During the first half of the month of April, nothing occurred in parliament involving any very great collision of opinions on this particular subject; but towards the close of the month a clashing of views on Oude affairs became manifest to the public. Throughout the first ten months of the mutiny, while Viscount Palmerston was at the head of affairs, the opposition party, in both Houses of Parliament, frequently appeared as advocates for the deposed royal family of Oude, dwelling on the injustice involved in the deposition. Much of this advocacy may have been sincere, but much also was mere special pleading; for the speakers well knew that, if in office, they would not and could not seek to undo what had been done. No sooner did a change of ministry take place, than the new occupants of office became much more cautious in denouncing the ‘annexation of Oude;’ seeing that, if an iniquity at all, it was one in which the Marquis of Dalhousie, the Calcutta government, the Court of Directors, the Crown, and both Houses of Parliament, were all implicated. Every one now saw that the practical question before the country was—not the rights or wrongs of the annexation—but the treatment of insurgents engaged in the warlike struggle. It became known that the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors had sent a letter to the governor-general in council, dated the 24th of March, relating to the treatment which it was desirable that rebels and mutineers should receive. So peculiar and anomalous were the functions of this Secret Committee, that although nominally belonging to the Court of Directors, it was little other than the mouthpiece of the president of the Board of Control. The letter was really from the Earl of Ellenborough, rather than from any one else.
Before pursuing this narrative, it may be well to say a few words concerning the organisation and functions of this Secret Committee—one of the many anomalies connected with our government of India. Mr Arthur Mills (India in 1858) described the relation between the Secret Committee, the Court of Directors, and the Board of Control, in the following terms: ‘The Court of Directors meets weekly at the East India House for the transaction of business, the ordinary details of which are discharged by three committees—1. Finance and home; 2. Political and military; 3. Revenue, judicial, and legislative. There is also a “Secret Committee,” with peculiar functions altogether different from those of the three ordinary committees. The office of the Secret Committee is purely ministerial. It receives from India all dispatches on matters with respect to which secrecy is deemed important—including those which relate to war, peace, or negotiations with native powers or states within the limits of the charter, or other states or princes; and forwards such dispatches to the Board of Control. The Secret Committee also transmits to India, after signature, dispatches prepared by that Board, which it is bound to do, under oath, “without disclosing the same.” The Secret Committee is composed, as prescribed by act of parliament, of three directors. The court may elect whom they please; but the chairman, deputy-chairman, and senior member of the court, are almost invariably appointed. The papers of the Secret Committee are in charge of the examiner at the East India House, who is clerk to the committee.... There is also a secret department in the Board of Control, for the purpose of carrying on written and oral communications with the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. The oral communications are for the most part carried on through the president personally; in the written communications he is assisted by a senior clerk, and occasionally by the secretaries of the Board. On the arrival of secret dispatches from India, the copy intended for the Board is sent to the senior clerk in the secret department, who prepares a précis of all the letters and enclosures, which he lays before the president; who thereupon gives him instructions, oral or written, for the preparation of an answer, or sometimes drafts one himself. It is then copied in official form, and transmitted to the Secret Committee of the East India House.’
The secret dispatch, produced by the authority here described, began by expressing a hope[[157]] that, as soon as Lucknow should fall before the conquering arm of Sir Colin Campbell, the governor-general would feel himself sufficiently strong to act towards the natives with the generosity as well as the justice which is congenial to the British character. The subsequent paragraphs laid down the propositions that it would be better, except in aggravated instances, to award punishment such as is usual against enemies captured in regular war, than against rebels and mutineers—the exceptions being those in which the fighting by the insurgents ‘exceeded the licence of legitimate hostilities;’ that the insanity of ten months ought not to blot out the recollection of a hundred years of fidelity; that the punishment of death had been far too frequently awarded; and that the governor-general ought sternly to resist the entreaties of those who would urge him to the adoption of a sanguinary policy.
