England. The criminal prosecution, therefore, of this delinquent, which Roebuck, conjointly with other persons, had set on foot, was a mortal offence to that stupid government. How short-sighted is oppression! Before the pardon arrived in India, Reddy Row was detected, upon the clearest proofs, of other forgeries by the Commissioners themselves. The man, finding all his villainies discovered, destroyed himself, and all the bonds which he had disposed of, (these for disputing which poor Roebuck had been so shamefully persecuted amongst the rest,) were wholly struck off and disallowed. The ground upon which the Governor applied for the pardon, was the alleged factious spirit of the prosecutors, and of the jury, who had wilfully, he said, defied the government, and combined in an open resistance to its authority. Such was the unheard-of nonsense that was sent to England upon that memorable occasion, and, strange to say, infused into the Royal ear by his advisers, in order to set aside the solemn verdict of a jury, and to let loose upon society a felon of the worst description. It is an old transaction, it is true; but it ought, nevertheless, to be called from its slumbers to bear witness to the thorough heartlessness and cold malignity of poor Roebuck's persecution. It is difficult to imagine more infatuated stupidity than that of the Madras Government at this period, nor could any thing more decidedly show how completely distance from England estranges us from her institutions. They went so far as to set up a profane gabble against the trial by jury itself, as unfit for India without certain modifications. What the trial by jury would become, when modified by such hands, it is easy to conjecture. The specific constitution also of the juries who tried Reddy Row and his accomplices, was the subject of the most indecent cavil; and their names and characters were held up to contempt and ridicule. Had the verdict, solemnly pronounced under the awful sanction of an oath, and thus shamefully criticised, been in conformity to their wishes, that noble institution would have been the subject of their foolish panegyric. The fact is, there was never assembled a more respectable or intelligent set of men, all of them selected from a class of life much superior to that from which they are selected at home, to decide on life or property. Nor did the Grand Jury, who found the bills, escape censure; some individuals among them did not escape punishment. They were chiefly civilians high in the service, merchants, and bankers. Of the civilians, three were removed from their situations, and appointed, with a considerable loss of salary, to other stations. No charge was specified-the only inference was, that they had given offence by concurring in finding the bills against the criminal, over whom the Governor had thrown the aegis of his protection. Is it not singular (Lord Melville was then at the head of the India Board) that these calumnies against the Madras juries, because their duties, the most high and responsible that can be exercised in civil life, happened to clash with the insane measures of a self-willed creature, clothed with a delegated authority,-is it not strange that such calumnies should have found credit in England? They had their effect, however, for a season, till subsequent events threw back the disgrace and infamy upon those who had earned it. Is it fitting that these things should be forgotten? If they are not preserved as lessons against oppression, they will be resorted to as precedents in its favour. Lord Charles Somerset, at the Cape, was a servile plagiarist from many of the acts of the Madras Governor, because those acts remained unpunished. Had they received the animadversion due to them, would the Governor of the Cape, (the revolting character of whose administration has been forcibly traced in former numbers of this Magazine,) have been guilty of such barefaced imitations of their genius and spirit? Starlings should be trained to cry them in the ears of all Colonial gover nors. It is a remarkable fact, that the Jury which gave all this offence to B-, by delivering a verdict according to their consciences, had, in a case immediately preceding Reddy Row's trial, received the commendation of the Chief-Justice for their accurate moral penetration and minute analysis of evidence, in a question affecting the life of an innocent man charged with murder. As it is an awful instance of alternation in human affairs, and of the providential detection of a most atrocious conspiracy, it may be worth while shortly to relate it. A most savage murder had been committed upon a serjeant in the Madras European regiment, then stationed at Masulipatam. A corporal and his wife gave information against one Hawley, a private in the same regiment. They stated themselves to have been eye-witnesses of the transaction, which took place, they said, at a short distance from the cantonment; that Hawley, who had apparently been lying in wait for his victim, ran towards him on his approach, stabbed him with a bayonet, and then disappeared. They added, that, with a view to obtain medical assistance, they had removed the body to their own hut. On this information, Hawley was sent down to the Supreme Court at Madras, and, on the trial, both the man and the woman persisted in their story, swearing positively to every particular. There was nothing to contradict their testimony but the prisoner's assertion of his