Upon how false an estimate of human nature this policy was founded became apparent at the first blast of the storm; and we believe that its injustice was lost sight of at the time, from its assuming the guise of an ardent zeal for the support of the village community system. Of these communities it may be sufficient to say, that they are best supported by protecting them from encroachment from without, and leaving their internal economy to be entirely adjusted by themselves. It may be difficult sometimes to combine their preservation with the recognition of the superior title of a talookdar, where such a title comes in the way, as does not often happen, but nothing can prove more ruinous to the system itself than that minute official meddling which we suspect generally ensued when the talookdar's influence was effectually crushed or removed.

A report addressed by him to the Government of Agra in the year 1844 has lately been printed for private circulation by Mr. H. S. Boulderson, formerly a member of the Board of Revenue in the Upper Provinces. This able paper records in detail several instances of treatment experienced by talookdars in our provinces, calculated to account but too clearly for the repugnance evinced by men of the same order to the introduction of our rule into Oude. We select two from the cases detailed by Mr Boulderson as samples of the course pursued towards men, who hold in Upper India a rank corresponding with that of our highest landed nobles in England or Scotland. The Talook of Munchanna, in the district of Mynpooree, consists of villages scattered over a wide extent of country. The very nature of the property shows that it must have been gradually acquired, and not by any sudden act of violence and usurpation. It had for centuries formed part of the Rajà of Mynpooree's possessions, but this possession was held to have been merely an official tenure under grants which, however ancient, it was determined to regard as "only patent grants of talookdaree office." The talook was accordingly resumed about the year 1844, and the talookdar, who, we are told by Mr Boulder

The other case is that of the Talook of Moorsan, in the contiguous district of Allyghur. The holder of this talook, happening to be a man of energy and considerable ability, did not quietly submit to be stripped of all the estates of which the revenue and executive authorities sought to deprive him. He brought actions in the civil courts against those to whom many portions of his estate had been transferred, and so popular was he among his former tenantry, that many of the parties sued admitted his claim, in order that he might re-enter upon possession of his ancient property under the sanction of a judicial award. Thus re-established in his former position, he has, during the recent commotions, remained steadfast in his allegiance, rendering, we have been assured, most essential service to the British authorities, by keeping open the communication between the upper stations of Delhi, and Agra, and Cawnpore. There can be no doubt, as observed by Mr Boulderson in the brief preface to his pamphlet, that "the conduct of the Government in these cases, and the kindred spirit shown in the resumption of rent-free land, must have had a powerful effect in lowering our character for justice and truth.'

Our sketch of the state of feeling towards us on the eve of the mutiny would be incomplete without some mention of the resumption proceedings alluded to by Mr Boulderson.

It was the practice of former governments of India to reward services by hereditary grants of portions of land to be held free from the obligation of any payment to the fisc of the State. In our early regulations of 1793 for the Lower, and in those of 1803 and 1805 for the Upper Provinces, the Government deliberately pledged itself to recognise every such tenure as should be proved to have been held under a valid grant of the former rulers of the land. As time went on, and our functionaries became better acquainted with the

country than they could possibly be at the period when these pledges were given, it began to be seen that the liberality of Government in this matter had been much abused. Many of the grants it was suspected were forged, and undue extension had, in many instances, been given to the quantity of land exempted from payment of revenue, even when there was no doubt of the validity of the document under which the land originally granted was held. In the year 1819 inquiry was first set on foot, and was carried on for many consecutive years with such scrupulous adherence to the ordinary rules of judicial practice, that though large tracts of country were brought for the first time on the rent-roll of Government, not a complaint was heard from any of the parties affected by the measure. During this period, though the inquiry continued to be conducted by officers specially selected for the purpose, and armed with somewhat extra-judicial powers, an appeal to the ordinary courts of justice was allowed to any one discontented with their decision.

