Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

Incomplete indeed, to use Mr Kaye’s words, would any victory have been, if these brave men and tender women, who had so well endured a long and fearful captivity, had been left behind; and it is well to reflect that we were saved from this reproach by the ascendancy of the milder principles of rule in the mind of the officer upon whom the chief command at this moment, we may almost say providentially, devolved.

Many more instances are recorded, in the chapter just quoted, of the influence of a contrary spirit on the closing events of the Afghan war; but we must pass on to what happened in Scinde, where the anti-judicial principle may be said to have reached its climax.

The following is Mr Campbell’s short and flippant account of that transaction, reminding us in one passage of a letter from the Empress Catherine to one of her French correspondents, wherein she congratulated herself “qu’il n’y a pas d’honneur à garder avec les Turcs”:—

“But though we withdrew from Cabool, our military experiences were not
yet over. On invading Afghanistan by the Bolan Pass, Scinde became a
base of our operations, and troops were there cantoned. When our
misfortunes occurred, it was supposed that the Beloch chiefs would
have liked to have turned against us, but dared not—did not.

“Major-General Sir C. Napier then commanded a division in Bombay; he
was a good soldier, of a keen, energetic temperament, but somewhat
quarrelsome disposition; had at one proud period of his life been in
temporary charge of a petty island in the Mediterranean, but was, I
believe, deposed by his superior—most unwisely, as he considered; and
he had ever since added to his military ardour a still greater thirst
for civil power—as it often happens that we prefer to the talents
which nature has given us those which she has denied us. He was
appointed to the command in Scinde; and Lord Ellenborough, an admirer
of heroes, subsequently invested him with political powers. He soon
quarrelled with the chiefs, and came to blows with them. Their
followers were brave, but undisciplined, and they had no efficient
artillery. An active soldier was opposed to them; he easily overcame
them, declared the territory annexed, and was made Governor of
Scinde.”

Now, the Beloch chiefs had no other right to the territory than the
sword; _and we, having the better sword, were perfectly justified in
taking it from them if we chose_, without reference to the particular
quarrel between Sir Charles and the chiefs, the merits of which have
been so keenly disputed, and on which I need not enter. But the
question _was one of expediency_; and this premature occupation of
Scinde was not so much a crime as a blunder,—for this very simple
reason, that Scinde did not pay, but, on the contrary, was a very
heavy burden, by which the Indian Government has been several millions
sterling out of pocket.

“The Ameers had amassed, in their own way, considerable property and
treasure, which the general obtained for the army. He was thus
rewarded by an unprecedented prize-money, and with the government of
Scinde, while Bengal paid the costs of the government he had gained.
Scinde was so great a loss, for this reason—that it was not, like
other acquisitions, in the midst of, or contiguous to, our
territories, but was at that time altogether detached and separated by
the sea, the desert, and the independent Punjab; while on the fourth
side it was exposed to the predatory Beloches of the neighbouring
hills. Consequently, every soldier employed there was cut off from
India, and was an expense solely due to Scinde; and while a great many
soldiers were required to keep it, it produced a very small revenue to
pay them. It is, in truth, very like Egypt—that is, it is the fertile
valley of a river running through a barren country, where no rain
falls. But there is this difference—first, that while no broader, it
is not so long, nor has the fine delta which constitutes the most
valuable portion of Egypt; second, that while Egypt is free from
external predatory invasion, Scinde is exceedingly exposed to it; and,
thirdly, that while Egypt has a European market for its grain, Scinde
has not. Altogether, the conquest was, at the time, as concerns India,
much as if we had taken the valley of the Euphrates.

“Half a dozen years later, when we advanced over the plain of the
Indus, and annexed the Punjab, we must have arranged to control Scinde
too, directly or indirectly, as might be done cheapest; but during
those intermediate years it was a gratuitous loss, and the chief cause
of the late derangement of our Indian finances.”—(Pp. 137–139).

The better sword gives the better title! When such is the doctrine maintained, even by a man of the pen, we cannot wonder at its finding a ready expositor in the man of the sword.

But, in truth, Mr Campbell’s sword plea, having the merit of honesty and openness, is by far the best that has been advanced; and yet, as he shows, it is only available in support of the right, and not of the policy, of the measure. After-events, he observes, alluding to the conquest of the Punjab, have given a value to Scinde, which in itself it did not possess; but he has omitted to remark that the one event very probably grew out of the other. The Sikhs, who not only had refrained, like the Ameers, from molesting, but had even assisted us in our recent difficulties, had some reason for apprehending that, in due time, the policy pursued in Scinde would be extended to their own more inviting country; while, as if to remove an obstacle to an apparently desired misunderstanding, Sir George Clerk was promoted to the nominally higher post of lieutenant-governor of Agra, and an officer, his very opposite in every quality excepting earnest zeal and undaunted courage, was appointed to be his political successor at Lahore.