own innocence, coupled with his solemn asseveration that the murder was committed by the man and the woman in their own hut; that he was present, and saw the man (some quarrel having arisen) stab the serjeant with a bayonet; that he (the prisoner) would have rushed out, but was forcibly detained by both parties. In this interval they endeavoured to induce him, by the offer of money, to hush up the matter; but, finding him inexorable, the woman ran to the Colonel and lodged her information, whilst the man detained him at the point of the bayonet. As the defence, however, rested on no positive evidence, and the depositions of the man and his wife were uncontradicted, the Chief-Justice charged the jury to that effect, and, when they retired, a verdict of guilty was universally expected. But the manner in which the corporal had given his evidence, some contradictions in minor circumstances, and his mode of answering the questions put to him on cross-examination, had been watched with an acute but silent comment by two or three intelligent men on the jury. Whilst they were deliberating, it happened almost miraculously that one or two important facts, which had been suppressed on the trial, had come to the knowledge of a magistrate; and as they tended to the exculpation of the prisoner, and to throw the guilt upon the two witnesses, he committed them both upon suspicion. At the time when they were taken into custody, the jury, entertaining doubts which they could not satisfy, acquitted Hawley. In a few minutes, the committal of the witnesses as the actual perpetrators of the deed, was made known to the Court. A bill was found against them by the Grand-Jury, and they were, in a few hours afterwards, tried and convicted by another jury; Hawley giving a clear and consistent account of the murder, in which he was confirmed by witnesses who had been kept back on the former trial. In forty-eight hours from the time of their appearing to give testimony against Hawley, the two wretches were executed. Such was the jury publicly libelled by the Madras Government in their despatches to England. Cecil Smith did not escape the persecution of those times. His offence is a mystery to this hour. He said nothing; but it was suspected what his opinions were, though lying undivulged in his bosom. There was no accusation-there could be none. He was ordered to quit his office of Accountant-General, which he had long filled, and in which his mind had been long exercised; for he had grown up to it, and acquired by that long discipline a peculiar expertness in the intricate financial duties that belonged to it. He was ordered to take charge of a judicial station up the country, an office quite new to him-to begin his apprenticeship, and to try his hand on matters of life and property, a raw, inexperienced Tyro of fifty. Mr. Maitland, the magistrate who committed Reddy Row, and whose affairs were involved to a large amount in a great commercial house, and Mr. Thomas Parry, a partner of another respectable firm, were ordered, at a few days' notice, to England. These proscriptions so rapidly succeeding each other broke up our Madras society, and it has not recovered the shock to this day. As for Cecil Smith, he was the life of our circles, the active promoter of their hilarity, a most bustling extra-official master of the ceremonies, outdoing that important functionary in his indefatigable zeal to make every soul happy. He was like a Savoyard's instrument, always in tune to mirth and pleasantry. Cecil carried home his complaint to England, but the usual policy brooded over the councils of the Directors. They could find no blame in the conduct of their servant;-they endeavoured to reconcile the conduct of the local Government to some supposed faction against its authority; but they found only diffused dislike, festering into hatred-not loud, but deep, and gathering strength every hour from compression. The common result of matters managed by those who are afraid to do justice, and shrink from barefaced wrong-nothing was done, and the grievance was unredressed. Cecil carried back a wounded spirit to Madras, where he died a few weeks after his arrival. His loss was much deplored in that place, and the evening murmurs of his hookah long missed in its convivial parties. Such was the miserable condition of Madras. The author of it all was a pale, sallow, official gentleman, with the mien and the soul of a clerk; grave and taciturn, as if he had forgot himself and all his human feelings into marble-no smile ever visited his lips; if it did, it was like that of Ovid's amiable being— "Risus abest, nisi quem visi movêre dolores." To describe Charley Wynox efficiently, there must be a new language, certainly, a new set of epithets. String and compound all that are now in use as you will, it will not do. Who can describe the varied deformities of that unearthly countenance, yet all conspiring to the strangest effect the countenance of man can produce? Those eyes, set there as practical satires upon the organ-glaring, small, and red, as if they had been just pierced with a hot iron;-a complexion burnt, adust, and adorned with perforations like those of a nutmeg-grater;—a nose flattened to his face, and only distinguishable by two immense craters ;-a mouth forming an impassable gulf from the lower to the higher regions of his face ;-a combination and a form, indeed, in which every infernal power seemed to have set its seal, to