The judicial principle, however, in the course of time, fell out of estimation, and the ordinary tribunals were considered too slow and too considerate to satisfy the impatience of the quick spirits who then began to influence the counsels of Government. A new court, called a Special Commission, was accordingly constituted, as the authority in the last resort in all cases concerning rent-free tenures. Then, indeed, though still trammelled with some observance of judicial form, the work of resumption went merrily on, to the but moderate benefit of our treasury, and the infinite disparagement of our name for good faith, humanity, and justice. No plea was considered too weak to justify a resumption. Grants stamped with the approval of Warren Hastings, Clive, and Sir Hector Munro, in the Lower Provinces, were pronounced insufficient; while in Upper India, even the fact of a tenure having been conferred at the instance of Lord Lake, could barely rescue it from confiscation. At last resumption became a passion; hundreds of

decisions in favour of Government were passed in a single day; and the principle was broadly proclaimed, that the very existence of a rent-free tenure was a nuisance, and ought to be abated. The following anecdote may show the state of native feeling on the subject of the destruction of these tenures, which supplied many of the decayed families of the old aristocracy with their sole means of subsistence.

Towards the end of 1838, on the day when the tidings reached Calcutta of the King of Persia having raised the siege and retired from Herat, a friend of ours received a visit from a Mussulman gentleman of his acquaintance. In the course of conversation, our friend, forgetting how cruelly disappointing it was to the raised expectations of his visitor's co-religionists, communicated the news of this event. Notwithstanding that command over their feelings which all Asiatics possess, the Mussulman was quite taken aback by the intelligence, and, unable to conceal his mortification, tried to qualify it by saying, "Everybody would pray for the continuance of the Company's Raj, if it were not for the resumptions."

It is necessary here to guard against the conclusion that this disposition to deal roughly with whatever stood in the way of any favourite scheme must have arisen in the minds of the Company's officers on the spot. The disposition was one of home growth transplanted to the East, and there quickened into active life. It sprung up under the transformation in the spirit of British administration, which, soon after the year 1830, spread from the parent state over all its dependencies. If the exact connection cannot be pointed out in as far as measures of civil and internal government are concerned, there is no difficulty in showing how directly the same spirit, when extended beyond our own borders, emanated from those who held the reins of government in England as well as in India. Three several Ministers of State have, at different periods, avowed their share in promoting the invasion of Affghanistan, for all the consequences of which

they have thus shown that they, and not the East India Company, or its servants, are responsible.

Lord Palmerston, in his famous Tiverton speech of 1841, in ignorance of what even then had happened, drew a taunting parallel between the friendly footing on which we stood with the Affghans and the mere military occupancy of Algiers by the French.

Lord Broughton, some years ago, in his examination before a committee of the House of Commons, frankly, and in a rather "alone-I-didit" style, declared himself to be the sole author of the Affghan war.

Both these noble lords spoke before the consequences of the measure had fully disclosed themselves; their candour, therefore, is not so striking as that of Lord John Russell, who, after it was clear to every man acquainted with India, that the expedition to Cabul had led to the mutiny of the Bengal army, by gratuitously avowing his share in the former, has very recently admitted his responsibility for the latter.

In further proof of the influence exercised by home-bred talent on the minds of those intrusted with the civil and political rule in India, a saying may be cited, ascribed to Lord Macaulay, which was frequently repeated with admiration by the advocates of progressive conquest-"You are ruling the whole of India, with the revenue of only half; "-meaning of course, that, the defence of all India from external foes devolving upon us as the paramount power, none of its revenue ought to be permitted to flow into any but our own coffers. The above were, we believe, the very words used, and, in point of wisdom, seem to us to fall short of those uttered at different periods by both Runjeet Singh and Dost Mohammed, when they said that the secret of our power lay in this, that, leaving much to the native princes, we had not to contend with their despair. In justice to the departed, it is but fair to state, that the Court of Directors always strove to infuse a more moderate spirit into the dealings of their own servants. It was all in vain their power was felt to be on the decline, and the younger functionaries had already begun to look

past them to the greater men behind.

But it is time to put a stop to our own speculations, that we may make our readers acquainted with the sentiments of the two authors of the works before us. Though members of the same service, and nearly coevals in standing, their views are in some respects as different as the circumstances under which the information contained in their several narratives was acquired.

