ABOLITION OF FLOGGING IN THE INDIAN ARMY.

[As we have the strongest desire to place every good deed of the Indian Government (so few are they in number) in the most conspicuous light, we give insertion to the following General Order' in this part of our work, that it may be sure of being seen by all who open it.-ED.]

'INDIAN ARMY.

FLOGGING ABOLISHED IN INDIA.

'Head-Quarters, Calcutta, March 19, 1827. 'The Commander-in-Chief is satisfied, from the quiet and orderly habits of the Native soldiers, that it can very seldom be necessary to inflict on them the punishment of flogging, while it may be almost entirely abolished, with great advantage to their character and feelings.

His Excellency is therefore pleased to direct, that no Native soldier shall, in future, be sentenced to corporal punishment, unless for the crime of stealing, marauding, or gross insubordination, where the individuals are deemed unworthy to continue in the ranks of the Army.

'Whenever, in such cases, corporal punishment is awarded by a Regimental Detachment or Brigade Court-Martial, the proceedings are to be referred, with a descriptive roll of the prisoner, and a report of his previous character, to the General or other officer commanding the division, before the sentence is carried into effect; and if he confirms it, and does not see cause to remit the punishment, he will, at the same time, direct the man to be discharged from the army. This order is to be clearly explained to every Native corps.

'By order of his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief.

'W. L. WATSON, Adjutant-General of the Army.'

THE ORIENTAL HERALD.

No. 46.-OCTOBER 1827.-VOL. 15.

ARBITRARY TAXATION OF THE BRITISH INHABITANTS OF
CALCUTTA.

THE all-absorbing topic of interest connected with Britsh India, is, at present, the pending Stamp Act, by which an attempt is to be made to tax the British residents of Calcutta more especially, but eventually, no doubt, of every other part of India, to the utmost verge of their capacity to pay, and at the mere will and pleasure of their 'Honourable Masters.'

There are some persons who think that they richly deserve this and every other infliction that tyranny can impose upon them, for the willing homage which they have, generally speaking, so indiscriminately paid to power and authority, during the last fifty years, but more especially for the unresisting manner in which they permitted themselves to be ignominiously fettered, insulted, and condemned, as totally unworthy to be trusted with the exercise of that privilege, by which more than every other, the free are distinguished from the enslaved-the privilege of giving utterance to their honest opinions, without dread of any other penalty than the verdict of a jury should adjudge. If the whole body of the British residents in India had petitioned for the abolition of that disgraceful power, by which the Governors of that country can banish, without a trial, any man who dares utter an opinion contrary to their wishes ;— if they had resisted, as they ought to have done, the odious imposition of a law more degrading than any that exists in Turkey or in Spain, which prohibits them, on pain of exile and ruin, from printing, buying, borrowing, lending, reading, or even possessing any newspaper, book, pamphlet, or publication, which the GovernorGeneral may choose in his caprice to denounce ;-if they had the sense to perceive, or the courage to act on the perception, that the greater evil always includes the lesser, they would have insisted on the importance of a Free Press, as including, as well as securing, every other species of freedom-and then, Stamp Acts, and every

other species of arbitrary exaction, might have been so subjected to the test of discussion and public opinion, as to be opposed with ten times the effect that they can now be met by humble petitions, to which the parties petitioned will pay just as little attention as such humble solicitations of rights, as boons, deserve.

But though some may argue thus, and on that ground contend, that a people who will make no effort for their own liberties deserve no advocates to plead their cause, we confess that our hatred of arbitrary power is so purely unconnected with personal considerations, and withal so interminable as well as intense, that notwithstanding the great mass of the pretended independent' British inhabitants of India appear to us to have hugged their chains with an unaccountable and debasing fondness, and to have joined in the general hue and cry against the few who had nobler spirits than themselves, condemning all who dared to write or speak of liberty in that despotic land, as miscreants who desired only the destruction of all that was sacred and established;-notwithstanding, we say, the general prostration of all the faculties of thought and powers of action to the supreme will of the ruler for the time being, by which the English name and character has been so disgraced in India for years past, still, for the sake of the few noble spirits still existing amidst this subservient body of Englishmen, as well as for the helpless many among the Natives of the country itself, from whom nothing better than slavish submission could yet be expected, we think it a duty to raise our voice against this new attempt at trampling under foot every consideration for the interests of the subjugated people, which the Government of India, acting under orders of their superiors at home, are making, under cover of the Stamp Act, now about to be introduced into Calcutta.

