manner to consist of natives; and secondly, in allowing those natives to be so much of one class, that the tract of country from Benares to Delhi should have been left so all but completely in the hands of native soldiers. This has been not merely an oversight, but a crime. The responsibility must rest somewhere, and wherever it is proved to rest, accountability and punishment should follow in due course. The precious lives lost in that district, and the convulsion of Bengal, indeed we may say of Hindostan, have been among the consequences. It is a singular and a deplorable fact, that the Sepoys were in possession of nearly every magazine in the province of Bengal. In the immense area from Calcutta to Umballah, including upwards of 1100 miles in length, we had only two regiments of cavalry and four of infantry, a force little exceeding 5000 men. In turbulent Rohilcund there was not one English regiment. In Oude there was one solitary regiment of British troops drawn from Cawnpore, which city, as well as Allahabad, was entrusted to native troops, with what result many a mourner in these realms can too sorrowfully tell. Bareilly, with its 100,000 inhabitants, was without a single European soldier.

Of the civil service of India we have hitherto said nothing. Though much has been said in the dispraise of this body by two very able but occasionally indiscreet men, the late Sir Charles Napier and the living Lord Ellenborough, we do not believe that the body in general merits the aspersions cast upon it. No men are more carefully prepared for the service by a previous education and training; and it was said by Mr. Canning in 1813, during the debates on the charter, that there could not be any thing radically wrong in a system which produced men who had given their evidence so ably. Let it be remembered that Hastings, Adam Edmonstone, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Colebrook, Forbes, Henry Ellis, Holt Mackenzie, Lord Metcalfe, Wilmot Horton, Robert Rickards, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Secretary of the Treasury, Sir George Clerk, the Governor of the Cape, and the late Sir Richard Jenkins, were all civil servants. The great fault of the civil service in general is, that it is somewhat too doctrinaire and abstract in its views. Civil servants transact far too much business by writing, consuming reams and reams of paper about trifling affairs. If the civil servants mixed more with the people and carried themselves less haughtily towards men not of their own class and caste, things would have gone on much better for the last quarter of a century than they have done. The whole of the education service and all classes of Europeans in India complain of the airs which covenanted servants give themselves, and of the superciliousness with which they treat

Sir Charles Metcalfe-John Lawrence.

497 all those who are not within their magic circle. The natives of India complain of more contumelious treatment, and speak of the spirit and bearing of many of the juvenile writers in a bitter spirit. Many of these writers are exceedingly young and inexperienced, and it is hoped that increase of years may bring a majority of them increase of wisdom. Fine examples are offered them in the character and career of such men as the late Lord Metcalfe and the living Mr. John Lawrence, (the brother of the gallant Sir Henry,) the settler and pacificator of the Punjaub. Those to whom the government of British India is entrusted, though for the most part honourable and able men, are human beings liable to errors, mistakes, and neglect of duty, and they require not merely to be constantly supervised, but to be roused and stimulated to a more adequate feeling of their responsibility. The intelligent people of England desire that the natives of India should be treated as justly, considerately, and humanely, as may be possible, but no intelligent man in this country thinks that Asiatics can or ought to be governed by Habeas Corpus and trial by jury, still less by parochial vestry, and a free press and open discussion. India has always been held by the power of the sword, and must now and for a long time to come be reined in more tightly than ever. All attempts to govern Asiatics on the model of the English constitution have hitherto failed, and to our thinking must hereafter. Asia has never understood government in that form, and never will. The natives of India must possess the political virtues and intelligence of the better communities in Europe before they can be fit for anything of that kind. In fact, they must cease to be Asiatics and lose the perfidiousness and the treachery which have been exhibited too recently, both by Hindoos and Mussulmans: bad qualities which both religions have a tendency to generate and foster. The truth is, that we have indulged in a great deal of amiable but impracticable doctrinaire dreaming on the subject of Europeanizing the native. People who habitually lie for the pleasure of lying, who cheat for the delight of cheating, and deceive and dissemble for the intense pleasures of deceiving, dissembling, and simulating, can only be kept in order by the strong hand. To use the words of an ancient, the jaws of such a race must be bound fast with bit and bridle. To talk to such a people of liberty, equality, and fraternity would be nothing short of treason to England. The press that circulates such doctrines in India, whether native or English, deserves to be suppressed. As to the native press, now happily extinguished, it was of the very worst description. It inculcated the most pernicious and diabolical doctrines in the most incendiary language, and was at the service

of any native or any foreign power inimical to English rule. There were, and there still are, some good journals in India, conducted by Englishmen; but there are some newspapers written in English in all the three Presidences which are no credit to the press, and which cannot be too narrowly watched by the law officers of the Crown.

The language of such journals should now be most guarded, for an unwise or imprudent word, or any incitement either to native or to European, may cause much needless suffering and an unnecessary effusion of blood.

