ANGLO-AUSTRIAN AMENITIES.
ENGLAND has no right to look down upon Austria for barbarous modes of maintaining authority : if we reproach Austria with a Windischgriitz, the Austrians can retort with the name of a Tor- rington. Ceylon, however, is more the Italy of England : all the bad government that is implied in heavy and inappropriate taxa- tion, alienation of the Government from the People, and neglect of the Native population, is crowned by a sanguinary retribution ; and then the Governor coolly talks of " indemnity " for himself and his officers. After all, though English rule has been bad enough in the Cape colony, in British Guiana, New Zealand, Ca- nada, and other dependencies, we suspect that Ceylon is the real opprobrium of our system : it blends the faults incidental to the conduct of affairs in a conquered foreign country like India, with the worse mode in which we treat our colonies ; and to that com- pound Lord Torrington adds a strong dash of the Austrian flavour. Much of the mischief originated before his time, only he has improved upon it. We have the broad facts on the highest offi- cial authority ; for it must be confessed that there is that cool candour in Ceylon which sometimes accompanies arbitrary irre- sponsibility. The Cingalese have been shamefully neglected— much more so than the foreigners of the Punjaub or Affghanis- tan. "There is a large part of the country whose wants and circumstances are quite unknown to us—where no European ap- pears to have been for the last thirty years " : such is the state- ment, not of some Opposition journalist, but of the Chief Justice to a Jury at Kandy. We know almost as little of the inland Cingalese as we do of the Dyaks in Borneo. We are not in a position to deal with their wants ; we have enlightened them so little as to the might of England, that they thought it possible to set up a poor fat boy as " pretender " against Queen Victoria! They know one thing of us—a knowledge which they share -with the Natives of India—that we exact heavy taxes. Even the Europeans complain of the exorbitant and impolitic taxation : while the Natives put forward divers Wat Tylers against an op- pressive poll-tax and a grinding dog-tax, the British merchants are provoked to remonstrate with the excessive amount and ar- bitrary imposition of the public burdens. Even that excessive taxation does not keep the public accounts square. Our Government "grinds the faces of the poor," the Cingalese, for a spendthrift waste of money. Sir Emerson Ten- nent, the Colonial Secretary, admits that there ought to be re- ductions and retrenchment. The Governor himself proclaims, that although, in adverse times, the revenue of 1847 exceeded that of 1846 by 24,0001., the expenditure still showed the large excess of 58,000/.
On official showing, therefore, we learn that the Government of Ceylon is extravagant, irregular, neglectful of its duties, and misbehaved. This accounts for the discontented state of the Eu- ropean population, the revolt of the Cingalese. And how is that revolt met? Not only by military -vigour, but by disgusting se- verities. The rebels are tried by courts-martial, and summarily shot ; while a larger number are punished wholesale at the as- sizes—sentenced by the Chief Justice, whose admission we have quoted. Some of the offences alleged against the sufferers under the military sentences are remarkable. One is accused of having connived at rebellion "directly or indirectly"; another, of having administered or "sanctioned" an unlawful oath : and such are the offences alleged to justify capital punishment. The rebellion is suppressed, and Lord Torrington, "to obviate future doubts," tells the Council that he shall ask an act of indemnity ! Bad government legitimately ends in rebellion and tyrannical retribu- tion. Lord Grey's friend and relative, promoted from the go- vernment of a railway to that of Ceylon, combines in his own person the ante-revolutionary functions of a Regnier and the post-revolutionary retributions of a Radetzky. If England re- proach Austria with Lombardy, France with Algiers, Spain with Cuba, she may be answered with Ceylon. More than the "mere colonies," therefore, are concerned : disgrace is brought upon the empire by these low methods of government.
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