fearfully against them, what possible inducement have they for entering upon it? And if there be no fear of their throwing off their allegiance, how should" free discussion " produce any baneful effects? We are wasting words on this part of the argument. If, in England, it be not found necessary to shut out our military men from the exercise of the common rights of British citizenship; in India it is far less so. There every officer's hopes of fortune depend on the favour of the executive, which has at its disposal such masses of the matter of corruption. There is hypocrisy as well as absurdity in the pretextit is put forward by the Caste who monopolize all office and power, from governorships and councillorships, down to the lowest grade of civil office. They have so long ruled without any control besides the weak and inefficient one of their own body, that they cannot endure the indignity of being made amenable to any other tribunal-to public opinion-in a word, to any authority but themselves, or their own sacred order. Unless, however, the expressions of interest in the happiness of India be a hollow, heartless, mockery and insult, the Indian government must be made amenable to public opinion; the CIVIL BODY must be compelled, to do their duty to those they govern, and there is no other efficient compulsion in India or anywhere else than the control of popular reprobation for misdoings. They must be deterred from evil themselves and must cause their millions of native underlings, the petty officers of justice, police, revenue, customs, trading and manufacturing monopolies, &c. to abstain from pillaging the timid and helpless peasants under the cloak, real or assumed, of their masters' authority. Nay more, the government, whose plenary and despotic influence spreads through all the provinces, must be taught to invite the comments and animadversions of that part of its subjects who are able to benefit and improve it by these strictures. An honest Governor ought not to complain; he ought rather to rejoice in and to profit by the commentaries of his dependents; who can only animadvert; for all power of reforming or changing is vested in the governors conjointly with two or three councillors from the civil body who, with the state secretaries and heads of departments, engross all substantial influence. In truth, the secret is here. It is the apprehension that a free press would penetrate into the dark places of corruption; that it would unveil the abominations and mysteries of patronage and power; that it would expose that dishonest policy which makes the well-being of thousands subservient to the enrichment of a few; it is the dread of censure; the desire of concealment; the weakness of self-conviction, that shrink

from the scrutiny of the public eye. Danger, indeed! There is danger in giving equal protection to good or bad government; in sheltering oppression; and warding off all attacks from extortion, violence, or injustice, when perpetrated by those in authority. For a time the degradation of the Hindoos may protect us from the re-action of their sufferings on our misdeeds; but a new era is arriving; a new race is growing up in India; the disproportion between the conquerors and the conquered is daily increasing; the half-castes will become, ere long, the natural and intellectual citizens of the east. They will have Indian sympathies blended with European knowledge. Are they to be forgotten in our calculations of the future, or is our legislation of that blind and reckless character which thinks nothing of the coming time, and makes no preparation for, and pays no regard to, those inevitable prognostics, which guide the wise and prudent in their plans and purposes?

From 1818 to 1823 the press of India was free. We would invite those who love to trace the onward career of improvement, to contemplate those halcyon days. Let the evil which belonged to them be exaggerated as it may, and then be weighed against the good produced. The mere facts that a daily newspaper in Calcutta should have deposited an annual profit of £8,000 per annum ; that many newspapers should have been suddenly established by natives in the dialects of India, are in themselves most remarkable and speaking events. On a subject to which we must refer, a subject of supreme. importance to the well-being of India, that "free press " threw abundant light; and, in advocating colonization, became the great champion of Indian, and not less of British, interest. The word has glided from our pen, but we must defer this most important branch of our subject to a future early occasion.

Yet before we conclude this article on a subject so vast in all its bearings, so pregnant with interest to England as well as India, and so little understood, we shall endeavour now to condense into a few distinct heads much of the desultory matter which we have now thrown together, as suggested by the topics as they severally occurred to us on perusing the works at the head of this article. It may be useful to our readers as a preparation for what we shall hereafter have to say on colonization and interchange of productions between India and England—that they set themselves in the mean time gravely to ponder the questions which follow.

We ask accordingly-solemnly and soberly do we askwhat must be the condition of India, ruled as it is by a Company here, feebly controlled by the Crown; and by a Govern

ment there, shunning publicity and responsibility. Truth and honesty will confirm the facts which we have embodied in a few questions; and thus embodied, and thus connected, we are persuaded they will make their way to the understandings of the wise, and the sympathies of the good. What, we ask, must be the condition of any country, WHERE the monopoly of office is vested in a distinct and separate class, into which no native talent can obtain admission, no aptitude found out of its privileged circle can serve for initiation; a circle whose members are responsible to one another alone, the lower functionaries being only dependent on the higher, and succeeding them, in turn, by almost regular gradations; the power under which they act to day being the power they will wield to morrow, and which they are not likely to wish should be checked or curtailed?

