously do I wish that the present tumult may subside, without fatal consequences; which, if the present violent measures are continued, I much fear will not be the case. If blood is once spilt in the cause, there is no knowing where it may end; and the probable consequences will be, that India will be lost for ever. So many officers

of the army have gone to such lengths, that, | discontents were confined almost exclusively unless a general amnesty is granted, tranquillity can never be restored.

"The honourable the governor in council will not, I trust, impute to me any other motives for having thus given my opinion. I am actuated solely by anxiety for the public good and the benefit of my country; and I think it my duty, holding the responsible situation I now do, to express my sentiments at so awful a period.

"Where there are any prospects of success, it might be right to persevere; but, where every day's experience proves, that the more coercive the measures adopted, the more violent are the consequences, a different and more conciliatory line of conduct ought to be adopted. I have the honour, &c."-Statement of Facts, pp. 55, 56.

"A letter from Colonel Forbes, commanding in Malabar, states, that to prevent a revolt in the province, and the probable march of the company's troops towards Seringapatam, he had accepted of a modification in the test, to be signed by the officers on their parole, to make no hostile movements until the pleasure of the government was known.-Disapproved by government, and ordered to enforce the former orders."-Statement of Facts, p. 61.

It can scarcely be credited, that in spite of these repeated remonstrances from officers, whose loyalty and whose knowledge of the subject could not be suspected, this test was ordered to be enforced, and the severest rebukes inflicted upon those who had presumed to doubt of its propriety, or suspend its operation. Nor let any man say that the opinionative person who persevered in this measure saw more clearly and deeply into the consequence of his own measures than those who were about him; for unless Mr. Petrie has been guilty, and repeatedly guilty, of a most downright and wilful falsehood, Sir George Barlow had not the most distant conception, during all these measures, that the army would ever venture upon revolt.

to the southern division of the army; that the troops composing the subsidiary force, those in the ceded districts, in the centre, and a part of the northern division, were all untainted by those principles which had misled the rest of the army."-Statement of Facts, pp. 27, 28. All those violent measures, then, the spirit and wisdom of which have been so much extolled, were not measures of the consequences of which their author had the most distant suspicion. They were not the acts of a man who knew that he must unavoidably, in the discharge of his duty, irritate, but that he could ultimately overcome that irritation. They appear, on the contrary, to have proceeded from a most gross and scandalous ignorance of the opinions of the army. He expected passive submission, and met with universal revolt. So far, then, his want of intelligence and sagacity are unquestionably proved. He did not proceed with useful measures, and run the risk of a revolt, for which he was fully prepared; but he carried these measures into execution, firmly convinced that they would occasion no revolt at all.*

The fatal nature of this mistake is best exemplified by the means recurred to for its correction. The grand expedient relied upon was to instigate the natives, men and officers, to disobey their European commanders; an expedient by which present safety was secured at the expense of every principle upon which the permanence of our Indian empire rests. There never was in the world a more singular spectacle than to see a few thousand Europeans governing so despotically fifty or sixty millions of people, of different climate, religion, and habits-forming them into large and welldisciplined armies-and leading them out to the further subjugation of the native powers of India. But can any words be strong enough to paint the rashness of provoking a mutiny, which could only be got under by teaching these armies to act against their Eu ropean commanders, and to use their actual strength in overpowering their officers ?-or, is any man entitled to the praise of firmness and sagacity, who gets rid of a present danger by encouraging a principle which renders that danger more frequent and more violent? We will venture to assert, that a more unwise or a more unstatesmanlike action was never committed by any man in any country; and we are grievously mistaken, if any length of time elapse before the evil consequences of it are felt and deplored by every man who deems In a conversation which Mr. Petrie had with the welfare of our Indian colonies of any im Sir George Barlow upon the subject of the portance to the prosperity of the mother coun try. We cannot help contrasting the managearmy-and in the course of which he recom- ment of the discontent of the Madras army, mends to that gentleman more lenient mea-with the manner in which the same difficulty sures, and warns him of the increasing disaf- was got over with the army at Bengal. A fection of the troops-he gives us the following little increase of attention and emolument to account of Sir George Barlow's notions of the the head of that army, under the management then state of the army :of a man of rank and talents, dissipated ap

"Government, or rather the head of the government, was never correctly informed of the actual state of the army, or I think he would have acted otherwise; he was told, and he was willing to believe, that the discontents were confined to a small part of the troops; that a great majority disapproved of their proceedings, and were firmly and unalterably attached to government."-Statement of Facts, pp. 23, 24.

