EXTRACTS FROM M. MONTALEMBERT'S "A DEBATE ON INDIA IN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT."

Lyttelton Times, Volume XI, Issue 660, 5 March 1859, Page 3

EXTRACTS FROM M. MONTALEMBERT'S "A DEBATE ON INDIA IN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT."

I (Published in the ' Correspondent.') * .. ..*..••;■.:■■,♦•■■ * t the end of last spring the state of Hihdostan, the issue of the insurrection which had for a le "year been raging in the' Northern Provinces t»*ts extensive region, still formed the principal ect of attention in England. How'couldl it have \ i otherwise ? As for me, I was astonished and mcd that the English people, after the consteroq and anger of the first few months, had so dily abandoned itself, not, certainly, to. a crimiparelessness, but to a premature confidence in issue of the struggle. I felt desirous to discover, he society of the most competent judges, the i causes of the insurrection, as well as the means jh were intended to: be employed in order to naph finally-over a danger so formidable, so little seen, and aggravated to such a pitch by threatg complications which from day to day might ear on the stage of European politics. I offered hat investigation an ardent and profound symy towards the great, free, and Christian nation i which God exacted so terrible a trial; and I * JTelt that sympathy redoubled in the presence of the rsinhuman fury of so many of the.organs of the Coni.jptmental press, and; unfortunately, of the soi.disitnt Conservative and religious journals against the vicjKtims of the Bengal massacres. I should have wished |pj4o inform every individual Englishman whom I met ft jthat I had no connexion whatever with the parties Vhose journals applauded and 'justified the cut- ♦ throats, and whose earnest vows are still daily up for the triumph of the Mussulman and hordes over the heroic soldiers of a Christian ■^people,—the ally of France.: , * I felt, besides/what every intelligent liberal feels knows, that, 'the -atitude of the Continental |* press with respect to .the Indian question demon- | f itrates once again the great fact which constitutes immortal honour of contemporary England. All a the apologists of absolutism, whether ancient or | Modern, monarchical or democratic, take part t tragainst her; with her, ou the contrary, are to be f fWen all those who still remain faithful to that regulated liberty of which she was the cradle, and ia,-to this hour, the invincible bulwark. That is but * natural and right; moreover, it suffices to cause us overlook, in the present policy of England, certain which may be more easily accounted for than justified,and to pardon her soitie wrongs which, under another state of things, would call for the g *evefest reprobation. ; I a I may boldly affirm that no one knows better that I no one has more loudly signalized, than I, the backI Glidings and deviations of English policy during the Lrfcw past years. I was certainly the first to denounce to 1848 the policy of Lord Palmerston, «c *but too often imperious towards the weak'and to. the strong, in the highest" degree imr, ,prudent, illogical, and'foreign to all great traditions &©f his country. But, in fact, when we read the £& wretched invectives of the Anglophobes, of our day, vhen we compare with their complaints against yt England the ideas which they emit and the systems m which they laud^wefeel involuntarily inclined to be m indulgent towards all that they attack, indulgent if even towards Lord Palmerstori. It would be, bei. sides, 'the-; height of folly"ana of iniquity, to regard |S England m, solely' culpable, or as the most culpable, l^among -the nations of the -earth.. Her policy is || neither more selfish nor more immoral than that of »other great States which "figure inancientormodsm Pjhistory. I;eyeri believe that it would be possible to l^demonstrate a thesis of an altogether contrary chaIt is not charity but Btrict justice which fWbegins at home,: and, urfder this head, no French has^the right : to stigmatize, the policy of KjEngland before having passed judgment on the poliJpical crimes of France, during the Revolution and" Empire, not as set forth by adverse witnesses, febut such as their apologists~M. Thiers, fprin||Btance— haye represented them. Rummage as you Pniay the most suspected recesses of English diplo||jrnacy,.you will find nothing there which bears even ©the most farfetched resemblance to the destruction Fof the Republic of "Vpnicp or to the ambuscade of F'Bayonrie.- ..'■■'-■■ ; ■ ■'• ■<• ■• ■ ......-• '^ Besides, it is not the general, but the colonial , I policy of Englaud,which is now in question, and it •hU precisely in this latter "that the genius of the r \ British people shines with all its lustre; not, cer|tainly, that it has been at all times'and in all places I irreproachable, but it has everywhere equalled, if it I have not surpassed, .-in! wisdom,justice, and huInjanity all the other European races which have JjUndertaken similar enterprises. It.musfc be.eonIfessed that the history of the relations of Christian ' lEurope with the rest of the world since the Crun^ttdes is not attractive. Unfortunately, neither the

ivirtues nor the truths ; of Christianity ]»nvo ruled the successive conquests won in Asia and America iby this;Jiowtrful nations of the West. After that iflrst. impetuous advance, so noble and so jiious, of the fifteenth century, which fathered the great, the saintly' Gbhimbus, and all the champions of the maritime and colonial history of Portugal, worthy of as high a place in the. foo'ungrateful memory of men as the herpes of ancient Greece, we see all the vices of modern civilisation usurp the place of the spirit of faith and self-denial, here exterminating the savage races, and elsewhere succumbing to the enervating influence of ■the corrupting civilisation of the East, instead of regenerating it or taking its place. It is impossible not to recognise that England, more particularly since the period when she gloriously ransomed her participation in the" kidnapping of the; negroes and colonial slavery, may. pride lierself on having escaped from the greater part of those Jamentalile deviations from the path of rectitude. To the historian who requires an account from her of the result of her maritime and colonial enterprises for the last two centuries, she has a right to reply,,".Si' quceris monumentum, circumspice." Can history exhibit many spectacles of a grander or more extraordinary nature, or more calculated to honour civilization, than that afforded us by a company of English merchants which has endured through two centuries and a half, and which governed but at a distance of 2000 leagues from the mother country, nearly 200,000,000 of men by means of 800 civil servants, and of an army numbering from 15,000 to 20,000 men? But England has done better still; she has not only founded colonies, but called nations into being. She has created the United States; she has erected'them into on& of the greatest Powers of the 'presentnand of the future, by endowing them with those provincial and individual liberties which enabled them to victoriously emancipate themselves from the light yoke of the mother country. "Our free institutions" (such is the tehour of the me"ssage for the year 1852 of the President of that great Republic) " are not the fruit of the revolution; they had been previously'in existence; they had their roots in the free charters under the provisions of which the English colonies had grown up." At the present day England is in course of creating in Australia United States anew, who will soon, in their turn, detach themselves from the parent tree, destined as they are to become a great nation, imbued from the cradle with the many virtues' and the glorious liberties which are everywhere the appanage of the Anglo-Celtic race, and which, let us declare it once again, are more favourable to the propogation of Catholic truth and to the dignity of the priesthood than any other regime under the sun. In Canada a noble French Catholic race, detached unfortunately from our country, but French in heart and in manners, owes to England the benefit of having preserved, or acquired, in addition to full religious: liberty, all the political and religious liberties which .France has rejected ; the population has increased tenfold in less than a century, and will serve as abasis'to the new confederation, which, extending from the Oregon to the St. Lawrence, will one day be the rival or the ally of the great American Republic. . *•.■..* * % *