NEWS OF THE WEEK.
To topic of the week is still the East j; but the scene has shifted from the East of Europe to the East of Asia, from Turkey to Bengal. The attempted enforcement of certain measures of economy has ex- cited a degree of irritation and uneasiness among the officers of the East India Company, which is in its form very little and in its spirit not at all removed from open mutiny. It has been usual, on certain stations, to make an allowance denominated balk ; and this allowance it is now intended to. withdraw.0 The .pay of officers in India varies of iiiirfe-VVith -their rank,Tathe following scale of that of a captain will show sufficiently its nature. We copy It from a correspondent of the Morning, Journal of Tuesday. The rupees are calculated at is. 9d. each A captain's ordinary income per month is
1st, Pay, 120 rupees, or . . . . RIO 10 0 6 3 6 3
When on service in the field, and when stationed at certain canton- ments, he receives what is 'called " whole batta,," but no allowance for house-rent ; so that the real addition is only 40 rupees, or 31. 10s. per month ; making the total field allowance 321. 11s. 3d. per month, or AV. 15s. per annum. This, it must be confessed, is a very small sum for one who has to calculate on an exile of at least twenty years from home ; and who, if he be married and have children, as many of the officers have, must send his children to England in order to have them educated. It is stated also, in the petitions of the offi- cers against the Company's order, that servants—of which, from the peculiarities of the Hindoo customs, a most extraordinary number is and alarm. The reductions proposed extend, it is true, to a very small part of the army—namely, to those portions of it that are stationed at Dinapore, Bhurampore, and the Presidency; but this fact, coupled with the almost universal outcry of the officers, without regard of the stations they happen to occupy, strikes us as the most serious eculiar to itself. the esprit du corps is strong Everywhere, therefore, sented as if levelled at the whole. But this spirit, which is powerful one that influences the military force.
and broadly distinguished,—the soldiers and inferior officers on the one whom chance has placed them—ignorant of their language—in a great degree altogether ignorant as well as careless of their opinions, yet hardly more ignorant of Hindoostan than they are of England, They gait Weir native land when boys, long before its laws, its 01.15t0MS, its
2d, House-rent, when not in. quarters, 50 r. . 4 7 3d, Tentage, 75 r. . . . . . 6 11 4th,
Half Batts, 90 r.
7
17
Total . . 29 6
necessary—demand much higher wages than they formerly did, and that in many other respects the expenditure of an officer has increased oflate years 50 percent. Indeed, so strongly has the continually in- creasing prices of all articles, whether of necessity or convenience, pres- sed on the Indian army, that they have for a considerable time past Contemplated the propriety of petitioning for an increase of pay. We ought not therefore to be surprised, that a proposal for a diminution, though of only 421. per annum, should be listened to with both anger feature in the case. The army everywhere constitute a class which, though it have much in common with civilians, has much that is in the army, and an insult or an injury to one soldier is apt to be felt and in Europe, is in India, from peculiar circumstances, almost the only ?tie Indian army is composed of two classes of men, permanently hand, and the commissioned officers on the other. The former are the children of the soil, and attached to it by the ties of parentage and atriotism ; the latter are cosmopolites, despising the natives, among privileges sacred and civil, hi had time to make any deep impression on their minds : they are awn that during their absence of a quarter of a century, friends, acquainta. es, neighbours, even the face of nature itself, the fields as well as thos who till them, must be utterly changed • from what they were ; and if they are bound to the land of their fathers , at all, it is only by the prospect it holds out of rest and quiet in ? the evening of their days, and the contented enjoyment of the competence which has been so hardly earned in India. Take from the officer in India the power of accumulating such a competence, or ma- terially abridge that power, and you sever the only chain that connects his affections or his wishes with the mother country. It is not won- derful, therefore, that officers in India should be so extremely sensitive on this point, and more especially when they are told that it is not in . compliance with any speculative or real improvement that the reduc- tions complained of are contemplated, but that the necessities of the Company require them. Under such circumstances, it was to be ex- pected that not only those who suffer should feel indignant, but that those who do not yet suffer should dread the approach of a similar visitation, and join their brethren in averting it. And accordingly we find, by all recent accounts, that throughout India there is but one cry. If that cry be not speedily stopped—and there is only one means ' of appeasing it—we shall have an enemy in our Indian possessions much more formidable than Russia is likely to prove for the next fifty years at least. India is held for the Company by the army alone ; and / the army is in effect made up of the white officers. Let these com- bine, and the sovereignty of Bengal might be transferred beyond the possibility of recovery to the first military chief who could contrive to . secure their suffrages. We do not think they will combine, at present; but they ought not to be tempted too far. Where a military force has been long established, rulers may with ease reduce its numbers, but never lef. them attempt to reduce its allowances. Such attempts are always dangerous, and for the most part fatal to those who make them.
