The mails that have come by way of the Red
Sea bring us an unusual amount of intelligence this time ; the most important of which is not from India itself. Indeed, the Indian papers only report progress in old matters ; and the most satisfactory event is the defeat, if not the death, of the robber chief who had obstructed the progress of our armies in Burmah.
The rebellion in China is an affair of much greater magnitude, geographically and politically. Every new report prepares us to expect the speedy downfall of the Tartar dynasty, and the esta- blishment instead of an aboriginal Chinese dynasty. Estimating roughly, it may be said that the rebels have attained possession of something like half the empire ; and they make steady advances, the Imperial party speaking as if their hopes depended upon the
next battle to be fought. We know more of the Chinese than we do of the Tartar Government at Pekin, but we know more of the Tartar family as ruler than we do of the Chinese in that ca- pacity, and it would not be very safe to calculate the course of policy which might be dictated by the new Government. It might be more favourable to English commerce, it might be di- verted to other alliances; and in the mean time the mere existence of so extensive a civil war threatens to interrupt, at least in some degree, the ordinary commerce of the country. What befalls us in China we must bear and cannot prevent ; but there are proceedings more within the range of British influence that do not at present wear a very satisfactory aspect. Once more it is announced that General Cathcart has finally accomplished the subjugation of the Caffres and the cognate tribes lately in re- bellion against the English Government in South Africa : but if the terms of the conquest are disagreeable to the conquered, they are also unpleasant to the British, because they threaten to reopen the rebellion by the inevitable force of circumstances. The Gaikas
(It complain that the territory which is allotted to them is the pro- perty of other tribes, and is too small for all who will be lodged within it; and they foresee that they must fight with one another for fodder to feed those cattle upon which they subsist. Now, whole tribes driven to violence as the sole means of getting their food, form a species of multitudinous robber, that cannot be a safe neighbour to any settlement. The arrangement ap- pears to be a crime-compelling one, and we are not to expect that the savages will be superior to such circum- stances. This settlement has established in full force exactly the same causes for rebellion, inroad, and war, which were established in the settlement of "British Caffraria"; and thus the conclusion of one war seems but the preface to the opening of another. The colonists foresee it as well as the savages, and they have been candid in their criticism : whereupon General Cathcart turns round on them, accuses them of motives interested in the maintenance of hostilities, and threatens them with punishment by court-martial for "treason," on account of attempts to prevent peace ! This is a highly Austrian mode of treating an expression of opinion, but it does not speak well for General Cathcart's re- liance on his own arrangements. Such intolerance of criticism be- trays a consciousness that the censure has touched upon a sore part.