It has been said by Mr. Disraeli in Parliament, that this was a national, and not a military revolt. This is altogether a mistake. Every mail that arrives from India proves that the revolt was purely military, and not in any wise national. Little consolation, however, can be derived from this fact, for it is on the military force that the possession of Hindostan has hitherto depended. We held the country hitherto by native soldiers, and if we can no longer do so for a time, at whatever cost, at whatever inconvenience, we must hold it by British troops. To talk of a national revolt in India implies great ignorance of the country. There is no such thing as national opinion; there is nothing like patriotism or love of country. The races of India have no idea of the feeling of a native fatherland, or of independence of any sort or kind. They have always had a master until the British sway-generally a tyrant-and if the British sway were removed to-morrow, they would only have a new master and a new tyrant. In so far as the great mass of the people of India are concerned, or have an opinion, we believe they are contented with our dominion. They are better off than they ever were before in any period of their history. They are neither suffering nor oppressed, and, generally speaking, they have more faith in the Feringhee than in their own people. We have been to them in the main good governors and good masters. We have made new lines of roads; we have placed steamers on their rivers; we have spent more than a million on the Ganges Canal, which traverses a distance of more than 800 miles; we have created the Solani aqueduct; we have prevented frequent famines by works of irrigation-we have executed the Baree and Doab Canal, Macadamized the Bombay and Agra roads; we have abolished Suttee, Infanticide, and Slavery; and we have interfered as little as possible with the habits and customs of the people. The natives enjoy perfect personal independence and free habits of locomotion. They are under no surveillance or restraint. There is no system of passports, as in foreign countries. They do what they like, go where they like, say what they like, provided they do not violate

Self-Government-Employment of Natives.

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the laws, and these laws are of the fairest and mildest description. In them is found nothing severe or arbitrary, and all acts of the Government can be called in question, if it violate the law, in the Indian Courts of Justice. In truth, the Government descends to a level to which no other Government descends, for any one may try a question against it in the lowest court of justice, without having obtained the previous sanction of the Advocate-General. This is not what is called in England selfgovernment, but it is a far better thing than self-government by the native. Self-government has been attempted in India, and has been found impracticable. Municipalities have been offered and refused. It is a fact that the Deputy-Governor of Bengal imposed a municipal constitution on one town, and that the inhabitants proceeded against the magistrate who imposed it. In obedience to a cry raised by a clique in England, the Government of Bengal has given appointments to cadets of native families of rank, and has employed natives as much as possible. But these attempts have not been very successful. The natives do not exhibit devotion to the service; they do their work without pride or zeal, and they are, moreover, apt to be corrupt. We do not say the Bengal Government has been right in yielding to those cries raised by interested cliques in England. But the Bengal Government, more especially since politicians of the Peel party have been in the highest offices, has been pusillanimous. It has even abandoned right and duty when any loud cry is raised by any party of political roarers. It has in this but followed the tactics of its departed leader-a man without convictions, without sincere opinions, without a conscience in any other sense than one inspired by the thing called a Parliamentary majority. It is not wonderful that, governed as we have described, Bengal has increased in wealth, in population, and in cultivation. For eighty years or more, the territory has been protected against external war. The taxation has not been onerous. The customs duties have been, according to Mr. George Campbell, rather after the fashion of tolls on transit than regular fiscal or revenue customs. Though the foundation of the criminal law is the Mahomedan code, yet our scrupulous judicature gives more even than British facilities of escape to the prisoner. The Courts profess to give every man the law of his own religion, country, or tribe; and where the plaintiff and defendant are of a different religion, decide according to the custom of the country. In the whole history of Bengal, since the period of the English dominion, there has not been a single execution for a political crime. It is therefore no marvel that the people have not joined the military in their iniquitous mutiny. That mutiny is alone

1

the work of Mussulman perfidy, ferocity, and fanaticism, operating on Brahminical falsity, intrigue, and Jesuitism.

In one great work the Bengal Government has not done its duty. It has not, as a Government, given the encouragement which it ought to have given to railways, but has left them to speculative and trading companies. Had there been a regular series of railways now in India under the control of the Government, the undertaking would be not only profitable commercially, but it would have rendered mutiny impossible. There would have been a prompt and instantaneous communication open for stores, for munitions of war, for the transport of troops between Delhi and Calcutta. Should any of the mutineers survive the terrible and just retribution which is in store for them, the survivors among the traitors might be doomed, for the remainder of their lives, to labour on some great scheme of Government railway works, which should be undertaken with a view to hold this immense territory by a small and well-disciplined army, in which the European element should, in a much greater degree, predominate. At present, it is stated by a writer who is, we believe, trustworthy, that the European in the army of Bombay is to the native as 1 to 93, in that of Madras as 1 to 163, while in the Bengal army it was as low as 1 to 243.

It will be collected, however, from what we have stated, that the East India Company has its good deeds to adduce against those who remind it of its shortcomings and its faults. That the Government has been perfect-that it has done all it might, and therefore ought to have done, the most enthusiastic advocate of the Company will not maintain. The administration has been, on the whole, one of improvement and of progress undoubtedly; and Sismondi is right when he stated that the East India Company have been the best masters which India has ever had. There have been immense and desolating wars, undoubtedlythe Rohilla, Mysore, and Mahratta wars; the Javanese, Pindaree, Burmese, Afghan, Scinde, and Sikh wars; but these wars have not been willingly undertaken. They have been forced on Great Britain sometimes against the wishes and desires of the Directors. The moral as well as the physical weakness of Indian nations have compelled us to undertake conquests which we did not originally contemplate, and from which we would have shrunk in dismay a century ago. Our trade was continually threatened by the caprices of a despot or by the cupidity of his officers, by the lawless violence of regular native armies, or by the desultory warfare of plundering tribes. The East India Company could place no reliance on the grants, promises, or concessions of princes-on the friendly disposition of the native, or the for