Together there a rich Arabian tale Alive with wondrous shapes,-a pair of friends Of innocence and spring:-The love scenes passed Of great magicians, and the tricks of dwarfs, Of Chinese ivory traced with opulent carve- And as I saw kings, knights, and towers, all heaped And rising, went discomfited to bed. : Next time we met;-ah, how young years flow on! Came floating heaped with ripest fruits and grain By commerce, learning, pleasure, peace, and art; I looked not on through all the east and south, Her fair fine hand, as came the draughts of wind Around the pansy's heart: soft beamed her brow, And shone her splendrous cheek amid her hair As through sweet summer dusk the half-blown moon. Of friends and scenes, and books, and twenty things; The golden star and lily of the year." "How came it then"—the student here broke in, That she herself could scarce resolve the cause; She centred all her soul in study, lived In libraries amid the sage of old, And read, thought, wrote, and thought, and wrote, and read, Till record of her in the spheres of love Had vanished, and her name became a myth And casual echo; much to the delight And mild malevolence of womankind." 66 Cease, misogunæ," some one sudden cried "Next time you saw her?"-" Ay, next time," quoth he, "'" Psha!" Last saw her then: 'twas late when I arrived; Where thought held empire like a sapphire orb That bathes some northern summit spired in snow. Little she spoke, and held herself apart Like a dethroned empress who had won That now seemed changed, disdaining its own power, Little she spoke, and then in epigram ; Her judgment, steadied by experience, brought All things to a focus, and with gentle force Touched and dismissed them. I was with cause afraid To take the lists with her-so grave, so fair, With such a mind and mien-the bright coquette Had grown into the sage philosopher. The maids addressed her with respectful air, The children only, unabashed, approached To levy homage, faith, affection, trust; More of the friend, and of the mistress less, Though dower'd with beauty still. For, woman's cheek Its firm camelia curve; the settled blood Grows wanish as the scant-leaved rose that hangs When day sinks down, and crimson shadows fade, The ranks of stars, and opens heaven through night; Brake forth, and for all losses made amends. As though a flower made vocal should discourse 66 Haste not to such a climax," some one cried ; And when he came to Myrrha's door, he touched "Well," said poor John; "it were a pity sure Should beauty die, nor leave the world its type," VOL. LI.-NO. CCCVI. 44 THE INDIAN RESOLUTIONS. "PUNCH," a week or two ago, made a political hit on the Indian question worthy of Hogarth. It is a curious fact, by the way, that a first-rate caricature, which knocks off to the life some political mess, and touches to the quick our sense of the ludicrous, comes-like a full moon-not oftener than once a month. During three weeks of the four, our contemporary, Punch, is like the moon in its quarters, waxing or waning in wit; but his first-rate joke comes to the full with the "inconstant" moon, though we charitably suppose the connexion is only accidental. Be this as it may, the fact is so; and a week or two ago Punch made a brilliant hit on the Indian Bills, buried, like the babes in the wood. Two robins, spruce and pert, and unmistakably like the leaders of the Ministry and the Opposition, are dropping leaves over their castaway India schemes. Mr.Disraeli's eyeglass hangs over his left wing; Lord Palmerston's feathers are crestfallen-and altogether the two birds look as dismal as those poetical undertakers are supposed to have been, as they dropped their leaves over the bodies of the deserted innocents, and sung dirges, as robins only do in a child's story. That cruel uncle, the Country, has left these two sweet India Bills to the sleep of oblivion. There is none to weep for them but the cock robin of the Treasury, and the cock robin of the Opposition. We have no leaves at our disposal to drop over these departed Bills; but in the page or two reserved for India this month, proceed to notice Lord John Russell's amendments to the Indian Resolutions. The first Resolution, "That this House is of opinion that the transfer of the government of the East India Company to the Crown should now take place, in order that the direct superintendence of the whole empire may be placed under one executive authority," has already passed the House. In a year of revolution we have learned a century's experience of our past rule in India. To return to the status quo ante is simply impossible. As far as this Resolution goes, nearly all parties are agreed. The second and third Resolutions purpose to provide the appointment of a Secretary of State for India, "and that such Secretary of State shall be responsible for the government of India, and the transaction of business, in the same manner, and to the same extent, as any of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State are responsible in the several departments over which they preside." On the subject of this Resolution, there is little room for disagreement, as far as we can see. Whether the Chief Minister for India shall rank as a Secretary of State, or only as a President of a Council for India, is more a dispute about names than things. In either case, it is desirable that there should be one responsible adviser of the Crown, to whom the country is to look, and call to account, if necessary. The king can do no