The war with Russia just and necessary, &c. The son of despot in treaty for an English princess. THE PEACE REJOICINGS. To the Editor of the Morning Advertiser. SIR,-I will not occupy a large space in your columns, but will you allow a few words of earnest and indignant remonstrance against the proposed tomfoolery to be enacted in the Parks next month? Surely, Sir, it would be much more decent for us to "swallow our leck," and be quiet. It is not shame enough that we have patched up a dishonourable peace, but we must needs go and cackle about it? This war was just and necessary, or it was not. If it was, on our side, just, who ought to pay the hundred millions that war has cost? Why, it should have been squeezed out of the coffers of the grasping Autocrat, had he pawned his revenues for ten years to come. Surely, Sir, it is enough that the bleaching bones of our wasted army cry out for vengeance on the incompetency (or worse), of those in authority; while we have to mourn "The deep damnation of their taking off." Surely it is enough that we succumbed to France in her wishes. for peace at any rate, and have thereby lost both prestige and power. Surely it is enough that, to crown all, we are about to a drunken give the fair daughter of free and merry England to the son of continental a drunken continental despot, with a crumbling dynasty and a tottering throne. Are not these humiliations sufficient for us, that we must needs exult in our own dishonour, and sing pæans over our own disgrace? No doubt that, to nurserymaids, these fêtes will be attractive; but sure I am that there is not one Englishman in ten thousand who will not feel that the whole of this miserable union of tragedy and comedy, of mourning and rejoicing, is like the roll of the prophet, "full of lamentation and woe." I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Brixton, April 21, 1856. INQUISITION OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. 311 HONESTY OF THE HONOURABLE EAST INDIA COMPANY. CASE OF MEER JAFUR ALEE THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S MORALITY. THE indignation of Englishmen is sometimes raised by The indig instances of the heartless exercise of arbitrary power in Russia nation of Englishand other despotic countries; but perhaps it does not so often men, &c. occur to them, that now and then, under the benignant authority and rule of the Saxon race, cases turn up which present features of as unscrupulous a morality as that which disgraces the worst of absolute governments. Bombay's representa Nawab of The The public should observe the circumstances in the case of Meer Jafur Alee. It appeared that, under the treaty concluded with the Nawab of Surat, by which the East India Company acquired possession of the city and its dependencies, the Company agreed to pay the Nawab and his heirs a lack and a-half of rupees, or £15,000 annually; the Governor of Bombay, who The represented the Company, stating that it would give a security Governor of "for an honourable provision to the Nawab, and his family and descendants, from generation to generation, greater than they tion to the ever yet had, and that a stipulation for a man and his heirs Surat. meant for ever, or until such heirs became extinct." The son of the Nawab died in 1842, leaving only one daughter, and, on his Honourable death, the Company not only seized possession of all his real Company and personal estate, but ceased and refused to pay the stipulated rent-charge to his heir,-now the wife of Meer Jafur Alee. The Legislative Council of India, without consulting the heir or her guardians, even passed an Act, in 1848, legalising the plunder of her father's property, and the refusal to pay the annual rent-charge. Meer Alee, dissatisfied with the trifling legalizo plunder. moiety of the property they decided on apportioning to his daughters, came to England to appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; but here he found that the Legislative Act of 1848 prevented the Committee from hearing his case. His next resource was a Bill in Parliament. perpetrato an illegal seizure. The Legis lative Council of India pass an act to Wood and a case of From motives best known to themselves, Sir Charles Wood Sir Charles and Mr. Vernon Smith, and some minor members of the Company's Government, were determined to resist this bill,-on which the trickery in Government would have been inevitably defeated by a large scandalous majority, a majority which, for the sake of British integrity, we hope would have been three to one,-but Lord Palmerston, alive dishonesty. to the justice of the case, and the odium of a defeat in such a cause, and probably alive to the machinations of his own subordinates-who appear to be making every effort to oust his Lordship from the Premiership-immediately arrested the opposition to the measure, by intimating that the Government would throw no obstacles in the way of Meer Alee recovering his rights. Lord Palmerston has acted no more than the part of an honest minister in the business; but what can the public think of the commercial company which could be guilty of this barefaced breach of a solemn treaty; and what, above all, of those who publicly abet and vindicate their scandalous dishonesty?