Though he is little disposed to state any case too favourably for the party opposed to us, this peculiarity in our relations with the Sikhs, immediately before their invasion of our territory, is frankly admitted by Mr Campbell. After mentioning various military movements calculated to give them alarm, he describes a political difficulty as to certain lands belonging to the Sikh state, lying on our side of the Sutledge, which he says had been so managed by two successive political agents, Sir Claude Wade and Sir George Clerk, that through their personal influence “it had so happened that our wishes were generally attended to.” He thus concludes:—

“Sir George Clerk having been promoted, new men were put in charge of
our frontier relations, and seem to have assumed as a right what had
heretofore been yielded to a good understanding. In 1845 Major
Broadfoot was political agent. He was a man of great talent and
immense energy, but of a rather overbearing habit. In difficult and
delicate times he certainly did not conciliate the Sikhs....
Altogether, I believe the fact to be, that had Sir George Clerk
remained in charge of our political relations, the Sikhs would not
have attacked us at the time they did; it might have been delayed: but
still it was well that they came when they did.”—(Pp. 142, 143.)

The annexation of the Punjab followed hard on the conquest of Scinde, and both events may be regarded as sequels to the Afghan expedition, and this again as but a fuller development of the anti-judicial school, which, since the downfall of the Cornwallis system, has held almost undisputed sway on the banks of the Ganges.

When a government essentially despotic, like that of British India, spontaneously engages to adhere to the rules of judicial procedure in dealing with its own subjects, a pledge is thereby given to neighbouring states that towards them also its conduct will be regulated on principles of justice and moderation.

We admit that the ruling power may thus sometimes create obstructions to its own progress along the path of improvement; but it seems probable that such self-imposed restraints should more frequently operate (to borrow a term from the railway) as “breaks” to save it from precipitately rushing into acts of rashness or injustice.

History confirms these conclusions, and shows the practical result to have been precisely what _a priori_ reasoning would have led us to expect.

Five great wars were waged in India during the second or judicial period of its administration—that is, from 1793 to 1830. These were—the Mysore war in 1799, the Mahratta war in 1803, the Nepaul war in 1814, the Pindaree war in 1817, and the Burmese war in 1825. There is not one of these against which even a plausible charge of injustice can be maintained by our bitterest foreign foes, or most quick-sighted censorious countrymen.

The acuteness of Mr Cobden himself would be at fault if he were to try to make out a case against the authors of any one of these wars, to satisfy a single sensible man beyond the circle of the “Peace Society.”

But how is it with the wars which have occurred since, wandering from judicial ways, the rulers of Gangetic India have pursued whatever course for the moment found favour in their own eyes, with little or no reference to the feelings of their subjects, and with hardly a show of deference to the laws enacted by their predecessors?

The Afghan war of 1838, the Scinde affair of 1843, the Gwalior campaign of 1844, have each in their turn, especially the two first-named, been made the subject of comments neither captious nor fastidious, but resting on indisputable evidence, and supported by reasoning such as pre-formed prejudice alone can resist. The two wars in the Punjab come under the category of the just and necessary; and Lord Hardinge’s generous use of the privileges of victory, at the close of the first of these hard-fought conflicts, did much to re-establish our character for justice and moderation. But still these wars are, we fear, coupled in the minds of the people of India with those out of which they sprang, and share in the reproach attaching, in their estimation, to the invasion of Afghanistan and the conquest of Scinde.

We have now reached a point where we may stop to consider the several merits of the works on our list at the head of this article. Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet is written in a frank conversational style, indicative of his earnest sincerity and his real sympathy with the people of the Upper Ganges, among whom his official life has been spent. We could wish occasionally that his language was a little more measured, for there are passages to startle some of his readers, and so to impair the general effect of his otherwise interesting pamphlet.

