would prefer the government of the crown to that of the Company; that
the natives of India having been thrown into doubt concerning the
intentions of the Company to interfere with their religion, some
authoritative announcement of the Queen’s respect for their views on
that subject would be very satisfactory; and that as the native Bengal
army had disappeared, as India must in future be garrisoned by a large
force of royal troops, and as the military power would then belong to
the crown, it was desirable that the political power should go with it.
Among the pleas urged on the opposite side were such as follow: That the
natives of India would anticipate an increased stringency of British
power, under the proposed _régime_; that the ministerial influence and
patronage, in Indian matters, would be dangerous to England herself;
that as the Whig and Conservative parties had both supported the system
of double government in the India Bill of 1853, there was no reason for
making this sudden change in 1858; that before any change of government
was effected, it was imperatively necessary that an inquiry should be
made into the causes and circumstances of the Revolt; that the direct
exercise of governing power by a queen, formally designated ‘Defender of
the Faith,’ could not be agreeable either to the Hindoos or the
Mohammedans of India, whose ideas of ‘faith’ were so widely different
from those of Christians; that, as all previous organic changes in the
administration of the government of India had been preceded by an
inquiry into the character of that government, so ought it in fairness
to be in the present case; that if the proposed change were effected,
European theories and novelties, owing to the pressure of public opinion
on the ministry, would be attempted to be grafted on Asiatic prejudices
and immobility, without due regard to the inherent antagonism of the two
systems; and that the enormous extent, population, revenue, and commerce
of India ought not to be imperiled by a measure, the consequences of
which could not at present be foreseen.

This debate ended on the 18th; the House of Commons, by a majority of
318 to 173, granting leave for the introduction of the bill—it being
understood that a considerable time would elapse before the second
reading, in order that the details of the measure might be duly
considered by all who took an interest in the matter.

Before, however, any very great attention could be given to the subject,
either in or out of parliament, a most unexpected change took place in
the political relations of the government. The same minister who, on the
18th of February, obtained leave to bring in the India Bill, was placed
on the 19th in a minority which led to the resignation of himself and
his colleagues. Circumstances connected with an attempted assassination
of the Emperor of the French induced the Palmerston government to bring
in a measure which proved obnoxious to the House of Commons; the measure
was rejected by 234 against 219, and the government accordingly
resigned. So far as concerned the immediate effect, the most important
fact connected with India was the offer by the Earl of Derby, the new
premier, of the presidency of the India Board to the Earl of
Ellenborough. This nobleman had long been in collision with the East
India Company and its civil servants. Twice already had he been
president of the Board of Control, and in 1842-3-4 he had filled the
responsible office of governor-general of India. In both offices, and at
all times, he had cherished as much as possible the royal influence in
India against the Company’s, the military against the civil. As a
consequence, his enemies were bitter, his friends enthusiastic. The
author of an anonymous ‘red pamphlet,’ which attracted much notice
during the Revolt, spoke of the Earl of Ellenborough as the one great
man who could alone be the saviour of India—as the chivalrous knight who
would shiver to atoms the ‘vested rights’ and ‘traditionary policy’ of
the Court of Directors. It was natural, therefore, that the accession of
the earl to the new government should be regarded as an important
matter, either for good or evil.

It speedily became apparent that the new president of the Board of
Control would find difficulty in framing a line of proceeding on Indian
affairs. His own predilections were quite as much against the Company,
as those of his predecessor; but many of his colleagues in the Derby
government had committed themselves, when out of office, to a defence of
the Company, and to a condemnation of any immediate alteration in the
Indian government. Either he must change his opinions, or they belie
their own words. The Court of Directors would fain have expected
indulgent treatment from the Derby administration, judging from the
speeches of the two preceding months; but their past experience of the
Earl of Ellenborough threw a damp over their hope.

Three weeks after the vote which occasioned the change of government,
Lord Palmerston proposed the postponement of the second reading of his
India Bill until the 22d of April—a further lapse of six weeks; and this
was agreed to. He would not withdraw the bill, because he still adhered
to its provisions; he would not at once proceed with it, because his
opponents were now in office, and he preferred to see what course they
would adopt. The fate of India was thus placed in suspense for several
weeks, simply through a party struggle arising out of French affairs;
the great question—’Who shall govern India?’—was made subservient to
party politics.

Although Lord Palmerston had named the 22d of April as the day for
reconsidering his India Bill, this did not tie down the Derby ministry
to the adoption of any particular line of policy. After many discussions
in the cabinet, it was resolved that the ministers should ‘eat their
words’ by legislating for India, although it had before been declared a
wrong time for so doing; and that, throwing Lord Palmerston’s bill
aside, a new India Bill should be introduced.

Accordingly, on the 26th of March, Mr Disraeli, the new Chancellor of
the Exchequer, moved for leave to bring in that which was afterwards
called the ‘India Bill No. 2.’ As in a former instance, this bill may be
most usefully rendered intelligible by a condensed summary: A secretary
of state for India, to be appointed by the Queen—This secretary to be
president of a Council of India—The council to consist of eighteen
persons, nine nominated and nine elected—The nominated councillors to be
appointed under the royal sign-manual by the crown, and to represent
nine distinct interests—Those nine interests to be represented as
follow: the first councillor to have belonged for at least ten years to
the Bengal civil service; the second to the Madras service; the third to
the Bombay service; and the fourth to the Upper or Punjaub provinces,
under similar conditions; the fifth to have been British resident at the
court of some native prince; the sixth to have served at least five
years with the Queen’s troops in India; the seventh, to have served the
Company ten years in the Bengal army; and the eighth and ninth,
similarly in the Madras and Bombay armies—The nine nominated members to
be named in the bill itself, so as to give them parliamentary as well as
royal sanction—The remaining eight members of the council to be chosen
by popular election—Four of such elected members to be chosen from among
persons who had served the Crown or the Company at least ten years in
any branch of the Indian service, or had resided fifteen years in India;
and to be chosen by persons who had been ten years in the service of the
Crown or the Company, or possessed £1000 of India stock, or possessed
£2000 of capital in any Indian railway or joint-stock public works—The
other five of such elected members to be chosen from among persons who,
for at least ten years, had been engaged in the commerce of India, or in
the export of manufactured articles thither; and to be chosen by the
parliamentary constituencies of five large centres of commerce and
manufactures in the United Kingdom, namely, London, Liverpool,
Manchester, Glasgow, and Belfast—the Secretary of State for India to
have the power of dividing the council, thus constituted, into
committees, and to exercise a general supervision over these
committees—The secretary alone, or six councillors in union, to have
power to summon a meeting of the council—The councillors not to be
eligible to sit in parliament, but to have each £1000 per annum for
their services—The patronage heretofore exercised by the East India
Company to be now exercised by the Council—The army of India not to be
directly affected by the bill—The revenues of India to bear the expenses
of the government of India—A royal commission to be sent to India, to
investigate all the facts and conditions of Indian finance.

It will be seen that this remarkable scheme was based on the idea of
conciliating as many different interests as possible, in England and in
India. Mr Disraeli, in the course of his speech, mentioned the names of
the nine gentlemen whom it was proposed to nominate to the council on
the part of the crown; and in relation to the vast powers of the
secretary and council, he said: ‘To establish a British minister with
unrestricted authority, subject to the moral control of a body of men
who by their special knowledge, their independence, their experience,
their distinction, and their public merit, are, nevertheless, invested
with an authority which can control even a despotic minister, and which
no mere act of parliament can confer upon them, is, I admit, no ordinary
difficulty to encounter; and to devise the means by which it may be
accomplished is a task which only with the indulgence of this House and
with the assistance of parliament we can hope to perform.’

Criticisms were much more numerous and contradictory on this than on
Lord Palmerston’s bill. It was no longer a contest of Conservatives
against Whigs. The new bill was examined on its merits. The friends of
the East India Company, expecting something favourable from the change
of government, were much disappointed; they analysed the clauses of the
bill, but found not what they sought. True, the old Indian interests
were to be represented in the new council; but just one-half of the
members were to be nominees of the crown, and five others were to be
elected by popular constituencies over which the Company possessed no
control. Even those who cared little whether the Company lived or died,
provided India were well governed, differed among themselves in opinion
whether the popular element would be usefully introduced in the manner
proposed. The objections were more extensively urged out of parliament
than within; for after the first reading of the bill, on the 26th of
March, the further consideration of it was postponed to the 19th of
April.

The Conservatives had reproved the Whigs for discourtesy to the East
India Company, in not giving due notice of the provisions of ‘Bill No.
1;’ but now equal discourtesy (if discourtesy it were) was shewn by the
first-named party in reference to ‘Bill No. 2.’ On the 24th of March, at
a quarterly meeting of the Company, and only two days before Mr Disraeli
introduced his measure—or rather the Ellenborough measure—into the House
of Commons, the chairman of the Court of Directors was asked whether he
knew aught concerning the provisions of a bill so nearly touching the
interests of the Company; to which he replied: ‘I know no more about the
forthcoming bill than I knew of the last before its introduction into
parliament.’ On the 7th of April, however, at a special Court of
Proprietors, the directors presented copies of the bills, ‘No. 1’ and
‘No. 2;’ and at the same time presented a Report against both. In the
debate, on the 7th and 13th, arising out of the presentation of the
Report, there was a pretty general opinion among the proprietors, that
if Lord Palmerston’s India Bill was bad, Mr Disraeli’s was not one whit
better, in reference to the interests of the Company; and there was a
final vote for the following resolution: ‘That this court concur in the
opinion of the Court of Directors, that neither of the bills now before
parliament is calculated to secure good government to India; and they
accordingly authorise and request the Court of Directors to take such
measures as may appear to them desirable for resisting the passing of
either bill through parliament, and for introducing into any bill for
altering the constitution of the government of India such conditions as
may promise a system of administration calculated to promote the
interests of the people of India, and to prove conducive to the general
welfare.’ One of the proprietors having expressed an opinion that the
directors ought to prepare a third bill, more just than either of the
other two, the chairman very fairly pointed out that it was not the
Company’s duty so to do.

Under somewhat unfavourable circumstances did the Derby ministry renew
the consideration of Indian affairs after the Easter recess. Parliament,
it is true, had not yet had time or opportunity to criticise ‘Bill No.
2;’ but that measure had been very unfavourably received both by the
East India Company and by the newspaper press; and it became generally
known that the ministers would gladly accept any decent excuse for
abandoning or at least modifying the bill. This excuse was furnished to
them by Lord John Russell. On the 12th of April, when the Commons
resumed their sittings after the Easter vacation, his lordship expressed
an opinion that the bill was ill calculated to insure the desired end;
that its discussion was likely to be disfigured by a party contest; and
that it would be better to agree to a set of resolutions in committee,
on which a new bill might be founded. Mr Disraeli accepted this
suggestion with an eagerness which led many members to surmise that a
private compact had been made in the matter. He suggested that Lord John
Russell should draw up the resolutions; but as his lordship declined
this task, Mr Disraeli undertook it on the part of the government.
Hereupon a new phase was presented by the debate. One member expressed
his astonishment that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be so ready
to hand over the functions of government to the care of a private
member. Another declared he could not see what advantage was to be
gained by a resolution in committee in lieu of a bill in the whole
House. The members of the late Whig government all condemned the plan
suggested by Lord John and accepted by Mr Disraeli; but, pending the
introduction of the proposed resolutions, they would not frustrate the
plan. Mr Mangles, on the part of the East India Company, expressed an
earnest hope that all party feeling would be excluded from the debates
on India. The East India Company, he remarked, could hardly be expected
to acquiesce in a measure for their own extinction; nevertheless, if
such should be proved to be inevitable, the directors would give their
best assistance to the perfecting of any measure which the House might
think proper to adopt. Mr Disraeli finally promised to prepare a set of
resolutions, and to bring them in for discussion on the 26th.

The state, then, to which this intricate discussion had been brought was
this—the ‘Bill No. 1,’ proposed by Lord Palmerston, stood over for a
second reading on the 22d of April; the ‘Bill No. 2,’ proposed by Mr
Disraeli, was placed in abeyance for a time; while the ‘resolutions,’ to
be prepared by Mr Disraeli on the suggestion of Lord John Russell, and
intended as a means of improving ‘Bill No. 2,’ or perhaps of leading to
a ‘Bill No. 3,’ were to be introduced on the 26th of April. It was
pretty generally felt, both within and without the walls of parliament,
that the whole subject was in great confusion, and that the ministers
themselves had no definite notion of the best course to pursue. At the
meeting of the East India Company on the 13th, Mr Mangles, who was a
member of parliament as well as chairman of the Company, said: ‘After
the extraordinary occurrences we have witnessed within the last six
weeks, in which we have seen a minister ousted who was supposed to have
the support of a most commanding majority, and another minister placed
in power without having a majority, or even a considerable minority, he
would be a very bold man who would prophesy what the fate of any new
measure in the House of Commons would be.’