"Sir G. Barlow assured me I was greatly misinformed; that he could rely upon his intelligence; and would produce to council the must satisfactory and unequivocal proofs of the fidelity of nine-tenths of the army; that

We should have been alarmed to have seen Sit George Barlow, junior, churchwarden of St. George's, Hanover Square,-an office so nobly filled by Giblet and Leslie it was an huge affliction to see so incapable a man at the head of the Indian empire.

pearances which the sceptred pomp of a mer- | was deprived of a seat in council, which the chant's clerk would have blown up into a commanders before him had commonly enrebellion in three weeks; and yet the Bengal joyed. A little attention, however, on the part army is at this moment in as good a state of discipline, as the English fleet to which Lord Howe made such abject concessions-and in a state to be much more permanently depended upon than the army which has been so effectually ruined by the inconveniently great soul of the present governor of Madras.

Sir George Barlow's agent, though faithful to his employment of calumniating those who were in any degree opposed to his principal, seldom loses sight of sound discretion, and confines his invectives to whole bodies of men, except where the dead are concerned. Against Colonel Capper, General Macdowall, and Mr. Roebuck, who are now no longer alive to answer for themselves, he is intrepidly severe; in all these instances he gives a full loose to his sense of duty, and inflicts upon them the severest chastisement. In his attack upon the civilians, he is particularly careful to keep to generals; and so rigidly does he adhere to this principle, that he does not support his assertion, that the civil service was disaffected as well as the military, by one single name, one single fact, or by any other means whatever, than his own affirmation of the fact. The truth (as might be supposed to be the case from such sort of evidence) is diametrically | opposite. Nothing could be more exemplary, during the whole of the rebellion, than the conduct of the civil servants; and though the courts of justice were interfered with, though the most respectable servants of the company were punished for the verdicts they had given as jurymen, though many were dismissed for the slightest opposition to the pleasure of government, even in the discharge of official duties, where remonstrance was absolutely necessary, though the greatest provocation was given, and the greatest opportunity afforded to the civil servants for revolt, there is not a single instance in which the shadow of disaffection has been proved against any civil servant. This we say, from an accurate examination of all the papers which have been published on the subject; and we do not hesitate to affirm, that there never was a more unjust, unfounded, and profligate charge made against any body of men; nor have we often witnessed a more complete scene of folly and violence, than the conduct of the Madras government to its civil servants, exhibited during the whole period of the mutiny.

Upon the whole, it appears to us, that the Indian army was ultimately driven into revolt by the indiscretion and violence of the Madras government; and that every evil which has happened might, with the greatest possible facility, have been avoided.

We have no sort of doubt that the governor always meant well; but, we are equally certain that he almost always acted ill; and where incapacity rises to a certain height, for all practical purposes the motive is of very little consequence. That the late Gen. Macdowall was a weak man, is unquestionable. He was also irritated (and not without reason), because he

of the government-the compliment of consulting him upon subjects connected with his profession-any of those little arts which are taught, not by a consummate political skill, but dictated by common good nature, and by the habit of mingling with the world, would have produced the effects of conciliation, and employed the force of General Macdowall's authority in bringing the army into a better temper of mind. Instead of this, it appears to have been almost the object, and if not the object, certainly the practice of the Madras government, to neglect and insult this officer. Changes of the greatest importance were made without his advice, and even without any communication with him; and it was too visible to those whom he was to command, that he himself possessed no sort of credit with his superiors. As to the tour which General Macdowall is supposed to have made for the purpose of spreading disaffection among the troops, and the part which he is represented by the agents to have taken in the quarrels of the civilians with the government, we utterly discredit these imputations. They are unsupported by any kind of evidence; and we believe them to be mere inventions, circulated by the friends of the Madras government. General Macdowall appears to us to have been a weak, pompous man; extremely out of humour; offended with the slights he had experienced; and whom any man of common address might have managed with the greatest ease: but we do not see, in any part of his conduct, the shadow of disloyalty and disaffection; and we are persuaded that the assertion would never have been made, if he himself had been alive to prove its injustice.

Besides the contemptuous treatment of Gen. Macdowall, we have great doubts whether the Madras government ought not to have suffered Colonel Munro to be put upon his trial; and to punish the officers who solicited that trial for the purgation of their own characters, appears to us (whatever the intention was) to have been an act of mere tyranny. We think, too, that General Macdowall was very hastily and unadvisedly removed from his situation, and upon the unjust treatment of Colonel Capper and Major Boles there can scarcely be two opinions. In the progress of the mutiny, instead of discovering in the Madras govern ment any appearances of temper and wisdom, they appear to us to have been quite as much irritated and heated as the army, and to have been betrayed into excesses nearly as criminal, and infinitely more contemptible and puerile. The head of a great kingdom bickering with his officers about invitations to dinner-the commander-in-chief of the forces negotiating that the dinner should be loyally eaten-the obstinate absurdity of the test-the total want of selection in the objects of punishment-and the wickedness, or the insanity, of teaching the Sepoy to rise against his European officer-the contempt of the decision of juries in civil cases-and the punishment of the juries themselves; such a system of conduct as this would

