the long-talked-of plan of a "staff corps." "staff corps." It is, that an officer selected for staff employment, and placed on the noneffective list, might prove on trial unfit for his situation, and that in this case it would be out of the power of the authorities to remand him to regimental duty. In reply to this we would observe, that, in the first place, the resort to regimental duty, as a sort of "hulks" for the punishment of refractory or incompetent staff officers, is most impolitic, unfair, and reprehensible, because degrading to a class of officers, whose feelings and dignity ought to be matter of peculiar solicitude to Government. And further, we would observe that this alleged defect of the scheme is in reality one of its greatest recommendations, because it would compel those in office to select for the staff from public motives, instead of from private favour and regard.

Here our self-imposed task ends. We have endeavoured -with what success our readers must determine-to trace the causes, which have caused Sir Charles Napier to pronounce the present state of discipline of the native army to be "such as to require every exertion on the part of every officer to bring it to that perfection, which it ought to attain." We have suggested a remedy for some at least of these causes. Our power extends no further: the application of the remedy lies with those who, immediately or remotely, govern the country and the army.

ART. VII.-The Letters of Civis on Indian affairs, from 1842 to 1849, by Henry Russell. London. Murray. 1850.

THE letters of "Civis are now acknowledged by Sir Henry Russell, an old Bengal civilian, who began his career in the Persian Translator's Office, when Mr. Edmonstone held that post, and who, many years afterwards, was Resident at Hyderabad. He quitted the service a quarter of a century ago; and now, having passed the allotted age of man, he has been pleasantly beguiling the time in his Berkshire home, by writing letters to the Times newspaper about India and her affairs-letters distinguished rather by their gossiping anecdotical character than by any profound political sagacity. The politics, indeed, are sometimes a little hazy; but the anecdotes are always pleasant and suggestive and it is just the kind of book, that a garrulous critic likes to lay his hands upon, and to take as a casus belli for a war of gossip with his author. So, without any further preface, we proceed to attack the work.

The first letter contains some general reflections on the danger attending the rapid extension of our Indian Empire. "Our power in India," it is said, "like the ripple of a stone thrown into the water, is destined to be lost in its expansion. It wants the first element of strength; and sooner or later must be exhausted by its own growth." And this principle, laid down at the outset of the discourse, seems more or less to govern all his subsequent discursions. It is a very grave question; but one of so purely speculative a character, that it were little profit to attempt its solution. According to all calculations, not only the Indian Empire, but the Russian and the Chinese Empires, ought to have fallen to pieces long ago. If there were any one-ness of design, any identity of interests, any religious or social sympathy, to bind together the conquered into one great body, the military and civil elements having blended therein, neither English, Russian, nor Tartar conquerors could resist the combination. dominant power would be crushed as easily as a hazel-nut under a mill-stone. But the people, whom we govern, are at war among themselves. Their weakness is our strength; their disunion is our security. Dum singuli præliantur, universi vincuntur. We seldom hear of any serious disturbances between the native inhabitants of the country and the European interlopers; but history is dotted with illustrative examples of the enmity existing between natives of different creeds, and the little that it takes to give outward shape and substance

The

to the irritability festering within them. There are old men amongst us now, who remember how grievously the strong mind of Lord Wellesley was shaken, when intelligence reached Calcutta, that the sepoys of the Persian Ambassador's escort at Bombay had fallen out with his personal attendants, and that the Elchee himself had been killed in the affray-and how, some years later, another affray between Metcalfe's escort at Umritsir, and a party of Sikhs, at a time when the conduct of Runjit Singh was greatly perplexing Lord Minto, brought the wavering mind of the Punjabi ruler to a settled point, by demonstrating the superiority of the Company's sepoys to his own troops, and so determining him to look with a more friendly eye upon the British alliance. There are men amongst us, who remember these things; whilst even the new arrivals of the last cold season can point to the recent disturbance at Mulkapore in proof of the difficulty of cementing the discordant parts of the great fabric of Indian society. If it were not for our presence in India, the affrays, which now have, for the most part, small beginnings and small endings, would deluge the country with blood. The small beginnings would have great endings; and a casual collision, or a Mohurrum broil, would often result in the massacre of thousands.

It is of little use, we say, to attempt to solve the question whether the extension of the Indian Empire is a source of weakness, or of strength. We have our own opinion, like other people, upon the subject; but so long as we are convinced that our Indian Empire has extended itself, under the direction of a higher power than our own, we see but little advantage in discussing the question of expediency. The extension of our Indian Empire has been matter of sheer necessity. The East. India Company have ever set their faces against it. Our local rulers have never designedly sought it, and have often struggled against it. In spite of all protests-of all efforts of every thing that can be said in theory and every thing attempted in practice our Indian Empire has gone on extending itself; and now, that our frontier has reached to the banks of the Indus, it is of little use to consider, whether it would not be better for us, if we had never transgressed the limits of the Jumna. We must make the best of our position, now that we are there. Whether for good, or for evil-whether for our exaltation, or our humiliation-it is beyond us to say: but the fiat of a superior power has determined the time and the extent of our progression, and we have nothing to do but to recognise "God in History" and to bow to His behests.

