We are anxious that the reader should go along with the short remainder of this story, because it bears strongly upon the true moral of our Eastern policy, of which, hereafter, we shall attempt to unfold the casuistry, in a way that will be little agreeable to the calumniators of Clive and Hastings. We do not intend that these men shall have it all their own way in times to come. Our Eastern rulers have erred always, and erred deeply, by doing too little rather than too much. They have been too long-suffering; and have tolerated many nuisances, and many miscreants, when their duty was—when their power was—to have destroyed them for ever. And the capital fault of the East India Company—that greatest benefactor for the East that ever yet has arisen—has been in not publishing to the world the grounds and details of their policy. Let this one chapter in that policy, this Kandyan chapter, proclaim how great must have been the evils from which our "usurpations" (as they are called) have liberated the earth. For let no man dwell on the rarity, or on the limited sphere, of such atrocities, even in Eastern despotisms. If the act be rare, is not the anxiety eternal? If the personal suffering be transitory, is not the outrage upon human sensibilities, upon the majesty of human nature, upon the possibilities of light, order, commerce, civilization, of a duration and a compass to make the total difference between man viler than the brutes, and man a little lower than the angels?
It happened that the first noble, or "Adikar," of the Kandyan king, being charged with treason at this time, had fled to our protection. That was enough. Vengeance on him, in his proper person, had become impossible: and the following was the vicarious vengeance adopted by God's vicegerent upon earth, whose pastime it had long been to study the ingenuities of malice, and the possible refinements in the arts of tormenting. Here follows the published report on this one case:—"The ferocious miscreant determined to be fully revenged, and immediately sentenced the Adikar's wife and children, together with his brother and the brother's wife, to death after the following fashion. The children were ordered to be decapitated before their mother's face, and their heads to be pounded in a rice-mortar by their mother's hands; which, to save herself from a diabolical torture and exposure," (concealments are here properly practised in the report, for the sake of mere human decency,) "she submitted to attempt. The eldest boy shrunk (shrank) from the dread ordeal, and clung to his agonized parent for safety; but his younger brother stepped forward, and encouraged him to submit to his fate, placing himself before the executioner by way of setting an example. The last of the children to be beheaded was an infant at the breast, from which it was forcibly torn away, and its mother's milk was dripping from its innocent mouth as it was put into the hands of the grim executioner." Finally, the Adikar's brother was executed, having no connexion (so much as alleged) with his brother's flight; and then the two sisters-in-law, having stones attached to their feet, were thrown into a tank. These be thy gods, O Egypt! such are the processes of Kandyan law, such is its horrid religion, and such the morality which it generates! And let it not be said, these were the excesses of a tyrant. Man does not brutalize, by possibility, in pure insulation. He gives, and he receives. It is by sympathy, by the contagion of example, by reverberation of feelings, that every man's heart is moulded. A prince, to have been such as this monster, must been bred amongst a cruel people: a cruel people, as by other experience we know them to be, naturally produce an inhuman prince, and such a prince reproduces his own corrupters.
Vengeance, however, was now at hand: a better and more martial governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, was in the field since 1812. On finding that no answer was forthcoming, he marched with all his forces. But again these were inadequate to the service; and once again, as in 1803, we were on the brink of being sacrificed to the very lunacies of retrenchment. By a mere godsend, more troops happened to arrive from the Indian continent. We marched in triumphal ease to the capital city of Kandy. The wicked prince fled: Major Kelly pursued him—to pursue was to overtake—to overtake was to conquer. Thirty-seven ladies of his zenana, and his mother, were captured elsewhere: and finally the whole kingdom capitulated by a solemn act, in which we secured to it what we had no true liberty to secure, viz. the inviolability of their horrid idolatries. Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's—but this was not Cæsar's. Whether in some other concessions, whether in volunteering certain civil privileges of which the conquered had never dreamed, and which, for many a long year they will not understand, our policy were right or wrong—may admit of much debate. Often-times, but not always, it is wise and long-sighted policy to presume in nations higher qualities than they have, and developments beyond what really exist. But as to religion, there can be no doubt, and no debate at all. To exterminate their filthy and bloody abominations of creed and of ritual practice, is the first step to any serious improvement of the Kandyan people: it is the conditio sine quâ non of all regeneration for this demoralized race. And what we ought to have promised, all that in mere civil equity we had the right to promise; was—that we would tolerate such follies, would make no war upon such superstitions as should not be openly immoral. One word more than this covenant was equally beyond the powers of one party to that covenant, and the highest interests of all parties.
