nered Sikhs with more tact and skill than Sir George Clerk during the perilous period of our disasters in 1841-42.

It is true that the utter failure of the system in operation in the Punjab is confidently predicted at p. 366; but it is consolatory to find, from the very last Indian newspapers, that no progress is making towards a fulfilment of this prophecy; but that, on the contrary, a reduction of taxation has been effected by the Board, such as would be felt as a boon by the tenantfarmers of England, its influence having been counteracted by nothing but by the effects of an excessive plenty.

It is creditable to the candour of the Bengal Civil Service, that its members themselves furnish the information to be turned against their own body, and it is from a work published by the Hon. F. J. Shore, in 1837, that Sir C. Napier has borrowed his most plausible charges.

On this we can only observe, that Mr Shore, in his zeal for the improvement of his own service, forgot that what he wrote would be read by the ignorant and the unfriendly; by those who could not, and by those who would not, comprehend the real scope and meaning of his words.

The faults imputed by him to his brother civilians are mainly those of manner, already noticed by ourselves as being common to the English, generally, in their deportment towards strangers in every clime.

If we were writing only for those who know what British India is, our ungrateful task of correcting errors might here conclude; but it is upon those to whom that country is unknown that the work before us is calculated to produce an impression, and therefore we must try, in as few words as possible, to point out one of its most striking inaccuracies. On referring to the pages noted below,* the reader will find a series of assertions, to the effect that in Bengal the army is scattered over the country for the protection of the Civil servants. From the Indian Register of this very year, it appears that, in the country below

* Pages 229, 230, 388.

Benares, which, in extent and population, is about equal to France, there are only about ten battalions; †_the half of these being stationed at Barrackpore, in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta. In the provinces above Benares, under the rule of the Lieutenant governor at Agra, with a somewhat smaller but more hardy population, it appears that there are thirteen stations occupied by regular troops; of which eight are close to large towns, such as in every country require to be watched-or else purely military posts. There are only five other places where regular troops seem to be stationed, and of these, one is on the frontier of Nepaul.

Admitting that the Civil power derives its support from the knowledge of a military force being at hand, still the exhibition of the latter is as rare on the Ganges as on the Thames; and a magistrate would sink in the opinion of his superiors, and of his own service, if he were to apply for the aid of troops in any but the extreme cases in which such an application would be warranted in England. It would be just as rational to argue that our provincial mayors and magistrates in England are hated, because troops are stationed at Manchester, Preston, or Newcastle, as to adduce the distribution of the regular Sepoys in Bengal and Upper India as a proof of the hatred borne to the Civil servants, through whose administration that vast region is made to furnish forth the funds to support the armies with which heroes win victories and gather laurels.

What is meant by "guards for civilians" it is hard to guess. The Lieutenant-governor at Agra is, we believe, the only civilian, not in political employ, who has a guard of regulars at his house. In some places in Upper India, regulars may be posted at the Treasury, for the same reason that a corresponding force is posted at the Bank of England in the heart of London; but even to the Treasuries in the lower provinces no such protection is given.

Sir C. Napier, we suspect, has con

fused the collector with the collections, and fancied the force occasionally posted to protect the latter to be, in fact, employed to swell the state or guard the person of the former. That regular Sepoys should be employed to escort treasure is much to be regretted; but treasure is tempting, and the mode of conveyance on carts very tedious, the ways long, the country to be traversed often very wild, and the robbers in some quarters very bold. It is not often that in England bullion belonging to the State has to be conveyed in waggons; but when this happens, it is, we think, usually accompanied by a party of soldiers.

It would be tedious to follow out all the mistakes made about Chuprassees and Burkundazes-the former being a sort of orderly, of whom two or three are attached to every officeholder, military or civil, to carry orders and messages, in a climate where Europeans cannot at all hours of the day walk about with safety; and the latter being the constabulary, employed in parties of about fifteen or twenty at the various subdivisions into which, for purposes of police, each district is laid out. To form them into battalions would be to strip the interior of all the hands wanted for the common offices of preventive and detective police.

We now gladly turn to the more pleasing duty of pointing out the brighter passages, and rejoice to draw our reader's attention to the strain of kindly feeling towards the men and officers of the Company's army, both European and Native, pervading the whole work.

