Punch: Punch (75.1878)

70

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[August 17, 1878.

PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

{Monday, August 5).—End of the Session in sight. Talk slacken-
ing and shortening ; work thickening and quickening.

" We do not care for the people of India. This is a heavy in-
dictment, but how else account for the facts about to be given ? Do
we even care enough ^to know about their daily lives of lingering
death, from causes which we could so well remove? We have
taken their lands and their rulers into our charge, for State reasons
of our own. Nay, the hour is coming, and even now is, when for
State reasons we are annexing, or preparing to annex, or to reor-
ganise, or to perfect—by whatever name we call it—huge and im-
measurable territories, because they lie between us and them. But
for them, themselves—these patient, silent, toiling millions of India,
who scarcely but for suffering, know their right hand from their

left, and yet who are so teachable, so ready to abide by law instead
of resisting their ' enemy the law,'—for then- daily lives and deaths
we do not, as a nation, practically care. Or should we not, as a
nation, practically rise en masse to see that the remediable things,
to which good public servants have so vainly called attention, shall
be remedied ? Have we no voice for these voiceless millions ? What
is the saddest sight to be seen in the East—nay, probably in the
world ? The saddest sight to be seen is the peasant in our own
Eastern Empire. But we do not look at this sight—no, not even
those few who travel in India."

These are not light words lightly spoken in debate, not an ex-
tract from the discussion raised in the Lords on Monday, by Lord
Noethbhook on a Calcutta Petition, signed by some of the best in