Philosophically speaking, this great revolution may not close perhaps for centuries: historically, it closed about the opening of the Hundred Days in the annus mirabilis of Waterloo. On the 13th of February 1815, Kandy, the town, was occupied by the British troops, never again to be resigned. In March, followed the solemn treaty by which all parties assumed their constitutional stations. In April, occurred the ceremonial part of the revolution, its public notification and celebration, by means of a grand processional entry into the capital, stretching for upwards of a mile; and in January 1816, the late king, now formally deposed, "a stout, good-looking Malabar, with a peculiarly keen and roving eye, and a restlessness of manner, marking unbridled passions," was conveyed in the governor's carriage to the jetty at Trincomalee, from which port H.M.S. Mexico conveyed him to the Indian continent: he was there confined in the fortress of Vellore, famous for the bloody mutiny amongst the Company's sepoy troops, so bloodily suppressed. In Vellore, this cruel prince, whose name was Sree Wickremé Rajah Singha, died some years after; and one son whom he left behind him, born during his father's captivity, may still be living. But his ambitious instincts, if any such are working within him, are likely to be seriously baffled in the very outset by the precautions of our diplomacy; for one article of the treaty proscribes the descendants of this prince as enemies of Ceylon, if found within its precincts. In this exclusion, pointed against a single family, we are reminded of the Stuart dynasty in England, and the Bonaparte dynasty in France. We cannot, however, agree with Mr Bennett's view of this parallelism—either in so far as it points our pity towards Napoleon, or in so far as it points the regrets of disappointed vengeance to the similar transportation of Sree.
Pity is misplaced upon Napoleon, and anger is wasted upon Sree. He ought to have been hanged, says Mr Bennett; and so said many of Napoleon. But it was not our mission to punish either. The Malabar prince had broken no faith with us: he acted under the cursed usages of a cruel people and a bloody religion. These influences had trained a bad heart to corresponding atrocities. Courtesy we did right to pay him, for our own sakes as a high and noble nation. What we could not punish judicially, it did not become us to revile. And finally, we much doubt whether hanging upon a tree, either in Napoleon's case or Sree's, would not practically have been found by both a happy liberation from that bitter cup of mortification which both drank off in their latter years.
At length, then, the entire island of Ceylon, about a hundred days before Waterloo, had become ours for ever. Hereafter Ceylon must inseparably attend the fortunes of India. Whosoever in the East commands the sea, must command the southern empires of Asia; and he who commands those empires, must for ever command the Oriental islands. One thing only remains to be explained; and the explanation, we fear, will be harder to understand than the problem: it is—how the Portuguese and Dutch failed, through nearly three centuries, to master this little obstinate nucleus of the peach. It seems like a fairy tale to hear the answer: Sinbad has nothing wilder. "They were," says Mr Bennett, "repeatedly masters of the capital." What was it, then, that stopped them from going on? "At one period, the former (i.e. the Portuguese) had conquered all but the impregnable position called Kandi Udda." And what was it then that lived at Kandi Udda? The dragon of Wantley? or the dun cow of Warwick? or the classical Hydra? No; it was thus:—Kandi was "in the centre of the mountainous region, surrounded by impervious jungles, with secret approaches for only one man at a time." Such tricks might have answered in the time of Ali Baba and the forty thieves; but we suspect that, even then, an "open sesame" would have been found for this pestilent defile. Smoking a cigar through it, and dropping the sparks, might have done the business in the dry season. But, in very truth, we imagine that political arrangements were answerable for this long failure in checkmating the king, and not at all the cunning passage which carried only one inside passenger. The Portuguese permitted the Kandyan natives to enter their army; and that one fact gives us a short solution of the case. For, as Mr Bennett observes, the principal features of these Kandyans are merely "human imitations of their own indigenous leopards—treachery and ferocity," as the circumstances may allow them to profit by one or the other. Sugarcandy, however, appears to have given very little trouble to us; and, at all events, it is ours now, together with all that is within its gates. It is proper, however, to add, that since the conquest of this country in 1815, there have been three rebellions, viz. in 1817-18, in 1834, and finally in 1842. This last comes pretty well home to our own times and concerns; so that we naturally become curious as to the causes of such troubles. The two last are said to have been inconsiderable in their extent. But the earlier of the three, which broke out so soon after the conquest as 1817, must, we conceive, have owed something to intrigues promoted on behalf of the exiled king. His direct lineal descendants are excluded, as we have said, from the island for ever; but his relatives, by whom we presume to be meant his cognati or kinspeople in the female line, not his agnati, are allowed to live in Kandy, suffering only the slight restriction of confinement to one street out of five, which compose this ancient metropolis. Meantime, it is most instructive to hear the secret account of those causes which set in motion this unprincipled rebellion. For it will thus be seen how hopeless it is, under the present idolatrous superstition of Ceylon, to think of any attachment in the people, by means of good government, just laws, agriculture promoted, or commerce created. More stress