Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/84

 an services during the mutiny. important part played by men like Hurisb Chunder ia assuaging the rancorous- feeling of hostility dis- played by an infuriated body of the- ruling race, partly from fear, and partly from-, selfish motives is now almost forgotten. Hurish. Chunder had early discerned, in the first outbreak, of the Mutiny what Burke has magniloquently said " that in all disputes between the people and their rulers the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people." That the general body of the people of India had nothing, to do with these insurgents' revolutionary actions which arose from, their impatience of " suffering,."" was a most palpable fact which he sought to impress upon the rulers with all the force and vehemence of lan- guage he could command to save the Government from a catastrophe. And, after such a. lapse of time*, the verdict of history is that he did- succeed in his noble- attempt- The Anglo-Indians convulsed with rage lost their sense completely, and deliberately advised the Go- vernment to dispossess all the landholding classes ia India of their lands and make them oyer to Europeans and Eurasians ; and the chimerical proposal of making, extensive English- colonization was sedately put forth* * And what was greatly to be deplored was that the maddened Anglo-Indians shewed every disres- pect and even menace to Lord Canning, and thought of deporting him from India when he firmly refused to listen- to their wicked advice. It was at such a time of general horror, uncertainty, andtrepir dation when the fate of the E. I. Company's Govern- ment in India was trembling in the balance; that Hurish Chunder was the steersman* of the destiny of his own countrymen. His words were half-battles fought on the side of the dumb millions of India, and be it recorded to the glory of the Great British- nation that, with the moral support given by this Brahmin* publicist, and by such honest journalist as Mr. Robert Knight then editor of the Bombay Times, with the