RIISSELL'S DZDIAN DIARY. * WE have already intimated that the narrative

which Mr. Russell has just published of his Indian mission is not a reproduction of his famous letters in the Times ; but it may not be superfluous to repeat that statement, for false suppositions are of all ill weeds the hardest to eradicate. The military operations at which Mr. Rus- sell was present are here described with all the well-known vividness of his pen, but the greater portion of the two volumes consists of entirely new matter. Much is told which the writer was bound to regard as secret history at the time when it became known to him ; scenes and incidents are related which multiply our points of view, and clear up our dim conceptions of the whole of the great struggle by the bright glimpses they give of its, ele- mentary forces ; and. we are forced to open our eyes wide to the condition of India by the pregnant facts which are set before us. Mr. Russell modestly apologizes for the frequent use of the first personal pronoun imposed upon him by the form of his narrative but the suppression of that little word " I " would have robbed his book of half its charms and more than half its value. Besides his many known friends, Mr. Russell has thousands of others who have not seen his face, and all of them will like best to hear the tale of his personal adventures told with the frankness with which friend speaks to friend, or with which a man records in his diary the impressions made upon him by passing events. We have heard a great deal about India from men who have long lived there, who have taken part in its administration, and who have claimed for themselves and their class a monopoly of all sound knowledge of the subject, and all capacity to discern its existing phenomena and forecast its future phases ; but our faith in these oracles has been severely shaken, for we have seen them convicted of the most lamentable self-delusions. Now there has gone out from among us to explore India one who "neither had any prejudices to overcome nor theories to support," one who had no other guide than his own perceptions, in the keenness and ac- curacy of which his countrymen justly place very great reliance ; and nothing is more likely than that such a man should discover facts of the highest importance in relation to our rule in India, which had been unnoticed by old residents in the country, or which had remained for them barren of all instruction. Many such facts has Mr. Russell detected, and they are the more to be prized for the direct testimony he bears to their authenticity. A single paragraph, in which he tells us what he saw with his own keen eyes, and what were the reflections it suggested to him, may do more than heaps of blue books, leading articles, and quarterly reviews to enlighten us on the subject of Indian policy. We will illustrate these remarks with an apologue, which we find ready to our hands, where our author describes his first landing at Calcutta.

"'And about the dead Hindoos in the river ?' said -I to my friend, as we were going off in our boat towards the ghaut, a landing place in a strong muddy tideway, gurgling through cables and hawsers of many ships. The dead Hindoos in the river ? I declare to you,' quoth he, with much gravity, it's all stuff. I have been for years in Calcutta, and -never saw half-a- dozen in my —" Whew !' interrupted I, what a dreadful smell ! God bless me ! Look at that thing !' And down with the smiling tide came towards us, bloated, face downwards, with arms outstretched, a human body, bleached white where it was exposed to the air, and serving at once as a banquet and a perch to half-a-dozen crows and buzzards. Our rowers lazily lifted their oars to let ' it ' float past, without a word. As we neared the landing-place we saw two more, dreadfully decomposed, churned about in an eddy. My friend was disconcerted a little. See how oddly the laws of evidence and observation often run. Had I come ashore at a few minutes earlier or later, I might have said the gentlemen who accompadied me, and who has lived for a long time at Calcutta, assured me he had never seen half- a-dozen bodies in the Hooghly in ten years' time ; and I am bound to say that I saw none in my voyage up the river.'"

It was during a drive on the crowded Course, the Rotten Row of Calcutta, that Mr. Russell caught his first glimpse of the rela- tions between the English and the Native races, and the sight was not very satisfactory or assuring. There was in the bearing of the former towards the latter

"Such insult offered as the arrogance of the most offensive aristocracy—

that of complexion—can invent to those who by no means admit themselves to be the plebeians of the race It is striking, for the first time at all events,—but I suppose the impression soon dies away,—to see the metaphy- sical Mahratta ditch which separates the white people, not only from the Na-

• My Diary in India, in the year 1858-9. By William Howard Russell, LL.D., Special Correspondent of the Times. With Illustrations. In two volumes. Pub- lished by Routledge and Co.

tires, but from the Eurasians. They drive and ride in the same throng, appa-

rently quite unconscious of each other's presence The high-capped Parsees, who are driving about in handsome carriages, are on better terms with the Europeans, as far as the interchange of salutations goes; but the general effect of one's impressions, derived from a drive on the Calcutta Course is, that not only is there no rapprochement between the Indian and the Englishman, but that there is an actual barrier which neither desires to cross."