On the 23d of April, Mr Disraeli announced his intention of abandoning
‘Bill No. 2’ altogether, and of postponing the preparation of ‘Bill No.
3’ until the House should have agreed to any ‘resolutions’ bearing on
the subject. Lord Palmerston would not withdraw his ‘Bill No. 1;’ he
simply held it in abeyance for a time, to watch the course of pending
events. On the 26th, Mr Disraeli craved four days more for the
preparation of his resolutions. He made a speech, in which he praised
his own ‘Bill No. 2’ at the expense of his antagonist’s ‘Bill No. 1;’
but, as he had ‘voluntarily stifled his own baby’—to use the
illustration of another speaker—his arguments fell with little force.
The illustration, in truth, was so tempting, that it was long made use
of both in and out of parliament. Lord Palmerston said: ‘The measure,
upon which the right honourable gentleman has pronounced so unbounded a
funeral panegyric, has been murdered by himself. If he thought so well
of the merits of the bill, why did he kill it?’ Mr Gregory, wishing, by
getting rid of the proposed ‘resolutions,’ to postpone all legislation
on the subject until another year, moved as an amendment—‘That at this
moment it is not expedient to pass any resolutions for the future
government of India.’ A general desire prevailed in the House, however,
that some measure or other should be passed into a law, to strengthen
and render more definite the governing authority in India; and the
amendment was withdrawn.

At length, on the 30th of April, the resolutions were proposed. They
departed very widely from ‘Bill No. 2.’ The members of the council,
instead of being definitely eighteen in number, were to be ‘not less
than twelve and not more than eighteen.’ The scheme for representing
classes, services, presidencies, and commercial communities in the
council was given up; as was likewise the election of a portion of the
members by parliamentary constituencies. As the whole of the fourteen
resolutions, if agreed to, would require a separate agreement for each,
and as every member would be allowed to speak on every resolution if he
so chose, there were the materials presented for a very lengthened
debate. There was a preliminary discussion, moreover, on a motion
intended to extinguish the resolutions altogether. Lord Harry Vane
moved—‘That the change of circumstances since the first proposal by her
Majesty’s late advisers, to transfer the government of India from the
East India Company to the Crown, renders it inexpedient to proceed
further with legislation on the subject during the present session.’
This proposal, however, was negatived by 447 to 57.

It would scarcely be possible, and scarcely worth while if possible, to
follow all the intricacies of the debate on the ‘resolutions.’ Every
part of the India question was opened again and again; every speaker
considered himself at liberty to wander from principles to details, and
back again; and hence the amount of speaking was enormous. Should there
be a secretary of state for India, or only a president of a council?
Should there be a council at all, or only a secretary with his
subordinates, as in the home, foreign, colonial, and war departments? If
a council, should it be wholly nominated, wholly elective, or part of
each? Who should nominate, and who elect, and under what conditions?
Should the secretary or president possess any power without his council,
and how much? Should the East India Company, or not, be represented in
the new council? By whom should the enormous patronage of the Court of
Directors be hereafter exercised? What would become of the ‘vested
rights’ of the Company, such as the receipt of dividends on the East
India stock? In what relation would the governor-general of India stand
to the new council? Would the local governments of the three
presidencies be interfered with? Who would organise and support the
Indian army? What would be done in relation to missionaries, idolatrous
practices, caste, education, public works, manufactures, commerce, &c.,
in India?—These were some of the questions which were discussed, not
once merely, but over and over again. Owing to the strange ministerial
changes, the independent members in the House had had but few
opportunities of fully expressing their sentiments; they did so now, at
ample length. Many long nights of debate were spent over the
resolutions; many amendments proposed; many alterations assented to by
the ministers. It occupied three evenings—April 30, May 3, and May 7—to
settle the first three resolutions; or rather, to agree to the first, to
modify the second, and to withdraw the third. At this period occurred
the exciting episode concerning the Oude proclamation, the censure of
Viscount Canning, and the resignation of the Earl of Ellenborough.[192]
As there was now no president of the Board of Control, the India
resolutions could not conveniently be proceeded with; and therefore
everything remained for a time at a dead-lock. Soon afterwards Lord
Stanley, son of the Earl of Derby, accepted the seals of the office
vacated by the Earl of Ellenborough. He had every claim to the
indulgence of the House, in the difficulty of his new position; and this
indulgence was willingly shewn to him; he was permitted to choose his
own time, after the ceremony of his re-election, to bring the great
question of India once again before the Commons House, in the hope of
arriving at some practicable solution. For a period of one full month
did the further consideration of the resolutions remain in abeyance,
while these party tactics and ministerial changes were engaging public
attention.

At length, on the 7th of June, when the subject was resumed, and when
Lord Stanley took the lead on Indian affairs in the House of Commons, it
began to be apparent that the resolutions were less valued by the
government than they had before been. The debate concerning them,
however, continued. When the time came for deciding how many members
should compose the new Council of India, Mr Gladstone reopened the whole
question by moving as an amendment, ‘That, regard being had to the
position of affairs in India, it is expedient to constitute the Court of
Directors of the East India Company, by an act of the present session,
to be a council for administering the government of India in the name of
her Majesty, under the superintendence of such responsible minister,
until the end of the next session of parliament.’ Mr Gladstone proposed
this amendment under a belief that it was not practicable, during the
existing session of parliament, to perfect a scheme of government for
India that would be worthy of the nation. The problem to be solved was
one of the most formidable ever presented to any nation or any
legislature in the history of the world, and the evils of delay would be
insignificant in comparison with those of crude and hasty legislation.
His suggestion, he contended, would not be inconsistent with the
appointment of a new council in the following year, if it should be
deemed desirable to make such appointment. Lord Stanley opposed this
amendment—on the grounds that it had all the evils of a temporary and
provisional measure; that the directors, as a council merely for one
year, would be placed in an inconvenient position; that having been told
that they were doomed, and that nothing could save them as a permanent
body, they would slacken their zeal and energy, and impair the
confidence of the public; that the much-condemned delays would still
continue; and that the public service would derive no advantage. The
friends of the East India Company supported this amendment; but it was
rejected by 265 against 116. Mr Roebuck then made an attempt to
extinguish the council both in theory and in fact. He contended that a
Secretary of State, alone responsible for all his acts, relying upon his
own mind for guidance and counsel, and having a more direct interest in
doing right, was morally and mentally the best governor for India; he
feared that a council would render the governing body practically
irresponsible to the nation. Lord Stanley, on the other hand, insisted
that it was quite impossible for any minister to act efficiently in such
a difficult office without the aid of advisers possessing special
information on Indian affairs; and as the House generally concurred in
this view, Mr Roebuck’s amendment was negatived without a division. Two
evenings, June 7th and 11th, were spent in discussing two resolutions.
On the 14th the House was engaged many hours in considering whether the
council should be elective, or nominated, or both; great diversity of
opinion prevailed; and the speakers, tempted by the peculiarity of the
subject, wandered very widely beyond the limits of the immediate
question. Lord John Russell thought that the members of the council
ought to be wholly appointed by the Crown, on the responsibility of the
minister; Sir James Graham thought that the Court of Directors ought to
be _ex officio_ members of the council, to insure practical knowledge on
Indian affairs; but Lord Stanley contended that the advantages of two
systems would be combined if one half of the council were nominated by
the Crown, and the other half elected by a constituency of seven or
eight thousand persons interested in or connected with Indian affairs;
and the House, agreeing with this view, voted a resolution accordingly.

Midsummer was approaching. The House of Lords had not yet had an
opportunity of discussing the Indian question either in principle or in
detail; and it began now to be strongly felt that, as the resolutions
really did not bind the Commons to any particular clauses in the
forthcoming bill, their value was doubtful. Accordingly, on the 17th of
June, after a long discussion on desultory topics, Lord Stanley
proposed, amid some laughter in the House, to withdraw all the remaining
resolutions—a proposition that was assented to with great alacrity,
shewing that the legislators were by no means satisfied with the wisdom
of their past proceedings.

Thus was completed the third stage in this curious legislative
achievement. Lord Palmerston’s ‘India Bill No. 1’ was laid aside,
because he was expelled from office; Mr Disraeli’s ‘India Bill No. 2’
was abandoned, because it was ridiculed on all sides; and now the
‘resolutions’ were given up when half-finished, because they were found
to be inoperative and non-binding. Some of the supporters of the East
India Company claimed, and not illogically, a little more respect for
the Company than had lately been given; the difficulty of framing a new
government for India shewed, by implication, that the old _régime_ was
not so bad as had been customarily asserted.

The ‘India Bill No. 3’ was brought in by Lord Stanley on the
evening (June 17th) which witnessed the withdrawal of the
resolutions. The bill comprised sixty-six clauses—of the more
important of which a brief outline may be given here, to furnish
means of comparison with bills ‘No. 1’ and ‘No. 2:’ The government
of India to revert from the Company to the Crown—A Secretary of
State to exercise all the powers over Indian affairs hitherto
exercised by the Court of Directors, the Secret Committee, and the
Board of Control—The Crown to determine whether to give these
powers to one of the four existing secretaries of state, or to
appoint a fifth—The Secretary to be assisted by a ‘Council of
India,’ to consist of fifteen persons—The Court of Directors to
elect seven of those members from among its own body, or from
among persons who had at any time been directors; the remaining
eight to be nominated by the Queen—Vacancies in the council to be
filled up alternately by the Crown and by the council assembled
for that purpose—A majority of all the members to be chosen from
among persons who had served or resided at least ten years in
India—Every councillor to be irremovable during good behaviour, to
be prohibited from sitting in the House of Commons, to receive
twelve hundred pounds a year as salary, to be allowed to resign
when he pleases, and to be entitled to a retiring pension varying
in amount according to the length of service—Compensation to be
given to such secretaries or clerks of the Company as do not
become officers of the new department—The Secretary of State to be
president of the ‘Council of India,’ to divide the council into
committees for the dispatch of business, and to appoint any member
as vice-president—Council meetings to be called by the Secretary,
or by any five members; and five to be a quorum—Questions to be
decided in the council by a majority, but the Secretary to have a
_veto_ even over the majority—The Secretary may send and receive
‘secret’ dispatches, without consulting his council at all—Most of
the appointments in India to be made as heretofore—Patronage of
cadetships to be exercised partly by the council, but principally
by the Secretary of State, and to be given in a certain ratio to
sons of persons who have filled military or civil offices in
India—The property, credits, debits, and liabilities of the
Company, except India stock and its dividends, to be transferred
from the Company to the Crown; and the council to act as trustees
in these matters—The council to present annual accounts to
parliament of Indian finance and all matters relating thereto—The
council to guarantee the legalised dividend on India stock, out of
the revenues of India.

The ‘Bill No. 3,’ of which the above is a slight programme, came on for
second reading on the 24th of June. Lord Stanley—who, as admitted by
opponents as well as supporters, entered with great earnestness upon the
duties of his office—stated that he had endeavoured to avail himself of
all the opinions expressed during the various debates, to prepare a
measure that should meet the views of a majority of the House. In the
discussion that ensued, Mr Bright wandered into subjects that could not
possibly be treated in the bill; he reopened the whole topic of Indian
misgovernment—disapproved of governor-generals—condemned
annexations—suggested new presidencies and new tribunals—and told the
Commons how he would govern India if he were minister. The speech was
vigorous, but inapplicable to the subject-matter in hand. The bill was
read a second time without a division.

The East India Company were not silent at this critical period in their
history. A meeting of proprietors on the 23d was made special for the
consideration of ‘Bill No. 3,’ which was to be read a second time in the
Commons on the following day; and at this meeting there was a general
expression of disappointment that the Company had been treated as such a
nullity. The only source of consolation was in the fact that seven
members of the new council were to be chosen by the Court of Directors,
from persons who then belonged or had formerly belonged to that court.
The opinions of the Company were embodied in a letter addressed to Lord
Stanley by the chairman and deputy-chairman, and presented to the House
of Commons.