will be laid, by the Ceylonese, on our worshipping a carious tooth two inches long, ascribed to the god Buddha, (but by some to an ourang-outang,) than to every mode of equity, good faith, or kindness. It seems that the Kandyans and we reciprocally misunderstood the ranks, orders, precedencies, titular distinctions, and external honours attached to them in our several nations. But none are so deaf as those that have no mind to hear. And we suspect that our honest fellows of the 19th Regiment, whose comrades had been murdered in their beds by the cursed Kandyan "nobles," neither did nor would understand the claim of such assassins to military salutes, to the presenting of arms, or to the turning out of the guard. Here, it is said, began the ill-blood, and also on the claim of the Buddhist priests to similar honours. To say the simple truth, these soldiers ought not to have been expected to show respect towards the murderers of their brethren. The priests, with their shaven crowns and yellow robes, were objects of mere mockery to the British soldier. "Not to have been kicked," it should have been said, "is gain; not to have been cudgeled, is for you a ground of endless gratitude. Look not for salutes; dream not of honours." For our own part—again we say it—let the government look a-head for endless insurrections. We tax not the rulers of Ceylon with having caused the insurrections. We hold them blameless on that head; for a people so fickle and so unprincipled will never want such matter for rebellion as would be suspected, least of all, by a wise and benevolent man. But we do tax the local government with having ministered to the possibility of rebellion. We British have not sowed the ends and objects of conspiracies; but undoubtedly, by our lax administration, we have sowed the means of conspiracies. We must not transfer to a Pagan island our own mild code of penal laws: the subtle savage will first become capable of these, when he becomes capable of Christianity. And to this we must now bend our attention. Government must make no more offerings of musical clocks to the Pagan temples; for such propitiations are understood by the people to mean—that we admit their god to be naturally stronger than ours. Any mode or measure of excellence but that of power, they understand not, as applying to a deity. Neither must our government any longer wink at such monstrous practices as that of children ejecting their dying parents, in their last struggles, from the shelter of their own roofs, on the plea that death would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, obtained secure possession of the entire island, with no reversionary fear over our heads, (as, up to Waterloo, we always had,) that possibly at a general peace we might find it diplomatically prudent to let it return under Dutch possession, we have no excuse for any longer neglecting the jewel in our power. We gave up to Holland, through unwise generosity, already one splendid island, viz. Java. Let one such folly suffice for one century.
For the same reason—namely, the absolute and undivided possession which we now hold of the island—it is at length time that our home government should more distinctly invite colonists, and make known the unrivaled capabilities of this region. So vast are our colonial territories, that for every class in our huge framework of society we have separate and characteristic attractions. In some it is chiefly labour that is wanted, capital being in excess. In others these proportions are reversed. In some it is great capitalists that are wanted for the present; in others almost exclusively small ones. Now, in Ceylon, either class will be welcome. It ought also to be published every where, that immediately after the conquest of Kandy, the government entered upon the Roman career of civilization, and upon that also which may be considered peculiarly British. Military roads were so carried as to pierce and traverse all the guilty fastnesses of disease, and of rebellion by means of disease. Bridges, firmly built of satin-wood, were planted over every important stream. The Kirimé canal was completed in the most eligible situation. The English institution of mail-coaches was perfected in all parts of the island. At this moment there are three separate modes of itinerating through the island—viz., by mail-coach, by buggy, or by palanquin; to say nothing of the opportunities offered at intervals, along the maritime provinces, for coasting by ships or boats. To the botanist, the mineralogist, the naturalist, the sportsman, Ceylon offers almost a virgin Eldorado. To a man wishing to combine the lucrative pursuits of the colonist with the elegances of life, and with the comforts of compatriot society, not (as in Australia, or in American back settlements) to weather the hardships of Robinson Crusoe, the invitations from the infinite resources of Ceylon are past all count or estimate. "For my own part," says Mr Bennett, who is now a party absolutely disinterested, "having visited all but the northern regions of the globe, I have seen nothing to equal this incomparable country." Here a man may purchase land, with secure title, and of a good tenure, at five shillings the acre; this, at least, is the upset price, though in some privileged situations it is known to have reached seventeen shillings. A house may be furnished in the Morotto style, and with luxurious contrivances for moderating the heat in the hotter levels of the island, at fifty pounds sterling. The native furniture is both cheap and excellent in quality, every way superior, intrinsically, to that which, at five times the cost, is imported from abroad. Labour is pretty uniformly at the rate of six-pence English for twelve hours. Provisions of every sort and variety are poured out in Ceylon from an American cornucopia of some Saturnian age. Wheat, potatoes, and many esculent plants, or fruits, were introduced by the British in the great year, (and for this island, in the most literal