In our last Number, in the article on the East India Company's Monopoly, we took occasion to show that no individual member of that Company, or in other words, no Proprietor of East India Stock, benefitted, in the remotest degree, from any increase of the Indian revenue, as the dividends on the amount of his stock remained, under all circumstances, the same; yet that, for the sake of the increased patronage connected with an increased expenditure in the government of these possessions, the twenty-four Directors were always glad to promote any scheme by which more money could be drawn out of the pockets of the people, and placed at their (the Directors') disposal. There is another reason why new taxes delight them. The only way in which a handful of Englishmen can rule a large body of foreigners is by keeping them ignorant and disunited; the surest way of effecting this is by keeping them poor. The same rule applies equally to the smaller body of their own countrymen whom they hold under their authority in India. The rule has been long since applied to the Army, whose officers, being kept in a state of perpetual dependence on the possible contingency

of a retiring pension, of which any act of independence on their part might for ever deprive them, and never being permitted to grow sufficiently rich out of their continually curtailed allowances to resign the service rather than submit to any indignities offered to them, are retained in the most manageable state of dependence on their superiors that could be desired. The Civil Service are only not in the same condition, because the civilians are the law-makers both in India and at home, and contain too many relatives and connections of the Directors themselves to be in much danger of any serious injury to their fortunes from any cause but their own indiscretions, which are far from being always unwelcome to the higher authorities, as their poverty, when it happens, produces the same happy effect of placing the individuals so affected at the entire mercy of those, by a subservience to whose will they can alone become rich. This is a melancholy and humiliating picture; but the chief question is, is it not true?

That portion of the British inhabitants in India, composed of what are miscalled independent gentlemen, divided into free merchants and free mariners, neither of whom are, however, free to do any thing that the Governor for the time being chooses to prohibit, is, one would have imagined, sufficiently under the power of the Government, by the simple condition of their residing in India on sufferance only, and being liable to be turned out of the country for any thing or nothing, without trial or without cause assigned, as well as without hope of redress from appeal. But the pleasure of impoverishing and trampling down those who are already destitute and prostrate, is one which is too dear to despotism not to be gratified at every favourable opportunity. And as the free merchants and free mariners of India are just as helpless and as incapable of offering any effectual resistance to their rulers as the enslaved natives of the country, the Directors at home, and their Governors abroad, are, no doubt, equally glad of an opportunity of showing these selfcalled independent' inhabitants of British-birth, that they are powerless and contemptible, and can be treated just as their rulers, in their sovereign will and pleasure, see fit. The issue will show whether there are any limits to their tyranny or not. In the mean time, treating the question as one to be decided by law and reason, (to which the petitioning inhabitants of Calcutta, after all their experience of the inefficiency of these guides, still appeal, as though these were to settle the dispute!) we shall record what has been said and done in the matter; earnestly desiring, though certainly not much encouraged to hope, that the end may be a triumph of right and justice over unbridled avarice and power; and that the inhabitants of India, British as well as Native, if they can be taught to hate depotism by no other means, may, after they have tamely submitted to all sorts of insults on their integrity, their independence, and their understanding, be roused to resistance by an attack on

their pockets, that meanest of all channels, and one through which a high-minded spirit would be least likely to be moved, but which, in the present instance, at least, seems to have stirred up a feeling that no previous aggravation could create.

We have received from Calcutta an official copy of the Stamp Act; but as it fills twelve entire sheets, and is full of technical and minute details, we shall not tax the reader's patience by its insertion. The only great question that can interest the public mind is the principle on which the Act is framed,-namely, the assumption that the East India Company and its Government in India have the power to levy, at their will and pleasure, contributions in any shape, and to any amount, not only from the Natives of India, (for, poor wretches! not even the complaining English petitioners seem to dispute that,) but from all British-born subjects residing by sufferance in their territories. We shall see the principle of the Act in its preamble: though this is a formality which, if the powers recited by it be justly assumed, might well be dispensed with altogether. This preamble is as follows:

'Whereas Stamp Duties have long been raised, levied, and paid ' within the PROVINCES subordinate to this Presidency; and where' as it appears EXPEDIENT, with a view to the improvement of the revenue derived from the said duties and is otherwise JUST AND PROPER that a similar tax should be levied and paid wITHIN THE TOWN OF CALCUTTA, the Vice-President in Council, under the powers ' vested in him by virtue of the 98th and 99th section of the Act 53d 'Geo. III. cap. 45; and with the sanction of the Court of Directors ' of the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies; and with the approbation of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, has enacted the following rules to be in force within the Town of Calcutta, from and after the 1st day ' of May next ensuing.'

This is really a pattern of a preamble which might serve for all time to come. It might be thus fairly paraphrased :

'Whereas floggings and tortures have long been inflicted on slaves within the PROVINCES subordinate to this country, (namely, 'the West Indies, the Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope ;) and whereas it appears EXPEDIENT, with a view to the improvement of discipline, and is otherwise JUST AND PROPER that similar 'floggings should be inflicted WITHIN THE ISLAND OF GREAT BRITAIN ITSELF, the prime minister, with the sanction of the West India planters, (the honourable masters' of the well-flogged slaves,) and the secretary of the colonies, (or commissioners for the ' affairs of our colonial dependencies,) have enacted the following rules ' (for a graduated scale of effective flogging) to be in force within 'the island of Great Britain, from and after the 1st day of May next 'ensuing.'