On the 25th, the House went into committee on the bill. Lord Palmerston
proposed two amendments—that the members should be twelve in number
instead of fifteen, and that all should be appointed by the Crown; but
both amendments were rejected by large majorities as being inconsistent
with the recent expression of opinion. At a further sitting on the 1st
of July, the ministers shewed they had obtained a considerable hold on
the House; for they succeeded in obtaining the rejection of amendments
proposed by Lord Palmerston, Mr Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and Mr
Vernon Smith. Lord Stanley, however, proposed many amendments himself on
the part of the government; and these amendments were accepted in so
friendly a spirit, that a large number of clauses were got through by
the end of a long sitting on the 2d of July. One of the most interesting
of the questions discussed bore relation to the Secret Committee of the
past, and the proposed exercise of similar powers by the Secretary of
State. Lord John Russell and Mr Mangles advocated the abolition of those
powers altogether; while Sir G. C. Lewis recommended great caution in
their exercise, if used. Mr Mangles, the late chairman of the Court of
Directors, stated that the powers of the Secret Committee had been much
more extensive than was generally supposed. ‘During many years after the
conquest of Sinde, the whole government of that province was conducted
by the Secret Committee, and the Court of Directors knew nothing about
it. He believed that much mischief had arisen from the Secret Committee
undertaking to transact business with which it had no right to
interfere. The real fact was, that nine-tenths of that which came before
the Secret Committee might with safety be communicated to the whole
world. He wished, therefore, that there should be no Secret Committee in
future. It was a mere delusion and snare. The Court of Directors had
shewn themselves to be as competent to keep a secret, when there was
one, as the cabinet of her Majesty; and he had no reason to think
otherwise of the proposed Indian Council.’ The ministers, however,
received the support of Lord Palmerston in this matter; and the
continuance of the secret powers was sanctioned, although by a small
majority only. On the 5th and 6th, the remaining clauses and amendments
were gone through. Mr Gladstone proposed a clause enacting, ‘That,
except for repelling actual invasion, or under sudden or urgent
necessity, her Majesty’s forces in India shall not be employed in any
military operation beyond the external frontier of her Indian
possessions, without the consent of parliament.’ Lord Palmerston opposed
this clause; but Lord Stanley assented to it as a wholesome declaration
of parliamentary power; and it was agreed to.

At length, on the 8th of July—five months after ‘Bill No. 1’ had been
introduced by Lord Palmerston, and three or four months after the
introduction of ‘Bill No. 2’ by Mr Disraeli—‘Bill No. 3’ was passed by
the House of Commons, after a vehement denunciation by Mr Roebuck, who
predicted great disaster from the organisation of the ‘Council of
India.’ Lord Palmerston’s bill was withdrawn on the next day: it never
came on for a second reading.

The House of Lords justly complained of the small amount of time left to
them for the discussion of the bill; but there was now no help for it,
short of abandoning the measure for the session; and therefore they
entered at once on the discussion. On the 9th, the bill was brought in
and read a first time. Between that time and the second reading, the
East India Company made one more attempt to oppose the measure. They
agreed to a petition for presentation to the House of Lords. It was in
part a petition, in part a protest. The propriety of adopting the
petition was urged by such considerations as these: ‘If we do not
protest, every wrong that may be done for years to come will be laid at
our doors; but with this protest upon record, history will do us the
justice of stating that we have been deprived of our power without
inquiry.’ The Court of Proprietors also discussed whether counsel should
be employed to represent the Company before the House of Lords. Many of
the directors assented to this—but only so far as concerned technical
and legal points; for, they urged, it would be very undignified to
employ any hired counsel to argue the moral and political question, or
to defend the conduct of the Company and the rights of India. It
remained yet, however, an unsettled point whether counsel would be
permitted to appear at all.

On the 13th of July, after a feeble attempt to attach importance to the
Company’s petition and protest, the bill was read a second time in the
Lords. The most remarkable speech made on this occasion was that of the
Earl of Ellenborough, Lord Stanley’s predecessor at the Board of
Control. He declared that, whether in or out of office, he could not
approve of the measure, the parentage of which he gave to the House of
Commons rather than to the government. He disapproved of the abandonment
of popular election in the proposed council; disapproved of the strong
leaven of ‘Leadenhall Street’ in its composition; disapproved of
competitive examinations for the Indian artillery and engineers; and
expressed a general belief that the scheme would not work well. When the
bill went into committee on the 16th, the earl proposed that the members
of the council should be appointed for five years only, instead of for
life; but this amendment was negatived without a division. Lord
Broughton, who, as Sir John Cam Hobhouse, had once been president of the
India Board, opposed the whole theory of a council in the strongest
terms. He described in anticipation the inconveniences he believed would
flow from it. ‘The council would only embarrass the minister with
useless suggestions and minutes on the most trifling questions; and, if
they were rejected, the minority would always be able to furnish weapons
of attack against the Secretary in the House of Commons. The minister
would gain no advice or knowledge from the council he could not obtain
from others without the embarrassment of having official councillors.’
The Earl of Derby contested these assertions simply by denying their
truth; and they had no effect on the decision of the House. All the
clauses were examined during three sittings, on the 16th, 19th, and 20th
of the month, and were adopted with a few amendments. During the
discussions, the Earl of Derby appeared as the friend of the ‘middle
classes.’ The Earl of Ellenborough having repeated his objection to
competitive examination for the engineers and artillery of the Indian
army, on the ground that it would lower the ‘gentlemanly’ standard of
those services, the premier replied that, ‘He was not insensible to the
advantages of birth and station: but he could not join with his noble
friend in saying that because a person happened to be the son of a
tailor, a grocer, or a cheesemonger, provided his mental qualifications
were equal to those of his competitors, he was to be excluded from
honourable competition for an appointment in the public service.’

On the 23d of July the India Bill was read a third time and passed by
the House of Lords, with only a few observations bearing collaterally on
Indian affairs. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some of the bishops
made an appeal for the more direct encouragement of Christianity in
India; but the Earl of Derby made a very cautious response. ‘Due
protection ought to be given to the professors of all religions in
India, and nothing should be done to discourage the efforts of Christian
missionaries. On the other hand, he deemed it essential to the
interests, the peace, the well-being of England, if not also to the very
existence of her power in India, that the government should carefully
abstain from doing anything except to give indiscriminate and impartial
protection to all sects and all creeds; and that nothing could be more
inconvenient or more dangerous on the part of the state than any open or
active assistance to any attempt to convert the native population from
their own religions, however false or superstitious.’ The Earls of
Shaftesbury and Ellenborough joined in deploring the vindictive feeling
which had sprung up between the Europeans and natives in India, and
which, if continued, would neutralise all attempts at improvement. The
Anglo-Indian press was severely reproved for the share it had taken in
originating or fostering this feeling.

The Lords having introduced a few amendments in the India Bill, these
amendments required the sanction of the Commons before they could be
adopted. One of these affected the secret service of the new council;
another, the mode of appointing the higher officials in India; a third,
the principle of competitive examinations; a fourth, the application of
Indian revenues; and so on. The Commons rejected some of these
amendments, and accepted the rest, on the 27th. On the 29th the Lords
met to consider whether they would abandon the amendments objected to by
the Commons. This they agreed to do except in one instance—relating to
competitive examinations for the Indian artillery and engineers; they
still thought that commissions in these two services should be given
only to ‘gentlemen,’ in the conventional sense of the term. The
government, rather than run into collision with the Lords, recommended
the Commons to assent to the slight amendment which had been made; and
this was agreed to—but not without many pungent remarks on the course
which the Upper House had thought proper to pursue. Sir James Graham
adverted to a supercilious allusion by the Earl of Ellenborough to the
‘John Gilpin class,’ and added—‘Where is hereditary wisdom found? In
what consists the justice of the tenet that India must henceforward be
governed by gentlemen, to the exclusion of the middle classes—a
gentleman being defined to be something between a peer and those who buy
and sell. Is this, I would ask, the only argument that can be advanced
against the system of competitive examinations? Who, let me ask,
founded, who won our Indian empire?—Those who bought and sold. Who
extended it?—Those who bought and sold. Who now transfer that empire to
the Crown?—Those who bought and sold; a company of merchants—merchants,
forsooth, whose sons are now not thought worthy to have even inferior
offices in India committed to their hands. But are not the sons of those
who buy and sell entitled to the appellation of gentlemen? Definitions
are dangerous; but I should, nevertheless, like to know what it is that
constitutes a gentleman. Why, sir, it appears to me that if a man be
imbued with strong Christian principles, if he have received an
enlightened and liberal education, if he be virtuous and honourable—it
appears to me that such a man as that is entitled to the appellation.
And who will tell me that among the sons of those who buy and sell may
not be found men possessing literary attainments and a refinement of
mind which place them in a position to bear comparison with the highest
born gentlemen in India? Who, let me ask, were the conquerors of the
country? From what class have they sprung? Who was Clive?—The son of a
yeoman. Who was Munro?—The son of a Glasgow merchant. Who was
Malcolm?—The son of a sheep-farmer upon the Scotch border. These, sir,
are the men who have won for us our Indian empire; and I entertain no
fear that the sons of those who buy and sell, and who enter the Indian
service by means of this principle of open competition, will fail to
maintain a high position in our army, or that they will do anything to
dishonour the English name.’

When the India Bill finally passed the Lords, the Earl of Albemarle
recorded a protest against it—on the grounds that the home government
established by it would be inefficient and unconstitutional; that the
council would be too numerous; that it would be nearly half composed of
the very directors who were supposed to be under condemnation; that
those directors, by self-election to the council, would establish a
vicious principle; that the members of the council would be
irresponsible for the use of the great amount of patronage held by them;
that the change in the mode of government was too slight to insure those
reforms which India so much needed; that it was pernicious, and contrary
to parliamentary precedent, to allow the members of the council to hold
other offices, or to engage in commercial pursuits; that the practical
effect of the council would be merely to thwart the Secretary of State
for India, or else to screen him from censure; and that efficient and
experienced under-secretaries would be far better than any council.

The bill received the royal assent, and became an act of parliament, on
the 2d of August, under the title of ‘An Act for the Better Government
of India;’ 21st and 22d of Victoria, cap. 106. A brief and intelligible
abstract of all the provisions of this important statute will be found
in the Appendix.

One clause in the new act provided that the Court of Directors should
elect seven members to the new council of India, either out of the
existing court, or from persons who had formerly been directors of the
Company. On the 7th of August they met, and chose the following seven of
their own number—Sir James Weir Hogg, Mr Charles Mills, Captain John
Shepherd, Mr Elliot Macnaghten, Mr Ross Donelly Mangles, Captain William
Joseph Eastwick, and Mr Henry Thoby Prinsep. Many of the public journals
severely condemned this selection, as having been dictated by the merest
selfish retention of power in the directors’ own hands; but on the other
side, it was urged that these seven gentlemen possessed a large amount
of practical knowledge on Indian affairs; and, moreover, that the
Company, owing the legislature no thanks for recent proceedings, were
not bound to be disinterested in the matter.

A remarkable meeting was held by the East India Company on the 11th of
August, to consider the state of affairs produced by the new act. The
directors and proprietors met as if no one clearly knew what to think on
the matter. They asked—What _is_ the East India Company now? What does
it possess? What can it do, or what has it got to do? Has it any further
interest in the affairs of India? Is there now any use in a Court of
Directors, or a Court of Proprietors, further than to distribute the
dividends on India stock handed over by the new Council of India out of
Indian revenues? Is the regular payment of that dividend well secured?
Are the _trading_ powers of the Company abolished; and if not, is there
any profitable trade that can be entered upon? Are they to lose their
house in Leadenhall Street, their museum, their library, their archives;
and if so, why? If the Company at any time become involved in
law-proceedings, will the costs come out of the dividends, or out of
what other fund? The answers to these various questions were so very
conflicting, and the state of doubt among all the proprietors so
evident, that it was agreed—‘That a committee of proprietors be
appointed to act in concert with the chairman and deputy-chairman of the
Court of Directors, for the purpose of obtaining counsel’s opinion as to
the present legal position of the Company under previous acts of
parliament, as well as the present act—more especially as to the
parliamentary guarantee of the Company’s stock, and the position of the
Company’s creditors, Indian as well as European.’

The 1st of September 1858 was a day to be recorded in English annals—it
witnessed the death of the once mighty East India Company as a governing
body. ‘On this day,’ said one of the able London journals, ‘the Court of
Directors of the East India Company holds its last solemn assembly.
To-morrow, before the shops and the counting-houses of our great
metropolis shall have received their accustomed inmates, the greatest
corporate body the world has ever seen will have shrivelled into an
association of receivers of dividends. The great house in Leadenhall
Street will stand as it has stood for long years, and well-nigh the same
business will be done by well-nigh the same persons; but the government
of the East India Company will have passed into a tradition. Thousands
and tens of thousands, including many of the greatest and wisest in the
land, intent upon pleasure at this pleasure-seeking period of the year,
will, in all human probability, not give the great change a thought. But
the first and second days of September 1858, which witness the
extinction of the old and the inauguration of the new systems of Indian
government, constitute an epoch in our national history—nay, in the
world’s history, second in importance to few in the universal annals of
mankind. On this day the East India Company, which hitherto, through
varied changes and gradations, has directed the relations of Great
Britain with the vast continent of India, issues its last instructions
to its servants in the east. On this day the last dispatches written by
the authoritative “we” to our governor-general, or governors in council,
will be signed by their “affectionate friends.” To-morrow the _egomet_
of her Majesty’s Secretary of State will be supreme in the official
correspondence of the Indian bureau. It may or may not be for the good
of India, it may or may not be for the good of England, that the
government of the East India Company should on this day cease to exist;
but we confess we do not envy the feelings of the man who can
contemplate without emotion this great and pregnant political change.’
There was a disposition, on this last day of the Company’s power, to
look at the bright rather than the dark side of its character. ‘It has
the great privilege of transferring to the service of her Majesty such a
body of civil and military officers as the world has never seen before.
A government cannot be base, cannot be feeble, cannot be wanting in
wisdom, that has reared two such services as the civil and military
services of the East India Company. To those services the Company has
always been just, has always been generous. In those services lowly
merit has never been neglected. The best men have risen to the highest
place. They may have come from obscure farmhouses or dingy places of
business; they may have been roughly nurtured and rudely schooled; they
may have landed in the country without sixpence or a single letter of
recommendation in their trunks; but if they have had the right stuff in
them, they have made their way to eminence, and have distanced men of
the highest connections and most flattering antecedents.... Let her
Majesty appreciate the gift—let her take the vast country and the
teeming millions of India under her direct control; but let her not
forget the great corporation from which she has received them, nor the
lessons to be learned from its success.’