infallibly doom any individual to punishment, | nation of their subjects; for though men will if it did not, fortunately for him, display pre- often yield up their happiness to kings who cisely that contempt of men's feelings, and that have been always kings, they are not inclined passion for insulting multitudes, which is so to show the same deference to men who have congenial to our present government at home, been merchants' clerks yesterday, and are and which passes now so currently for wisdom kings to-day. From a danger of this kind, the and courage. By these means, the liberties governor of Madras appears to us to have very of great nations are frequently destroyed-and narrowly escaped. We sincerely hope that destroyed with impunity to the perpetrators of he is grateful for his good luck; and that he the crime. In distant colonies, however, go- will now awake from his gorgeous dreams of vernors who attempt the same system of mercantile monarchy, to good nature, moderatyranny are in no little danger from the indig-tion, and common sense.

BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE.

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1813.]

It is a melancholy thing to see a man, clothed in dition, and other faith, may fairly aspire, was soft raiment, lodged in a public palace, endowed with not frequently the most severe and galling of a rich portion of the product of other men's industry, all punishments. This limited idea of the using all the influence of his splendid situation, how nature of punishments is the more extraordiever conscientiously, to deepen the ignorance, and nary, as incapacitation is actually one of the inflame the fury, of his fellow-creatures. These are most common punishments in some branches the miserable results of that policy which has been so of our law. The sentence of a court-martial frequently pursued for these fifty years past, of frequently purports, that a man is rendered for placing men of mean, or middling abilities, in high ever incapable of serving his majesty, &c. &c.; ecclesiastical stations. In ordinary times, it is of and a person not in holy orders, who performs less importance who fills them; but when the bitter the functions of a clergyman, is rendered for period arrives, in which the people must give up some ever incapable of holding any preferment in the of their darling absurdities; when the senseless church. There are, indeed, many species of clamour, which has been carefully handed down from offence for which no punishment more appofather fool to son fool, can be no longer indulged;-site and judicious could be devised. It would when it is of incalculable importance to turn the be rather extraordinary, however, if the court, people to a better way of thinking; the greatest im-in passing such a sentence, were to assure the pediments to all amelioration are too often found among those to whose councils, at such periods, the country ought to look for wisdom and peace. We will suppress, however, the feelings of indignation which such productions, from such men, naturally occasion. We will give the Bishop of Lincoln credit for being perfectly sincere; we will suppose, that every argument he uses has not been used and refuted ten thousand times before; and we will sit down as patiently to defend the religious liber-avail themselves of this permission. It is the ties of mankind, as the reverend prelate has done to abridge them.

We must begin with denying the main position upon which the Bishop of Lincoln has built his reasoning-The Catholic religion is not tolerated in England. No man can be fairly said to be permitted to enjoy his own worship who is punished for exercising that worship. His lordship seems to have no other idea of punishment, than lodging a man in the Poultry compter, or flogging him at the cart's tail, or fining him a sum of money;-just as if incapacitating a man from enjoying the dignities and emoluments to which men of similar con

* A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln, at the Triennial Visitation of that Diocese in May, June, and July, 1812. By GEORGE TOMLINE, D.D., F.R.S., Lord Bishop of Lincoln. London. Cadell and Co. 4to. + It is impossible to conceive the mischief which this mean and cunning prelate did at this period.

culprit," that such incapac.tation was not by them considered as a punishment; that it was only exercising a right inherent in all governments, of determining who should be eligible for office and who ineligible." His lordship thinks the toleration complete, because he sees a permission in the statutes for the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship. He sees the permission-but he does not choose to see the consequences to which they are exposed who

liberality of a father who says to a son, "Do as you please, my dear boy; follow your own in. clination. Judge for yourself; you are free as air. But remember, if you marry that lady, I will cut you off with a shilling." We have scarcely ever read a more solemn and frivolous statement than the Bishop of Lincoln's antithetical distinction between persecution and the denial of political power.

