T

For help divine that leads his way
Again to reach his native bay:
Mohammed, Vishnoo, Zerdusht, all
May hear their kneeling votaries call.
See, yonder Guebre far retires
Where gleam his own ancestral fires,
And bends before an altar low,
Whose mystic flames eternal glow.
In wild devotion kneeling there,
The grateful votary pours his prayer;
And thus his kindling thoughts aspire,
To praise the awful God of Fire.'

THE GUEBRE'S HYMN.

Lo! kneeling again at the fane of my sires,
I bow to the God whom their fathers adored;
Amid its bright altar it never expires,

It lives on the sea, and on earth it is Lord.

Through all the wide shores where my absence has gone,

Its power and its splendour my footsteps have seen;

Or ruling in terror its greatness was shown,

Or aiding the gladness and wealth of the scene.
By isles of the savage I kneel'd to thy gleam,

Beheld in the night by our wave-shaken bark,
And witness'd thee bless with thy heat and thy beam,
The lands where mankind as their midnight are dark.
Mid ocean's dim channels, where shoals lie unseen,
And rocks are conceal'd till they crash on the wreck,
Thy light was our beacon; far hail'd was its sheen,
To seamen a sun, though on land but a speck.

I saw thy fierce ray shooting upward at night,

Where towers the volcano o'er Seas of the West;
Its glare brought the foam of the breakers to light,

And shone on the storm-bird that rock'd on their crest.

I saw thee in power rolling widely thy fires,

O'er cities that shrivell'd and crack'd in thy beam;

Thy flames rose in sport upon turrets and spires,
And rush'd over streets with the roar of a stream.

I've seen thee ascend o'er the funeral pyre, *

Where mourners at eve did the rites of the tomb:
And thus shall thy splendours triumphant aspire,

Over earth and its skies at the hour of their doom.

Q.

* The Hindoo Natives of India burn their dead, and the ceremony is performed chiefly in the twilight.

EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST A FREE PRESS IN INDIA.

THERE is nothing in the peculiar circumstances of India to abate the force with which the facts and arguments contained in the preceding articles, published in this journal, on the advantages of a free press generally, tend to establish the expediency, wisdom, and justice of granting a legal toleration to the most unrestrained freedom of opinion in that country as well as in all others. The relations between the Governors and governed, may be very different, without impairing the salutary influence on both, with which the regimen of free discussion is pregnant. In India, as in England, corruption and imbecility shrink from exposure; integrity defies the shafts of slander; talent laughs at the attacks of presumptuous ignorance; and the true characters of men and measures may be ascertained long before such knowledge could be of no other use than to 'point a moral,' and deform the pages of history with facts that dishonour human nature. As a substitute for the control of a local press, that of England would be little more efficacious than the voice of history, wasting the sweetness of its commendations, and the bitterness of its reproofs, on men whom neither the one nor the other will be able to deflect from the courses they are severally pursuing. The people of England are so distant, and so pre-occupied with nearer and dearer interests, that their judgments on the affairs of India come like the dispassionate but powerless judgments of posterity.

It may, indeed, be said, that the co-existence of a free press with the absolute forms under which the Government of India is administered, would present something anomalous and unprecedented; that, in England, as a free press has been the result, so it is the necessary concomitant of other institutions for the protection of liberty, since an appeal to the public is an appeal to those who by their influence and votes elect the persons who constitute by far the most powerful member of our tripartite Government; whereas, in India, where the mass of the population are subject to a handful of foreigners who occupy every office of trust and power, an appeal to the public would either be an appeal to the Natives who do not possess any recognised means, direct or indirect, of influencing the determinations of Government, and who, though they are rather excluded from offices for incapacity than by exclusion incapacitated, might urge very inconvenient and dangerous pretensions to emancipation from their various disabilities, or to the European servants of Government, who are charged with the execution of measures respecting the adoption of which they have no deliberative voice. To these plausible apologies it may be replied, that the Government of India is despotic in form only, being compelled to render a

minute account of all its proceedings to the Court of Directors, and to receive, through them, and in their name, the orders of the President of the Board of Control; being also liable to the animadversions of either House of Parliament, and to the unreserved discussions of their conduct by the periodical press. If there is no free press in India, therefore, it is not because the Governor-General in Council is armed with power to prevent it, but because the Parliament of England will not allow it,-because the representatives of those who are ever ready to confess that the blessings of a free press are inestimable, deliberately renounce the assistance of that invaluable instrument in the Government of a distant dependency, for whose welfare they are most deeply responsible ! It is the Parliament of England who refuse to apply that surest test, not merely of the spirit in which the local Government is administered, but of the degree in which its institutions are adapted to the character and circumstances of the people. If India were really subject to an arbitrary Government, the introduction of a free press would be hopeless and impracticable; but, so long as its Government is in the hands of Englishmen or their descendants, no such obstacle can be assigned as the cause of its nonexistence.