The 6th of May was the date on which the battle may be said to have begun in parliament, on the policy to be pursued towards Oude. Mr Bright, in the House of Commons, asked the ministers whether there was any authenticity in a certain proclamation concerning Oude, said to have been issued by Viscount Canning; whether, if authentic, it had been issued in accordance with any directions from the home government; and, if not so sanctioned, what steps the government intended to take in relation to it? These questions came upon the House generally by surprise, as indicating a revelation of things hitherto hidden; and it was then for the first time made public, by the minister who replied to these questions—that the government had, three weeks before, received a dispatch containing a copy of the proclamation adverted to; that the matter was immediately taken into consideration by the government; that a secret dispatch had been sent off, stating the views of the government on the matter; and that there would be no objection to produce both the proclamation and the dispatch. This announcement was the forerunner of a storm, in which the passion of party was strongly mixed up. On the 7th, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Ellenborough moved for the production of certain papers, analogous to those ordered by the other House on the preceding night; and then arose a debate whether Viscount Canning had really issued the proclamation he intended; whether it was a proper proclamation to issue; whether it was right that the Earl of Ellenborough should reprimand Viscount Canning in so imperious a way as he was accused of doing; whether the secret dispatch containing that reprimand should have been kept so entirely concealed from the Court of Directors; whether it should have been sent out to Calcutta at the time it was; and whether a so-called secret dispatch ought to make its appearance among parliamentary papers, unrelieved by any comments on it by Viscount Canning. There was unquestionably something strange in the mode of proceeding; for the dispatch, although not made known to the Court of Directors until the morning of the 7th, had been communicated to certain members of both Houses on the 6th. Earl Granville urged that, if the government wished to get rid of Viscount Canning, the usual course might have been adopted for so doing; but that it was neither just nor generous to keep him in office, and yet give publicity to such insulting censure on him. The Earls of Derby and Ellenborough replied that it was not intended to dismiss Viscount Canning, or even to censure him; but to induce him to make such modifications in his proposed proclamation as would render the policy adopted in Oude less severe.
It now becomes necessary to attend to this much-canvassed proclamation itself, before noticing the further debates concerning it.
The proclamation in question, and the explanations bearing on it, were dated at a period when, from the absence of an electric telegraph between England and India, they could not of course be known in the former country. On the 3d of March, while at Allahabad, paying anxious attention to the daily telegrams received from Oude, Viscount Canning sent a proclamation and an explanatory letter to that province, relating to the treatment to be meted out to rebels.[[158]] Although Sir Colin Campbell commanded the army of Oude, and conducted the military operations, Sir James Outram was chief-commissioner of the province; and on his shoulders rested, at that time, all that could be effected in the way of civil government. The proclamation was to be at once a sentence, a warning, and a threat, addressed to the inhabitants of Oude. It announced that Lucknow, after months of anarchy, was now again in British hands; it dwelt on the fact that many of the citizens, even those who had shared the bounty of the government, had joined the insurgents; and it declared, that the day of retribution for evildoers had arrived. It proceeded to name six rajahs, thalookdars, and zemindars, who had remained faithful amid great temptation, and who were not only to retain their estates, but were to receive additional rewards. It promised a proportionate reward to all other chieftains who could prove that they had been loyal. With these exceptions, the whole proprietary right to the soil of Oude was declared to be forfeited to the British crown—subject only to such indulgences as might, as a matter of favour, be conceded to individuals, conditional on their immediate submission to the supreme authority, their surrendering of arms, and their steady assistance in the maintenance of order and discipline; and conditional, also, on their innocence of shedding the blood of Englishmen and Englishwomen in the cruel outrages which had taken place. The stringent and startling clause in this proclamation was that which related to the confiscation: declaring that, with the few specified exceptions, ‘the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the British government, which will dispose of that right in such manner as it may seem fitting.’ In the letter to Sir James Outram accompanying this draft of a proclamation, Viscount Canning stated that the proclamation was not to be issued until Lucknow had been fully conquered by Sir Colin Campbell; and that, when so issued, it was to be addressed only to the non-military inhabitants of Oude, without in the slightest degree offering pardon or lenity to rebel sepoys. The proclamation was spoken of as a very indulgent one; seeing that it promised an exemption, almost general, from the penalties of death and imprisonment, to Oudian chieftains and others who had gone against the government; the confiscation of estates was treated as a merciful diminution of punishment, rather than as a severe measure of justice. Sir James Outram was to exercise his judgment as to the mode and the time for issuing the proclamation, in the English, Hindee, and Persian languages. He was supplied with suggestions, rather than strict instructions, how to deal with those Oudians who had been inveterate opponents of the government, but without being concerned in actual murder; how to regard those who had fought in the insurgent ranks, but shewed a willingness to surrender their arms; and how to draw a line between the chieftains on the one hand and their less responsible retainers on the other.