Of the style, as well as the matter, of Mr Campbell’s more elaborate work, hardness is the chief characteristic. Indeed, he seems to discard all ornament from the one, and all sentiment from the other, and to aim at nothing beyond correctness as to his facts, and positiveness as to his deductions. In this he fully succeeds. His volume is a repertory of useful facts, and his conclusions can never be misapprehended. Some of Mr Campbell’s descriptions also are amusing; and we insert, as a specimen of his lighter style, the following sketch of the day of a magistrate and collector in Upper India, that functionary whose labours are so little known to any but those of his own service, or the people among whom he lives. After enumerating many out-of-door duties despatched in the course of an early morning’s ride, the description thus proceeds:—

“At breakfast comes the post and the packet of official letters. The
commissioner demands explanation on this matter, and transmits a paper
of instructions on that; the judge calls for cases which have been
appealed; the secretary to Government wants some statistical
information; the inspector of prisons fears that the prisoners are
growing too fat; the commander of the 105th regiment begs to state
that his regiment will halt at certain places on certain days, and
that he requires a certain quantity of flour, grain, hay, and eggs; Mr
Snooks, the indigo-planter, who is in a state of chronic warfare with
his next neighbour, has submitted his grievances in six folio sheets,
indifferent English, and a bold hand, and demands instant redress,
failing which he threatens the magistrate with Government, the supreme
court, an aspersion of his character as a gentleman, a Parliamentary
impeachment, a letter to the newspapers, and several other things
besides. After breakfast he despatches his public letters, writes
reports, examines returns, &c.

“During this time he has probably a succession of demi-officials from
the neighbouring cantonments. There is a great complaint that the
villagers have utterly, without provocation, broken the heads of the
cavalry grass-cutters, and the grass-cutters are sent to be looked at.
He goes out to look at them, but no sooner appears than a shout
announces that the villagers are waiting in a body, with a slightly
different version of the story, to demand justice against the
grass-cutters, who have invaded their grass-preserves, despoiled their
villages, and were with difficulty prevented from murdering the
inhabitants. So the case is sent to the joint magistrate. But there
are more notes; some want camels, some carts, and all apply to the
magistrate; then there may be natives of rank and condition, who come
to pay a serious formal kind of visit, and generally want something;
or a chatty native official who has plenty to say for himself.

“All this despatched, he orders his carriage or umbrella, and goes to
cutcherry—his regular court. Here he finds a sufficiency of business;
there are police, and revenue, and miscellaneous cases of all sorts,
appeals from the orders of his subordinates, charges of corruption or
misconduct against native officials. All petitions from all persons
are received daily in a box, read, and orders duly passed. Those
setting forth good grounds of complaint are filed under proper
headings; others are rejected, for written reason assigned. After
sunset, comes his evening, which is probably like his morning ride,
mixed up with official and demi-official affairs, and only at dark
does the wearied magistrate retire to dinner and to private
life.”—(Pp. 248–249).

Mr Kaye’s essay recommends itself by the same easy flow of language as made his _History of the Afghan War_ such agreeable reading. His plan does not admit of his giving more than a series of sketches; but his outlines are so clear, and his selection of topics to fill up with is so happy, that we can safely recommend his volume to any one who, without leisure or inclination for more minute study of the subject, may still wish to obtain some general idea of the administration of our vast Eastern empire. In a note at page 661, Mr Kaye informs us, that in the summer of 1852 the Duke of Newcastle told the Haileybury students that, during a recent tour in the Tyrol, he had met an intelligent Austrian general who, in the course of conversation on our national resources, said that he could understand all the elements of our greatness except our Anglo-Indian empire, and _that_ he could not understand. The vast amount of administrative wisdom which the good government of such an empire demanded, baffled his comprehension.

The Austrian general, perhaps, would not have readily assented to the explanation of the marvel given by the young French naturalist, Victor Jaquemont, who, in a letter dated from the confines of Tartary, in August 1830, thus writes to a relative in Paris: “The ideas entertained in France about this country are absurd; the governing talents of the English are immense; ours, on the contrary, are very mediocre; and we believe the former to be embarrassed when we see them in circumstances in which our awkwardness would be completely at a stand-still.”—(_English translation of Victor Jaquemont’s Letters_, vol. i. p. 169).

The lady whose three volumes come next under our notice is certainly one of the most intelligent travellers of her sex who has visited India since the days when Maria Graham, afterwards Lady Callcott, amused her readers in England, and enraged many of her female acquaintances in India, by describing the latter as generally “under-bred and overdressed.”

It is curious to observe how little change the lapse of forty years seems to have made in the outward peculiarities of Anglo-Indian drawing-room life, and how much in unison the two fair authors are in their remarks on their own countrymen.