WHERE every functionary, the judges not excepted, holds Office simply during the good pleasure of the Government; where not only office, but rank fortune and station depend on the government; where there are no Nobles, nor landed Aristocracy, no Universities, no associations, no free companies, no free courts; where the many have no representatives, no delegates, no means whatever of addressing the government collectively or, in other words, efficaciously?

WHERE to assemble for deliberation or petitioning, without a special permission, is unlawful; where it is unlawful to print or publish, or to possess printing materials, and equally so to make use of any book, which the Government may choose to think obnoxious?

WHERE there are no channels for the safe expression of complaints, no instrument for the redress of grievances; where the courts of justice are dilatory and expensive, frequently situated at many days' journey from the abode of complainants, hemmed in with a thousand forms, and all proceedings encumbered with heavy taxation; how can such means of redress avail the black and starving peasant-how can he contend with delays and corruptions against a white oppressor, rich and powerful?

WHERE the important class of half-castes seem wholly neglected or forgotten, or blended as "natives" with the mass of the black population-removed, at an incalculable distance, from the whites (whose children they are), in spite of talents and attainments frequently of a high order?

WHERE the whole of the native population, whether Mussulmans or Hindoos, are shut out from any but the lowest walks of the public service, the "command of a platoon" being the highest military post, and the most distinguished civil office

not more elevated; while strangers inconnected with and

menceclize all power, ience, all wealth, all dignity,

earbest moment to the mother country ! WHERE the ban of perpetual

stertity, and a barmer to all agri

tribute exacted from the canvir: where there is no posses

the barest neizs of support to the mer and peasant, de

WHERE the English who conquers, and the Indians who

Was the sole ressessors of ul newer are unconnected with

country empty-handed and bury them it is soen is they are

paced over

IN DE ME X them, the smallest voice, or portion of a voice in choosing any one of the numerous Žinezomares them whether dig i ow, wie or nacs, cui ir military,

or habit, have at least the shadow of some popular rieres

some Farisa, A numcipal, or commercial, or collegrace infuence In Spain itseif, as in the Spanish colonies while under the Spanish Voke, the people's voice was deard in the vantami

of India the zeinuar, the village chief, the village watchmen, tradesmen and betty functionaries, but, above all, the village

Britisa india rom the most insignistern of the swarms of venul

the night watch of the streets, up to the highest functionary, ALL are appointed without the knowledge, participation, or consent of any of the governed, however respectable from caste, education, or property. In such a state of things, the tree of hope within man (if such a being can be called man) is withered. Being wretched to day, he is indifferent about to-morrow. He begets, as he was begotten, to the inheritance of thankless toil, a toil which produces to him no wealth, and promises to him no amelioration. He approximates to the Servile State-a degree only, above the animal condition:

WHERE these inhabitants, poor and wretched as they are, pay not only for a costly local government, not only for the charges of wars and the interests of debts incurred without their concurrence and without any benefit to them; not only for the jobs, and pensions, and extravagance of the secondary government at the East-India-house, but for a third government, called the Board of Control: so that in point of fact this miserable people, in a very imperfect state of civilization; without accumulation of capital, actual or in near prospect; wretchedly housed; all but quite naked; supporting existence on a handful of rice and a pinch of dirty salt; and painfully and primitively scratching the unmanured and never fallow earth, for a yearly harvest, this unfortunate people to whom we have not communicated our arts, our sciences, our capital, our liberal institutions, or scarcely any thing really worth their having, are actually saddled with the intolerable expenses of three Governments abroad and at home, cumbrous and costly! ARE THESE THINGS TRUE? If so-OUGHT SUCH THINGS TO BE?

ART. II. Tremaine; or the Man of Refinement. 3 vols. 8vo. London. Colburn. 1825.

SPECULATION has been very busy respecting the author of this novel, as if it had displayed powers and possessed a character of unusual merit and energy. We are more inclined to believe that the whole rests with a publisher well versed in all the direct and indirect modes of advancing the sale of works in which he is interested. In any case, it is of little moment, in an age when every one writes, whether the author be a political character or aught else: it is a man, and, from internal evidence, a young man, although he pretends to have held office under Mr. Perceval; and, that he belongs to that division of society popularly termed Saints, is not less apparent.

As a romance, or novel, this work is extremely slender; since