Mr Gubbins was one of the Lucknow garrison, and shared in all its dangers, privations, and trials; but the society he lived in was European, and consequently, excepting as open foes, he saw little more of the undisguised native than is usually seen by our official countrymen in the East. Mr Edwards, on the other hand, was at first the "sole European officer in charge of a district with a lawless population of nearly 1,100,000 souls ;" and then, from the 1st of June to the 31st of August, a houseless fugitive, seeing more of the real native in his wanderings than would have fallen under his notice in a lifetime spent with Europeans as his chief or hourly associates. The two narrators appear also to have started with a different bias. Mr Gubbins has no sympathy with the landed aristocracy, whether hereditary or of our own creation, and seems to think that British India would be better without any of these gradations of society. This at least is what we gather from the concluding observations, commencing at page 428 of his very interesting work, where he seems to look forward with pleasure to the rule by "bayonets,' though a misgiving comes across him as he reflects that the "new principle may be pushed too far," to the neglect of "that principle which has been the safeguard of the empire for a hundred years-I mean our respect for the feelings and religion of the people." Mr Edwards, on the contrary, seems to have been deeply impressed with a sense of the injury done to the landed gentry, and even to the village communities, by our wrong-headed benevolence in subjecting them to courts of justice, fashioned on the English model, and invested with the mischievous power

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of selling land to realise the amount of their decrees. Judging by remarks that drop from him incidentally, he must, we conclude, have had many personal friends among the people of his own and the neighbouring districts of Bareilly, and nothing delights us more in the story of his adventures, than his clear perception of the good as well as the evil in the character of those among whom he was thrown, under difficulties which would have proved fatal to any one with a mind warped by the vulgar prejudices of the day, against every man with a sable skin. Nothing can indeed be more evident, from the whole tenor of the narrative, than that Mr Edwards owed his escape to his previously established reputation for kindliness and sympathy with the people of his district, and to the knowledge, which he had taken some pains to acquire, of the character of our native subjects, and of the true way of appealing to their feelings. In support of our conclusion, we will cite two remarkable passages from the first pages of the slender volume

before us.

"On Monday the 25th of May, I received certain information that the Mohammedans of the town of Budaon, who were that day assembled for prayers, on occasion of the Ede festival, were to rise at noon and create a riot, which would probably have resulted in the plunder and destruction of the place. I

at once summoned the most influential inhabitants of that persuasion to meet me at my house. They immediately came, many of them very fierce and insolent, and all in a most excited state. Soon after they were seated, and I had commenced talking with them, I saw Wuzeer Singh, a Sikh peon, and one of my personal guards, come up quietly behind me, with my revolver in his belt, and my gun in his hand, and station himself immediately behind my chair. In the tumult and excitement, and where all were armed, his entrance was unnoticed, but his quiet and determined demeanour made me for the first time

feel an assurance that he was a man I could depend upon in any difficulty or danger. This Wuzeer Singh, whose tried fidelity, courage, and devotion, make me regard him as Paul did Onesimus, 'not now so much as a servant as a brother beloved,' deserves some notice

from me here. To return to my visitors. By degrees they calmed

down, and by leading them into conversation, and reasoning with them, and, above all, playing off one party against another-knowing, as I did, that a bitter animosity existed between several of them-I managed to occupy their attention until the time fixed for the rising had passed. The plots, which I do not doubt were premeditated, were for the time defeated, and the day, to my infinite relief (ah! what a long one it was!) passed off quietly. I think I never wished more in my life for some one of my own countrymen to talk to, than during these miserable days between the 20th and the 27th of May. I had every reason to distrust the Sepoys

forming my treasury-guard, who belonged try, stationed at Bareilly; and it was by to the 68th Regiment of native infan

no means comfortable to sit in the close vicinity of these gentlemen, who, at any moment, might break out into open mutiny and murder me. My police were little more to be depended on, and I felt my isolation greatly. It was, therefore, with no small joy that, while sitting at my solitary dinner on the 27th of May, I saw my cousin, Alfred Phillips, magistrate of Etah, ride up to horsemen, some belonging to different the house, escorted by about a dozen regiments of irregular horse, others common police sowars. He gave a most deplorable account of the state of things in his district, and had himself, with his men, had an affair with a body of rebels in the town of Khasgungi, in which he killed no less than three men with his own hand. He had come across the Ganges, with the view of going to Bareilly to procure some military aid to

put down the disturbances. I was forced to disabuse him of this hope, informing him that I had already myself more than once applied for aid in vain, as none could be spared."

