restless activity, an over-governing of the ruled, which does more harm than any ordinary amount of neglect. It seems tempting to say; "come, let us build a stately fabric whence shall issue inevitable fiats; let us reduce the inequalities of place and the hazards of caprice to one standard of right;" and again, "away with distinctions of faith and descent" is sure to be a favorite cry with people governing a distant dependency in which they have no immediate personal concern, also "let justice be done, though the heaven fall;" but history seems to shew that nothing of this will, in the long run, form a safe substitute for careful, conscientious study of detail; and a persevering attempt to scale the steeps of circumstance, not by patent air-balloons, but mounting, crag by crag, the difficult ground before us.

It will be well, therefore, to examine a little into the transition from practical to speculative legislation since "India Reform" first set in. Well aware of their delicate position, our early conquerors founded a policy which long formed the tradition of the India-House. The basis was discouragement to European settlers as individuals, combined with careful provision for all prerogative that could be desired for the race. They seemed unwilling to provoke or precipitate the clash of such antagonistic elements, as long as it could be postponed by the two-fold expedient of repression to British immigrants, and the apotheosis of those whom they were compelled to admit. This was one way of meeting the greatest of all the difficulties that can beset the governors of an alien race, much behind themselves in intellectual and moral progress; it was probably necessary for the formation of the empire; and as the empire grew, the policy might have healthfully developed with it. But the apathy of the conquered population misled its masters; and previous legislation having "brought India more under the direct control of the Crown," opportunities ensued which were not to be neglected. The expiry of the old Company's charter, the successful struggles of reformers in England and in France, and the personal peculiarities of Lord William Bentinck, conspired to give a marked character to the period of that nobleman's sway. India became a curious toy; a mixture of the petted object of philanthropic fondness, and the corpus vile of political experiment. A perfect fever of reform, indeed, broke out here as elsewhere-such disorders being often epidemic-and the assertion of native "rights" was loud and frequent. From 1831 to 1836, no less than eightytwo laws were passed-nearly half of which have been since modified, superseded, or repealed-including reforms of judicature, civil and criminal; the entire revenue, from land and

from external and internal customs; the coinage, and the Press, (which was completely freed from restraint, and, practically, from control). Regulation V. of 1831 extended the powers of Moonsiffs-the lowest judges of first instance, and declared natives of India eligible for the office; VII. of the same year ordered monthly jail deliveries; III. of 1832 declared the freedom of slaves; VI. of the same admitted natives to the jury-box; by VII. it was provided that, under no circumstances, "English or other foreign law" was ever to be followed in the civil courts; VI. of 1833 afforded comfort to laboring convicts; II. of 1834 abolished corporal punishment; XI. of 1835 freed the Press, native and European; VIII. of 1836 declared natives eligible to the highest bench of first instance; and XI. rendered Europeans subject to their jurisdiction. Many of these enactments, it will be perceived, proceeded on ideas, in themselves honorable and generous, and those subsequent to 1843 at least were introduced directly in accordance with parliamentary legislation. But a little observation of local peculiarities will tell us, especially after recent events, that India was not and is not ripe for the gratuitous introduction of those ideas. The abolition of corporal punishment, for instance, which was about the same time extended to the native army (as doing away with a practice deemed degrading, which was in the meanwhile constantly and publicly applied to European soldiers)-was not this a master-stroke of Centralization, and did it not serve to strengthen its parent? A culprit may be sentenced to imprisonment, or a court-martial may dismiss a sepoy from the service; for these are punishments which superior authority can remit. But a man flogged has little practical inducement to appeal. He might as well have been hanged almost; no authority can remove from his back the stripes inflicted by the lower court. Again, a disaffected, intriguing soldier was the very last man to come under the notice of a court-martial; consequently hundreds of such accumulated in regiments, well-known in many cases to the regimental and Company officers, but not to be controlled or dismissed for lack of power. Some checks might have been easily thrown in the way of individual caprice; a Commandant might have been required to obtain to his order dismissing such soldiers, the counter-signature of the adjutant and the officer in charge of the Company; to flog a sepoy the sentence of a regimental court might have been required; no civil prisoner need have been flogged, but by the sentence of a quorum of their magistrates; but in the long run the education of an English gentleman, the interests and responsibilities of command, and the prospect of assassination, would surely keep officers from any very gross abuses.

This course of legislation was all reversed in a few short months; the death struggle of 1857 witnessed the restoration of authority to regimental officers, the legalization of corporal punishment, the restriction of the Press, the practical exclusion of natives from offices of trust. But, till then, the restraints on local authority amounted to nothing short of fetters. Not only was the military Commandant rendered a cypher in his corps; but in the districts the power of the civil rulers was circumscribed in every direction. Increased jurisdiction was given to appellate courts, and to the Board of Revenue; prisons were put under central management; coinage was equalized, and provincial mints were abolished; and the system of "nugshas introduced, by which countries as large as the Austrian empire were to be governed in a study hung with maps. In 1857 things had come to that pass that a district officer had no less than fifteen different superiors calling on him for statements weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly;† while presenting to the people the old appearance of a visible providence, an idol only found to be hollow when struck.‡

India, in fact, had begun to be governed by Ideas, instead of Principles. It is only when Idea is wedded to Fact that true principles can be produced, but this rule was not observed. There can be nothing nobler, in the abstract, than the notion that all men are equal; but it is obviously a mere theory, applicable to an imaginary state of society, never found strictly true in the world of Reality. It may not be easy to get at the etymology of such words as "Quack" or " Charlatan ;" and the original root of "Empiric" is often lost sight of in practice; but one cannot be far wrong in applying those names to persons who, not content with expounding Ideas in writing, seize a remote, and apparently helpless dependency, and, in utter ignorance of the true data, introduce their Ideas wholesale. And to what purpose?

