RETRIBUTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 537, 26 December 1857, Page 4

RETRIBUTION.

(From the 'Times,' August 29.)

We venture to back up tliß appeal from the Throne with an expression of our own earnest wishes and confident hopes that during the recess her Majesty's Government will draw without stint on their Parliamentary powers arid the resources -of "the -country. We trust that nothing short of necessity will be allowed to limit the scale of our armaments for the East. We have not merely to reconquer strong positions and extensive districts, not merely to destroy some fifty regiments of treacherous and cowardly mutineers, not merely to chastise and terrify into submission independent princes, numerous contingents, crowds of Irregulars, ■whole tribes of robbers and murderers, and a population naturally apt to side with the strong; but, more than all, we have to .perform in the eyes of the world, and for the benefit of the human race, a tremendous act of vengeance. England, religion, and civilisation have received the most intolei-able insult that Mahomedan fanaticism could devise in a systematic series of deliberate brutalities' on European women and children. Throughout all the East this is the particular mode of expressing the utmost national scorn arid defiance, -A people, it is there felt, that cannot,, or does not choose, to protect j and avenge its women is no people at all,-and I unfit to be served and obeyed. The Mahoinedans of every class do not allow their women to be seen by the eye of man, and nowhere is this scruple so strong as in Hindostan,. where even Turks and Persians are thought less refined. However dissolute an old Begum may be,- —and some of them are something extraordinary in this way,—wherever she goes curtains and draperies must protect her from the profanation of male eyes. In various less settled districts of Hindostan.—Rajpoot-ana, for instance,—where the state of society makes it difficult to protect women from insult, it is eusto destroy most female infants, in order .'tfjj. prevent what would be a disgrace to the tribe, out which* a foe would always, for that reason, be ready to perpetrate. Now, we in. India stand in tliis respect on tender ground. They canuot understand, though to a certain extent they envy, the freedom of our female society. But this is the particular point on which they hold us most accessible to insult, I and accordingly the native journals have always j been full of the most scandalous libels upon English ladies. Balls, pic-nics, morning calls, and every occasion on which. English gentlemen and ladies see one another, are continually recorded with, malicious additions. There can be no doubt of a design in the horrors committed on our women and girls; and, if there were any doubt, it would be removed by the manner and method which has been deliberately adopted. It ought to be known, reluctant as we are to tell it, that the women and unmarried girls who fell- into the hands of the mutineers and populace of Delhi were carried in procession for .hours through the chief thoroughfare of the city, with every horror that could degrade them in the eyes of the people, previous to the last brutalities and cruelties that then, in the sight of thousands, were perpetrated upon them. It was done of settled purpose, to degrade England, to degrade Europe, to degrade a Christian empire and a Christian Queen. Now, we say it after full deliberation, and with a due regard to the objections always forthcoming against any real and effectual policy, that no! one stone of that city should be left upon another. Delhi should for the future be only known in history as Sodom and Gomorrlm, so that its place might not be known. We are well aware that this will try the fidelity of gome friends, but they cannot really be oar friends if they wish to preserve the memorial of our disgrace. It must be fully explained to them that no disrespect is intended to the Mahomedan dynasties or the Maboraedan religion, but we desire also that no disrespect shall be iutended or permitted to us. An execution of thi g solemn*character is not to be performed withou a proper force; but, if thirty thousand British soldiers are required to keep order on the occasion, we twist that no Englishman would be found to grudge a year's more Income-tax that tHe work may be done. It will be the eighth time that Delhi ha 9 been destroyed, and never before was its destruction so merited. All Asia will be wiser and better for the example.