to Smyrna. Circumstances detained me for many days at Hydra; and one night as I returned to the monastery where I lived, from the house of Jacomaki Tombazi, an attack was made on me by two soldiers. They suddenly left me, but my friend Dr Dumont (now a distinguished medical officer in the service of King Otho) was that very evening assaulted by assassins, and received four wounds, but was spared when the villains saw his face. It was conjectured that I was the person sought after, and that a change in my dress had deceived the assassins. Demetri was furious; he declared that Alecco must have bribed the assassins; and he left me, in spite of all my entreaties, to punish the attempt which had been made to murder his master. From Smyrna I sent the portrait to England. Years after, I became acquainted with its romantic history.

In the spring of 1823 I returned to Greece. Demetri soon joined me. He owned that it had been his intention, when he left me, to slay Alecco the moment he saw him. On his passage to Athens, he found himself in the boat with Dumont's assassins. Every body was delighted with Demetri; even these banditti were charmed by his careless wit. They became his tools, confessed that they had been employed by Alecco to murder an Englishman, and owned that they were not ignorant of Alecco's communications with the Turks. Demetri then conceived the idea of a rich revenge: the delight of having Alecco executed seemed greater than that of executing him. Demetri watched him, surprised his correspondence with Omer Vrioni, revealed his treason to Odysseus, who condemned him to death in a very summary manner; and my former college companion, Alecco, was hung over the empty tomb of Themistocles. A satire, I suppose, both on the classic and romantic schools, for Odysseus detested equally Maurocordatos and Colettis.

(BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.)

THE

LAWS RELATING TO INDIA,

AND

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY:

The last Charter act, passed in 1833, effected material changes in the instrumentality by which England rules the millions of Hindostan. The Company was not only deprived of the monopoly of the trade with China, but was absolutely debarred from engaging in any commercial transactions, and became, from the date of that act, a purely governing body; the directors of which have a strong interest, not merely on the score of reputation, but of a pecuniary nature also, in the wise and equitable administration of the affairs of a country, upon which they and their constituents have been rendered exclusively dependent for their dividends. The making India responsible for these payments, amounting to L.640,000 per annum, in return for which a considerable part of the commercial assets of the Company was applied to the liquidation of funded debts, has been strongly condemned by some,-fondly disposed to believe that it would have been right or practicable to settle all the difficult and delicate ques

tions at issue between the Company and the Government, by rudely casting the sword of power into the scales in which it behoved the great council of the nation to weigh fairly and considerately the claims of the body, which, however anomalous its constitution, and whatever its sins of omission or commission, had unquestionably won and maintained for England a mighty empire; and was ruling it, at the period when the mode of its future management came under discussion, with great and increasing vigour and success. It is very questionable whether public opinion would have permitted, or the letter of the law would have sanctioned, a measure involving so much national ingratitude as the dissolution, in 1833, of all connexion between the East India Company and the wide regions which its military and civil servants had acquired for the Crown, and had governed so long and so ably. It is certain, in our judgment, that nothing would really have been gained by it, either for England or for India. There are obvious reasons of the highest national importance, why the enormous patronage of India should not be conferred on the ministry for the time being; and ingenuity has not yet devised any plausible scheme by which the servants of the Crown could be debarred from the use and abuse of this superabundant supply of the richest materials for oiling the wheels of government, otherwise than by the interposition of such a body as the Company. As regards India, no one who knows how its affairs have been administered by the servants of the Company on the one hand, and how the comparatively petty business of governing the colonies of the Crown has been executed on the other, can doubt that it would have been a grievous sufferer from a change of agency. In the one case, there has been uninterrupted and signal success, achieved by a succession of able men, with scarcely an instance, in the long course of eighty years, of even partial failure at any important crisis; in the other, there has been almost constant weakness, inefficiency, and dissatisfaction, felt and expressed by all acquainted with the working of the system; and not seldom serious remissness or positive misrule, issuing in more or less disastrous results. Further, it is es

sential to the welfare of India, that the principles on which it is governed should be fixed on a more stable and enduring basis than the contingency of the maintenance of power by any ministry could afford; that the councils of its ruler should be free, to the utmost possible extent, from the action of English politics; and that the singleness of their view to its interests should not be liable to be distorted by any temptation to make this or the other measure connected with its administration the means of upholding or distressing a parliamentary party. A board chosen in any imaginable manner by the Crown or the people, could not be expected to possess these aptitudes in so great a degree as the directors of the East India Company; and it is obvious that no mere segment of the ministry could so far abstract itself from the whirl and excitement of the home politics of the day, as to make the affairs of India its primary concern. But these affairs might most beneficially engross the attention of the ablest of our statesmen; they cannot, without grievous mischief, be regarded as objects of secondary consideration by any individual or body responsible for their administration. Yet it is certain that they would be postponed by mere politicians to a thousand matters of transitory, but nearer and more urgent interest.

The Charter of 1833 did not alter very materially the practical relations of the Court of Directors to the India Board; but it defined those relations more precisely, and laid down the course to be taken in the event of the controlling authority differing with that court, on any occasion, as to the orders proper to be sent to India. No orders 'relating to any public ' matter whatever,' can now be issued by the court without the previous sanction of the board formerly the directors could correspond with any parties in this country without the intervention or knowledge of the controlling authority. Nor can the court now make any money-grant without the permission of the board. The initiative in all cases is with the directors, except when they shall omit to prepare, and submit for the consideration of the board, orders or despatches upon any subject, within fourteen days after receiving a

VOL. IV.

:

64

requisition to that effect. But But the board is empowered to alter, at its discretion, the drafts of any despatches submitted by the court for its sanction; and the court are required to sign and forward the orders so remodelled by the board. The court may remonstrate against directions of this nature; but if they be reiterated, their only means of resistance are passive namely, a refusal to sign the despatch as required; leaving the board to enforce its authority by the instrumentality of the Court of Queen's Bench. The issue of such a conflict must depend entirely upon the moral strength of the parties, as resulting from their being severally right or wrong upon some important point of principle, involving considerations higher than any of mere policy of justice or good faith; for, of course, the court would not be justified in making a stand on any lower ground, against the power with which the Board of Control is unquestionably vested by the law. In one instance since 1833, the court did take up such a position of passive resistance, and maintained it with equal spirit and judgment; the board, which was grossly in the wrong, being obliged to recede from its requisition. Such collisions, happily, can seldom occur when both parties are ordinarily honest and sensible, and are not hlinded indeed, under the existing system, rarely be the case in regard to Indian affairs-by any factious motives.

as can,

The constitution of the Court of Directors is this. The directors, thirty in number, are elected by the proprietors of East India stock, voting by ballot; £.1000 stock (worth at present about £.2500) entitling to one vote; £.10,000 stock to four votes. Six of the directors go out every year, and as regularly return to office at its close, never having to encounter even a show of opposition, except when one or more of the six happen to die, or choose to retire, during the period of exclusion. In that event only, established routine permits new candidates to offer themselves, together with the remainder of the ex-directors, who constitute what is technically the house list; but though such circumstances frequently occur, only two instances have been known within the me