One cannot peruse this simple statesible it would have been for an unment without perceiving how impospopular man, or for any one who had stood aloof from the people, however great his general talents, or profound his acquirements, to have steered his course with success through such a scene as that described. It were well if Mr Bright could be induced to commit the whole to memory, that before again launching into invectives against the Indian civil service, he might reflect whether men with such duties to perform, and such perils to encounter, are really entitled to no higher remuneration than

they would receive in a nominally corresponding situation in their own country under a milder sun.

Let us now, in conclusion, endeavour to extract sense from what Mr Edwards places before us, by showing how it bears upon the State, and is suggestive of improvement in the administration of Upper India. The practice of legislating with a regard rather to the public feeling of England than of India (a practice likely to gain strength from recent changes), is one at times productive of no small injury to the latter country. Our horror of bodily suffering in any shape, as a means of enforcing payment, is so great, that it is against property alone that every coercive process, not only of the Government, but of the Courts of Civil Justice, must be directed. On this point the Asiatic and the European are directly at variance. The former would welcome a law, substituting what the latter would call torture, for our clumsy expedient of selling land, and so deranging the framework of society. The following extracts from Mr Edwards's work will place this part of the question in the clearest light before our readers :

:

"To the large number of these sales during the past twelve or fifteen years, and the operation of our revenue system, which has had the result of destroying the gentry of the country, and breaking up the village communities, I attribute solely the disorganisation of this and the neighbouring districts in these provinces.

"By fraud or chicanery a vast number of the estates of families of rank and influence have been alienated, either wholly or in part, and have been purchased by new men, chiefly traders or government officials, without character or influence over their tenantry. These men, in a vast majority of instances, were also absentees, fearing or disliking to reside on their purchases, where they were looked upon as interlopers and unwelcome intruders. The ancient proprietary of these alienated estates were again living as tenantry on the lands once theirs; by no means reconciled to their change of position, but maintaining their hereditary hold as strong as ever over the sympathies and affections of the agricultural body, who were ready and willing to join their feudal superiors in any attempt to recover their lost position, and regain possession of their estates.

The ancient landed proprietary body of the Budaon district were thus still in existence, but in the position of tenants, not proprietors. None of the men who had succeeded them as landowners were to give me any aid in maintaining the possessed of sufficient influence or power public tranquillity. On the contrary, the very first people who came in to me, imploring aid, were this new proprietary body, to whom I had a right to look for vigorous and efficient efforts in the maintenance of order."

How close a resemblance does not this picture present to what might have been drawn of Ireland towards the close of the last century! In India, as in Ireland, the old proprietors clung to the soil; and the new men by whom they were supplanted proved in the hour of trial to have

no influence whatever over the minds

of the peasantry. Mr Edwards shows in the following passage how he had warned the Government of the danger inherent in this state of things :

"For more than a year previous to the outbreak, I had been publicly representing to superior authority the great abuse of the power of the Civil Courts, and the reckless manner in which they decreed the sale of rights and interests connected with the soil in satisfaction of petty debts, and the dangerous dislocation of society which was in consequence being produced. I then pointed out, that although the old families were being displaced fast, we could not destroy the memory of the past, or dissolve the ancient connection between them and their people; and I said distinctly, that in the event of any insurrection occurring, we should find this great and influential body, through whom we can alone hope to control and keep under the millions forming the rural classes, ranged against us on the side of the enemy, with their hereditary retainers and followers rallying around them in spite of our attempts to separate their interests. My warnings were unheeded, and I was treated as an alarmist, who, having hitherto only served in the political department of the State, and being totally inexperienced in revenue matters, could give no sound opinion on the subject. Little did I think at the time, that my fears and forebodings were so soon to be realised."

An account follows of the counterpart of the fiery cross (the mysterious chupaty or cake), which, issuing from