It will be said, perhaps, that if we settle political questions in

this summary manner, all discussions of human justice and human wisdom are idle and unprofitable, as all such considerations are swamped in the one idea of an overruling Providence. The answer to this is as trite as the objection, and we need scarcely pause to offer it. Man is not passive, because God is omnipotent. We are to do our best according to the light that is in God works through us and in us.

us.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them as we may.

But it is (all the same,) our work to rough hew them, with so much of human wisdom and such directions of the moral sense, as Providence has implanted within us. L'homme propose; Dieu dispose. We have extended our frontier to the Indus; and it is at least permitted us to hope that the extension will be crowned, not only with profit to ourselves, but with blessings to the people we have conquered.

In the second letter, which is dated April 3, 1842, “Civis” writes of the old alarm of an Afghan invasion, and of our missions to the Court of Persia. "Since the destruction of Tippu's power in Seringapatam in 1791," he writes, "the views of the Indian Government have from time to time been directed to the defence of our possessions against invasions by an European rival. The intercourse we have cultivated with Persia was designed to close that road against the French; and our late calamitous advance into Afghanistan was made, professedly in contemplation of an attempt in that direction by the Russians. I never believed that there was anything beyond menace in the display of that design. Bonaparte · had no more purpose of invading India, than he had of invading England; nor has the Emperor Nicholas any real project of the same kind now." That the invasion both of India and of England was really meditated by Napoleon, requires no inconsiderable stretch of scepticism now to question. We have nothing here to do with his designs on England; but that he seriously thought of disputing our supremacy in India is a fact which, after patient enquiry, every historian will be compelled to admit. The invasion of India by a confederate army of Russian and French troops, uniting on the plains of Persia, was discussed at Pilsit in 1807 by Napoleon and Alexander; and a regular compact for the furtherance of the scheme was entered into between the two potentates. That it was a mere sham on the part of Napoleon, intended to fill the mind of the Czar with visions of oriental conquests, and so the more securely to blind him to the real views of the over-reaching

Frenchman, we, while fully believing that Alexander was at this time duped and deluded by his more able ally, are not prepared to recognise. It was not a mere sham; nor was it a mere fleeting impulse. Napoleon was not the man to send a costly mission to the Court of Teheran; to despatch engineer, artillery, and other officers to Persia, to erect fortifications, to cast cannons, and to drill the Persian troops; or to depute men of science to the Persian Gulph, to survey its harbours, and to obtain other needed information-without some ulterior designs. When Arthur Conolly, in March 1839, had an interview with Metternich at Vienna, that statesman told him that he knew little about Persian and Afghan affairs, adding-"Indeed, I never had occasion to think at all about those countries, except ' when Napoleon threatened to carry his arms through them. 'He really did project an invasion of India. Russia has never < had any more serious thoughts of such an undertaking, than you in India have of invading Siberia." We may accept the testimony of the great Austrian minister on a point of past history, if not upon one of cotemporary politics. That Napoleon projected the invasion of Hindustan is as certain, as that Zemán Shah was puffed up with the idea of the same magnificent enterprize: but both monarchs were restrained from the effort at far-off conquest by the necessity of action nearer home. Whether there was any real cause of apprehension, in either case, on the part of the Anglo-Indian Government, is altogether another question. But that the enterprize, however unsuccessful it might have proved to be in the sequel, was really meditated by Napoleon, we require some better testimony, than that Civis," to induce us to disbelieve.

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There is much suggestive matter in this letter. The writer declaims against the folly of prosecuting defensive measures beyond the frontier, and argues that the nearer home we meet our enemies the better. Two objects," he says, have been assigned as the principal motives of our defensive measures : one-that of anticipating the project of the invader, by encountering him on his approach, rather than on his arrival; the other that of engaging the powers on his line to join with us in our resistance. Of these two purposes, a little con'sideration will, I think, show that the first was prejudicial, and that the second was more likely to be defeated, than promoted, by the measures we adopted." He then goes on to say :Whether it be from the centre, or the north, of Europe that our invader is to issue the length of the march before him, and the want of supplies upon his line, will constitute his greatest difficulty. By advancing to meet him, we lighten his enterprize, by shortening his way. That effort, which would otherwise have lain wholly upon him, we take partially upon our