  Old East India House, Leadenhall Street.
]

The last special General Court of the Company was held, as we have said,
on the 1st of September. The immediate purpose was a generous one: the
granting of a pension to the distinguished ruler of the Punjaub, Sir
John Lawrence; and this was followed by an act at once dignified and
graceful. It was an earnest tender of thanks, on the part of the East
India Company generally, to its servants of every rank and capacity, at
home and in India, for their zealous and faithful performance of duties;
an assurance to the natives of India that they would find in Queen
Victoria ‘a most gracious mistress;’ an expression of hearty belief that
the home-establishment, if employed by the Crown, would serve the Crown
well as it had served the Company; a declaration of just pride in the
sterling civilians and noble soldiers at that moment serving unweariedly
in India; and an earnest hope and prayer ‘That it may please Almighty
God to bless the Queen’s Indian reign by the speedy restoration of
peace, security, and order; and so to prosper her Majesty’s efforts for
the welfare of her East Indian subjects that the millions who will
henceforth be placed under her Majesty’s direct as well as sovereign
dominion, constantly advancing in all that makes men and nations great,
flourishing, and happy, may reward her Majesty’s cares in their behalf
by their faithful and firm attachment to her Majesty’s person and
government.’

The East India House in Leadenhall Street was chosen by Lord Stanley as
the office of the new Council for India, on account of its internal
resources for the management of public business. During more than two
centuries and a half, the city of London had contained the head-quarters
of those who managed Anglo-Indian affairs. The first meeting of London
merchants in 1599, on the subject of East India trade, was held at
Founders’ Hall. The early business of the Company, when formed, was
transacted partly at the residences of the directors, partly in the
halls of various incorporated companies. In 1621 the Company occupied
Crosby Hall for this purpose. In 1638 a removal was made to Leadenhall
Street, to the house of Sir Christopher Clitheroe, at that time governor
of the Company. In 1648 the Company took the house of Lord Craven,
adjoining Clitheroe’s, and on the site of the present India House. In
1726 the picturesque old front of this mansion was taken down, and
replaced by the one represented in the above cut. Finally, in 1796, the
present India House was built,[193] and remained the head-quarters of
the Company. Acquiring skill by gradual experience, the Company had
rendered this one of the most perfectly organised establishments that
ever existed. Ranged in racks and shelves, in chambers, corridors, and
cellars, were the records of the Company’s administration; prepared by
governor-generals, judges, magistrates, collectors, paymasters,
directors, secretaries, and other officials abroad and at home. These
documents, tabulated and indexed with the greatest nicety, related to
the whole affairs of the Company, small as well as great, and extended
back to the earliest period of the Company’s history. Declarations of
war, treaties of peace, depositions of native princes, dispatches of
governor-generals, proceedings of trials, appeals of natives, revenue
assessments, army disbursements—all were fully recorded in some mode or
other. The written documents relating to a hundred and fifty-five years
of the Company’s history, from 1704 to 1858, filled no less than a
hundred and sixty thousand huge folio volumes. These documents were so
thoroughly indexed and registered that any one could be found by a very
brief search. It was mentioned with pride by the staff of the India
House, that when Lord Stanley, in his capacity as Secretary of State for
India, made his first official visit to Leadenhall Street, he was
invited to test the efficiency of this registration department, by
calling for any particular dispatch, or for any document bearing upon
any act or policy of the Court of Directors, throughout a period of a
century and a half; a promise was given that any one of these documents
should be forthcoming in five minutes. His lordship thereupon asked for
a report on the subject of some occurrence which took place under his
own observation while on a tour in India. The document was speedily
produced, and was found to contain all the details of the transaction
minutely described.

After the Court of Directors had elected seven members to the new
council, the government nominated the other eight. The greatest name on
the list was Sir John Laird Muir Lawrence, who was expected to return to
England, and for whom a place at the council-board was kept vacant. The
other seven nominated members were Sir Henry Conyngham Montgomery, Sir
Frederick Currie, Major-general Sir Robert John Hussey Vivian, Colonel
Sir Proby Thomas Cautley, Lieutenant-colonel Sir Henry Creswicke
Rawlinson, Mr John Pollard Willoughby, and Mr William Arbuthnot. It was
considered that the fifteen members, in reference to their past
experience of Indian affairs, might fairly represent the following
interests:

                Bengal Civil Service, Prinsep, Mangles.
                Madras Civil Service, Montgomery.
                Bombay Civil Service, Willoughby.
                Bengal Army,          Cautley.
                Madras Army,          Vivian.
                Bombay Army,          Eastwick.
                The Punjaub,          Lawrence.
                Afghan Frontier,      Rawlinson.
                Native States,        Currie.
                Indian Law,           Hogg, Macnaghten.
                Shipping Interests,   Shepherd.
                Finance,              Mills.
                Indian Commerce,      Arbuthnot.

This classification, however, was not official; it was only useful in
denoting the kind of knowledge likely to be brought to the council by
each member. When, in the early days of September, Lord Stanley presided
at the first meetings of the new council, he grouped the members into
certain committees, for the more convenient dispatch of business. This
grouping was based in part on the previous practice of the East India
Company, and in part on suggested improvements. The committees were
three in number, of five members each—partly nominated, and partly
elected. The functions and composition of the committees were as follow:

                    FINANCE, HOME, AND PUBLIC WORKS.
                   Sir Proby Cautley,   }
                   Mr Arbuthnot,        } Nominated.

                   Mr Mills,            }
                   Mr Macnaghten,       } Elected.
                   Captain Shepherd,    }

                        POLITICAL AND MILITARY.
                   Sir John Lawrence,   }
                   Sir R. Vivian,       }
                   Sir H. Rawlinson,    } Nominated.
                   Mr Willoughby,       }

                   Captain Eastwick,      Elected.

                   REVENUE, JUDICIAL AND LEGISLATIVE.
                   Sir H. Montgomery,   }
                   Sir F. Currie,       } Nominated.

                   Sir J. W. Hogg,      }
                   Mr Mangles,          } Elected.
                   Mr Prinsep,          }

Lord Stanley appointed Sir G. R. Clerk and Mr Henry Baillie to be
under-secretaries of state for India; and Mr James Cosmo Melvill, late
deputy-secretary to the East India Company, to be assistant
under-secretary. Mr John Stuart Mill, one of the most distinguished of
the Company’s servants in England, was earnestly solicited by Lord
Stanley to assist the new government with his services; but he declined
on account of impaired health. With a few exceptions, the valued and
experienced servants of the Company became servants of the new council,
as secretaries, clerks, examiners, auditors, record-keepers, &c.; for
the rest, arrangements were to be gradually made in the form of
compensations, pensions, or retiring allowances.

One of the first proceedings under the new _régime_ was the appointment
of a commission to investigate the complicated relations of the Indian
army. The heads of inquiry on which the commission was to enter included
almost everything that could bear upon the organisation and efficiency
of the military force in the east, under a system where the anomalous
distinction between ‘Company’s’ troops and ‘Queen’s’ troops would no
longer be in force. Such an inquiry would necessarily extend over a
period of many months, and would need to be conducted partly in India
and partly in England.

In closing this narrative of the demise of the powerful East India
Company as a political or governing body, it may be remarked that all
the well-wishers of India felt the change to be a great and signal one,
whether for good or harm. There were not wanting prophets of disaster.
The influence of parliament being so much more readily brought to bear
upon a government department than upon the East India Company, many
persons entertained misgivings concerning the effect of the change upon
the well-being of India. Before any long period could elapse, submarine
cables would probably have been sunk in so many seas, and land-cables
stretched across so many countries, that a message would be flashed from
London to Calcutta in a few hours. Lord Palmerston once jocularly made a
prediction, ten years before the Indian mutiny broke out, to the effect
that the day would come when, if a minister were asked in parliament
whether war had broken out in India, he would reply: ‘Wait a minute;
I’ll just telegraph to the governor-general, and let you know.’ A war in
India did indeed come, before the period for the fulfilment of this
prediction; but the time was assuredly approaching when the
‘lightning-post,’ as the natives of India felicitously call it, would be
in operation. What would be the results? Some of the foreboders of
disaster said: ‘In any great crisis, it is true, which demands prompt
action on the part of the governing country, this rapid
intercommunication will be a source of strength; the resources of
England will be brought to bear upon any part of India four or five
weeks sooner than under existing circumstances. But, on the other hand,
the ordinary work of government, at either end of the wire, will be
greatly complicated and embarrassed by this frequent intercommunication
of ideas. The Council of India will probably not be overanxious to
fetter the movements of the governor-general; nor will the Secretary of
State for India be necessarily prone to send curt sentences of advice or
remonstrance to the distant viceroy; but it is doubtful whether
parliament would suffer the council or the Secretary to exercise this
wise forbearance. There would be a tendency to govern India by the House
of Commons through the medium of the electric telegraph. A sensitive
governor-general would be worried to death in a few months by the
interference of the telegraph with his free action; and an irritable one
might be stung into indignant resignation in a much shorter time.’ All
such fears are groundless. If a message from England were perilous in
its tendency through its ease and quickness of transmission, a message
from India pointing out this perilous tendency would be equally easy and
quick. The electric messenger does its work as rapidly in one direction
as the other. A governor-general, worthy of the name, would take care
not instantly to obey an order which he believed to be dangerous to the
welfare of the country under his charge; the wire would enable him to
converse with the authorities at home in a few hours, or, at any rate, a
few days, and to explain circumstances which would probably lead to a
modification of the order issued. The electric telegraph being one of
the greatest boons ever given by science to mankind, it will be strange
indeed if England does not derive from it—in her government of India, as
in other matters—an amount of benefit that will immeasurably outweigh
any temporary inconveniences.

  Calcutta.—Company’s Troops early in the Nineteenth Century.
]

-----

Footnote 191:

  Some of the documents here adverted to will be given _verbatim_;
  others in a condensed form.

Footnote 192:

  See Chap, xxvii., p. 451.

Footnote 193:

  See Engraving, p. 452.

  W. & R. CHAMBERS LONDON & EDINBURGH
]

  ORMUZ—Entrance to the Persian Gulf.
]

                         SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.

 § 1. THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION, 1856-7.

 § 2. THE CHINESE AND JAPANESE EXPEDITIONS, 1856-7-8.

 § 3. ENGLISH PROSPECTS IN THE EAST.

Not the least among the many extraordinary circumstances connected with
the Revolt in India was this—that England, at the very time when the
Revolt began, had two Asiatic wars on her hands, one eastward and the
other westward of her Indian empire. True, the Shah of Persia had
consented to a treaty of peace before that date; true, the Emperor of
China had not yet actually received a declaration of war; but it is
equally true that British generals and soldiers were still holding
conquered positions in the one country, and that hostilities had
commenced in the other. We have seen in former chapters, and shall have
occasion to refer to the fact again, that Viscount Canning was most
earnestly desirous, when the troubles in India began, to obtain the aid
of two bodies of British troops—those going to China, and those
returning from Persia. It must ever remain an insoluble problem how the
Revolt would have fared if there had been no Persian and Chinese
expeditions. On the one hand, several additional regiments of the
Company’s army, native as well as European, would have been in India,
instead of in or near Persia. On the other hand, there would not have
been so many disciplined British troops at that time on the way from
England to the east. Whether these two opposing circumstances would have
neutralised each other, can only be vaguely guessed at.

There are other considerations, however, than that which concerns the
presence or absence of British troops, tending to give these two
expeditions a claim to some brief notice in the present work. The
Persian war, if the short series of hostilities deserve that name,
arose, mainly and in the first instance, out of apprehensions for the
future safety of British India on the northwest. The Chinese war arose,
mainly and in the first instance, out of that opium-traffic which had
put so many millions sterling into the coffers of the East India
Company. Other events, it is true, had tended to give a different colour
and an intricate complication to the respective quarrels; but it can
hardly be doubted that the India frontier-question in the one case, and
the India opium-question in the other, were the most powerful
predisposing causes in bringing about the two wars. Two sections of the
present chapter are appropriated to such an outline of these two warlike
expeditions as will shew how far they were induced by India, and how far
they affected India, before and during the Revolt. Any detailed
treatment of the operations would be beyond the scope of the present
volume. The expedition to Japan will claim a little notice as a peaceful
episode in the Chinese narrative.

