REINFORCEMENTS FOR INDIA.
I fell in with Granville and Clarendon at Watford, and got into their carriage. Of course my first enquiries were about India, when they told me that the general impression was not quite so unfavourable as that produced by the first telegraphic intelligence. Clarendon said that if it was possible for Havelock to maintain himself a short time longer, and that reinforcements arrived in time to save the beleaguered places, the tide would turn and Delhi would fall; but if he should be crushed, Agra, Lucknow, and other threatened places would fall with renewals of the Cawnpore horrors, and in that case the unlimited spread of the mutiny would be irrepressible, Madras and Bombay would revolt, all the scattered powers would rise up everywhere, and all would be lost. We both agreed that the next would probably be decisive accounts for weal or for woe. I told Granville afterwards that I was glad to see they had called out more militia, but regretted they had not done more, when he said that he was inclined to take the same view, from which it was evident to me that there has been difference of opinion in the Cabinet as to the extent to which the calling out of the militia should be carried. I urged him to press on his colleagues a more extensive measure. It is evident that public opinion will back them up in gathering together as great a force as possible in this emergency, regardless of expense, and at all events the course of this Government is not embarrassed and annoyed as that of another Government was three years ago in reference to the Crimean War. As a very true article in a very sensible paper set forth, the difference between then and now is, that the Government of Palmerston has fair play, while that of Lord Aberdeen never had it. The Press, and public opinion goaded and inflamed by the Press, treated the latter with the most flagrant injustice, while Palmerston and the whole Government, out of regard for him, are treated with every sort of consideration and confidence.
London, October 19th.—I spent last week at Newmarket; the details of the last Indian news which arrived there put people in better spirits, but they were too much occupied with the business of the place to think much about India. Returned to town on Friday, and went to The Grove yesterday; had some talk with Clarendon, who said Palmerston was very offhand in his views of Indian affairs, and had jumped to the conclusion that the Company must be extinguished. At the Cabinet on Friday last he said, 'They need not meet again for some time, but they must begin to think of how to deal with India when the revolt was put down. Of course everybody must see that the India Company must be got rid of, and Vernon Smith would draw up a scheme in reference thereto.' This brief announcement did not meet with any response, and there was no disposition to come to such rapid and peremptory conclusions, but it seemed not worth while to raise any discussion about it then.
Clarendon then talked of the Court, and confirmed what I had heard before, going into more detail. He said that the manner in which the Queen in her own name, but with the assistance of the Prince, exercised her functions, was exceedingly good, and well became her position and was eminently useful. She held each Minister to the discharge of his duty and his responsibility to her, and constantly desired to be furnished with accurate and detailed information about all important matters, keeping a record of all the reports that were made to her, and constantly recurring to them, e.g. she would desire to know what the state of the Navy was, and what ships were in readiness for active service, and generally the state of each, ordering returns to be submitted to her from all the arsenals and dockyards, and again weeks or months afterwards referring to these returns, and desiring to have everything relating to them explained and accounted for, and so throughout every department. In this practice Clarendon told me he had encouraged her strenuously. This is what none of her predecessors ever did, and it is in fact the act of Prince Albert, who is to all intents and purposes King, only acting entirely in her name. All his views and notions are those of a Constitutional Sovereign, and he fulfils the duties of one, and at the same time makes the Crown an entity, and discharges the functions which properly belong to the Sovereign. I told Clarendon that I had been told the Prince had upon many occasions rendered the most important services to the Government, and had repeatedly prevented their getting into scrapes of various sorts. He said it was perfectly true, and that he had written some of the ablest papers he had ever read.
Clarendon said he had recently been very much pleased with the Duke of Cambridge, who had shown a great deal of sense and discretion, and a very accurate knowledge of the details of his office, and that he was a much better Commander-in-Chief than Hardinge. He had been lately summoned to the Cabinet on many occasions, and had given great satisfaction there. Clarendon talked of Vernon Smith, of whom he has no elevated opinion, but still thinks him not without merit, and that at this moment it would not be easy to replace him by some one clearly better fitted. He takes pains, is rather clever, and did better in the House of Commons than anybody gave him credit for last session; he makes himself well informed upon everything about his office, and is never at a loss to answer any questions that are put to him, and to answer them satisfactorily.
ATTACKS ON LORD CANNING.
November 2nd.—Gout in my hand has prevented my writing anything, and adding some trifling particulars to what I have written above. In the meantime has arrived the news of the capture of Delhi, but though we have received it now a week ago we are still unacquainted with the particulars. All the advantages of the electric telegraph are dearly paid for by the agonies of suspense which are caused by the long intervals between the arrival of general facts and of their particular details. It still remains to be seen whether the results of this success turn out on the whole to be as advantageous as it appears to be brilliant. The Press goes on attacking Canning with great asperity and injustice, and nobody here defends him. Though I am not a very intimate or particular friend of his, I think him so unfairly and ungenerously treated that I mean to make an effort to get him such redress as the case admits of, and the only thing which occurs to me is that Palmerston, as head of the Government, should take the opportunity of the Lord Mayor's dinner to vindicate him, and assume the responsibility of his acts. His 'Clemency' proclamation, as it is stupidly and falsely called, was, I believe, not only proper and expedient, but necessary, and I expect he will be able to vindicate himself completely from all the charges which the newspapers have brought against him, but in the meantime they will have done him all the mischief they can. Amongst other things Clarendon told me at The Grove, he said, in reference to Canning's war against the press, that the license of the Indian press was intolerable, not of the native press only, but the English in Bengal. Certain papers are conducted there by low, disaffected people, who publish the most gross, false, and malignant attacks on the Government, which are translated into the native languages, and read extensively in the native regiments, and amongst the natives generally, and that to put down this pest was an absolute necessity.
November 4th.—I have been speaking to Granville about Canning, and urged him to move Palmerston to stand forth in his defence at the Lord Mayor's dinner on the 9th. This morning he received a very strong and pressing letter from Clanricarde, in the same sense in which I had been urging him, and a very good letter, and this he is going to send to Palmerston. Clanricarde is struck, as I am, with the fact that nobody and no newspaper has said a word in Canning's favour, and he sees as I have done all the damage which has already been done to him by the long and uncontradicted course of abuse and reproach with which the press has teemed.
Hatchford, November 8th.—Granville made a speech in defence of Canning, at a dinner given at the Mansion House to the Duke of Cambridge. He writes me word it was 'rather uphill work,' and I was told it was not very well received, but nevertheless it produced an effect, and it acted as a check upon the 'Times,' which without retracting (which it never does) has considerably mitigated its violence. It was the first word that has been said for Canning in public, and it has evidently been of great use to him.
The most interesting event during the last few days is the failure of the attempted launch of the big ship (now called 'Leviathan),' and it is not a little remarkable that all the great experiments recently made have proved failures. Besides this one of the ship, there was a few weeks ago the cracking of the bell (Big Ben) for the Houses of Parliament, and not long before that the failure of the submarine telegraph in the attempt to lay it down in the sea. The bell will probably be replaced without much difficulty, but it is at present doubtful whether it will be found possible to launch the ship at all, and whether the telegraphic cable can ever be completed.