Mrs Colin Mackenzie, however, has enjoyed opportunities which her predecessor could not command, of observing the private and domestic side of Oriental life, and has evinced a wonderful aptitude in turning these opportunities to the best account. The great charm of her work is that it admits us within the Purdah, and lets us see what is hidden from all European masculine eyes,—the interior, namely, of an Asiatic household.

It is pleasing to read an English lady’s lively account of her own friendly intercourse with families of another faith, upon whom her industrious energy, quickened and regulated by a zeal for her own religion, openly avowed and studiously exhibited as her main motive of action, cannot, we imagine, have failed to produce a deep and lasting impression. We trust that Mrs Mackenzie’s example may be followed by many of our countrywomen; for the information in which, of all others, the English functionaries in the East are most deficient—that regarding natives in their private and domestic sphere—is precisely what our ladies alone have the power to acquire and impart. Mrs Mackenzie, it is true, mingled chiefly with the Afghans, who are a more attractive race than the people of India.

The Afghans, also, must have felt inclined to open their hearts to the wife of one who, both as a soldier in the field, and afterwards as a captive in their hands, had commanded the sincere respect of those among whom he was thrown. But though all cannot have her advantages, there is no lady whose husband holds office in India, who, if she makes herself acquainted with the languages of the country, will not find native women of rank and respectability ready to cultivate her acquaintance, and thus afford her the means of solving some of those problems of the native character which elude all the researches of our best-informed public functionaries. Having said thus much in praise of Mrs Mackenzie’s book, we cannot but censure most strongly the attempt at spicing her work with gossipping tales calculated to wound the feelings of private individuals among her own countrymen, and even of the officers of her husband’s own service, with whose characters she deals with a most unsparing degree of reproachful raillery, designating individuals as Colonel A., Major B., or Captain C. of the — Regiment, stationed at such a place, so that there cannot be a doubt as to whom the anecdotes, which are always to the discredit of the parties, refer.

The difficulty of commenting on a posthumous work is much enhanced when the author happens to have been, like the late Sir Charles Napier, one whose errors of the pen are more than redeemed by a career of long and glorious services. Still, though this consideration may soften, it ought not to silence criticism, for errors never more require correction than when heralded by an illustrious name. An additional reason for not passing over the last work of so distinguished a man is, that it contains many admirable remarks on the Native army, well deserving to be detached from the mass of other matter in which they are imbedded. The contents of the book may be classed under three heads: Censure of individuals; censure of public bodies; suggestive remarks on the civil and military administration of India.

On whatever comes under the first of these heads, our strictures shall be brief.

We find in the list of those censured, the names of so many of the best and ablest men who have taken part in Indian affairs, either at home or in the East, that we feel loth to give any additional publicity to what we have read with pain, and would gladly forget. Public bodies being fair targets to shoot at, the censures coming under the second head are open to no objection excepting such as may arise from their not standing the test of close examination. The Court of Directors, the Supreme Council of India, the whole body of the Civil Service (with one or two exceptions), the Political Agents, the Military Board in Calcutta, and the Board of Administration in the Punjab, follow each other like arraigned criminals in the black scroll of the author’s antipathies. To notice all that is advanced against those included in this catalogue would be impossible, for a few lines may contain assertions which it would fill a folio to discuss. Of the East India Company, the instrument through which India has been providentially preserved from the corruptions of an aristocratic and the precipitancy of a more popular rule, Sir Charles Napier’s view is not more enlarged than what we might have got from his own Sir Fiddle Faddle, of whom he has left us (at page 253) so amusing a description. Though capable, as we shall soon see, of rising above the prejudices of his profession on other points, he looks at this singular Company and its governing Court with the eyes of a Dugald Dalgetty, who, while pocketing the commercial body’s extra pay, accounts it foul scorn to be obliged to submit to such base and mechanical control.

But none are all bad, and we rejoice to see it admitted at page 210 of the unfriendly book before us, that “the Directors, generally speaking, treat their army well;” and at pages 49, 261, that the Company’s artillery, formed under the rule of these very Directors, is “_superb_, second to none in the world—perfect.” Yet it never seems to have occurred to the author, that those under whose rule one department has reached perfection, are not likely to blunder in every other, as in his moments of spleen he made himself believe. So able a man as Sir C. Napier could not always be blind to his own inconsistencies; and accordingly, in the midst of some declamation on what India might be under royal government, he seems to have been suddenly brought up by a thought about what the Crown Colonies really are.

From this dilemma he escapes by saddling one distinguished personage with the blame of all that is wrong in the colonies, and thus punishes Earl Grey for the speech about Scinde, made by Lord Howick, some ten years ago, in the House of Commons.