                  § 1. THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION, 1856-7.

Examining a map of Asia, we shall see that the country, called in its
widest extent Afghanistan, is bounded on the east by India, on the west
by Persia, and on the north by the territories of various Turcoman
tribes. Whatever may be the fruitfulness or value of Afghanistan in
other respects, it includes and possesses the only practicable route
from Central Asia to the rich plains of India. So far as Persia,
Bokhara, and Khiva are concerned, England would never for a moment think
of doubting the safety of India; but when, in bygone years, it was known
that Russia was increasing her power in Central Asia, acquiring a great
influence over the Shah of Persia, and sending secret agents to
Afghanistan, a suspicion arose that the eye of the Czar was directed
towards the Indus as well as towards the Bosphorus, to India as well as
to Turkey. Alarmists may have coloured this probability too highly, but
the symptoms were not on that account to be wholly neglected. About
midway between the Punjaub and the Caspian Sea is the city of Herat,
near the meeting-point of Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkistan or
Independent Tatary. It was this city, rather than any other, which
caused the war with Persia. To what state does Herat belong, Persia or
Afghanistan? The answer to this question is of great political
importance; for as Russia has more influence in the first-named state
than in the second, any aggressive schemes of the court of St Petersburg
against India would be favoured by a declaration or admission that Herat
belonged to Persia. In the course of twenty centuries Afghanistan has
been in succession under Persian, Bactrian, Scythian, Hindoo, Persian,
Saracenic, Turcoman, Khorasan, Mongol, Mogul, Persian, and Afghan rule;
until at length, in 1824, three Afghan princes divided the country
between them—one taking the Cabool province, another that of Candahar,
and another that of Herat. There are therefore abundant excuses for
Persians and Turcomans, Afghans and Hindoos, laying claim to this
region, if they think themselves strong enough to enforce their claims.
It is just such a complication as Russia would like to encourage,
supposing her to have any designs against India—just such a
complication, we must in justice add, as would lead England to seize
Afghanistan, if she thought it necessary for the safety of her Indian
empire. When Lord Auckland was governor-general of India, in 1837, he
interfered in Afghan politics, in order to insure the throne of Cabool
to a prince friendly to England and hostile to Russia and Persia; this
interference led to the first Afghan war in 1838, the disastrous
termination of which brought on the second Afghan war of 1842. Since the
year last named, the Cabool and Candahar territories have remained in
the hands of princes who were bound, by treaties of alliance, to
friendly relations with England. Herat, however, further west and more
inaccessible, became a prey to contentions which brought on the Persian
war in 1856.

About the year 1833, disputes arose between Herat and Persia which have
never since been wholly healed. The Shah claimed, if not the ownership
of Herat, at least a tribute that would imply a sort of protective
superiority. This tribute was suddenly withdrawn by Kamran Mirza, Khan
of Herat, in or about the year just named; and certain clauses of a
treaty were at the same time disregarded by him. Thence arose a warlike
tendency in the court of Teheran—encouraged by Count Simonich, Russian
ambassador; and discouraged by Mr Ellis, British ambassador.
Negotiations failing, a Persian army began to march, and the Shah
formally declared Herat to be a province of the Persian empire. The
fortress of Ghorian fell, and after that the city of Herat was invested
and besieged. Russia proposed a treaty in 1838, whereby Herat was to be
given to the Khan of Candahar, on the condition that both of these
Afghan states should acknowledge the suzerainty of Persia: the
fulfilment of the conditions being guaranteed by Russia. This alarmed
Sir John M’Neill, at that time British representative at Teheran; he
suggested to Lord Palmerston that the British should send an army to
support Herat, as a means of preventing the falling of the whole of
Afghanistan into the clutches of Russia. Herat was defending itself
bravely, and there might yet be time to save it. The Shah refusing to
listen to M’Neill’s representations, and various petty matters having
given England an excuse to ‘demand satisfaction,’ an expedition was sent
from India to the Persian Gulf in the summer of 1838. Nominally a
dispute about Herat, it was really a struggle whether England or Russia
should acquire most ascendency over the Shah of Persia. Three years of
negotiation, on various minor grievances and differences, led to a
treaty between England and Persia in 1841. There then followed many
years of peace—not, however, unalloyed by troubles. Persia, urged on
secretly by Russia, continually endeavoured to obtain power in the Herat
territory; while the oriental vanity of the officials led them into many
breaches of courtesy towards English envoys, consuls, and merchants. In
1851, it came to the knowledge of Colonel Sheil, at that time British
minister at the court of Teheran, that Persia was quietly preparing for
another attack on Herat. In spite of Sheil’s remonstrances, the Shah
sent an army against that city in 1852, captured the place, set up a
dependent as subsidiary chief or khan, coined money with his own effigy,
imprisoned and tortured many Afghan chiefs, and formally annexed the
Herat territory as part of the great Persian empire. Colonel Sheil,
failing in all his endeavours to counteract the policy of the Persian
court, sent home to recommend that the British should despatch an
expedition to the Persian Gulf. Under the influence of English pressure,
the Shah signed another treaty in 1853—engaging to give up Herat; not to
attack it again unless an attack came previously from the side of Cabool
or Candahar; and to be content with the merely nominal suzerainty which
existed in the time of the late Khan. The Persians, nevertheless, threw
numberless obstacles in the way of carrying out this treaty; insomuch
that Colonel Sheil was engaged in a perpetual angry correspondence with
them. Faith in treaties is very little understood in Asia; and the court
of Persia is thoroughly Asiatic in this matter. While this wrangle was
going on, another embarrassment arose, out of the employment by the Hon.
A. C. Murray, British representative, of a Persian named Mirza Hashem
Khan, against the Shah’s orders. A seizure of Hashem’s wife by the
authorities was converted by Mr Murray into a national insult, on the
ground that Hashem was now in the service, and under the protection, of
the British crown. Murray struck his flag from the embassy house, until
the matter should be settled. A most undignified quarrel took place
during the winter of 1855, and far into 1856—Mr Murray insisting on the
supreme rights of the British protectorate; and the Persian authorities
disseminating scandalous stories as to the motives which induced him to
protect the lady in question.

The scene was next transferred to Constantinople; where, early in 1856,
the Persian minister discussed the matter with Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe, deploring the rupture, and laying all the blame on Mr Murray
and the other British officials. In a memorandum drawn up at Teheran,
for circulation in the different European courts, M’Neill, Sheil,
Murray—all were stigmatised as mischief-makers, bent on humiliating
Persia, and on disturbing the friendly relations between the Shah and
Queen Victoria. In an autograph document from the Shah himself, Mr
Murray was designated ‘stupid, ignorant, and insane; one who has the
audacity and impudence to insult even kings.’

Before this Murray quarrel was ended, hostilities broke out again at
Herat. There were rival parties in that city; there was an attack
threatened by Dost Mohammed of Cabool; an appeal was made to Persia for
aid, by the Khan who at this time ruled Herat; and Persia marched an
army of 9000 men in that direction. The British government, regarding
this march as an infringement of the treaty of Herat, demanded the
withdrawal of the troops, and threatened warlike proceedings if the
demand were not attended to. The Persians, whether emboldened by secret
encouragement from Russia, or actuated by any other motive, made a
pretence of negotiating, but nevertheless proceeded with their
expedition, captured Ghorian, and laid siege to Herat. Hereupon
instructions were sent out to the governor-general of India, to prepare
a warlike force for service in the Persian Gulf. Before those
instructions could reach Bombay, Ferukh Khan arrived at Constantinople
with full powers from the Shah to settle all points of difference
between Persia and England. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was empowered to
treat with this plenipotentiary; they made great advances towards the
settlement of the terms of a treaty; but while they were discussing (in
November), news arrived that the Persians had captured the city of Herat
after a long siege. This strange confusion between diplomacy at
Constantinople and war at Herat, stringent orders from London and
warlike alacrity at Bombay, totally disarranged the negotiations of
Ferukh Khan and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; those ministers could do
nothing further. The governor-general declared war against Persia on the
1st of November, and the Persian plenipotentiary left Constantinople for
Teheran in December.

Thus arose the Persian expedition—out of circumstances so complicated,
that it is difficult to bear in mind the relations of one to another.
The existence of intrigues among contending parties in the state of
Herat; the frequent strife between the Afghans of Cabool and Candahar
and those of Herat; the well-remembered and never-abandoned claims of
Persia upon the last-named state; the open desire of Russia to obtain a
hold over the Persian court; the concealed desire of the same astute
power to approach nearer and nearer to the gates of India; the anxiety
of England to see Afghanistan remain as a barrier between India and the
centre of Asia; the tendency of Persia to disregard those courtesies to
western nations which oriental potentates have never willingly
conceded—all were concurrent causes in bringing about the British
expedition to the Persian Gulf in 1856. The most powerful incentive,
probably, although never acknowledged in diplomatic correspondence, was
the wish to keep Russia as far as possible away from India.

But, it may be asked, what had the East India Company to do with this
war? Why was India put to the expense of providing an armament for
invading Persia? This, in truth, was one of the anomalies connected with
the ‘double government’ of India. It was a war declared by Lord
Palmerston’s cabinet; but as it was founded on considerations relating
to the safety of India, it was treated as an India war, to be conducted
by the authorities in British India.

The providing of the army for the Persian Gulf devolved chiefly upon
Lord Elphinstone, as governor of Bombay. The army was in two divisions,
one of which left Bombay several weeks before the other. Numerous
transport-vessels were chartered, besides many of the large
mail-steamers, to carry troops, guns, and stores to the Persian Gulf.
The commissariat and quarter-masters’ departments had to make great
preparations—a thousand baggage-cattle; fodder for these, for
draught-bullocks, and for cavalry and artillery horses; framework for
fifteen hospitals; hutting for many thousand soldiers, &c. Means of
transport had to be provided for most of these, as it would not be safe
to rely on supplies obtained in an enemy’s country.

Gradually, as the troops, guns, and stores reached the shores of Persia,
the organisation of the force proceeded. It was thus constituted:

                            FIRST DIVISION.

                                 { H.M. 64th foot.
           1st Infantry Brigade, { 20th Bombay N.I.

                                 { 2d Bombay Europeans.
           2d Infantry Brigade,  { 4th Bombay Rifles.

                                 { 3d Bombay native cavalry.
           Cavalry Brigade,      { Poonah Horse.

           Artillery Brigade,      Various detachments.

                           SECOND DIVISION.

                                 { H.M. 78th Highlanders.
           1st Infantry Brigade, { 26th Bombay N.I.

                                 { 23d Bombay N.I.
           2d Infantry Brigade,  { Light Batt. B.N.I.

                                 { H.M. 14th Dragoons.
           Cavalry Brigade,      { Jacob’s Sinde Horse.

                                 { Troop horse-artillery.
           Artillery Brigade,    { Two field-batteries.

The several divisions and brigades were thus commanded: The first
division was placed under Major-general Stalker; and the four brigades
of which it consisted were commanded by Brigadiers Wilson, Honner, Tapp,
and Trevelyan. The second division was under Brigadier-general
Havelock—who lived to become so famous in connection with the wars of
the Indian mutiny; and the four brigades which it comprised were
commanded by Brigadiers Hamilton, Hale, Steuart, and Hutt.
Brigadier-general Jacob commanded in chief the cavalry of both
divisions; while Major-general Sir James Outram held supreme command of
the whole force.

The first division, as we have said, preceded the second by several
weeks. General Stalker took his departure from Bombay on the 26th of
November, with a fleet of nearly forty vessels under Admiral Sir Henry
Leeke—a few of them war-steamers, but chiefly steam and sailing
transports, carrying 10,000 soldiers, sailors, and men of all grades and
employments. Stalker and Leeke, having brought all the troops and stores
past Ormuz and up the Persian Gulf, captured the island of Karrack as a
military depôt, and then effected a landing at Hallila Bay, about twelve
miles south of Bushire. Although the opposition, from a few hundred
Persian troops, was very insignificant, the landing was nevertheless a
slow process, occupying three days and two nights—owing chiefly to the
absence of any other boats than those belonging to the ships. There
being no draught-cattle landed at that time, the troops were without
tents or baggage of any kind; they therefore carried three days’ rations
in their haversacks. After being thus engaged on the 7th of December and
two following days, Stalker and Leeke advanced towards Bushire—the one
with the troops along the shore, the other with the fleet at easy
distance. Bushire is an important commercial town on the northeast side
of the gulf; whoever commands it, commands much of the trade of Persia.
Stalker found the defences to be far stronger than he had anticipated.
On the 9th he dislodged a body of Persian troops from a strong position
they occupied in the old Dutch fort of Reshire. On the 10th, after a
short bombardment, Bushire itself surrendered—with a promptness which
shewed how few soldierly qualities were possessed by the garrison; for
the place contained sixty-five guns, with a large store of warlike
supplies. The governor of the city, and the commander of the troops,
came out and delivered up their swords. The troops of the garrison,
about two thousand in number, having marched out and delivered up their
arms, were escorted by cavalry to a distance, and then set free. By the
evening of the 11th the tents and cooking-utensils were landed; and an
intrenched camp was formed outside Bushire as a temporary resting-place
for the force—sufficient detachments being told off to hold the city and
fort safely. So entirely had the expedition been kept secret from the
Persians, that when, on the 29th of November, the first vessels of the
fleet hove in sight, the governor of Bushire sent to Mr Consul Jones to
ask what it meant; and he only then learned that our army and navy had
come to capture the city. This plan was adopted, to obtain a ‘material
guarantee’ sufficiently serious to influence the double-dealing Persian
government.

