British Indian Advocate (Newspaper) - July 1, 1841, London, Middlesex BRITISH JUSTICE TO TO TO THE JULY PRICE EAST INDIA IMPORTANT DEBATE ON THE RAJA OF A QUARTERLY general Court of Proprietors of East India stock was held on the 23rd in terms of the The attendance was more numerous than owing to the interest excited by the anticipated debate on the case of the dethroned and exiled Raja of The or envoys of the Raja were besides two other all in their native In the gallery we observed several members of the Society of who appeared to watch with great interest the proceedings of the ADDRESS TO THE QUERN AND PRINCE The minutes of the last Court having been The CHAIRMAN Lyall informed the Court that he and Bayley on the 24th of March presented the addresses of lation to the Queen and Prince Albert on the birth of the Princess that were agreed to at the general Court held in December which had been most graciously MARRIOTT presented a petition on the subject of idolatry in IN MARTIN said he had given notice of a motion embracing two objects that the Court of Directors be requested to take into consideration the practicability and expediency of permitting the occupiers and cultivators of the soil of British India to redeem the and lo consider the practicability and expediency of jn fee the waste lands belonging to the Government in after the manner adopted in and in other British Before he proceeded with his he wished to know whether the Court of Directors had taken these subjects into and If whether it was intended to lay the result of their inquiry before the He had not the least idea of interfering with the executive body in the discharge of their duty and if they had or meant to those questions into he should at that time say nothing further on the The CHAIRMAN said the condition of the the soil in India was nis nonce jbr and gave notice that he at the next quarterly general move as follows That the British Government are neither de facto nor de jure proprie of the soil of British That periodical assessments on the produce of the at the sole will of the defeat the proprietary rights of the occupiers and cultivators of the soil by preventing the hereditary possession and trans mission of landed diminishes its deteriorates the revenue of the impoverishes the and renders the Government of India un stable and That the occupiers and cultivators of the soil of British India arc entitled to obtain from the British Government a fixed and a guarantee of hereditary unmolested by arbitrary demands and peri either by annual or more extended RAJA OP SALOMONS in pursuance of to call the attention of the Court to the case of the late Raja of He that he should have been better pleased if a subject of such great magnitude and had been taken up by some person more in the habit of leading in that as it was in consequence of a motion made by him that the papers con with the Rajas case had been laid before the and as no other indi vidual had come forward to introduce the he felt it to be his duty to state the opinion which he had after a careful perusal of these volu minous He intended to go into detail as little as It was his desire to he as concise as the nature of the subject would so far as he was to bring a few facts before the he a clear and intelligible In addressing himself to this it was not necessary for him to go into the history of the Raja of at It how to be that a treaty existed between the late Raja and the com pany and having been placed on the throne by the East India must stand or fall by that The printed papers would show the Court for many years after he had been raised to the dignity from which he had afterwards been this Raja was the object of great solicitude to the at a very late he had been rewarded by the Company with the present of a handsome as a mark of their confidence in his It appeared that in 1832 and some question arose as to the construction of the treaty with reference to The Court of Directors on that he might say on every acted with the strictest im partiality and justice hear at the present if any evidence were wanting to place ra the most praiseworthy point of view the character of the as feeling deeply anxious for the interests of the people of India it would be found in the facts set forth on the face of these This ques tion of the was referred to the Court of and they were in to think that the question in dispute ought to be ceded to the Raja Let the proprietors look to the He held it in his and he contended fairly considering its it was impossible for any one to entertain a doubt that the demand of the Raja was in conformity with the letter and spirit of the He therefore contended so far as the treaty the English broke that He did not say that the Court of Directors broke did not mean to say by whom it was particularly broken speaking in general he would maintain that it was broken by the A dis pute had arisen between this prince and the authorities at on the sub ject of certain as he had before The Raja made repeated applications to those authorities on the subject of his complaints that he could not procure he as he Salomons very that he would send ambassadors to this country to procure that justice which he could not get from the Bombay It seemed that the Raja was charged with a or an imputed against the British Govern ment in The charge was a very illdefined It to the that the or some one acting for had opened a treason able intercourse or communication with certain officers of the Companys native for the purpose of shaking their fidelity to the if the evidence bearing on that point were well sustained and no person would venture to stand up in defence of that or of any other individual who could be guilty of such when the subject was calmly con tho charge appeared to be so ridiculous in its so utterly at va riance with and so entirely impossible of that he wondered at its ever having been A commission appointed to inquire into One of the General they had heard some time ago deliver his sentiments on that subject in the general The other two were Colonel Ovans the Political Secretary to the Government of He would not read the proceedings of that commission but he must confess that he never perused evidence more acute than the evidence of this unfortunate prince before the three when he entered into an explanation of his conduct with reference to the charges brought against He read to the Court the minute of dated May 1837 I cannot agree with the Bombay that it is ex to adopt a middle course in this If the Raja is he is guilty of an offence with which there should be no The Bombay Government convict the Raja of attempting to corrupt the fidelity of our and of plotting the subversion of our rule to say nothing of an item in the according to the Brahmins that the troops were to be got rid of by bribing the bakers to poison their and yet propose to leave him in the possession of power to renew these whenever his plans may be better organised than they were on ihe late For my am not satisfied the and would therefore acquit adopting in my humble judg even supposing him to be U neither reconcilable with public Jus tice nor with sound It pd difficult to divest the affair of all suspicion but when we reflect on the utter want of basis as far as we yet know on which the plot could have been the improbable manner in which the Brahmin commenced his seduction of the or native the total unworthiness of his the discrepancies between the stories first told by the and their subsequent depositions before the com and the absurd terms in which the Raja is said to have announced to the the signs of coming I confess I look in vain for anything tangible or in the shape of for my mind to rest upon Ho was not aware that it was necessary for him to go further into the What he had read was quite sufficient to that the Government of India having considered this matter and came to the that there seemed to be not the least foundation for tho The Government of Bombay still inclined to persevere and having failed in reference to the charge of treason they endeavoured to prove collateral treason in other that if there were nothing actually treasonable inthe case they had brought that at least the person whom they charged was capable of if he could perpetrate it and it was alleged that an improper intercourse bad been carried on between the Raja of and the Governor of Goa for several When the subject was brought again before the he again begged the authorities at Bombay to He Salomons had there two documents which would lay before them the whole and put them in entire possession of the They were two letters from the Chief Secretary of the of India to the Chief Secretary of the Governor of The first was dated October and stated that his Lordship in Council was of opinion that the evidence that accompanied the communication from respecting the delinquency of the Raja was and that his Lordships opinion of the danger of be coming involved in an indefinite every appearance of being that was the opinion of the It would appear that the Bombay Government were desirous of getting rid of an whom no doubt thought a guilty and they communicated the documents to the after carefully examining de clared that he placed no belief in and thought them of not the least im portance The other letter was dated a few days on the 16th and in this the went again over the same and expressed still more strongly the same that the proceedings that had been taken were not such as met with the approbation of his Lordship in There was a postscript to that in which the Governor General stated that he had lately received certain communications relating to tho but that those communications did not alter his opinion of the The Court of begged and entreated that these proceedings should be brought to a conclusion and in proof of this statement the proprietor read extracts from two despatches sent out to India by the Court of Directors in in the first of which they called on the Government to review on the earliest possible day the proceedings relative to the Raja df and to give their decided opinion whether it was not a waste of time to carry on the inquiry In making any remarks on the conduct of the Government of Bom bay he wished to say nothing harsh of Sir Robert for whom he enter the highest He believed the rock that he split on Mas