sense, the era of a new earth and new heavens)—the year of Waterloo. From that year dates, for the Ceylonese, the day of equal laws for rich and poor, the day of development out of infant and yet unimproved advantages; finally—if we are wise, and they are docile—the day of a heavenly religion displacing the avowed worship of devils, and giving to the people a new nature, a new heart, and hopes as yet not dawning upon their dreams. How often has it been said by the vile domestic calumniators of British policy, by our own anti-national deceivers, that if tomorrow we should leave India, no memorial would attest that ever we had been there. Infamous falsehood! damnable slander! Speak, Ceylon, to that. True it is, that the best of our gifts—peace, freedom, security, and a new standard of public morality—these blessings are like sleep, like health, like innocence, like the eternal revolutions of day and night, which sink inaudibly into human hearts, leaving behind (as sweet vernal rains) no flaunting records of ostentation and parade; we are not the nation of triumphal arches and memorial obelisks; but the sleep, the health, the innocence, the grateful vicissitudes of seasons, reproduce themselves in fruits and products enduring for generations, and overlooked by the slanderer only because they are too diffusive to be noticed as extraordinary, and benefiting by no light of contrast, simply because our own beneficence has swept away the ancient wretchedness that could have furnished that contrast. Ceylon, of itself, can reply victoriously to such falsehoods. Not yet fifty years have we held this island; not yet thirty have we had the entire possession of the island; and (what is more important to a point of this nature) not yet thirty have we had that secure possession which results from the consciousness that our government is not meditating to resign it. Previously to Waterloo, our tenure of Ceylon was a provisional tenure. With the era of our Kandyan conquest coincides the era of our absolute appropriation, signed and countersigned for ever. The arrangements, of that day at Paris, and by a few subsequent Congresses of revision, are like the arrangements of Westphalia in 1648—valid until Christendom shall be again convulsed to her foundations. From that date is, therefore, justly to be inaugurated our English career of improvement. Of the roads laid open through the island, we have spoken. The attempts at improvement of the agriculture and horticulture furnish matter already for a romance, if told of any other than this wonderful labyrinth of climates. The openings for commercial improvement are not less splendid. It is a fact infamous to the Ceylonese, that an island, which might easily support twenty millions of people, has been liable to famine, not unfrequently, with a population of fifteen hundred thousand. This has already ceased to be a possibility: is that a blessing of British rule? Not only many new varieties of rice have been introduced, and are now being introduced, adapted to opposite extremes of weather: and soil—some to the low grounds warm and abundantly irrigated, some to the dry grounds demanding far less of moisture—but also other and various substitutes have been presented to Ceylon. Manioc, maize, the potato, the turnip, have all been cultivated. Mr Bennett himself would, in ancient Greece, have had many statues raised to his honour for his exemplary bounties of innovation. The food of the people is now secure. And, as regard their clothing or their exports, there is absolutely no end to the new prospects opened before them by the English. Is cotton a British gift? Is sugar? Is coffee? We are not the men lazily and avariciously to anchor our hopes on a pearl fishery; we rouse the natives to cultivate their salt fish and shark fisheries. Tea will soon be cultivated more hopefully than in Assam. Sugar, coffee, cinnamon, pepper, are all cultivated already. Silk worms and mulberry-trees were tried with success, and opium with virtual success, (though in that instance defeated by an accident,) under the auspices of Mr Bennett. Hemp (and surely it is wanted?) will be introduced abundantly: indigo is not only grown in plenty, but it appears that a beautiful variety of indigo, a violet-coloured indigo, exists as a weed in Ceylon. Finally, in the running over hastily the summa genera of products by which Ceylon will soon make her name known to the ends of the earth, we may add, that salt provisions in every kind, of which hitherto Ceylon did not furnish an ounce, will now be supplied redundantly; the great mart for this will be in the vast bosom of the Indian ocean; and at the same time we shall see the scandal wiped away—that Ceylon, the headquarters of the British navy in the East, could not supply a cock-boat in distress with a week's salt provisions, from her own myriads of cattle, zebus, buffaloes, or cows.
Ceylon has this one disadvantage for purposes of theatrical effect; she is like a star rising heliacally, and hidden in the blaze of the sun: any island, however magnificent, becomes lost in the blaze of India. But that does not affect the realities of the case. She has that within which passes show. Her one calamity is in the laziness of her native population; though in this respect the Kandyans are a more hopeful race than the Cinghalese. But the evil for both is, that they want the motives to exertion. These will be created by a new and higher civilization. Foreign labourers will also be called for; a mixed race will succeed in the following generations; and a mixed breed in man is always an improved breed. Witness every where the people of colour contrasted with the blacks. Then will come the great race between man indefinitely exalted, and glorious tropical nature indefinitely developed. Ceylon will be born again, in our hands she will first answer to the great summons of nature; and will become, in fact, what by Providential destiny, she is—the queen lotus of the Indian seas, and the Pandora of islands.