PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 882
1
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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in readiness to embark. This was on the 29th of July, I cannot now recollect the precise day upon which Sir J. E. Tennent returned to Colombo, but I know that for a week or more after the reports had reached us of a hostile feeling having betrayed itself in Matelle, I was summoned almost daily to the Queen's House, and that I frequently, if not always, met Sir J. E. Tennent there. The first proclamation of martial law was, however, published in the 'Gazette of the 29th of July, and I saw no member of the Executive Council at the Queen's House on that day (except Major-General Smelt), so that any observa- tions I may have made in the presence of the Council of a suggestive nature, must have referred to the proclama- tion of the 31st of July, when the acts of violence and outrage which had been committed in the Seven Korles and Matelle, the blocking up of the Trincomalee road, &c., must have convinced me, whatever might have been my opinion until then, that Lord Torrington was quite justified in proclaiming martial law, and in adopting the most prompt and vigorous measures to restore the disturbed provinces to order and subordination. It will hardly be denied, I suppose, that it would have been quite impossible to put down an insurrection like that of 1817-18 with the small force under General Smelt's orders in 1848; but from the improved state of our communications, and the other advantages we possessed at this latter period, a force so large as that which Sir Robert Brownrigg had at his command at the termination of the rebellion of 1818, would have been much more than sufficient for the suppression of an insurrection equally formidable in its nature (in 1848), had such an event taken place. In 1848 we had excellent carriage-roads from Colombo to all our principal stations in the interior. The Upper Kandyan country had to a very considerable extent been divested of its forests, and the caves and torrents' bed, in which it inhabitants had found or formed shelter for themselves and their property and supplies during the rebellion of 1818, had been unmasked, and every village and stream laid down upon paper, so that they were as well known to us as to themselves. But the province of Matelle has not yet benefited to any material extent by the attention which has of late years been paid to the improvement of our communications generally, though from its great natural strength and inaccessibility, it has always been one of the chief haunts of the disaffected, who, in consequence of our small force being sufficiently occupied in other quarters, were left in the undisturbed possession of it from the commencement of the insurrection in 1817 until the middle of September 1818, when resistance had nearly ceased. In the whole extent of that lofty segment of the Zone (called "The Knuckles Range") which lies
Sir E. Tennent.
April 11, 1850.
Martial Law.
Mortial Law.
น
Sir E. Tennent.
April 11, 1850.
Lord Torrington's No. 146;
Aug. 15, 1848.
Parliamentary Papers, 1849,
p. 198.
25
between the Adjale Pass, in the old Trincomalee road, and the left bank of the Mahavillaganga at Bintenne (a distance of nearly 30 miles), and forms the southern boundary of Matelle, there is but one footpath by which that formidable chain of mountains can be passed, and even that rugged track crosses it within four or five miles of its eastern extremity. I may also observe that there is no line of country in the whole of the interior (an I have often pointed out) where a good line of road is more required (and that not in a military point of view alone), than that which skirta the northern base of the Zone between the Nalande Road and the Mahavillaganga. My opinion being required as to what might have been the result had the disturbances of last year not been promptly checked, I have now to state that had those disturbances ended in a well-organised insurrection of the people of Matells and the neighbouring districts, the troops would in all probability have been involved in a disheartening and trying service, in which, without assistance from India, it would have been in vain to hope for success, and the Government would have had on its hands a troublesome and expensive contest with its own subjects, to say nothing of the ruinous conse- quences of such a state of things to the European proprietors
of the numerous coffee plantations throughout the interior. As connected with this question, I may further mention that the fire-arms taken from the Kandyans at the end of the rebellion of 1818 did not exceed 10,000 stand at the utmost, and at least two-thirds of those (including a large proportion of old matchlocks) were in a most unserviceable state, whereas in 1848 they (the Kandyans) kad probably not less than 60,000 stand in their possession, many of them good muskets or English fowling-pieces.
J. FRAGER,
(Signed)
Deputy Quartermaster-General.”
Colombo, December 19, 1849.
Not only, therefore, did the Executive Council and the military authorities unanimously concur in the two proclamations of martial law, but at public meet- ings of both Europeans and Natives in Kandy and Colombo, a similar unanimity of opinion prevailed,
as the following extracts from the despatch of Lord Torrington and its inclosures show :
2. I have now the honour to forward to your Lord- ship four of the documents giving expression to public opinion in various forzas. The first is a copy of certain resolutions carried at a public meeting in Colombo. The second is a resolution adopted at a general meeting of the