It is pleasing to observe the anxiety expressed by so thorough a soldier, to see the armies of the Crown and Company assimilated to each other, and all "the ridiculous jealousies entertained by the vulgarminded in both armies" removed. It is delightful to read the assurance given by such a man that, "under his command, at various times, for ten years, in action, and out of action, the Bengal Sepoys never failed in

It is in

real courage or activity." structive to learn from so great a master in the art of war, that "Martinets are of all military pests the worst ;" and still more so to read his earnest and heart-stirring exhortations to the younger of his own countrymen not to keep aloof from Native officers; § and his declaration that, even at his advanced age, he would have studied the language of the Sepoys, if his public duties had not filled up all his time. Our space will not allow us to give any specimens of the author's style. It is ever animated and original. There was no need of a signature to attest a letter of his writing, for no one could mistake from whom it came. Though deformed by occasional outbursts of spleen, our readers may find much to admire in the narrative of the expedition to Kohat. It will be well, however, after reading it through, to take up the Bombay Times of the 14th of December last, to see what progress is being made by the very Board of Administration so contemptuously spoken of in the narrative,¶ towards reducing the turbulent Afridee tribes to a state of enduring submission and good order.

Long practice had given great fluency to the author's pen when employed in what we may call antilaudatory writing, but this sometimes led him into that most pardonable of plagiarisms, the borrowing from himself, as in the following sentence, at page 118: "He," meaning the Governor-General, "and his politicals, like many other men, mistook rigour, with cruelty, for vigour.' If our memory is to be relied on, this very antithetical jingle may be found in a pamphlet, published some twenty-five years ago, about the alleged "misgovernment of the Ionian Islands." The author's political speculations, when unwarped by prejudice, were generally correct, and we fully concur with him, and, we may add, with his predecessor, the late Sir Henry Fane, in the opinion expressed at page 66, that the Sutledge" ought to bound our Indian possessions ;" and

|| Page 89.

our own, the cravings of natural and reasonable ambition.

In searching for a guide at this point of our inquiry, we have hit upon the work standing last upon our list, the production of a gentleman who has extraordinary claims upon the attention of English as well as Indian readers. Mr Cameron carried out with him to India a mind stored with the best learning of the West; and during twelve years spent out there in the high posts of Law Commissioner, Member of the Supreme Couneil, and President of the Committee of Education, his best powers were exerted, not merely to impart instruction, but to inspire with a true love of knowledge, the native youth attached to the various institutions within the sphere of his influence.

His work is truly one of which his country may be proud, for a more disinterested zeal in the cause of a conquered people was never exhibited by one of the dominant race, than is evinced in this noble address to the Parliament of England on behalf of the subject millions of India.

Many, however, as Mr Cameron's qualifications are for the task which he undertakes, there is one of much importance not to be found among them. He never served in the interior; never was burdened with the charge of a district; never spent six hours a-day, at the least, in the crowded Babel of a Cutcherry,* with the thermometer at 98 in the shade. His Indian day was very different from that of the magistrate collector of which we have inserted Mr Campbell's lively description. It was passed in the stillness of his library, or in the well-aired and well-ordered halls of a college, among educated young natives, mostly Bengalees, who were about as true specimens of Indian men as the exotics in a London conservatory are of British plants.

Such a life is compatible with the acquirement of great Oriental lore, but not with the attainment of that ready knowledge of native character which is picked up by far inferior intellects in the rough daily school of Cutcherry drudgery.

This reflection has somewhat damp

ed our pleasure in perusing Mr Cameron's eloquent and high-toned address. We devoutly hope to see our misgivings proved to be groundless; but in the mean time we must give one or two of our reasons for doubting whether the day is at hand when the natives of England and India may meet on terms of perfect parity in every walk of life. In the first place, to judge by precedent, we doubt the strict applicability to the present question of that drawn from the practice of ancient Rome. Of the people subjugated by Rome, a vast proportion were of the same race as their victors, with no peculiarities, personal or complexional, to check the amalgamation resulting from popular intermarriage. It is in Egypt that the closest similarity to our situation in India is likely to be found, and, judging by the contemptuous tone of Juvenal's allusion to the people of that country in his 15th Satire, we can hardly imagine that, when employed in any public capacity, the "imbelle et inutile vulgus" were placed exactly on the same footing as the Roman knights who constituted the "covenanted service" of those days in that particular province.