To the Supreme Council of India, though he was one of their number, the author never makes any but disparaging allusions. Discontented with being a commander-in-chief under a ruling body, of which he was himself a member, he sought to be recognised as the head of a separate military government. He wished, in short, to be, not what the Duke of York was in England, but what, under peculiar circumstances, the Duke of Wellington was in Spain during the war in the Peninsula. In this he was not singular; for we suspect that the real cause of that uneasiness in their position, stated at page 355, to have been manifested by many of Sir C. Napier’s predecessors, is to be found in a desire on their part for such an independency of military administrative power, as is totally incompatible with the necessary unity and indivisibility of a government. Yet it is admitted that, in England, “when war comes, the war-minister is the real commander,”—(p. 220.) The author evidently felt how much this admission must tell against his own complaints of undue interference with his authority; for he endeavours, by some feeble special pleading, to abate its effect, and to prove the “poor Indian general,” with his £15,000 a year, to be more unfavourably placed than his _confrère_ in England.

One circumstance, however, is such, that while the latter is excluded from the Cabinet, the former can take his seat at the Council-Board, and his part in the guidance of the counsels of the State.

It is, we think, greatly to be regretted that Sir C. Napier did not more frequently avail himself of this privilege, for by keeping apart from the Supreme Council he lost the benefit of free personal communication with equals, and incurred the evil of having none near him but subordinates, whom he could silence by a word or a look.

The Civil Service is represented simply as a nuisance requiring immediate abatement.

We are told that “a Civil form of government is uncongenial to _barbarous_ Eastern nations.” There is some truth in this, if a proper stress is laid on the word _barbarous_. In the first chapter of the fourth part of his work, Mr Kaye has shown how, in reaching the outskirts of civilisation, we are brought into contact with rude tribes like the Beloches in Scinde, “to whose feelings and habits the rough ways of Sir C. Napier were better adapted than the refined tenderness or the judicial niceties of the gentlest and wisest statesman that ever loved and toiled for a people.” But the error of such reasoners as Sir C. Napier is, that they would treat all India as barbarous, and rule it accordingly. Now, with all our respect for Sir C. Napier’s talents, we doubt much whether he would have governed the more civilised provinces of Upper India better than the late Mr Thomason, whom he condescends to praise—(p. 37); or managed the subtle and well-mannered 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 tenant-farmers 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,[37] 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 Benares, which, in extent and population, is about equal to France, there are only about ten battalions;[38] 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 confused 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 office-holder, 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 vulgar-minded in both armies”[39] 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 real courage or activity.”[40] It is instructive to learn from so great a master in the art of war, that “Martinets are of all military pests the worst;”[41] 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;[42] 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.[43] 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,[44] 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 anti-laudatory 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 we now fear that, having crossed that river, we must also throw the Indus behind us, and fulfil the prediction hazarded at page 374, that, “with all our moderation, we shall conquer Afghanistan, and occupy Candahar.” Sometimes, however, his disposition to paint everything _en noir_ has misled our author even upon a military point, as in the following instance: “The close frontier of Burmah enables that power to press suddenly and dangerously upon the capital of our Indian Empire; and such events are no castles in the air, but threatening real perils. The Eastern frontier, therefore, is not safe,”—(p. 364).

In former days, when the Burmese territories were dovetailed into our district of Chittagong, there might have been some ground for this opinion, supposing the Burmese to have been, what they are not, as energetic a people as the Sikhs. But a glance at the map might satisfy any one that with our occupation of Arracan, a country so intersected by arms of the sea as to be impassable for any power not having that absolute superiority on the water which a single steamer would give us, all danger of invasion from that side has for the last twenty-five years been at an end.

The mention of Burmah naturally leads to the next work in our list, that of Mr J. C. Marshman, the well-known editor of the ablest of the Calcutta journals, the _Friend of India_.

His pamphlet is a reply to another, by Mr Cobden, entitled “The origin of the Burmese war.” Mr Cobden could not, of course, write about a war excepting to blame it, consequently Mr Marshman appears in defence of what the other assails.

We cannot devote much time to the consideration of this controversy, but at one passage we must indulge in a momentary glance.

Towards the end of the fifth page of Mr Marshman’s pamphlet our readers will find a sentence throwing some light on the origin of the war which he undertakes to defend. He there dwells, with great emphasis, on the “unexampled and extraordinary unanimity which was exhibited by the Indian journals on the Burmese question,” and describes, with much unction, the happy spectacle of rival editors laying aside their animosities, to combine in applauding the course pursued on that occasion by the Government. Editors, like players, must please, to live; and as the whole Anglo-Saxon community in the East, most especially those of the shipping and shopping interest at Calcutta, have, for the last twenty-five years, had a craving for a renewal of war with Ava, the newspaper must have been conducted upon most disinterested principles, which had opposed itself to any measure conducive to so desiderated a result.