In times of peace a kind of dynamic action may be produced, but no chemical or assimilative operation is performed. Mischief brews; the patent machinery is powerless-except perhaps for evil-the storm becomes a hurricane; and the illplanned, ill-joined redundancies are swept away in an hour; tearing with them portions of the actual structure, together with a troop of the luckless understrappers. Such times of

*Tabulated returns.

+ Calcutta Review, May 1857. "The District Officer."

The writer knew a magistrate's life attempted in his own district in 1849, on the alleged ground that he "was of the nation who permitted the slaughter of beef." The culprit was imprisoned for five years!

divine judgment try and search every man's work; but woe be to the bunglers who reiterate their errors-though they may think it is not at their own risk.

It may seem arrogant; readers may take offence; but it can be proved that the facts of Indian life, whereon our system should be reconstructed, are not dreamed of by many of those who are foremost in the work. Surrounded by people who have passed through the peculiar influences of Greek poetry and philosophy; of Roman jurisprudence; of Christianity with its motley elements and universal brotherhood; of Teutonism, with its mystery, woman-worship, chivalry, and self-devotion, how can the untravelled Englishman comprehend, or sympathize with, a couple of barbaric civilizations, like those of Manu and Mahommed, where every principle is opposed to anything of which he has experience? Time was when such statements would have been treated as egotistic pedantry; but now all who run may read the rules on which is formed the Hindustani character. Recent events have shewn the natives of India to be, as a mass, treacherous, cruel, cowardly, and imbecile to a degree which persons long resident among them, would formerly do their best to ignore. Look at the past and present then, ere you seek to legislate for the future! As far as any one cause can be adduced to account for the sudden and wide-spread disaffection and insolence of the once submissive Indian population, can we not all see that it is to be found in the depression of the European name and dignity by doctrines emanating from London and Calcutta? Even in the heat of the outbreak, councillors could be found in Calcutta to legislate against the Press, and for Arms in a manner which placed the same restraints on Europeans as on Natives, and when Lord Ellenborough-who joins to local experience a sagacity which never misleads him unless wilfully divorced therefrom-draws the attention of the House of Peers to this dangerous pedantry, we find noble Lords rising in all parts of the assembly to support Lord Canning, and to denounce the opposite principle. The last great deed of the Government before the fatal month of May was the completion of a scheme whereby native judges would have been empowered to sentence Europeans, without the intervention of a jury, to imprisonment-with or without labour, for two years. But Διος ETEλELTO BOUλN. The lawyers at home were planning, and the settlers in India petitioning, the missionaries casting their pearls before swine; the Government calling for statements; and Parliament pouring forth its philanthropy, when the windows of the hell were opened, and the fiery flood broke forth.

The facts of India are certainly not easily learned; though we have now, by a countless price, obtained enough to shew

us that the Asiatic and European require separate courses of legislative treatment. Sir Charles James Napier, when Commander-in-Chief of the Indian armies, and proposing plans of military reform-for which he has had far more credit than he deserved-could think of no better check to Hindu usurpation than the entertainment of 40,000 Goorkhas. Now, in the first place, it is perfectly notorious that we cannot obtain the tenth part of that number; and in the second, to oppose them to Brahminism shews that-as he indeed confessed-Sir Charles knew "nothing of their tenets." But he might have learned them, and in his position; they are known by all who have anything to do with them, for rigid Hindus, subservient to their Brahmins, are so far from being "indifferent to the sex of a beef-stake" that no slaughter of the sacred animal is permitted at Dehrah Dhoon, one of their cantonments where scores of European families reside!*

Is it not then apparent that whatever ideas may be originated at the primary or subordinate centre of Government, they cannot generate into healthy life without a process conducted by the local and technical knowledge to be supplied on the spot? The primary centre of our system must be the imperial parliament of Commons, Lords, and Cabinet; but the opinions of clubs, and of journalists, and the sentiments of the constituencies supply the imperial parliament with a mass of notions. from which it cannot depart. And who will be bold enough to assert, this day, that the affairs of India should be entirely conducted by the clubs, the Press, and the ten pounders ?†

But, it may be asked, are the subordinate centres-Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Agra, Lahore-any better or safer ? Is the illustrious Obscurity nominated, from fear or favor, to be Viceroy for five years, during the first half of which he depends for information upon a clique of elderly gentlemen who never cross the Mahratta Ditch, is He the proper person for our Universal Dictator? Such men have their uses; they give an English tone to policy, a dignified lustre to administration; but can it be hoped that they will be entirely free from a disposition to govern Asiatics by the experience-or as above, by the ideas of Europe? It is often said that the English are not an idealistic race; but we are becoming cosmopolites, and we learn to think it very wise to blend a little pure philosophy with what looks like experience, but is only so when employed with the facts from which it has been inducted. If it were otherwise, there could not, certainly, be a single

* And of these 40,000 strictly united brethren and brave soldiers chose to rebel?

† Observe, moreover, that Indian Reformers are usually in favor of a great extension of the suffrage.