CHANGE OF THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 689, 10 March 1852, Page 4

CHANGE OF THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.

[From the Times, November 21.] We learn from our Indian correspondence that it has been resolved to recommend the creation of a fourth Presidency for the better administration of our eastern dominions. The new Government is to be styled the Government of Lahore, and, if we may judge from the specifications of a project which must still be rudimentary, it will greatly exceed the ancient territorial departments in magnitude and splendour. Its base, if we may so speak, is to be constituted by the spacious province of the Punjab, to which, on the east, it will annex the broad districts of Agta and Bengal, up to the banks of the Sone, embracing the populous and important cities of Allahabad and Benares. To the south-west it will include our anomalous appanage of Scinde, and will thus extend itself from the Hindoo Koosh to the mouths of the Indus, and from the mountains of Beloochistan to the plains of the Ganges. Nor will its dignity be disj-ropor-tioned to its dimensions, for the prescriptions of a century are at length to be demolished, and the supremacy cf India is to be formally transferred from the residence of Clive and Hastings to the capital of the Sikhs. At the latter of these cities, or at Umballah, will be stationed a subordinate administration, and a Lieutenant-Governor will superintend from the deserted palaces of Calcutta the immediate interests of Lower Bengal. The supreme Government and Council of India, under the Go-vernor-General in person, is to be permanently established at Simlab, from which agreeable retreat the affairs of our Eastern empire will be henceforth directed.

Though the proposed change involves no more than a redistribution of territory already acquired, it is probable, that few readers acquainted with the subject will hear without a certain emotion of so swetping a project. Even those not immediately conversant with Indian affairs will be startled at the suggestion for transferring the central seat of British Government to a capital city some 1,200 miles from the mouth of the Hooghly, and which within three short years was the metropolis of our most distant and most determined foes. If it was deemed hazardous to annex the Punjab, what is likely to be thought of selecting it as the residence of supreme power ? What will be said by those writers who warned us against crossing the Sutlej, of our final domestication in the heart of those very territories which were described as so barbarous, remote, and inaccessible ? We are carrying ourselves bodily to encounter our proverbial perils. We are placing ourselves in immediate contiguity with the'treacherous and turbulent chieftains of Affghanistan, and, if the argument haa any weight, we are actually marching a thousand miles in the direction of Russian advances. Herat will now actually be nearer to .us than Calcutta; and Herat within these last few months has really been besieged again.

To tne omens which might thus be not unnaturally suggested a few substantial arguments can be stated in reply. In the first place although in effecting this movement we should be retiring from Calcutta, we should not be retiring from England. The mighty revolutions of traffic generated by the employment of steam have already worked their irresistible will abroad as well at home, and have left the City of Palaces stranded and forlorn. Bombay is now the point of contact between England and India, and as the system of overland communication becomes gradually perfected under Mr, Stephenson’s auspices, the terminus of the commercial track will advance still nearer to the plains of the wmftt. h is C ® lcu V a ’ r)ot Lahore » wl >ich will be the remote station of India; and, if

the supreme Government were still t C served at that spot, we should b e our central seat of administration the most distant .corners cf our domi • In the next place it must be ob.em?\‘ > if the productiveness of India is e much increased, the object must, plished by reclaiming from desolation*'’” 1 ’ rility those spacious plains which rive an agricultural value from ths *’ streams of the Upper Ganges rivers of the, Punjab. ... Ake.dy irrigation in the north-west is regarded ' of the most important duties of Govern B**” 8 **” and it needs no argument to prove ’ ! enterprise will be far more effective). • rated under<b« immedi.r, eje . o( .JJ 1 * rulers ot India.. Such a precedence won? fain assign to these pacific enterprises that ■» truth would permit, we should gladly ab '- i from mentioning the benefits of the Mo i2 migration in the event of war. If tb’ e - however, should ever burst upon us ; is scarcely doubtful that it must proceedK' the quarters against which we should.th o .? fortified by the presence and appurtenances! a central power. One of the cnntemp]2 advantages of the East Indian Railway\ that it would carry our battalions rackpore to Meerut before the enemy cZ' concentrate his strength on the Sutlej; but if these are the contingencies against which our battalions are most obviously required [ should not Meerut be made a Barrackp'oreJ once ? Il would doubtless have been aprojj, gious gain to have reduced a march of 1000 ' miles to a ride of 48 hours, but why not the movement be dispensed with ahooe. ther ? Why should our troops be quartered at all at such a distance from the probable scene of action? In point of fact, the gal army already pivots on Umballah .orU hore ; the artillery, it will be remembered • did actually receive the route the other dir .I r .L (n J2 s time- honoured quarters at Dum-dutt ■ and substantial reasons” dffgh't Purely "to [ ( ’ ■ forthcoming for maintaining the troops inoot place and their directors in another. So self-evident is the principle of the pro. jected change, and so manifestly Lad the huge and unwieldy Presidency of Bengal outgrows the administrative machinery of Calcutta, that at the last renewal of the Company's charter ■ it was proposed by Government and sane, tioued by Parliament to detach the northwestern provinces for a separate Presidency with the capital and title of Agra. Thescheae however, although still discernible in the at. rangements and accounts of the Company, nt never effectually carried out, but it is now designed to divide the military force as well at the civil administration of Bengal, and maintain a Lahore army as distinctly as a Lahore Government. The latter force, indeed, most soon become the more important of the two, and the last victories of the Bengal armymtj not improperly contribute to the comparative oblivion of the military designations under which they were won. Above all, however, in the eyes of practical Englishmen the best argument for the change must lie in the circumstance that it simply contemplates an assimilation of professionU fact. The Government of India is alreadyt» all intentsand purposes engaged and stationed in these very parts, and there can be up'good reason for maintaining such an artificial distinction b tween theory and practice as would place the residence of the Governor-Gentnl at Calcutta, while his ditties lay at Lab re, How far the seduction of climate may have operated in maturing this change of opinion we will not attempt to conjecture, but if, as» matter of fact, the Governor-General ol India does find himself at Simlah through ten months of the year, it is surely better that his Council should be brought thither at once than that a thousand miles should intervene between the head and its members. If Punjab and tweih-western districts fornb|>=* chief scenes of action for the civil and.roilitary servants of the Company, they had, better furnish a seat of Government too. It cer ‘ tainly probable that objections may bereafte 1 be discovered to this remarkable migr® l and, beyond all doubt,* they will receivetM fullest effect in the hands of the good ,peop e of Calcutta. It is no small calamity iot • city to be reduced from a metropolis to • 0 out-station, but, if the interests of India t*’ quire it, the change must be made; s^ 1 , Calcutta, in its turn, should become • conda, it must acquiesce in the unslt* 1 * * destiny of cities, and repose on the gloik ,c ‘ the past.