Here the troops remained for several weeks. The second division, and the
real head of the force, had not arrived; and General Stalker was not
expected or authorised to undertake anything further at present. His
camp, about a mile from Bushire, assumed every day a more orderly
appearance; and steady trading transactions were carried on with the
towns-people. The transport ships went to and fro between Bushire and
Bombay, bringing guns and supplies of various kinds.

The political relations between the two countries, meanwhile, remained
as indefinite as before. Mr Murray came from Bagdad to Bushire, to
confer with the military and naval leaders on all necessary matters, and
to negotiate with the Shah’s government if favourable opportunity for so
doing should offer. Herat remained in the hands of its conquerors, the
Persians. Sir John Lawrence, in his capacity as chief authority in the
Punjaub, held more than one interview with Dost Mohammed, Khan of
Cabool, in order to keep that wily leader true to his alliance with
England; and it was considered a fair probability that if Persia did not
yield to England’s demands, a second expedition would be sent from the
Punjaub and Sinde through Afghanistan to Herat.

It was not until the last week in January, 1857, that Sir James Outram
and his staff reached the Persian Gulf; nearly all the infantry had
preceded him, but much of the artillery and cavalry had yet to come. Sir
James sighted Bushire on the 30th; and General Stalker, long encamped
outside the town, made prompt preparations for his reception. Outram was
desirous of instant action. Stalker had been stationary, not because
there was nothing to do, but because his resources were inadequate to
any extensive operations. Shiraz, the most important city in that part
of Persia, lying nearly due east of Bushire, is connected with it by two
roads, one through Ferozabad, and the other through Kisht and Kazeroon;
the Persians were rumoured to have 20,000 men guarding the first of
these two roads, and a smaller number guarding the second. These reports
were afterwards proved to be greatly exaggerated; but Sir James
determined that, at any rate, there should be no longer sojourn at
Bushire than was absolutely needed.

Information having arrived that a large body of Persians was at the foot
of the nearest hills, Outram resolved to dislodge them. The troops were
under Soojah-ool-Moolk, governor of Shiraz, and formed the nucleus of a
larger force intended for the recapture of Bushire. Leaving the town to
be guarded by seamen from the ships, and the camp by about 1500 soldiers
under Colonel Shephard, with the _Euphrates_ so moored that her guns
could command the approaches—Outram started on the 3d of February, with
about 4600 men and 18 guns. He took no tents or extra clothing; but gave
to each soldier a greatcoat, a blanket, and two days’ rations; while the
commissariat provided three more days’ rations. He marched round the
head of Bushire creek to Char-kota, and on the 5th came suddenly upon
the enemy’s camp, which they had precipitately abandoned when they heard
of his approach. This was near the town of Borasjoon, on the road to
Shiraz. On the next two days he secured large stores of ammunition,
carriages, camp-equipage, stores, grain, rice, horses, and
cattle—everything but guns; these had been safely carried off by the
enemy to the difficult pass of Mhak, in the mountains lying between
Bushire and Shiraz; and as Sir James had not made any extensive
commissariat arrangements, he did not deem it prudent to follow them at
that time.

On the evening of the 7th, Outram began his march back to Bushire—after
destroying nearly twenty tons of powder, and vast quantities of shot and
shell; and after securing as booty such flour, grain, rice, and stores
as belonged to the government rather than to the villagers. But now
occurred a most unexpected event. The Persian cavalry, which retreated
while Outram had been advancing, resolved to attack while he was
retreating. They approached soon after midnight; and the British were
soon enveloped in a skirmishing fire with an enemy whom they could not
see. Outram fell from his horse, and Stalker had to take the command for
a time. The enemy having brought four guns within accurate range, the
position was for a time very serious. Stalker was enabled by degrees to
get the regiments into array, so as to grapple with the enemy as soon as
daylight should point out their position. When at length, on the morning
of the 8th, the British saw the Persians, seven or eight thousand
strong, drawn up in order near the walled village of Khoosh-aub, they
dashed at them at once with cavalry and horse-artillery, so irresistibly
that the plain was soon strewed with dead bodies; the enemy fled
panic-stricken in all directions; and if Outram’s cavalry had been more
numerous (he had barely 500 sabres), he could almost have annihilated
the Persian infantry. By ten o’clock all was over, the Persians leaving
two guns and all their ammunition in the hands of the British. In the
evening Outram resumed his march, and re-entered Bushire during the
night of the 9th. His troops had marched ninety miles over ground
converted into a swamp by heavy rains, and had seized a camp and won a
battle, in a little more than six days. In a ‘Field-force Order,’ issued
on February 10th, and signed by Colonel (afterwards Sir Edward) Lugard
as chief of the staff, Outram warmly complimented his troops on this
achievement.

After this dashing affair at Khoosh-aub, the patience of Sir James was
sorely tried by a long period of comparative inactivity—occasioned in
part by the rainy state of the weather, and in part by the non-arrival
of some of the artillery and cavalry, without which his further
operations would necessarily be much impeded. Brigadier-general Havelock
arrived about this time, and took command of the second division, which
had hitherto been under a substitute. The feeding of the army had become
a difficult matter; for the Persian traders came in less readily after
the battle of Khoosh-aub. Rumours gradually spread in the camp that an
expedition was shortly to be sent out to Mohamrah, a town near the
confluence of the Euphrates and the Karoon, about three days’ sail up
from Bushire; these rumours gave pleasurable excitement to the troops,
who were becoming somewhat wearied of their Bushire encampment. Much had
yet to be done, however, before the expedition could start; the
northwest winds in the gulf delayed the arrival of the ships containing
the cavalry and artillery. On the 4th of March, Sir James made public
his plan. General Stalker was to remain at Bushire, with Brigadiers
Wilson, Honner, and Tapp, in command of about 3000 men of all arms;
while Outram and Havelock, with several of the brigadiers, at the head
of 4000 troops, were to make an expedition to Mohamrah, where many
fortifications were reported to have been recently thrown up, and where
10,000 or 12,000 Persian troops were assembled. During many days
troop-ships were going up the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates—some
conveying the troops already at Bushire; and others conveying cavalry
and artillery as fast as they arrived from Bombay. The enemy eagerly
watched these movements from the shore, but ventured on no molestation.

During the three weeks occupied by these movements, events of an almost
unprecedented character occurred at Bushire—the suicide of two British
officers who dreaded the responsibility of the duties devolving upon
them. These officers were—Major-general Stalker, commanding the first
division of the army; and Commodore Ethersey, who had been placed in
command of the Indian navy in the Persian Gulf when Sir Henry Leeke
returned to Bombay. Stalker shot himself on the 14th of March. On that
morning, Sir James Outram and Commander Jones had breakfasted with him
in his tent. He displayed no especial despondency; but it had been
before remarked how distressed he appeared on the subject of the want of
barrack-accommodation for his troops—fearing lest he should be held
responsible if the soldiers, during the heat of the approaching summer,
suffered through want of shelter. On one or two other subjects he
appeared unable to bear the burden of command; he dreaded lest Outram,
by exposing himself to danger in any approaching conflict, might lose
his life, and thereby leave the whole weight of the duty and
responsibility on him (Stalker). Shortly after breakfast, a shot was
heard in the tent, and the unfortunate general was found weltering in
his blood. Commodore Ethersey followed this sad example three days
afterwards. For three months he had been labouring under anxiety and
despondency, haunted by a perpetual apprehension that neither his mental
nor physical powers would bear up under the weight of responsibility
incurred by the charge of the Indian navy during the forthcoming
operations. Memoranda in his diary afforded full proof of this. An entry
on the day after Stalker’s suicide ran thus: ‘Heard of poor Stalker’s
melancholy death. His case is similar to my own. He felt he was unequal
to the responsibility imposed on him.... I have had a wretched night.’
So deep had been his despondency for some time, and so frequently
expressed to those around him, that the news of his suicide on the 17th
excited less surprise than pain.

It had been Outram’s intention to proceed against Mohamrah directly
after his return from Borasjoon and Khoosh-aub; but the unexpected and
vexing delays above adverted to prevented him from setting forth until
the 18th of March. He was aware that the Persians had for three months
been strengthening the fortifications of that place; he knew that the
opposite bank of the river was on Turkish ground (Mesopotamia), on which
he would not be permitted to erect batteries; and he therefore
anticipated a tough struggle before he could master Mohamrah. His plan
was, to attack the enemy’s batteries with armed steamers and
sloops-of-war; and then, when the fire had slackened, to tow up the
troops in boats by small steamers, land them at a selected point, and at
once proceed to attack the enemy’s camp. The Persian army, 13,000
strong, was commanded by the Shahzada, Prince Mirza. Outram’s force was
rather under 5000, including only 400 cavalry: the rest having been left
to guard Bushire and the encampment. Outram and Havelock arrived near
Mohamrah on the 24th, and immediately began to place the war-ships in
array, and to plant mortars on rafts in the river. On the 26th, the
ships and mortars opened a furious fire; under cover of which the troops
were towed up the river, and landed at a spot northward of the town and
its batteries. The Persians, who had felt the utmost confidence that the
landing of a British force, in the face of thirteen thousand men and a
formidable array of batteries, would be an impossibility, were
panic-stricken at this audacity. When, at about two o’clock, Outram
advanced from the landing-place through date-groves and across a plain
to the enemy’s camp, the Persians fled precipitately, after exploding
their largest magazine—leaving behind them all their tents, several
magazines of ammunition, seventeen guns, baggage, and a vast amount of
public and private stores. As Outram had, at that hour, been able to
land not even one hundred cavalry, he could effect little in the way of
pursuit; the Persians made off, strewing the ground with arms and
accoutrements which they abandoned in their hurry. Commodore Young
commanded the naval portion of this expedition, having succeeded the
unfortunate Ethersey.

This action of Mohamrah scarcely deserved the name of a battle; for as
soon as the ships and mortars had, by their firing, enabled the troops
to land, the enemy ran away. Outram had scarcely any cavalry, and his
infantry had no fighting—rather to their disappointment. The Persians
having retreated up the river Karoon towards Ahwaz, Outram resolved to
send three small armed steamers after them, each carrying a hundred
infantry. Captain Rennie started on the 29th, in command of this
flotilla: his instructions being, ‘to steam up to Ahwaz, and act with
discretion according to circumstances.’ He proceeded thirty miles that
day, anchored at night, landed, and found the remains of a bivouac. On
the 30th he reached Ismailiyeh, and on the 31st Oomarra. Arriving near
Ahwaz on the 1st of April, Rennie came up with the Persian army which
had retreated from Mohamrah. Nothing daunted, he landed his little force
of 300 men, advanced to the town, entered it, and allayed the fears of
the inhabitants; while the Persians, thirty or forty times his number,
retreated further northward towards Shuster, with scarcely any attempt
to disturb him—such was the panic into which the affair at Mohamrah had
thrown them. Captain Rennie, having had the satisfaction of putting to
flight a large Persian army with a handful of 300 British, and having
given to the inhabitants of Ahwaz such stores of government grain and
flour as he could seize, embarked a quantity of arms, sheep, and mules,
which he had captured, and steamed back to Mohamrah—earning and
receiving the thanks of the general for his management of the
expedition.

Just at this period a most sudden and unexpected event put an end to the
operations. Captain Rennie’s expedition returned to Mohamrah on the 4th
of April; and on the 5th arrived news that peace had been signed between
England and Persia. Outram’s army, European and native, was rapidly
approaching 14,000 men; such a force, under such a leader, might have
marched from one end of Persia to the other; and both officers and
soldiers had begun to have bright anticipations of honour, and perhaps
of prize-money. It was with something like disappointment, therefore,
that the news of the treaty was listened to; there had not been fighting
enough to whet the appetites of the heroic; while soldiers generally
would fain make a treaty at the sword’s point, rather than see it done
in the bureaux of diplomatists. Captain Hunt of the 78th Highlanders,
who was concerned in the operations at Mohamrah and Ahwaz, and who wrote
a volume descriptive of the whole campaign, told very frankly of the
dissatisfaction in the camp: ‘The news of peace with Persia having been
signed at Paris on the 4th of March damped the elation of all, and
considerable disgust was felt at this abrupt termination to what had
promised to prove a brilliant campaign.’