This impression was deepened by all Mr. Russell's subsequent experience in India. On the road he found that the bungalows built by Government for the use of travellers, though in theory open to all, are in practice and reality reserved almost exclusively for Europeans. The camp he perceived to be full of significant, if small, indications of a mocking and unsympathizing spirit, which, no doubt, the Native reciprocates :—

"Next to my griffinish wonder at the want of white faces, has been my regret to perceive the utter absence of any friendly relations between the white and the black faces when they are together. Here comes a trqpper —a tall fine old fellow, with face as fair as that of many a sunburnt soldier from England—he carries a despatch for the Lord Sahib—he has ridden with it fifty miles through a country full of rebels. The old Sikh asks for the tent of the Chief ; he dismounts, sticks his lance in the ground, fastens his panting horse to it, and stalks in his long leather boots—his heels, perhaps' stuck up in a crease of the leather six inches above the sole— through the camp. It is ten to one if a soul notices him, and if he goes to a wrong tent he is saluted with an adjuration, and a request to go to a place far beyond the limits of the camp, by the angry young gentleman who has been disturbed in his Pendennis,' or in the contemplation of a fine 'ash.' The old soldier will follow his own sahib to the last ; but for strange sahibs he has not much regard, and he thinks it's their nature to be rough and rude, and so he shuffles forth on his cruise, looking hopelessly about for the dere, till some kind mortal compassionates his distress. What is the old trooper's revenge ? Why, he sticks in our service, saving up money and re- mitting it to his family—retires on his pension, and then, when his last hour is near, his last act is to try and get Ins name scratched,' so that he may not die in the service of the stranger."

" There is no such enemy to a black skin," says Mr. Russell, "as your Anglo-Saxon, who has done so much for liberty ;" and at Simla he was impressed with a conviction that " there is cer- tainly a change wrought in the character of many English people by their residence in India." For instance— "The Judges of the Courts tell me they are much troubled by the pseudo- aristocratic prejudices of all classes of Europeans against paying then- bills till they are forced into court. Today an officer was summoned by his ser- vant for wages due ; and, as he had dismissed the man without payment, he was ordered to attend and give evidence in his defence. Instead of doing so, he wrote to the Judge to say he hoped he would not be required to ap- pear, as, in fact, the man had broken things of more value than the amount of his wages, adding—this, mind, to the Judge of the Court !—he would take good care to put it out of the fellow's way to summons him again, as he had 'no notion of putting up with such conduct on the part of a dog of a Native ! ' Imagine how such a man would treat those who were placed under his com- mand, or were subject to his jurisdiction, if he became, as very probably he will be, invested with magisterial functions."

Here is a scene which occurred at the breakfast-table of Lord William Hay, Deputy Commissioner of the Hill States :—

"June 1611,, iTrednesdriy.—I did not keep my resolution to lie in bed all day, but got up to breakfast. Poor Hodson's crderly came in with a mes- sage to Lord IS illiam Hay early in the morning. He is a tall, bright-eyed, white-toothed, slender Sikh, of a good expression of face, whose attachment to his master has now been transferred to his unhappy widow, who resides here with her son, Lieutenant Mitford. This brave fellow received his master in his arms as he fell mortally wounded, and carried him away from under fire. His gallantry, proved in many a fight, has not yet been re- warded as it should be, and the sower liV i es n hope, which I trust will one day be justified. Our breakfast would have afforded Lance a fine subject— splendid peaches, fine plums, green-gages, and grapes—the plumage of hill- pheasants and sheen of arms in the background. I was rather amused at one of Hay's cases this morning. An officer entered and sat down at table. After compliment, as the Natives say :- Briton (loguituv)—"I say, Lord William, I want to ask your advice. Can I lick a fellow for serving me with a summons—a writ, you know ?' Lord William—" 'No. If you lick a man you must take the consequences. Do you owe the money ?' Briton—" Why, yes; but the d--d nigger came up and annoyed me, and I want to give him a hiding. It's too bad that gentlemen should be insulted in this way by those confounded impudent rascals about the courts.'