-Morning Advertiser, 10th April, 1856. R. Gladstone's letter THE DOWRY TO THE PRINCESS ROYAL. THE following letter was yesterday posted to Messrs. Ewart and Brown, the members for Dumfries and Lancashire, in reference to the dowry to the Princess Royal, which, it is reported, is to be given to her Royal Highness on her forthcoming marriage : MY DEAR SIR,-On behalf of the Council of the Financial Reform Association, I beg leave to call your attention, and relating to through you, that of the public generally, to the common report of the that her Majesty's Ministers intend to propose to Parliament Princess that an annuity of £70,000 per annum shall be settled on the Royal with the Prince Princess Royal on her marriage with the Prince of Prussia. the annuity of Prussia. On the policy of that marriage I offer no opinion. Perhaps the alliance with the heir to a powerful kingdom may be an improvement on the system which has hitherto confined the selection of husbands and wives for the royal progeny of England to the petty princes and princesses of Germany, with territories less extensive and less productive than the estate of many an English country squire; but the proposed dowry is so preposterously extravagant, that the first mention of it conveys the impression that in this, as in many other instances, common the Princess report must be a common deceiver. Seventy thousand per annum! It is the interest of a million and a-half of money; it is £20,000 more than was thought sufficient, by an unreformed Extravagant proposed dowry to Royal. Parliament, in the days of King George the Third, when all the expenses of living were much higher than they are now, for the husband of Princess Charlotte, the heiress to the throne of England. Just consider the circumstances under which this job is said to be in contemplation. We have spent upwards of a hundred millions on the war now terminated-for the present; we have borrowed, or shall have to borrow, some thirty or fifty millions more; our doubled income-tax and impost on commodities wring from us nearly seventy millions annually; these are the strongest motives for reducing expenditure to the lowest limits consistent with the efficiency of the public service. How, then, is it possible that our rulers can meditate such a piece of wasteful extravagance as the alienation of £70,000 per annum meditate of the public money for the life of a princess who, in the natural wasteful course of events, will become Queen of a foreign kingdom? extrava Why should the people of England be bound to provide £70,000 £70,000 a year for the future Queen of Prussia? Such questions must occur to every one; but the objections implied in them will have no force whatever, either with Ministers, who propose the arrangement, or with Parliament, which will be called upon to carry it into effect, unless the country speaks out through public meetings and its representatives, and protests energetically against so needless and improvident a waste of the public money. As to her Majesty's Ministers, instead of endeavouring, by every practical means, to reduce the ordinary burdens of the nation, whilst imposing extraordinary ones upon it, they have taken advantage of the popular excitement produced by the war to make large and unnecessary additions in almost every branch of expenditure, civil as well as military and as to the House of Commons, instead of acting as a check on Ministers, it has encouraged them in their profusion. It has aided and abetted them in their extravagance so rashly and blindly, that it has incurred rebuke from the House of Lords, for its reckless disregard of all economy. Ministers gance of per annum. The House of Compresent constituted ministers to mons as at encourago misapply the people's money. of the parents of The personal income of the parents of this young lady, from Income all sources, cannot fall very much short of £200,000 per annum. Whatever the amount really is, it may be regarded as their the pocket-money only; for they are furnished, in addition, with palaces, parks, and gardens, for residence and recreation,-horses, carriages, and yachts, for locomotion; with most nume Princess Royal. There is a limit to patience and forbearance. rous establishments for their service, and with provisions of every kind for eating and drinking, the actual cost of all which goes far beyond the £385,000 forming the imaginary boundary of Civil List expenses. Why, then, should, they not, like all other parents, provide dowries for their children? If they are not to be subjected to the same rules as ordinary mortals,--if this also must be done for them at the public expense, let it be done with some little regard to decency and moderation, at all events,--some little consideration for the struggling taxpayers from whom the funds will be extracted; many of whom are hardly enough pressed to provide for their own necessities. John Bull is, proverbially, the most enduring, though he may John Bull's likewise be the most grumbling, of all creatures. But there must be bounds even to his patience and forbearance. To ascertain how far these extend would seem to be the present object both of Ministers and of Parliament. The experiment is injudicious, and may be dangerous. Once thoroughly roused the people of this country will make short work with all oligarchical abuses. If any such proposal as that which forms the subject of this letter should really be submitted to Parliament, it ought to be met with the most strenuous opposition by every true representative of the people. If it be, nevertheless, adopted, the day of reckoning will come, and those who sanction it, by speech or vote, will have to render a strict account to their constituents. I am, my dear Sir, yours faithfully, ROBERTSON GLADSTONE, President, (Signed) Financial Reform Association, 6, York-Buildings. Solicitors like the grass hoppers in Egypt. ORIGIN OF SOLICITORS. Tuis branch of legal practitioners seems to have arisen in great part out of the suits in the Star Chamber. "In our age, says Hudson, a barrister of Gray's Inn in the reign of Charles I., "here are stepped up a new sort of people called solicitors, unknown to the records of the law, who, like the grasshoppers in Egypt, devour the whole land; and these, I dare say (being authorised by the opinion of the most reverend and learned |