ultimate degree of freedom on the press in India. That, which the late Governor General bestowed upon it, has been employed to the very worst purposes; and although the shameful abuses which have prevailed, have not induced Government to re-impose the censorial trammels, they have compelled them to adopt measures, better calculated than those hitherto employed, to prevent the evils, which a regard to the maintenance of our tive on them to guard against. the censorship. We are rather inclined to believe, that it was owing to the discovery of a circumstance, which had either been at the time entirely overlooked, or the growing importance of which had not been properly provided against, namely, that a previous censorship might, in the eye of the English law, subject the officer exercising it, or the Government under whose orders he acted, to a responsibility in the case of libels published against private in-power in the East, renders it imperadividuals, which it was by no means prudent at any time to incur, much less to remain under, where there was a daily increasing society, and a daily greater clashing of private interests. The question of a censor's liability in such cases has never, indeed, been tried in this country, and in our opinion of it we may very probably be mistaken; but we apprehend we are not far wrong, in surmising, that considerations connected with this view of the subject, actuated the public authorities, when the censorship was abolished. If our readers keep in view the principles, which we have laid down at the commencement of this article, they will agree with us, that in taking away the censorship, and imposing the restrictions, to which we shall afterwards have occasion to allude, Government were bestowing in fact a greater degree of liberty on the Indian press, than it had ever enjoyed. The act of Lord Hastings has, indeed, been very unfairly and ungratefully held up, as laying a trap for public writers; whereas it is obvious, that in substituting the Governor General in Council, as judge of the tendency of public writings, in place of the censor, it was approximating nearer to the most perfect state of freedom, in which the press can exist, consistent with the very being of civilized society-that of submitting this tendency to a jury of the writer's peers. We shall afterwards take occasion to point out the impolicy and danger of bestowing this The able and masterly statement of facts, now before us, will be perused by every one, taking an interest in the character of our Government and in the maintenance of its authority, with much satisfaction. It brings home to Mr. Buckingham the charge of having violated the laws regarding the press, so triumphantly, and from evidence so incontestable, that it would be perfectly superfluous to add any thing with the view of establishing this point; and it must for ever shut the mouths of those who maintain, that he was transmitted solely on account of the remarks he made on the appointment of the present clerk to the Stationery Committee. It is indeed impossible to peruse this statement, and to behold the editor of the Calcutta Journal, repeatedly violating the law, and Government repeatedly restraining itself from exacting from him its penalty, without wondering alike at the boldness and effrontery of Mr. Buckingham, and the leniency and long-suffering of the Governor General in Council. With the question, how far Englishmen in India possess the same right, as Englishmen at home, to publish remarks on the acts of the Local Governments, Mr. Buckingham had nothing to do: nor had he any concern in the question, how far, if this liberty does not exist, it is expedient to bestow it upon them. He had voluntarily come under an obligation, not to touch in his paper on : We are the extent in which he did. the subjects prohibited by the autho- upon Government a tissue of the most shallow, sophistical, and inapplicable arguments, in defence of his conduct. It will be seen from the pamphlet before us, that many and repeated were the applications which the Governor General in Council was compelled to make to his law officers, in consequence of the libels which issued weekly from the Calcutta Journal; and certainly the very fact of making these applications, places beyond a doubt, the sincere desire of Government, to allow the late editor of the Calcutta Journal all the benefits he could derive from the laws of England, administered in all the latitude of their liberty,—a latitude which he could not claim, and which, as it was purely ex gratia of the Governor General, ought to have met from him with a very different return. Every one knew, and no one better (as appears from his own correspondence with Government) than Mr. Buckingham himself, that by the laws, as they existed in India, he could be deprived of his license of residence, at the pleasure of the Governor General in Council. But he has left us to conjecture, what could possibly have been his aim and design, in brav-, ing the application of these laws, to * The Statement traces Mr. Buckingham through all his career of disrespect and disobedience to Government, confining itself very properly to his attacks upon public authority: and we ourselves shall not take up the cudgels on questions affecting private character, however such questions may have been obtruded upon the attention of the Indian public. It will undoubtedly be asked in England, when the subject is brought before the Indian Authorities, how a man like Mr. Buckingham, in the daily breach of regulations, issued from the Council Board, was enabled to persist so long in his course of disobedience; and it will not redound to the honour of the ex-editor, that this impunity is in part to be ascribed to his having held up the sentiments of the late Governor General, in his answer to an address from Madras, as having led him into a hope and belief that the regulations had been annulled. It is true, that in this answer, the Marquess Hastings warmly eulogized the advantages of public scrutiny through a public press; and we have no hesitation in