give the world assurance-I need not say of a man! His tricks, also, were as whimsical as those of the hideous animal he most resembled. Eternally grinning, he attempted every species of joke, some good, others execrable, talking a kind of inarticulate gabble unendowed with words; for those who were not habituated to him could not understand one word he uttered. He was considered a privileged being; being exempted, by universal consent, from the strait rules of etiquette; for his nonsense, which seemed to flow from the unweeting gladness of a good heart, never excited more than a transient frown, which soon relaxed, as if half applauding what it half condemned. But never did countenance do less justice to the virtues of a human character than Wynox's. Poor fellow! no self-sacrifice, no task however laborious, would he shrink from, to do an act of kindness:-to comfort another in sickness, to relieve him with his purse if he was poor-that purse a too faithless interpreter to his heart. He had little to bestow but good-will and active service. Self, the centre of the system in others, was in him quite dethroned. He devoted himself to the navy, a service he intensely admired. Captains, commanders, lieutenants, even the humble middy, filled his house and his bungalows. The naval officer who casts his eye over these imperfect sketches, if he chanced to have been at that time on the India station, will recall the remembrance of Charley Wynox with a sigh. In their turn, they gave him invigorating cruises at sea, which helped to repair from time to time his shattered constitution. Could it be imagined that this rough-hewn copy of humanity was destined to feel the pangs of love? It was the only part of the passion he could be expected to feel. But he did love with fervency and idolatry, and he was for more than a year sicklied o'er with the pale cast of a lover's thought; and he told his love, but, as he himself used to remark, it was with a misgiving that marred all that he had conned over for the occasion. It was a beauteous creature whom he served; and it was a thousand pities that he made the proposal, for she was truly amiable, and would not willingly have wounded any sentient thing. She comprehended the nature of his visit, and guessed the purport of what he was stammering out, éclatéed, and ran out of the room. "You may go farther and fare worse," cried Charley, as the lady left him. She heard it, and laughed still louder. It was too ridiculous even for the lover, for he joined in her mirth most audibly, and then stepped into his palanquin. In those iron times at Madras, Wynox, as usual, said what he pleased. But his idle talk was not forgiven by the starch and austere man of authority. Nothing was too high or too mean for his resentment. Poor Charley was removed from his place; he embarked for England to obtain redress, but in vain; returned to Madras, and died in indigence. They ascribe an anecdote to Wynox which is highly characteristic of him. When he first arrived in India, and delivered his letters of recommendation round the settle ment, he carried one to O. -, an old and churlish member of the council. This man was peculiarly splenetic at these introductions, and generally discharged his spleen upon the persons in England who took the liberty of writing them, not sparing occasionally the young gentleman who was obtruded on his patronage. "And pray, Sir," said he to Charley, as he glanced over the letter, "what is your father?"-" My father," replied Wynox, "is a farmer.”—“ And why," returned the other, "did he not make you a farmer also?" Poor Wynox was stung with the reproach, but with admirable quickness asked him, "And who, Mr. O, was your father?"-"My father!-my father, Sir," said the counsellor; "my father was a gentleman."-"Then let me ask you," said Wynox, "why he did not make you a gentleman also ?" I have recalled by-gone transactions, upon which the memory of mankind ought never to slumber, the occasional revocation of such transactions from oblivion being some security against their recurrence: for nothing can be more helpless than the victim of Colonial tyranny. At home the abuse of delegated authority has its immediate remedy: a thousand tongues, a thousand pens, are ready to awaken the public attention. In India there is no public; for the community is composed of the accomplices of the oppression, and the silent spectators of it, who know full well, that to breathe a remonstrance against it, would direct it to their own heads. Appeals to England are of little avail, being, for the most part, received with averted ears; and if the mischief is redressed, it has arrived at its consummation before the remedy can be felt. Despotism more unmixed in kind, more intense in action, can hardly exist. Life, indeed, is safe from its violence, but all that sweetens life-comfort, independence, and above all, the hopes so dear to every Anglo-Indian, of returning home, may be swept away in the storm of persecution. Probably in a few years the universal complaint of the settlement will produce its effect; but it is a suit in which success is an equivocal advantage. The Roman province at last prevailed over its guilty proconsul; but misgovernment had done its worst. "Tu victrix provincia ploras!" was the indignant exclamation of the satirist. SONNET WRITTEN IN THE SPRING. How heavenly o'er my frame steals the life-breath And white forms strew with flowers a maid's untimely grave! |