Lord William—" Well; but you know those men must do their duty, and they must be protected in the discharge of it. As you have asked me, I must beg of you not to think of such a thing, or my assistant will have to notice the case.'

Briton—" The whole country's going to the d—1 ! How can you ex- pect gentlemen to come here to be insulted by those bazaar blackguards and those confounded summon-servers ? I'll lick—" &c., &c., &c. [Exit.]

Now we have had clear warning that our rule in India can never be safe while the present anti-social relations subsist between the governing and the subject races. The danger lies not alone in the secret enmity to which the latter are provoked, but in the ex- treme ignorance of the real feelings and of the inner social life of the people to which the English in India are condemned by their own faults. This ignorance has existed in its full intensity side by side with the boasted experience of all but a very few of the highest minds among the administrators of India, and what it has already produced it will produce again unless it be abated. It may be that all moral confidence in the natives is destroyed, but in practice they must be largely trusted again, and trusted blindly so long as they are protected against scrutiny by the opaque barrier which the prejudices of Englishmen have raised up for their own stultification. We all know how the officers of many Sepoy tegiments remained to the very moment of their mur- der incredulous of any possible treachery on the part of their men ; yet warnings had not been wanting. Sir Thomas Monro had foretold, and Sir Charles Napier had long afterwards re- peated the prediction, that when nothing else was left for us to conquer in India, we should have to conquer our own native army.

" Sir Colin and Mansfield declare they always had the same opinion of the Sepoys that they have now. ' God forgive me, it was the only time I ever wilfully lent myself to an untruth in my life, when I expressed myself satisfied with their conduct.' Why did our officers lend themselves to such deceit? It is a long answer to an embarrassing question. It was • the mode ';—more than that, an officer would be persecuted, hunted down, and ruined, who dared to tell the truth. I am assured, in the.old days, a Queen's officer who ventured to express an opinion, that the discipline of a Sepoy regiment was not perfect, would be insulted till he was forced to fight, and then had a host of enemies ready to put him under the sod with a bullet, or to stab him with their pens in the Indian press, which was quite dependent on the services, with a few exceptions, of volunteer writers and corre- spondents."

Anglo:Indians have learned to their cost that the native races are not to be propitiated by any amount of wilful blindness to their disaffection, and now perhaps our countrymen may begin to comprehend the necessity of devising some more practical means for their own security in the midst of millions whom it will be impossible to hold in subjection by force alone. Perhaps they may come at last to think with Mr. Russell that "the Anglo- Saxon and his congeners in India must either abate their strong natural feelings against the coloured race, restrain the expression of their antipathies, or look forward to the day, not far distant, when the indulgence of their passions will render the Government of India too costly a luxury for the English people."

MORE WELLINGTON DESPATCHES..

ALREADY we have had four thick volumes of Supplemental De- spatches dug from the paper storehouse of Arthur Duke of Welling- ton, and here is a fifth as big as its four big brothers. Moreover, we are to have additional volumes of equal bigness, coming down to the year 1815, and finally ending in a magnificent tailpiece, to be composed of Maps and Plans. So that, in the end, the Supple- mental will transcend the Original publication in bulk, if not in value, and much will see the light which will modify, or complete, the views of the historian, and help to make out in the minutest detail that best Life of Wellington which is to be found in these monumental despatches. But so true it is that specimen excerpts of the works of really great men serve as indices to the whole of their character, that it seems impossible to publish anything which does not confirm the estimate of Wellington formed by the public after a perusal and reperusal of Gurwood's Selection. Every fresh page of evidence wonderfully harmonises with what had gone be- fore. As in a masterpiece of architecture, if we examine the mi- nute details, we find they help to heighten the general effect, and are consistent with the main design; so the more closely we ana- lyse the character of Wellington by the light of his written words, the more do we find its bold outlines and majestic proportions enhanced by the small and trivial details that fill up and complete the whole.