"It is sometimes said, that Papists, being excluded from power, are consequently persecuted; as if exclusion from power and religious persecution were convertible terms. But surely this is to confound things totally distinct in their nature. Persecution inflicts positive punishment upon persons who hold certain religious tenets, and endeavours to accomplish the renunciation and extinction of those tenets by forcible means: exclusion from power is entirely negative in its operation-it only de

clares that those who hold certain opinions shall Kind Providence never sends an evil without not fill certain situations; but it acknowledges a remedy:-and arithmetic is the natural cure men to be perfectly free to hold those opinions. for the passion of fear. If a coward can be Persecution compels men to adopt a prescribed made to count his enemies, his terrors may be faith, or to suffer the loss of liberty, property, reasoned with, and he may think of ways and or even life exclusion from power prescribes means of counteraction. Now, might it not no faith; it allows men to think and believe as have been expedient that the reverend prelate, they please, without molestation or interfer- before he had alarmed his country clergy with ence. Persecution requires men to worship the idea of so large a measure as the repeal God in one and in no other way: exclusion of Protestantism, should have counted up the from power neither commands nor forbids any probable number of Catholics who would be mode of divine worship-it leaves the busi- seated in both houses of Parliament? Does ness of religion, where it ought to be left, to he believe that there would be ten Catholic every man's judgment and conscience. Per- peers, and thirty Catholic commoners? But, secution proceeds from a bigoted and sangui- admit double that number (and more, Dr. nary spirit of intolerance; exclusion from Duigenan himself would not ask),-will the power is founded in the natural and rational Bishop of Lincoln seriously assert, that he principle of self-protection and self-preserva- thinks the whole Protestant code in danger of tion, equally applicable to nations and to indi- repeal from such an admixture of Catholic viduals. History informs us of the mischiev- legislators as this? Does he forget, amid the ous and fatal effects of the one, and proves the innumerable answers which may be made to expediency and necessity of the other."-(pp. such sort of apprehensions, what a picture he 16, 17.) is drawing of the weakness and versatility of Protestant principles ?-that an handful of We will venture to say, there is no one sen- Catholics, in the bosom of a Protestant legistence in this extract which does not contain lature, is to overpower the ancient jealousies, either a contradiction, or a misstatement. For the fixed opinions, the inveterate habits of how can that law acknowledge men to be per-twelve millions of people ?-that the king is to fectly free to hold an opinion, which excludes apostatize, the clergy to be silent, and the Parfrom desirable situations all who do hold that liament be taken by surprise ?-that the nation opinion? How can that law be said neither is to go to bed over night, and to see the Pope to molest, nor interfere, which meets a man in walking arm in arm with Lord Castlereagh the every branch of industry and occupation, to next morning?-One would really suppose, institute an inquisition into his religious opi- from the bishop's fears, that the civil defences nions? And how is the business of religion of mankind were, like their military bulwarks left to every man's judgment and conscience, transferred, by superior skill and courage, in where so powerful a bonus is given to one set a few hours, from the vanquished to the victor of religious opinions, and such a mark of in--that the destruction of a church was like the famy and degradation fixed upon all other blowing up of a mine,-deans, prebendaries, modes of belief? But this is comparatively a churchwardens and overseers, all up in the air very idle part of the question. Whether the present condition of the Catholics is or is not to be denominated a perfect state of toleration, is more a controversy of words than things. That they are subject to some restraints, the bishop will admit: the important question is, whether or not these restraints are necessary? For his lordship will, of course, allow, that every restraint upon human liberty is an evil in itself; and can only be justified by the superior good which it can be shown to produce. My lord's fears upon the subject of Catholic emancipation are conveyed in the following paragraph:

in an instant. Does his lordship really ima gine, when the mere dread of the Catholics becoming legislators has induced him to charge his clergy, and his agonized clergy, to extort from their prelate the publication of the charge, that the full and mature danger will produce less alarm than the distant suspicion of it has done in the present instance ?that the Protestant writers, whose pens are now up to the feather in ink, will, at any future period, yield up their church, without passion, pamphlet, or pugnacity? We do not blame the Bishop of Lincoln for being afraid; but we blame him for not rendering his fears in"It is a principle of our constitution, that the telligible and tangible-for not circumscribing king should have advisers in the discharge of and particularizing them by some individual every part of his royal functions-and is it to case-for not showing us how it is possible be imagined that Papists would advise mea- that the Catholics (granting their intentions to sures in support of the cause of Protestantism? be as bad as possible) should ever be able to A similar observation may be applied to the ruin the Church of England. His lordship two Houses of Parliament: would popish peers appears to be in a fog; and, as daylight breaks or popish members of the House of Commons, in upon him, he will be rather disposed to disenact laws for the security of the Protestant own his panic. The noise he hears is not government? Would they not rather repeal roaring, but braying; the teeth and the mane the whole Protestant code, and make Popery are all imaginary; there is nothing but ears. again the established religion of the country?" It is not a lion that stops the way, but an ass. —(p. 14.)

And these are the apprehensions which the clergy of the diocese have prayed my lord to nake public.

One method his lordship takes, in handling this question, is by pointing out dangers that are barely possible, and then treating of them as if they deserved the active and present atten tion of serious men. But if no measure is to