expressing our regret, that For an abridged historical account of Mr. Buckingham's principal offences, vide our leadiag article. We purposely confine our present strictures to a general view of the case. when the Noble Marquess stated his opinions on this subject-opinions in which we cordially agree-he did not accompany the statement with a reference to the regulations, which he had himself imposed. To the expediency and necessity of these regulations he could not, however, have borne a stronger testimony, than by continuing them in full force, after the expression of these general sentiments. It will not excite much surprise, that, under such circumstances, the late Governor General should have felt inclined to try the experiment, how far leniency and forbearance might correct the licentiousness of the press, to a greater extent in Mr. Buckingham's case, than he would otherwise have done. His Lordship, as appears from this Statement, had received repeated assurances from the editor, how sensibly he felt this forbearance, and how sincerely desirous he was of evincing his gratitude, by a more obedient conduct in future; and, considering how sensible Mr. Buckingham must have been, that all his prospects of success in this country depended on the fiat of the Governor General in Council, it was to be expected, that his professions of regard to his authority would, at least for some time, have been something more than empty words. It requires, however, a very cursory glance over the present Statement, to be satisfied that these professions never received any thing like an embodying, in acts of respect and deference to authority. So far was this from being the case, that Mr. Buckingham at length proceeded to the extent of applying the most disrespectful terms to the public conduct of Lord Hastings, openly, and without disguise, accusing him of tyranny in the discharge of his high duties! It certainly proclaimed a very callous and depraved feeling in the mind of the Indian public, when such language from an editor of a newspaper, and one so peculiarly circumstanced as Mr. Buckingham by this time was, did not excite the most marked disgust and reprobation; and we yet look back with some astonishment at the scene, which for a short time presented itself. That any part of the public of India, laying claim to honourable feelings, should have affected to dole out its pity to Mr. Buckingham as an injured man, and to overlook the insults offered to a nobleman so justly and highly esteemed as the Marquess Hastings, can only be explained by the angry passions, which happened at the moment to have been conjured up by a paltry dispute which had been carrying on in the newspapers of the settlement, on the comparative merits of Mr. Buckingham and Mr. Bankes, as gentlemen and travellers. When Mr. Buckingham found it convenient, for his own purposes, to drag Government, and the late Governor General, into this altercation, he was listened to by many with a degree of credence and attention altogether unworthy of their good sense; and we blush for the little discretion and judgment of those, who could for a moment have entertained the belief, that a Government, which had, in all its acts, shewn the utmost leniency and forbearance to Mr. Buckingham, could have combined with a set of anonymous and unknown scribblers in the Bull and the Journal, to vilify his character, urge him on to language of disrespect, and ultimately to his banishment from the country. The Statement before us very properly avoids making the most distant allusion to the trifling discussion, to which we have referred. It places clearly before the public the grounds and the causes of the editor's transmission; and every candid man, who looks into it, will at once agree with us in saying, that if in the last act of Government it proclaims and justifies the vigour of that rule, on the unimpaired respectability of which depends our very existence, it also abounds, in almost every page, with proofs that this act was not resorted to until it was time-we had almost said more than time. It is impossible to peruse the ably written Statement before us, without being sometimes tempted to laugh at the assumed dignity and importance of the editor of the Calcutta Journal, When called upon, in one instance, to apologize to the Madras Government, for a gross libel which he had published upon it, this free mariner affects to say to the Governor-General in Council, "It is impossible for me to express to you, Sir, how I feel humbled by such a demand!" But we cannot express ourselves better on this subject, than in the words of the Statement itself. To the clear and positive injunctions of the Supreme Government of the country, Mr. Buckingham, a licensed free mariner, residing here on sufferance, thinks proper to oppose his pretended dignity; as if the unfounded insinuations thrown out by him against the public conduct of the Madras Government were nothing, and his dignity every thing. It is impossible for him to express, says he, how much he feels humbled by being called on to apologize for any opinions he may have expressed against the Madras Government, because, they were "honestly conceived, and honestly expressed." Acting upon his ideal notions of his own dignity, Mr. Buckingham sends in a letter of justification, couched in such terms as to be altogether inadmissible, repeating rather than atoning for his offence! Most artfully overlooking the fact, that whatever might be the nature of the grievance under which he fancied himself to labour, he was not at liberty, to remark disrespectfully upon the acts of any of the Governments in India. He attempts to prove, that he and his subscribers had suffered, and were suffering, from the Post-office regulations. When driven to publish something like an apology, he does so in the shape of a "Notice to Correspondents under the Madras Presidency,"-" in which," says the author of the Statement," having related, with apparent triumph, the nature of the correspondence between him and Ge · vernment, and the great success that attended it, a