Such being the general character of the proposed proclamation and its accompanying letter, we proceed with the debate.
After the discussions on Friday the 7th of May, the conduct of the government underwent much discussion out of parliament; the supporters of Viscount Canning contending that the publication of the secret dispatch was unfair to that nobleman, even if the dispatch itself were defensible. On the 10th, the Earl of Shaftesbury gave notice of a resolution condemnatory of the publication; and Mr Cardwell gave notice of a similar resolution in the House of Commons. In the course of an irregular discussion, it appeared that the government had not received a single official dispatch from Viscount Canning since that which contained the draft of his proposed proclamation, and they were quite in the dark whether the proclamation had been issued, altered or unaltered. It also became known that the late president of the Board of Control, Mr Vernon Smith, had received a letter from Viscount Canning, stating that the proclamation would require an explanatory dispatch, which he had not had time to prepare.
On the next day, March 11th, parliament was surprised by an announcement that the Earl of Ellenborough, without consulting his colleagues, had resigned into the Queen’s hands his seals of office as president of the Board of Control. Amid the courteous expressions of regret on the part of the other ministers, at losing so important a coadjutor, it soon became evident that the publication of the secret dispatch had emanated from the Earl of Ellenborough, without the knowledge or consent of the Earl of Derby and the cabinet. He found that he had drawn them into trouble; and he resolved to take the whole blame on himself—resigning office to shield others from censure. There was a generosity in this which touched his colleagues. The Earl of Derby candidly admitted that there were parts of the secret dispatch which he could not quite approve, and that the publication of it was indefensible; but that he deeply regretted the resignation of the Earl of Ellenborough.
This will be the proper place in which to notice the celebrated dispatch fraught with such important consequences. On the 24th of March, after Viscount Canning’s proclamation had been penned, but long before any news concerning it could reach England, the Secret Committee wrote to him on the subject of the treatment of the rebels generally. The letter was virtually from the Earl of Ellenborough; although, on account of the absurd system of double government, it professed to emanate from a committee sitting in Leadenhall Street. The general character of this letter was noticed in a recent paragraph, and the letter itself is given in Note G; it may therefore be passed without further notice here. When, on the 12th of April, a draft-copy of Viscount Canning’s proposed proclamation reached England, the Earl of Ellenborough wrote the much-discussed ‘secret dispatch,’ purporting, as before, to come from the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. A few days elapsed before the writing, and a few more before the forwarding, of this document. The earl[[159]] expressed his apprehension that the proposed proclamation would raise such a ferment in Oude as to render pacification almost impossible. He declared his belief that the mode of settling the land-tenure when the British took possession of Oude had been in many ways unjust, and had been the chief cause of the general and national character of the disaffection in that province. He asserted that the Oudians would view with dismay a proclamation which cut them off, as a nation, from the ownership of land so long cherished by them; and would deem it righteous to battle still more energetically than before against a government which could adopt such a course of policy. He went through a process of argument to shew that the Oudians regretted the dethronement of their native king; that their regret ought to be at least respected; that they had never, as a nation, acknowledged British suzerainty; that they ought not to be treated as rebels in the same sense as the inhabitants of those parts of India which had long been under British control; and that the conflict in which they had engaged should on this account be regarded rather as legitimate war than as rebellion. The haughty and stinging portions of the dispatch were contained in the fifteenth and two following clauses or paragraphs; in which the earl, addressing the greatest British functionary in India, said: ‘Other conquerors, when they have succeeded in overcoming resistance, have excepted a few persons as still deserving of punishment; but have, with a generous policy, extended their clemency to the great body of the people. You have acted upon a different principle. You have reserved a few as deserving of special favour, and you have struck with what they will feel as the severest of punishment the mass of the inhabitants of the country. We cannot but think that the precedents from which you have departed will appear to have been conceived in a spirit of wisdom superior to that which appears in the precedent you have made.’