wrong. The constitution has wisely ruled that the minister is responsible; but if that minister may screen himself behind a Council-board-if he may be there outvoted, and, either in pretence or in truth, seem to act only as their mouthpiece, the country will be as much mystified now as before about Indian affairs. It will be the old Double Government over again, under another name. We want our Indian Minister-whatever his style and title to propose his measures, as law-makers once did in early Greece, with a halter round his neck. But we could never hang a whole Council. Queen Victoria interceding, like Queen Philippa of old, for her Indian Council, at the bar of the House, might form a fine historical tableau to decorate some panel in Westminster; but we all know that when a dozen men or more are to blame, the fault is shifted from shoulder to shoulder; and without some projecting peak at which to launch its bolts, public censure plays over their heads, as lightning over a sheet of water, with nothing to strike. On this account our statesmen are right in recommending that the Mi nister for India shall rank as a Secretary of State. India deserves to stand as a fourth department of the State. It has interests of its own, peculiar and distinct from either home, foreign, or colonial. Neither the Home nor Foreign department could handle Indian affairs. In spite of all that has been said about colonization, India is not a colony, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies should have nothing to say to it. But it calls for a minister of equal rank with the other three secretaries. It is most important, for instance, that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and our Indian Minister should act in concert. Often has the Company been dragged into wars in India to sustain views of policy adopted at the Foreign Office, the peace policy of the Company being overruled by the war policy of the minister at Teheran or St. Petersburgh. These anomalies would be smoothed down by the appointment of a Secretary of State for India, of equal rank in the Cabinet with the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. We, therefore, hope that the proposal to which we refer, that the head of the Council for India shall be responsible for the acts of that Council, may pass the House unmutilated in its essential parts. The fourth Resolution is, that "in order to assist such Secretary of State in the discharge of his duties, it is expedient that a Council be appointed of not more than twelve members, including the Secretary of State." In the wisdom of this resolution we entirely agree. In selecting twelve as the number to sit on the Council for India, we feel unbiased by the failure of Lord Palmerston's proposal of a Council of Eight, and Mr. Disraeli's Council of Eighteen. Twelve is a mathematical mean between the two, and, perhaps, it may have occurred to Lord John Russell to "split the difference" between eight and eighteen. Ten months ago, before the subject had been brought up for discussion at all, we recommended a Council of Twelve for India, in an article on the Indian mutiny in the August number of this Magazine, to which we refer our readers for further undesigned coincidences between Lord John Russell's proposals and our own. We there proposed, not so much to abolish the Court of Directors-a body, on the whole, deserving the highest praise for administrative talent, and a sincere regard for the welfare of India-as to merge the Court of Directors and Board of Control into one body, "like the two single gentlemen rolled into one.' "In order to do this, we proposed to reduce the Directors from eighteen to twelve; to appoint six of the twelve from members of the two Houses of Parliament, and the other six from returned Indian officials, civil and military, with or without seats in Parliament, this body to be presided over by a Secretary of State, who was always to have a seat in the Cabinet, and to go in and out with the Ministry. We thus hoped to combine the highest Indian experience with fullest parliamentary control over the Council and its proceedings. Lord Palmerston's Bill comes short of our expectations most signally in this. His Council was to consist of only eight members, and these excluded from Parliament. The Secretary of State was to be its single mouth-piece; in his bosom were to be locked up the secrets of this Indian prisonhouse; and, to reverse the brag of Sir Oracle, when he shut his mouth no dog should bark. Every note of remonstrance, suggestion, or protest, heard at the council board was locked up in one bosom "of state," and till that bosom chose to thaw, every discordant note heard at the council board would be frozen like the music in Munchausen's trumpet. It was plain, from the first, that such a Council was only a sham; that it would be a degradation to offer a man of mark and position a seat at such a board of dummies; and that, sooner or later, such a council would hang as a useless appendage to the Minister for India, like a train to a court lady when out of the presence chamber. But we do not fight shadows. Lord Palmerston is out of office, and his bill requiescat in pace. May the robins of oblivion (we will offer, in old-fashioned style, a sentiment) strew it with the leaves of forgetfulness, till the place of its burial know it no more. There are two good elements in the present Double Government of India that must be combined in any future scheme of government in equal |