The geographical circumstances were also different. Rome grew like a tree-its root in the eternal city, its branches stretching forth in continuous lines to the furthest extremities of its vast domain.

Our Indian empire springs from a transplanted offshoot of the parent State. No one part of it has a firmer hold on the soil than another. It is all equally loose. Our dominion is, in fact, based upon our ships, and it is to our ships that both Englishmen and natives, in touching on the possibility of our eventual downfall, always speak of our retreating or being driven. From our ships we sprung, and to our ships we shall some day perhaps return. It is in vain, therefore, to draw, from the practice of a purely continental empire like that of Rome, rules for the government of an essentially maritime dominion such as we have established on the Ganges. Ours is a power without a precedent, and perhaps, therefore, without a prognostic.

There is nothing like it in the past, and its future will probably be stamped with the same singularity as has characterised its whole existence.

We must try, therefore, to better the condition of our subjects by means such as our own experience teaches us to be best adapted to their nature. To open to them at once the civil and military services; to give to any number of them that absolute right to preferment implied in their enrolment in the ranks of a peculiar body, would not, we imagine, be to follow the guidance of experience. Presumption on the one side, and the pride of race on the other, might lead to serious jarrings between the English and the Indian members, who, though standing in the ranks of the same service, would still differ from each other like the keys of a piano-forte. It would, we think, be safer to commence, as we have already suggested, by selecting for preferment individuals from the mass of our native subjects. Situations in the judicial and revenue department may be found or created which natives can fill with great credit; but their general fitness for the office of magistrate remains to be proved. It is easy to imagine a case wherein to leave the powers wielded by a magistrate in the hands of any one open to the influences from which a fellow-countryman alone can be secure, would be, to say the least, most imprudent. Besides, there is a duty, perhaps but imperfectly performed at present, and to which, at least in the lower provinces, a native functionary would be quite incompetent, and that is, affording protection to the people against the violence of Englishmen settled in the interior as merchants, landholders, or Indigo-planters. We have now before us a letter written in excellent English by a native of Bengal, in which the following passage occurs:" The fact is, that European traders have obtained, in many places in the interior of the Bengal Presidency, almost uncontrolled power -a power which they are seldom sufficiently scrupulous not to exert to the injury of those with whom they come in contact. It is not exaggeration to say, each Indigo - factory, together with its surrounding estate, is a little kingdom within itself, wherein ava

rice and tyranny hold unlimited sway. The police is too feeble to render effectual aid in suppressing the lawless oppression of the factor."

Now, let us figure to ourselves one of Mr Cameron's slender dusky élèves on the bench as magistrate, and (to take what ought to be the mildest specimen of a gentle Englishman) the leading member of the Peace party at the House of Commons at the bar in an Indigo-planter, taxed with oppressing the Hindoo, and we shall easily see that the law must have an almost supernatural inherent majesty, if, under such circumstances, it can be effectually enforced and impartially administered.

The regulation of the intercourse between our own countrymen not in the service of Government, and our native subjects, will rise in importance with the progress of those works in which European agency is essential to insure success. Railways, electric telegraphs, improved cottoncultivation, steam, and all other complicated machinery, must, if overspreading the country as many anticipate, bring with them a vast increase to the European section of the community, whose influence will still be out of all proportion to its commercial strength.

To give to this little section full scope for the development of its industrial energies, and yet to restrain it from abusing its strength to the injury of the native population, is in fact the only real service ever likely to be rendered by the Law Commissions and Legislative Councils called into existence by the enactment of last session.

In as far as the natives of Bengal and Upper India are alone concerned, we are convinced that all of this cumbrous law-making apparatus is quite superfluous. The existing regulations, with occasional pruning and trimming, would, if fairly enforced and adhered to, amply suffice to meet all of their simple wants. But the natives can no longer be left to themselves. Europeans will intrude, and legislation must therefore be shaped and stretched so as to fit it to the characters of the intruders.

As at present constituted, the magistracy and the police are hardly