We have now skimmed over the annals of a hundred years, endeavouring, as we moved along, to detect the ruling principle of each successive period, and to trace its influence upon the leading events of the time.

In looking forward to what is to come, we shall not speculate on the spontaneous limitation of conquest, because we feel that this will never be; for this simple reason, that we shall never sincerely wish it to be. Wars, then, will go on, until, on the north-west, we shall have accomplished all that Sir C. Napier either predicted or recommended, and until, on the south-east, we shall have added Siam to Pegu, and Cambodia to Siam. Within the geographical boundaries of India Proper, also, there are several tempting patches of independent territory to be absorbed, such as the Deccan and Oude, both of which, along with the Rajpoot and Bondela states, are all marked like trees in a forest given up to the woodman. The inexhaustible plea for interminable conquest, internal mal-administration, will ever furnish grounds for the occupation of the larger states; and though many of the smaller Hindoo principalities are admirably governed, according to their own simple notions, still, as they certainly will not square with our ideas of right, some reason will always be found to satisfy the English-minded public that their annexation is both just and expedient. Then we shall, indeed, be the sole Lords of Ind; but after destroying every independent court where natives may hope to rise to offices of some little dignity, we shall be doubly bound to meet, by arrangements of 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 Council, 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,[45] 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 damped 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 avarice 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 cotton-cultivation, 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 equal to the control of British-born settlers, half a dozen of whom are more difficult to rule than half a million of natives. There prevails among Englishmen of every grade a notion of the East India Company being a body of a somewhat foreign stamp, to whose servants it is almost degrading for a free-born Britain to be obliged to submit.

The amalgamation of the Queen’s and the Company’s superior tribunals, known at Calcutta as the Supreme, and the Sudder, Courts, would, by coupling the home-bred judges appointed by the Crown with the country-trained nominees of the local government, give a weight to the magistracy acting under this combined authority, and thus fit it for the better discharge of the difficult duty of controlling and correcting the excesses of Englishmen settled in the interior. These settlers often find in the menace of an action or prosecution before a remote and somewhat prejudiced tribunal, a weapon wherewith to combat the immediate power of a functionary, amenable individually to the Queen’s Court in Calcutta, for every act which legal ingenuity can represent to be personal, and so beyond the pale of official protection.

The fusion of the two superior courts will not, in fact, lessen the personal responsibility of the English magistrate; but it will remove an apparent antagonism, calculated to keep alive a spirit of defiance towards the _local_ authority in the breast of many an English settler, the effects of which, as described in the extract above given, from the letter of a Bengal gentleman, are felt by every native with whom he may have any dealings. Much has been written and spoken about the duty of protecting the people of India from being oppressed by the Government and its agents, but few seem to have thought of that more searching tyranny which a few strong-nerved and coarse-minded Englishmen in the interior, invested with power by the possession of land, may exercise over the people among whom they are located, and from whom they are eager to extract the wealth which they long to enjoy in a more congenial climate.

This species of tyranny will of course be most felt among the feeblest, and is, consequently, likely to be more grievous in Bengal than among the hardier population of Upper India. But wherever the Anglo-Saxon goes, he will carry with him his instinctive contempt for tribes of a dusky complexion; and where this is not counteracted by the imposed courtesies of official life, or checked by the presence of a sufficient controlling authority, it will ever be ready to break out in a manner injurious to the interests and feelings of those subject to his power.

Our future rule will, it is evident, become daily more and more European in its tone, and there will consequently be an increasing call upon those engaged in its direction to watch over the conduct of the dominant race, to restrain its arrogance, and to see that the equality announced in the laws does not evaporate in print, but is something real and substantial, to be felt and enjoyed in the ordinary everyday intercourse of life.

If this can be accomplished by legislation, the new Commissions and Councils will not have been created in vain; but if their labours end in merely adding to the existing tomes of benevolent enactments, without effectual provision for their enforcement, then we cannot but fear that our projected measures of improvement, being all of a European character, will add little to the happiness of our subjects on the banks of the Ganges, and be regarded by them merely as ingenious contrivances for extending our own power, and completing their subjugation.

THE SECRET OF STOKE MANOR: A FAMILY HISTORY.