success beyond his most sanguine expectations,' he informs them that Government had waived the acknowledgment and apology first required, and merely expected an expression of the editor's regret at having worded the original notice so carelessly as to bear the appearance of disrespectful animadversion on the Governor in Council at Madras, and with this expressed expectation of Government, he said he should have no reluctance in complying, since his sentiments had undergone no change."" When the circumstances of this case are taken into one comprehensive view, and we recollect who the parties are, with whom this Mr. Buckingham is corresponding, and who this Mr. Buckingham is himself, it is impossible not to smile at the farcical aspect which the affair presents. Encouraged by the indulgence which he had experienced, and indebted for this indulgence to circumstances, of which he proved himself well adapted to take advantage; this individual, only notable as the conductor of a public paper, carried on, under a new system of regulations, enacted from a belief that the Indian press would fall into the hands of men of sense, erects himself into a personage of great importance, and backed by a turbulent "faction," as it is very properly termed in the Statement before us, aspires to little short of being Governor General himself, under of course the control and direction of the modern reformers of India. Nothing perhaps can place the whole matter in a more contemptible point of view, than the consideration who are these modern reformersthis turbulent faction-who, in the words of the Statement, have 'disgraced themselves' by their association with this high priest of free discussion. They are men being under favour in the country, whose administration they are contributing (we would fain hope unwillingly) to impugn and vilify;-men who, challenged to point out a single instance, in which this administration has departed from justice and equity, would themselves be the first to laud its measures, and to profess themselves among the foremost of its admirers; men, who, with all these pretensions, have not in reality the talent to look into the grand questions of Indian policy as regards the press; but who, finding a public writer, like Mr. Buckingham, who could skip about, and gambol with ease upon the surface, only proclaimed their own ignorance, by heartily giving him credit for the depth of his knowledge; men, in short, who, without knowing it, have been made the tools and the dupes of a journalist, who has manifested, in all he has done, a uniform regard to his own interest. But on the merits of Mr. Buckingham's transmission we would come, even with these men, to a very summary issue. Let them turn to the 17th page of the Statement, and read the following paragraph. On the 29th of the following month [February 1820] a letter was published in the Calcutta Journal, in which the writer, after complaining of the rate of exchange at which the troops in the Nizam's country were paid, attempted to shew, that the officers through whom the pay was issued, derived an illicit profit from selling or receiving the good currency, which was sent there from the Company's country, and issuing a base currency to the troops; and he concluded with insolently recommending that Government should openly deduct a certain portion of the pay of the troops, instead of depriving them of it clandestinely. This letter the Resident at Hydrabad considered it his duty to transmit to Government, as he observed in his letter on the subject, that it could not have been intended, in removing the restrictions from the press, either that the acts of Government should be audaciously arraigned, that discontent at their measures should be spread among the troops, or that their servants should be wantonly traduced, in the discharge of their public duty, by the slander of anonymous calumniators. He therefore requested that Government would call upon the writer of the letter in question (who had given his address to the editor) to justify the imputations he had presumed to cast, or that Asiatic Journ.-No. 97. they would take such other steps as might appear to them proper to vindicate their public officers, whose characters had been aspersed. Government accordingly did call for the name of the writer of the letter in question: but no notice was taken of Mr. Buckingham who gave it publicity. His conduct on this occasion, as on many others, was through the lenity of Government allowed to pass without any mark of displeasure. The reformers of India cannot be unacquainted with Cobbett and his writings; and they will perhaps recollect, that Cobbett had to cool his heels in Newgate for a goodly term, for having written that English soldiers were flogged by foreigners, thereby tending to excite mutiny and disaffection in the army. Now we will ask Mr. Buckingham's numerous friends and admirers, what they think would have been the fate of the English apostle of radicalism, had he said as much in regard to the economy of the army at home, as the ex-editor has allowed to be said, in the letter alluded to, about that of the army in India? Will they deny that, to tell any army that the good currency remitted for their payment is kept back, and they are paid with bad, does not tend to excite disaffection and mutiny in the ranks? or will they maintain that it is safer to tamper with the troops of an Indian than an English army? We are quite sure there is not one among them, blinded and intemperate as they have shewn themselves, who will advocate such opinions, or even venture to deny that, on this occasion, Mr. Buckingham experienced a leniency, which, even had the letter to which we have referred contained the first and the last of his offences, he very ill deserved. We peruse it, even at this distance of time, with no slight degree of feeling: and we are persuaded that when brought to the notice of those at home connected with the Government of India, or having within its territories a friend or relative whom they esteem and love, they will thank the present Governor- |