How and where the treaty of peace was concluded, we must now shew, in
connection with the proceedings of ministers, legislators, and
ambassadors.

When the Persian expedition was determined on, parliament was not
sitting, and no legislative sanction for the war could be obtained; but
when the session opened in February 1857, the policy of the government
was severely canvassed. Ministers were charged with involving the
country in a war, without the nation itself being acquainted with the
causes, or even consulted at all in the matter. The Earl of Clarendon
explained the course of events at considerable length. He went into the
case of Mr Murray, and the quarrel with the Persian government on
matters of diplomatic etiquette—justifying that envoy in all that he had
done. But the earl was particular in his assertions that the Murray
dispute was not the cause of the war. The siege and capture of Herat
furnished the _casus belli_. He dwelt on the immense value of that city
as a military station. ‘Herat is altogether a most important place for
military operations; and an enemy once in possession of it is completely
master of the position. Every government of this country has desired
that Afghanistan should be protected; and it clearly cannot be protected
if Herat remains in the power of Persia.’ He expressed a conviction that
‘the Russian government and the whole of the Russian people are under a
belief that their destiny is to go forward, to conquer, and to hold new
territory;’ and that this disposition would be greatly tempted if
Persia, backed up by Russia, were permitted to seize Herat. He stated
finally that the Persian ambassador at Paris had recently expressed a
wish to renew negotiations for peace, and that the British government
would willingly listen to any overtures for that purpose. Lord
Palmerston gave similar explanations in the House of Commons. The Earls
of Derby and Malmesbury, Earl Grey, Lord John Russell, Mr Gladstone, and
Mr Disraeli, all spoke disparagingly of the Persian expedition—either
because it was not necessary; or because, if necessary, parliamentary
permission for it ought to have been obtained. The latter was the strong
point of opposition; many members asserted, not only that the nation was
involved in a new war without its own consent, but that no one could
understand whether war had been declared by the Crown or by the East
India Company. Earl Grey moved an amendment condemnatory of the
ministerial policy; but this was negatived. The ministers declined to
produce the diplomatic correspondence at that time, because there was a
hope of renewed negotiations with Furukh Khan at Paris.

At the close of February it became known to the public that the East
India Company had, not unnaturally, demurred to the incidence of the
expenses of the Persian war on their revenues. It appeared that, so
early as the 22d of October the Court of Directors had written to the
president of the Board of Control—adverting to ‘the expedition for
foreign service preparing at Bombay, under the orders (it is presumed)
of her Majesty’s government, communicated through the Secret Committee;’
and suggesting for his consideration ‘how far it may be just and proper
to subject India to the whole of the charges consequent on those
orders.’ The directors, as a governing body, had no voice whatever in
determining on the Persian war; and yet their soldiers and sailors were
to take part in it, and the Indian revenues to bear all or part of the
burden. It was ultimately decided that England should pay one-half of
the expenses, the other half being borne by the Company out of the
revenues of India.

Before the British public could learn one single fact connected with the
landing of Sir James Outram or of the second division in Persia, they
were surprised by the announcement that Lord Cowley and Furukh Khan had
succeeded in coming to terms of pacification at Paris—the Persian
ambassador having received from his sovereign large powers for this
purpose. A provisional treaty was signed on the 4th of March, of which
the following is a condensed summary: Peace to be restored between
England and Persia—British troops to evacuate Persia as soon as certain
conditions should be complied with—All prisoners of war to be released
on both sides—The Shah to give an amnesty to any of his subjects who
might have been compromised by and during the war—The Shah to withdraw
all his troops from Herat and Afghanistan within three months after the
ratification of the treaty—The Shah to renounce all claim upon Herat or
any other Afghan state, whether for sovereignty or for tribute—In any
future quarrel between Persia and the Afghan khans, England to be
appealed to as a friendly mediator—England to display equal justice to
Persia and Afghanistan, in the event of any such appeal—Persia to have
the power of declaring and maintaining war against any Afghan state in
the event of positive insult or injury; but not to make such war a
pretext for annexation or permanent occupation—Persia to liberate all
Afghan prisoners, on condition of Persian prisoners being released by
Afghans—All trading arrangements between England and Persia, in relation
to consuls, ports, customs, &c., to be on an equal and friendly
footing—The British mission, on its return to Teheran, to be received
with due honours and ceremonials—Two commissioners to be named by the
two courts, to adjudicate on British pecuniary claims against Persia—The
British government to renounce all claim to any ‘protection’ over the
Shah’s subjects against the Shah’s consent, provided no such power be
given to [Russia or] any other court—England and Persia to aid each
other in suppressing the slave-trade in the Persian Gulf—A portion of
the English troops to remain on Persian soil until Herat should be
evacuated by the Persians, but without any expense, and with as little
annoyance as possible, to the Persian government—Ratifications to be
exchanged at Bagdad within three months.

This treaty—which, if faithfully carried out, would certainly debar
Persia from any undue interference with Afghan affairs—was signed at
Paris on the very day (March 4th) when Sir James Outram announced to his
troops at Bushire the intended attack on Mohamrah. Such was one of the
anomalies springing from diplomacy at one place and war at another many
thousand miles distant. Furukh Khan proceeded, on the 19th from Paris to
London, where he was received by Queen Victoria as plenipotentiary
extraordinary from the Shah of Persia, and where the arrangements for
the fulfilment of the treaty were further carried out. The treaty having
been forwarded to Teheran, was ratified by the Shah of Persia on the
14th of April, and the ratification arrived at Bagdad on the 17th. The
English nation was still, as it had been from the beginning, without the
means of judging whether the Persian war had been necessary or not; the
government still withheld the state papers, on the ground that, as the
ratification of the treaty would speedily be effected, it would be
better to wait until then. When, later in the year, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer asked the House of Commons for a vote of half a million
sterling, ‘on account of the expenses of the Persian war,’ many members
protested against the vote, on the ground that parliament had not been
consulted in any way concerning the war. On the 16th of July Mr Roebuck
moved a resolution—‘That the war with Persia was declared, prosecuted,
and concluded without information of such transactions being
communicated to parliament; while expensive armaments were equipped
without the sanction of a vote of this House; and that such conduct
tends to weaken its just authority, and to dispense with its
constitutional control over the finances of the country, and renders it
requisite for this House to express its strong reprobation of such a
course of proceeding.’ The government policy was censured on many
grounds by Mr Roebuck, Lord John Russell, Mr Gladstone, and Mr Disraeli;
the first of these speakers even went so far as to attribute the mutiny
in India to the withdrawal of troops for the Persian war. The House of
Commons agreed, however, pretty generally in the opinion, that although
the ministers might reasonably have been more communicative before they
commenced hostilities with Persia, there was ground sufficient for the
hostilities themselves; and the resolution was negatived by 352 to 38.
The question was reopened on the 17th, when the House granted the
half-million asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer towards defraying
the expenses of this war; renewed attacks were made on the Asiatic
policy of the Palmerston government, but the vote was agreed to; and
nothing further occurred, during the remainder of the session, to
disturb the terms of the pacification.

It is unnecessary to trace the course of events in Persia after the
ratification of the treaty. The British officers, and the troops under
their charge, had no further glory or honour to acquire; they would be
called upon simply, either to remain quietly in Persia until Herat was
evacuated, or to go through the troublesome ordeal of re-shipment back
to Bombay. The troops all assembled in and near Bushire, where they
resumed their former camp-life. The officers, having little to do, took
occasional trips to Bassorah, Bagdad, and other places on the banks of
the Euphrates and Tigris; while the soldiers were employed in destroying
the fortifications of the encampment, now no longer needed. On the 9th
of May Sir James Outram issued a ‘Field-force Order’—thanking the troops
for their services during this brief and rather uneventful war, and
announcing the break-up of the force. Some of the regiments and corps
were to return to India, as rapidly as means of transport could be
obtained for them; while the rest, under Brigadier-general Jacob, were
to form a small compact army, to remain at Bushire until all the terms
of the treaty were fulfilled. Outram, Havelock, and a large number of
officers, embarked within a few days for India; and by the time they
reached Bombay and Madras, according to the place to which they were
bound, the startling news reached their ears that a military mutiny had
broken out at Meerut and Delhi. What followed, the pages of this volume
have shewn. As to Persia, much delay occurred in carrying out the terms
of the treaty, much travelling to and fro of envoys, and many months’
detention of British troops at Bushire; but at length the Persians
evacuated Herat, the British quitted the Gulf, and the singular ‘Persian
war,’ marked by so few battles, came to an end.

  BUSHIRE.
]

          § 2. THE CHINESE AND JAPANESE EXPEDITIONS, 1856-7-8.

The occurrences westward of India having thus been briefly narrated,
attention may now be directed to those on the east.

Viewed in relation to the circumstances which immediately preceded
hostilities, it might almost be said that England declared war against
China because a few persons went on board a small vessel to search for
certain offenders, and because a Chinese official would not civilly
receive visits from a British official. These trifling incidents,
however, were regarded as symptoms of something greater: symptoms which
required close diplomatic watching. To understand this matter, a brief
summary of earlier events is needed.

During the first thirty years of the present century, in like manner as
in earlier centuries, Europeans had no recognised right of residing in
China, or even of visiting its ports. Merchants were allowed to reside
at Canton, by official connivance rather than sanction; and even this
was possible only at certain times of the year—they being required in
other months to retire to Macao. They were liable to be expelled from
Canton at any time, with or without assigned cause; their trade was
liable to be stopped with equal suddenness; and, under the designation
of ‘barbarians,’ all negotiation was denied to them except through the
medium of a mercantile community called the Hong merchants. During many
years, Indian opium was the chief commodity sold by the English to the
Chinese, in exchange for tea and other produce. This opium-trade was
always declared illegal by the Chinese government, though always
covertly favoured by the Chinese officials. Quarrels frequently arose
concerning this trade, and the quarrels sometimes ended in violence. The
import of opium became so large that the exports were insufficient to
pay for it; and when silver was thus found necessary to make up the
balance, the imperial anger waxed stronger and stronger. The
‘barbarians’ were commanded not to bring any more opium; but, finding
the trade too profitable to be abandoned, they continued their dealings
in spite of the mandates of the celestial potentate.

The year 1831 may be said to have commenced the political or
international stage of this difficulty. The governor-general of India
wrote a letter to the governor of Canton, complaining of the conduct of
the Chinese authorities, and demanding explanations, &c. Why his
lordship, rather than any functionary in England, did this, was because
the East India Company in those days sold opium on its own account, and
made use of its political power to render that trade as profitable as
possible—one of the pernicious anomalies arising out of the Company’s
double functions. In 1832, the governor of Canton vouchsafed a partial
explanation, but only to the Hong merchants—refusing with superb scorn,
to communicate either with the Company’s merchants, or with the
governor-general. In 1833 an imperial edict forbade the introduction of
opium; but this, like many that preceded it, remained inoperative. In
1834 the Company’s trading monopoly ceasing, private merchants thereupon
engaged in the tea-trade with China. The English government sent three
commissioners—Lord Napier, Mr (afterwards Sir) J. F. Davis, and Sir G.
B. Robinson—as ‘superintendents of British commerce in China.’ The
Chinese authorities refused to acknowledge these commissioners in any
way, in spite of numerous invitations; while on the other hand the
commissioners refused to retire from Canton to Macao. These disputes led
to violence, and the violence brought a British ship-of-war up the
Canton river. A compromise was the result—the commissioners retiring to
Macao, and the Chinese authorities allowing the resumption of the
opium-traffic. Lord Napier died towards the close of the year, and was
succeeded as chief-superintendent by Mr Davis—Captain Elliot being
appointed secretary, and afterwards third superintendent. During the
next three years trade continued; but the Chinese officials were
uniformly rude and insulting. The British government would not permit
Captain Elliot to submit to these indignities; missives and
counter-missives passed to and fro; and the year 1837 ended with
threatening symptoms. In 1838 Admiral Maitland arrived in Canton river
with a ship of war, to protect British interests—by cannon-balls, if not
by friendly compact. The nearest approach to equality between the two
nations was in an interview between Admiral Maitland and the Chinese
Admiral Kwan; in which Maitland assured his brother-admiral that he
would remain peaceful—until provoked. In 1839, as in previous years, the
opium-trade was often violently interrupted by the Chinese authorities.
The officers of the English government, political and naval, were placed
in an embarrassing position in this matter; their duty was to protect
Englishmen; but they could not compel the Chinese to trade in opium—for
the Chinese government held the same power as all other despotic
governments, of prohibiting or encouraging trade with other countries.
In this year, when Maitland was absent, Elliot became powerless at
Canton; he and all the English were made prisoners, and could not obtain
release until they had destroyed all the opium in the English
stores—more than twenty thousand chests. This was done: Elliot
guaranteeing that the English government would repay the merchants.
Commissioner Lin saw that the opium was wholly destroyed; and by the end
of May almost every European had quitted Canton.

