CEPHILONLL—BORNEO—CEYLON.
To the House of Commons the resolution to suppress the evidence taken by the Ceylon Committee is the crowning disgrace of the ses- sion. The papers presented to the House last year and the year before conclusively established the charges of unfitness and tyranny brought against Lord Torrington. When Parliament met in Feb- ruary last, Ministers, who had previously thrown every possible obstacle in the way of inquiry, suddenly proposed a Committee to resume the Ceylon investigations. The gentlemen who acted on last year's Committee objected., that nothing more could be accom- plished by such an agency—that a Commission to sit in Ceylon itself could alone elicit the information wanted. But Ministers persisted, and a Committee was named; comprising Mr. Under- Secretary Hawes, Mr. Secretary Wilson, the Chairman of the East Tndia Directors, a majority of stanch Ministerial voters, and a thin sprinkling of Independent Members.
What this Committee has been doing, and what new lights it has obtained, is one of those secrets which everybody knows. Its first step was to turn aside from tracing the doublings of Lord Torring- ton, to open in full cry upon certain alleged calumniators of a Captain Watson, who are now proved to have told the simple truth. The rest of its time has, according to its own account, been oc- us ed in hearing mutual charges and recriminations between cers of the Ceylon Government, and in reading scandalous letters obtained by scandalous breaches of confidence. The upshot of this disgraceful trifling has been, that instead of reporting the evidence taken by the Committee and the judgment it has arrived at, it intimates them confidentially to Ministers, with a signi- ficant hint that something must be done to allay public discontent Ministers thereupon, with the worst possible grace, recall the Governor who was convicted of unfitness and tyranny a year ago ; and the Committee packed by Ministers, and Minis- ters themselves, agree between them to keep the House of Com- mons in ignorance of the discoveries which have led to this result. The House of Commons on its part, by a deliberate vote, approves of this insolent contempt of its authority, and thereby degrades it- self to the level of a mere chamber to register Ministerial edicts.
For a proper estimate of the conduct of Ministers, their share in the transactions must be viewed in connexion with some other kindred proceedings. Three nominees of the Colonial Office have been arraigned before the public on charges of gross misgovernment and cruelty. Sir Henry Ward, Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, is accused of having, in a state of panic, acted upon the sug- gestions of a despotic and intriguing camarilla of officials ; made an agrarian insurrection confined to a small part of one small island the pretext for declaring martial law in Cephalonia, for slaying some men and scourging others with a reckless profusion of luinan suffering unequalled by Haynau himself, and for wan- tonly crushing the sickly " constitution " of the Ionians. Sir James Brooke, Governor of Labuan, is accused of having jobbed his appointment to make his own private property of Sara- wak (distant three hundred miles) more marketable ; of having under false pretences seduced British naval officers to engage in warlike operations undertaken to extend his territory and confirm his power ; and of having in pursuit of these objects occasioned at four different times wanton massacres of many thousands of weak and ignorant natives, and devastation of their country.
Lord Torrington, Governor of Ceylon, is accused of having, by precipitately forcing upon the Cingalese six or seven crude, un- workable, and in many respects oppressive acts, without pre- vious investigation as to the reception they were likely to meet with, and without timely forewarning to the natives, given occa- sion to wide multgeneral disaffection ; and of having availed him- self of some trifling riots, to proclaim and maintain martial law for nearly three months, to have men condemned and executed upon insufficient evidence, and all this in defiance of representa- tions and protests from men of high personal and official character. The charges advanced against these three nominees of the Colo- nial Office are not vague in their nature, nor do they proceed from enonymous or disreputable sources. They are in fact entirely borne out, in so far as Lord Torrington and Sir Henry Ward are concerned, by the official communications of the accused parties themselves ; and in the case of Sir James Brooke, by his own de- spatches, taken in connexion with the volumes of Captains Kep el and Rodney Mundy, both compiled from his own papers, the latter under his immediate personal supervision and direction. Yet in all the three cases, the part taken by Ministers has been to interfere openly and unblushingly, by the most pettifogging devices, not only to deny justice, but to obstruct the discovery of the truth. In the case of Sir Henry Ward, a commission of in- quiry refused; Mr. Hawes assigning, among other reasons for this refusal, the trifling nature of the complaints made. "Only seventy-two men were flogged," exclaimed the humane -Under- Secretary, astonished at the leniency of Earl Grey's Lord High Commissioner. In the case of Sir lames Brooke, copies of de- spatehes have been presented to Parliament in which there is at least one material omission, but no indication that anything has been left out; and the instructions of the Admiral on the station to Commander Farquhar are withheld, on the pretext that no such in- structions exist, although the Commander expressly mentions them in his report, and although, he being at present in this country, they could easily be procured from him. M. 'sters have moreover favoured and promoted the attempts of the friends of Sir James Brooke to elude inquiry by diverting attention from the public questions really at issue, to the wretched personal squabblesef
James and the various merchants who have been his agents. The course pursued by Ministers in Ceylon, as we have shown, is not less shabby and disingenuous, and it is marked by a snore daring contempt for the constitutional authority of Parliament. All the cases upon which we have been commenting are in their origin rank Colonial Office jobs. Lord Torrington was appointed to a Colonial Governorship because of his relationship to the Premier., Sir James Brooke was appointed to conciliate a set of aristocratic lionizers and half-political half-mercantile intriguers. Sir Henry Ward was appointed to reward him for the role he played in the farce of a Liberalized Ministry. Their appointments were the work of the Colonial Office, and their defence was under- taken by the Moe. It has been conducted, as we have shown, with all the defiance of public opinion which since the advent of Mr. Hawes has characterized that department even more than it formerly did. But other Ministers have not shrunk from openly participating in the offensive proceedings. It was Lord Sohn Russell who undertook the ungracious task of refusing to issue the commission of inquiry demanded in the ease of the Ionian Islands ; it was Lord Palmerston who contributed the aid of his singular talent for evasion in behalf of Sir James Brooke ; and it is the First Lord of the Admiralty who supplies one document in a garbled form and denies the existence of others. Finally, it is Lord John Russell who takes upon him the full reponsibllity of the disgraceful collusion between the Cabinet and a packed Par- liamentary Committee, to strike a deadly blow at the privile,ges and usefulness of the House of Commons. They are all in for it ! The conspiracy to obstruct justice and suppress truth is the work not of individual Ministers but of the whole Ministry combined.
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