-now were again taken possession of; and at last the whole country was again at peace. The British Sovereign, Queen Victoria, took the government in her own hands. Meanwhile, a new power had manifested itself among the educated in Bengal — the power of the Native (or Indian) Press. A weekly journal in English, named The Hindu Patriot, had been started in 1853, by one Madhusudan Roy, in Calcutta. He, unable to manage it properly, after a year or two sold the paper and his own proprietary right to Babu Haris Chandra Mukerji, then one of the leading men in the city. He was a man of great talents, keen sagacity, and a dauntless heart; and, thus equipped, he entered upon the discussion of the politics of the day. He boldly protested against Lord Dalhousie’s policy of annexation, and with equal boldness he supported Lord Canning in his Liberal views. He tried to convince Englishmen here and at home that the Mutiny had had its origin in some shallow-headed bigoted zealots; and that the people of India, as a whole, were loyal to the backbone. Canning, by following a lenient policy, had incurred the displeasure of some of his countrymen, who even went so far as to recommend his being called upon to resign; and to combat his antagonists he often fell back upon the columns of The Hindu Patriot, the chief exponent of public opinion then in the country.
In The Hindu Patriot Haris Chandra Mukerji stoutly vindicated the cause of the ryots against the planters, at the time of the Nil Darpan troubles, and it was one of the results of his championship, that the Government appointed the “Indigo Commission,” in 1860, to go round and collect evidence on the indigo question. Babu Haris Chandra gave his evidence in such terms as greatly to annoy some of the planters, and one of them brought a case of libel against him in the Supreme Court. The