Such is the effect produced on the mind by a perusal of thesa

new despatches which the present Duke has drawn out from his father's chests of papers. Like those which preceded them, they exemplify the great principles of his life—to perform with scru- pulous exactness the whole of the duties of any position in which he might be placed, and to perform them as a servant of the King's Government. Not "what ought to be, what I should like to be, but what are my duties ?" is clearly the question he would have asked himself, had not his instinct anticipated the solution. "How can I best carry out the objects of those who entrusted me with power ?" he would have said had he propounded questions to himself. That a man of this stamp is not a man of the highest character we are ready to admit ; but he who accepts a subordi- nate position, while he should hold himself ready to Five advice, while he may warn his superiors of the danger of their policy, or point out the inadequacy of the means put in motion to obtain an end, while he is bound to give information, should yet, so long as he holds a subordinate position, not only obey the behests of his superiors, but obey them with all his heart and might. Welling- ton did so in every situation he filled ; and, granting that a man has the golden key of fortune—opportunity—to do so is the cer- tain way to fame and power. But in this special case we are considering, fame and power were not the ends sought. The end sought was the doing of duty. Reward, distinction, reputation, power, these were results of Wellington's career, but the result most satisfactory to his mind was that he did what he desired to do—his duty. Had he been a carpenter or a shoeblack, he would have turned out the most complete workmanship and the most brilliantly shining boots. In our generation, Wellington stands out preeminently as the Man of Duty.

Whether he always formed the highest and purest idea of his duty is another question. There are, indeed, but few who may read this volume of his civil correspondence on Irish affairs who will arrive at the conclusion that he did. Few will insist that it is part of any man's duty to carry out a colossal system of electoral corruption, or to bolster up governments by purchasing adherents right and left. Yet this is what Arthur Wellesley did during his term of office as Irish Secretary. It is impossible not to regret that so fine an instrument should have been put to so low a use; it is impossible not to regard this as the worst period of Welling- ton's life. But, before we utter a verdict of wholesale condemna- tion, we must remember that the system of corruption he admin- istered he found in existence ; that he was brought up in the good old Tory belief which held the system of oorruption to be an in- dispensable element of Government; and that it is most probable, considering the political atmosphere in which he lived, that he so-

Civil Correspondence and Memoranda of Field-Marshal Arthur Duke of Wellington, 1.0. Edited by his Son, the Duke of Wellington, K.O. Published by Murray. ',opted the Tory creed in good faith and without question. In support of this view take the following extract from a letter to Lord Hawkesbury, written on the 18th of May 1807, one little month after his landing in Ireland. He remarks that Lord Lei- trim has no chance of being chosen a representative peer, and he continues thus— "But we have a very difficult game to play in this country ; and you must not be surprised we should lose some of our elections. Notwith- standing that the objects to be attained by it are as numerous as ever, the patronage of the local government in Ireland has been very much di- minished since the Union, and indeed I may say that at present it ope- rates agninst the government in every instance. We have nothing to say to the army, the ordnance, the commissariat, the medical department, the barrack department, and the comptroller of the army accounts ; and the officers of the revenue, who by law ought not to interfere in elections, are against us in almost every instance. I intend, when I return to England, to bring under your consideration the state of this government in respect to its influence in the country ; and you will see the necessity of adopting some measures to prevent the influence of all the departments which I have above mentioned from being exercised against our friends."