Nor would the co-existence of a free press, with the division of the inhabitants into a governing and subordinate class, be anomalous and unprecedented. It does now exist in America and the West Indies, where the inferior classes are much more depressed by adverse laws and manners than they are in India. As an organ for the ex-·. pression of the opinions of the Natives and more benevolent Europeans, it would greatly tend to mature the intellectual powers, and ameliorate the general condition of the former, though it could not effect any sudden improvement of their character, nor inspire the idea of attempting, nor the means of accomplishing innovations; while the very manner in which they stated their pretensions, and advocated their claims, would afford the best means of judging whether it would be wise to concede or resist them. If the several orders in the state are so balanced, that power flows in the channels which it would naturally scoop for itself, a free press will not disturb the arrangement; but, if they are not, it will gradually and peaceably conduce to its distribution into such channels, before the violence done to nature has occasioned a more violent description of retaining banks and opposing mounds.

It is true that the duties of the servants of Government are ministerial; but the implicit obedience which they owe to the orders of Government, according to their several departments and individual places, is perfectly compatible with the freest avowal of their opinions on the measures of Government, and with their commenting on erroneous policy, whenever they bona fide believe it to be practised or projected. In venturing on such appeals to public

opinion, a man may contribute to reforms in matters of legislation and administration, where private or official communications would have been treated with entire disregard, with listless indifference, or with insolent contempt. On the other hand, he may manifest symptoms of profound ignorance, presumption and indiscretion, and thereby enable Government and all the world to appreciate him more justly; but, whatever other imputations may be grounded on such productions, they do not warrant a charge of contumacy or insubordination, far less of treasonable dissatisfaction. If, indeed, charges of (constructive) contumacy or insubordination were supported by references to supposed libels, and verdicts on such charges were founded by the party preferring them, there would be no security for innocence, and no restraint on abuse of authority, except from the energy of the press itself. In England, where that sove reignest remedy is practically free, notwithstanding the gratuitous suffering occasionally inflicted at the caprice of the Attorney-General for the time being, there are thousands of servants of Government, civil and military, to whom the press is as easily and safely accessible, as to the most independent country-gentlemen, some of whom do openly, others anonymously, review the proceedings of public functionaries, of whatever rank or station, not only without any inconvenience, but with the utmost benefit to the state. To debar the whole body of placemen from contributing any thing but assentations and praise to the political literature of the day, would be to degrade and corrupt a most important part of the sum of national virtue and intelligence.

There is another description of Europeans in India, the merchants, who are dependent on Government, no otherwise than that they are liable to be transported to England without trial! That is, Parliament takes advantage of its own monstrous wrong, and tells men who must otherwise be eminently qualified by their knowledge, experience, and the stake they hold in the welfare of the country, to enter into discussions regarding its most important interests, that they are disqualified for the exercise of such patriotic functions by their subjection to a species of slavery from which their Asiatic fellow-subjects are exempt! The doctrine of constructive contempt being carried to so hideous an extent, as that the Governor-General shall have power, not to imprison for a few months, but to arrest and send to England any British-born subject whom he may adjudge to be the author of a libel, it is plain that no more effectual step could have been taken to shut up the thoughts and cares of the British part of the community within the circle of their own private affairs, and to leave the Governor-General the fearful responsibility of originating measures, and acting on orders framed by persons ten thousand miles distant, with no other information as to the circumstances, interests, and teniper of the immense and heterogeneous population to be affected by them, than what is permitted to perco

late through the regular channels of official communication. Of such a system of government it may be safely affirmed, that it is not, and it cannot come to good.' The Epicurean stillness that is now so grateful, will some day be broken by the noise of commotions which a more generous policy alone can avert.

The objection that a free press in India would relax the bands of military discipline, is so contradicted by experience, and the confusion between difference of opinion in matters unconnected with the professional obligations of the parties and actual disobedience of orders, or contempt of authority, is so gross, that it is unworthy of serious examination. A more plausible apprehension, however, may be suggested, that a free press would make more apparent and sensible that preponderance of latent power which now resides in the army; and that, without injuring discipline, the discussion of military interests would be carried on with so much animation and appearance of concert, as to raise the tone in which favours from Government might be solicited more than was perfectly desirable and convenient. But let it be remembered, that a free press would incessantly labour to hasten the arrival of the day when all restraints on COLONISATION shall be removed, and thereby set in motion that power which alone can fill up the several stages of society in those proportions which are most favourable to strength and happiness. When that great object is attained, every other blessing will follow in its train; the germs of peace, order, and security, of industry, arts, and knowledge, will be widely diffused; internal tranquillity will be no longer dependent on the precarious fidelity of a soldiery who have so little in common with those under whose command, and for whose benefit, they hold broad India in subjection. Nor would Calcutta be exposed to insult, as she was in May, 1824, when she counted the handful of Christian population whom she could arm for her protection. A race of Native Christian seamen of European, aboriginal, and mixed extraction, capable of supporting the honour of the British flag, will be created. External security will no longer be exposed to the chances of the unequal contest between an invading Russian force of great numerical strength, consummate discipline, and undoubted attachment to its leaders, and a defensive army so scattered over an immense peninsula, in order that the distrusted population may be every where overawed, that corps of adequate strength cannot be collected where they are required; unaccustomed to act in masses, and for the first time brought into contact with the persevering activity and combination of European modes of warfare; while we are bereft of all resources in the affection, courage, and wealth of the inhabitants, wherewith to meet and repel the first advantages the invader might obtain. Finally, that dreadful abomination, that bloody rite, with the connivance at which we have so long tried the patience of Heaven, the burning of Hindoo widows, would be abolished; that mixture of cowardice and