It was thus that commenced the first Chinese war—a war which had a bad
moral basis on the English side; since it arose more out of the forced
sale of an intoxicating drug, than out of any other circumstance. The
British government, finding themselves bound by Captain Elliot’s promise
to pay an enormous sum for the opium destroyed, and feeling the
importance of maintaining British supremacy in the east, resolved to
settle the quarrel by warlike means. Fighting and negotiating alternated
during 1840 and the two following years. At one time, Sir Gordon Bremer,
at another, Sir Hugh Gough, commanded troops on the Chinese coast,
acting in conjunction with ships-of-war; and according to the amount of
naval or military success, so did the Chinese authorities manifest or
not a disposition to treat. Commissioner Lin, then Commissioner Keshen,
and afterwards Commissioner Key-ing, conducted negotiations—a perilous
duty; for their imperial master did not scruple to punish, or even to
put to death, those diplomatists who made a treaty distasteful to him;
and nothing but the noise of cannon induced him to respect treaties when
made. The chief military and naval events of the three years, in
connection with this struggle, were the following: The British ship
_Hellas_ attacked by junks, and many of the crew killed; an attempt to
burn the British fleet by fire-rafts; Chusan taken by the English; naval
action near Macao; attack and capture of Chuen-pe and Tae-cok-tow;
Hong-kong taken by the English; the Bogue forts, with 460 guns, taken by
Sir Gordon Bremer; Canton attacked by the British, under Sir Hugh Gough,
and only spared on the prompt payment of five million dollars; Amoy,
with 300 guns, taken by the British; the cities of Ting-hae, Ching-hae,
Ning-po, and several others on the coast, captured; several military
engagements in the vicinity of the captured cities; an advance of a
powerful squadron up the Yang-tsze-kiang; and a threatening of the great
city of Nankin, which brought the emperor effectually to terms—all the
previous offers of negotiation on the part of the Chinese having been
mere expedients to save time.

The war ended thuswise. Sir Henry Pottinger arrived in the Chinese
waters in April 1842, with full power as representative of the British
Crown; and it was he who procured the important ‘Treaty of Nankin,’
signed by the respective plenipotentiaries in 1842, and the
ratifications exchanged by the respective sovereigns in 1843. This
treaty having had an important bearing on the later or second war with
China, we will epitomise a few of its chief conditions: Lasting peace
and friendship established between England and China—China to pay
21,000,000 dollars for the opium destroyed, and for the expenses of the
war; the payments to be spread over four years—The ports of Canton,
Amoy, Fuh-choo-foo, Ning-po, and Shang-hae, to be thrown open to British
merchants, with consular facilities, and just and regular tariffs—The
island of Hong-kong to become a permanent British possession—All British
subjects, at that time confined in China, to be at once and
unconditionally released—The Chinese emperor to give an amnesty to all
his own subjects, in respect of any proceedings on their part friendly
to the British—Correspondence in future to be conducted on terms of
perfect equality between the officers of the two governments—The islands
of Chusan and Kulangsoo to be held by the British until the fulfilment
of all the conditions of the treaty, and then given up.

Under the influence of this Treaty of Nankin, trade rapidly extended
between England and China. Instead of being confined to Canton, and
conducted in a stealthy and undignified manner, it was openly carried on
at five ports. The British government did not undertake to protect the
opium-trade more than that in any other commodity; on the contrary, the
representatives of the English government would gladly have seen that
trade diminish; but in truth, the East India Company realised several
millions sterling a year profit by it, and English merchants reaped many
additional millions: insomuch that a very powerful influence was brought
to back up this trade.

A ‘Supplementary Treaty’ was signed in October 1843, for regulating the
terms of commercial intercourse at the five ports, and providing for the
courteous reception of British representatives by the Chinese officials,
in matters relating to mutual trade. During the thirteen years following
the signature of the Treaty of Nankin, the trade between England and
China gradually increased, though not at so rapid a rate as had been
hoped by British manufacturers and merchants. The English had trading
establishments, with consuls and other officials, at the five ports, and
a colony or military settlement at Hong-kong; while there were always a
few ships-of-war in the Chinese waters. The relations, however, were not
wholly peaceful. The inhabitants of Canton had a general ill-will
towards the English; so had the imperial viceroy; and violence arising
out of this ill-will led to a brief period of hostilities. In April
1847, the English seized the Bogue Forts, in the Canton river, in order
to obtain redress for various insults; this seizure was followed by a
new convention.

Thus matters continued until October 1856. On the 8th of that month, an
incident occurred, trivial in itself, which gave rise to the ‘Second War
with China.’ Sir John Bowring was at that time chief representative of
British interests in China, with Hong-kong as his head-quarters; Admiral
Sir Michael Seymour commanded the royal ships in those seas; Commodore
Elliot was under Seymour in the Canton and Hong-kong district; and Mr
Parkes was consul at Canton. These were the English officials more
immediately concerned in the matter. On the day here named, a Chinese
officer and a party of soldiers boarded a _lorcha_ or small vessel
called the _Arrow_, anchored off Canton; and then seized twelve out of
fourteen of the crew, bound them, and carried them away. The _Arrow_ had
a colonial register from the governor of Hong-kong, which placed it
under British protection; the master, an Englishman, protested against
the seizure, but was not listened to. The British flag, too, was hauled
down from the lorcha. This was the statement on the part of the British.
Most of the accusations, however, were stoutly denied by the officials
of Canton, who asserted that the lorcha was Chinese, that the owner was
Chinese, that the crew were Chinese, and that the boarding was effected
simply to take into custody men who had committed some offence against
Chinese laws.

When the seizure of the men from the _Arrow_ became known, Mr Parkes
remonstrated with the Chinese officer, on the ground that the crew were
under British protection. No notice being taken of this remonstrance, Mr
Parkes communicated with the highest dignitary in that part of China,
whose name was Yeh Mingchin, and whose office was variously designated
imperial commissioner, governor, and viceroy. The letter sent by Parkes
to this functionary demanded that the twelve men should be brought back
to the lorcha by the same officer who had taken them away, that an
apology should be made, and an assurance given that the British flag
should in future be respected. The men were sent back, after much
negotiation; but Mr Parkes complained that the return ‘was not made in
the public manner which had marked the seizure, and that all appearance
of an apology was pointedly avoided.’ The facts were communicated to Sir
John Bowring, and by him to Admiral Seymour. No real injury had been
done, for the men had been reinstated; but there was an insult, which
the English representatives conceived themselves bound to resent. They
had often been piqued at the absence of respect shewn by the officers of
the Celestial Empire, and were willing to avail themselves of any
reasonable opportunity for bringing about a more diplomatic state of
affairs.

The first act of war occurred on the part of the British. Sir John
Bowring recommended to the admiral the seizure of a Chinese junk or
war-boat, as a probable mode of bringing an apology. Sir Michael
accordingly directed Commodore Elliot, of the _Sybille_, to carry out
Bowring’s instructions; and placed at his disposal the _Burracouta_
steam-sloop and the _Coromandel_ tender. A junk was seized; but this was
a profitless adventure; for, being found to be private property, the
junk was given up again. The admiral next sent the steam-frigates
_Encounter_ and _Sampson_ up the Canton river; ‘in the hope that the
presence of such an imposing force would shew the high-commissioner the
prudence of complying with our demands.’ The Chinese viceroy remained,
nevertheless, immovable; he made no apology. Mr Parkes thereupon went
from Canton to Hong-kong, to consult with Bowring and Seymour as to the
best course to be adopted. They all agreed that the seizure of the
defences of the city of Canton would be the most judicious, both as a
display of power without the sacrifice of life, and of the determination
of the English to enforce redress—‘experience of the Chinese character
having proved that moderation is considered by the officials only as an
evidence of weakness.’

Then commenced the second stage in the proceedings. On the 23d of
October, Sir Michael Seymour went in person up to Canton, with the
_Coromandel_, _Sampson_, and _Barracouta_, and accompanied by the
marines and boat-crews of the _Calcutta_, _Winchester_, _Bittern_, and
_Sybille_. He captured four forts a few miles below Canton, spiked the
guns, destroyed the ammunition, and burned the buildings. Another, the
Macao fort, in the middle of the river, mounting 86 guns, he retained
and garrisoned for a time. Mr Parkes was then sent to announce to Yeh
that the British admiral had come to enforce redress for insults
received, and would remain in the river until redress was obtained. The
high-commissioner sent a reply which was not deemed satisfactory. On the
morning of the 24th, marines and sailors were sent to capture the
‘Bird’s Nest Fort,’ the Shamin Fort, and others near Canton; this they
did, spiking the guns and destroying the ammunition. On the afternoon of
the same day, strong reinforcements were sent to the British factory, or
trading-station of the merchants, to protect it from any sudden attack,
and to guard against the floating of fire-rafts by the Chinese on the
river.

‘Apology’ was the demand made by the British representatives; but no
apology came; and thereupon the siege of Canton was proceeded with. On
the 25th, a fort called the Dutch Folly, immediately opposite the city,
was captured. The 26th being Sunday, nothing was done on that day. On
the 27th, the admiral heightened his demands. He caused Consul Parkes to
write to the Chinese commissioner, to the effect that as the required
apology and reparation had not been given, the terms should be made more
stringent. Henceforward, the field of contest was widened; it was no
longer the lorcha and the flag alone that constituted the grievance. Sir
John Bowring probably thought that the same amount of threat and of
fighting, if fighting there must be, might be made to settle other
annoyances, as well as those more immediately under notice. No reply
being sent to Parkes’s letter, the guns of the _Encounter_ and
_Barracouta_ were brought to bear upon the Chinese commissioner’s
residence, and upon some troops posted on the hills behind a fort named
by the English Gough’s Fort. This enraged Yeh Mingchin, who issued a
proclamation, offering a reward of thirty dollars for every Englishman’s
head.

Sir Michael, resolved to punish this obstinate viceroy, made
preparations for a much more serious attack. He sent Captain Hall on
shore, to warn the inhabitants of Canton to remove their persons and
property from the vicinity of a certain portion of the city; this they
did during the night of the 27th. On the 28th, a bombardment was kept up
from the Dutch Folly, with a view of opening a clear passage to the wall
of the city; and when this passage was opened by noon on the 29th, a
storming-party was sent in under Commodore Elliot. Marines and sailors,
with two field-pieces, advanced to the wall, and speedily obtained
possession of the defences between two of the city-gates. One of the
gates was then blown to pieces by gunpowder, and another body of seamen
advanced to that spot under Captain Hall. Soon afterwards, Seymour,
Parkes, and Elliot entered the city through this shattered gate, went to
the high-commissioner’s house, inspected it, remained there some time,
and then returned to the ships. The motive for this visit was a singular
one, unusual in European warlike politics, but having a significance in
dealing with so peculiar a people as the Chinese; it was simply (in the
words of the admiral’s dispatch) ‘to shew his excellency that I had the
power to enter the city.’

The month of November opened ominously. The British were determined to
humble the pride of the Chinese officials; whereas, these officials
shewed no signs of yielding. Admiral Seymour now addressed a letter in
his own name to the high-commissioner, adverting to the case of the
_Arrow_; pointing threateningly to the fact that Canton was at the mercy
of cannon-balls, and inviting him to terminate the unsatisfactory state
of affairs by a personal interview. He claimed credit, rather than the
reverse, for his conduct towards the city. ‘It has been wholly with a
view to the preservation of life, that my operations have hitherto been
so deliberately conducted. Even when entering the city, no blood was
shed, save where my men were assailed; and the property of the people
was in every way respected.’ Commissioner Yeh’s reply to this letter was
not deficient in courtesy or dignity; whether or not he believed his own
assertions, he at least put them forth in temperate language. He
maintained, as he had before asserted to Consul Parkes, that the seizure
of the twelve men on board the _Arrow_ was perfectly legal; that some of
them had been released on their innocence of an imputed crime being
proved; that the other three were given up when Parkes demanded them;
that the _Arrow_ was a Chinese vessel; that the authorities had no means
of knowing that she had passed into the hands of an Englishman; that no
flag was flying when the vessel was boarded, and, therefore, no flag
could have been insultingly hauled down. The non-admission of English
representatives into Canton was defended on the plea that, the less the
two nations came in contact, the less were they likely to quarrel. Again
was a letter written, and in more threatening terms than before. Sir
Michael refused to discuss in writing the case of the _Arrow_, and
insisted that nothing short of a personal interview between himself and
Yeh, either on shipboard, or in Canton city, could settle the quarrel.
Nothing daunted, Commissioner Yeh replied on the 3d, reiterating his
assertions of the justice of his cause, and acceding to no propositions
for a personal interview.

On the 6th a naval engagement took place on the river. The Chinese
collected twenty-three war-junks in one spot, under the protection of
the French Folly fort, mounted with twenty-six heavy guns. This fort was
a little lower down the river than the Dutch Folly. Seymour resolved to