Here we have the theory that "our friends "—that is the King's friends—were to be sustained in power by the influence of the de- partments, in addition to the employment of corrupt means to buy off powerful malcontents and self-seekers. Theb Govern- ment must be carried on. Half the opposition displayed is only an advertisement to the Government of the value of the opponent. Corruption is not a good thing in itself, but it is the only mode of winning corrupt men over to the right side. Wellesley would have scorned a bribe had any one dared to offer it, but unhappily he was brought up in a school over-willing to bribe those who were but too ready to receive bribes. Those who read these Irish despatches must bear in mind the fact that, in the main, it is the system, not the man which deserves condemnation. We leave to the reader the task of fishing out for himself the details of the system of government practised by the Tories in Ireland fifty years ago. They abound in this volume. We find them in its earliest and they glare out upon its latest pages. They sickened the soul of a Cornwallis ten years before ; and al- thoughhe performed the part allotted to him with his wonted energy, thoroughness, and sagacity, we cannot imagine that his part was congenial to the soul of a Wellesley. The story is stale and old. But loathsome as it is, we must remember that we have just been witnesses of a corruption quite as loathsome in Gloucester and Wakefield.

The best parts of this volume are those which treat of the higher branches of polities and of military science. We have elaborate dissertations on the Roman Catholic question ; on Tithes, so fruitful in evils; on Irish Education, as troublesome then as now, and from similar causes ; on Maynooth ; on a host of minor questions, and some admirable papers on the defence of Ireland from a then anticipated French invasion. The keen insight and good sense of Wellesley are conspicuously displayed in these papers. How characteristic is the following passage taken from a letter to the then Lord Chancellor, Apropos of a letter by Lord Redesdale :—

"The misfortune of Ireland is, that the existing evils are so great and so obvious that everybody Bees them ; and it is easy to find out how things ought to be by adverting to England. The difficulty is to bring them from the state in which they are in this country to that in which they are in England, and I have not yet seen any practical solution for this difficulty.

"I am convinced that all sudden and hurried reforms fail, and I think I could prove, by adverting to the history of the last twenty years in this country, that they have invariably ended by making matters worse than they were. This is, however, no reason for not making a beginning to re- form abuses, and I hope that we have not only made a beginning in that good work, but some effectual progress in every department of the State. "I wish that I could agree in opinion with Lord Redesdale, and could think that the law was better obeyed in Ireland than it was before the Union and the Rebellion. I long for the period when I shall be able to say that any one law is carried into execution strictly and is obeyed in Ireland ; and when I shall witness that period, I shall believe that we can carry into exe- cution in Ireland the system of the British constitution as it ought to be carried into execution without the aid of general officers and bayonets."

Could there be better testimony to the existence of the grossest abuses than the closing sentence of this extract' Well might he say in a paper on the defences of Ireland—" I lay it down as decided that Ireland, in a view to military operations, must be considered an enemy's country." The whole of his plans for its defence were based upon that estimate ; and Lord Castlereagh, in urging their execution, especially so far as related to fortifications, laid as much stress on the political as he did on the military grounds. We recommend all these military memoranda to the careful attention of military students, for if they are not ap- plicable to Ireland now, the principles on which they rest remain good for all time. In one of these able memoranda occurs a pas- sage pertinent to the present moment. It relates to volunteer drill:— "I think," he says, "that both in England and Ireland we have at- tempted too much in teaching parade discipline to yeomanry and volunteers. In the event of operations in these countries we should be greatly in want of light troop, particularly infantry of the description of these troops. The parade discipline which they receive in large bodies would be entirely use- less, nay, would embarras them when they would be called upon to act as light troops ; and I would, therefore, leave them as they are, in detached companies of various strength throughout the country."

This touches the moot point how far our modern volunters should be organized in strong battalions, and to what extent Should they be drilled on the regular model. The inoonvenienoe of small bodies, separately drilled, would be enormous. Besides, it is hardly likely that the nominal strength and the real strength ma of a company would correspond. The medium would seem to be manageable battalions, and a system of Light Infantry drill, which, while it makes the most of the qualities of every man as an independent self-relying fighter, teaches him to act in concert with others.

Our notice of this volume is necessarily inadequate, but we shall he satisfied if we have induced our readers to study a chapter in the early life of Wellington, showing how he carried into the administration of a detestable system of government those high practical qualities which he developed with so much effect in after years on the larger field of the Peninsula. In fact, few men in our day have equalled Wellington as a Man of Business ; and. we cannot call to mmd any one who has surpassed him.