was the system of Thuggee, or hereditary murder; and for the suppression of this, also, the most effective steps were taken, under the rule of Lord William Bentinck. The goddess Kalee (otherwise known as Devee, Doorga, or Bhavanee), Siva's consort, made war in old time, it is said, upon a gigantic monster, every drop of whose blood became a demon, from whose blood again other demons were generated, till the goddess created two men, to whom she gave handkerchiefs wherewith to destroy the demons without spilling blood; and when they had fulfilled their task, bestowed the handkerchiefs upon them as a gift, with the privilege of using them against human beings for their livelihood. They are noticed by European travellers in the seventeenth century, when they seem to have used female decoys-as the autobiography of Lutfullah shows them to have done within the present century. -but were evidently of a much older date, even though we may not give implicit faith to the assertion of a Thug of the royal race,' that 'he and his fathers had been Thugs for twenty generations.' The fraternity consisted of men of different religions and castes, inhabiting all parts of India, having secret signs and a peculiar dialect. The majority of them are still, at least nominally, Mahometans; and according to their traditions, their different clans sprang from seven tribes, all Mahometan, in the neighbourhood of Delhi, who were dislodged in the seventeenth century. But they all agree in the worship of Kalee, observe her usual Hindoo festivals, present offerings at her most famous temples, solemnise special feasts in her honour, with offerings of goats, rice, fruits, and spirit; and after any murder offer solemnly to her a piece of silver and some coarse sugar-the holy wafer of Thuggee, which is held to change man's whole nature, and of which only those who apply the noose are on this occasion allowed to partake. The members of the gang are taught from boyhood to look upon murder by the noose as their calling. The boy is first employed as a scout only; then allowed to see and handle the corpse, and to assist in the interment: lastly, empowered to use the noose, after a solemn initiation from one of the elders, as his gooroo, or spiritual guide, by means of the sacred sugar. The pickaxe for digging the grave (also deemed a gift of the goddess) is solemnly forged, solemnly

consecrated, looked upon with especial veneration, worshipped every seventh day; the dead cannot be buried with any other instrument; it is the Thug standard— the awful oath which can never be broken. The Thugs followed ostensibly any ordinary calling — agriculture, industry, trade. They travelled under various disguises, often to considerable distances, straggling into villages by threes and fours, meeting as strangers. One of them sometimes passed as a man of rank, with numerous attendants, and his women in palanquins, which in reality contained generally the implements of their calling. They fell in with other travellers as if by accident, or for mutual protection. Suddenly, at the favourable spot, one threw the waist-band or turban round the victim's neck, another drew it tight, both pushing him forward with their other hands, a third seized him by the legs and threw him on the ground. If the locality was dangerous, a canvas screen was thrown up, as if to conceal women, and the body buried behind it; or one of them would distract the attention of travellers by pretending to be in a fit. If a stranger approached nevertheless, they wept over the body as over a dear comrade. The traces of the murder were quickly obliterated. Such was their expertness and success, that 100 Thugs could, it is said, slaughter on an average 800 persons in a month. They always went forward, never passing through towns or villages through which their victims had passed. If they killed a man of note, they took care to dispose of all his attendants.

They had implicit faith in omens; but when the omens were once favourable, they looked upon the victim as an appointed sacrifice to the Deity, so that, if he were not slain, Devee would be wroth with them, and reduce them and theirs to misery. So they ate, and drank, and slept without remorse upon the newfilled graves. A Thug leader, courteous and eloquent, being asked whether he never felt compunction in slaying the innocent, replied, 'Does any man feel compunction in following his trade, and are not all our trades assigned to us by Providence?'-'How many people have you killed with your own hands?'

None.'-'Have you not just been describing a number of murders?'-'Do you suppose I could have committed them? Is any man killed from man's killing? Is it not the hand of God that

kills him, and are not we instruments in the hand of God?' In their own villages they might be tender husbands, kind fathers, faithful friends. Often their calling was not suspected. Their community profited, of course, by their wealth. They generally paid tribute to the zemindar or to the police officials, whose brothers and other near relatives were often members of the gang; some Thugs were in government employ themselves. Superstition often protected them, when discovered, as the favourites of Devee. A rajah had been struck with leprosy, it was said, for having two Thug leaders trampled under foot by elephants, though he built up a wall begun by one of the Thugs, raised them a tomb, fed Brahmins, had worship performed. One of the Scindias, who had been warned to release seventy Thugs, began to spit blood after their execution, and was dead in three months. Rajpoot chiefs perished miserably for the like cause. So openly was the traffic carried on at one time, that merchants came from a distance to purchase the plunder.

The extension of British rule, however, gradually made the land too hot to hold them. Many were arrested in Mysore as early as 1799; others were punished in 1807. From the ceded provinces of Oude, by many sentences of imprisonment or death, they had to migrate, chiefly to Malwa and Rajpootana. In 1820, a large gang was apprehended in the valley of the Nerbudda, but escaped by favour of law and procedure. In 1823, in the same valley, two large gangs were again arrested, one amounting to 115; and this time convictions were obtained. Still, the law was too cumbrous and slow to extirpate them. Stringent measures were at last taken, under Lord William Bentinck (1829), for their suppression, particularly in the Saugur and Nerbudda territories. There were at this time very few districts of India' without 'resident gangs of Thugs;' in some, 'almost every village community was, more or less, tainted with the system; while there was not one district free from their depredations. A regular Thuggee Suppression Department was instituted. Mr F. C. Smith, political commissioner in charge of the districts above named, was invested with large powers for the summary trial and conviction of Thugs; Major (afterwards Sir William) Sleeman being appointed commissioner under him: other officers were subsequently charged with

similar duties in other districts. By promises of reward and employment, Sleeman and his associates gradually obtained from approvers full details as to the organisation of their fraternity, and the gangs were hunted down with almost complete success, latterly even in the native states, under arrangements made for the purpose. In six years-from 1830 to 1835-2000 Thugs had been arrested and tried, at Indore, Hyderabad, Saugur, and Jubbulpore, of whom about 1500 were convicted and sentenced to death, transportation, or imprisonment. The final stroke was put to the work after Lord William Bentinck's departure, in 1836, by an Act, making the mere fact of belonging to any Thug gang punishable with imprisonment for life with hard labour, and rendering procedure still more summary.

Cambridge Essays, Contributed by Members of the University. 1857. London: John W. Parker & Son. 8vo, 274 pp.

THE LAW OF ENGLAND.

The law of England is composed of three principal branches, of very unequal authority. These are, Statutes, Reports, and Text-books. The Statutes begin from Magna Charta (9 H. III.), and extend to the present year. The Reports

are records of the decisions of the Courts

upon particular states of facts, involving sometimes a more or less distinct enunciation of the principles upon which they proceed. Including the early series, called the Year-books, they cover a period extending from the reign of Edward II. downwards. The Text-books, of which Bracton is, perhaps, the oldest now in credit,* were written by a variety of private authors, from the reign of Henry III., and are of all shades of value-the opinions of Littleton, Coke, Sheppard, and some other writers, being of almost as high authority as the express enactments of Parliament; whilst others-especially the later ones-neither have nor claim any independent weight, and aim merely at the merit of being indexes, more or less accurate and convenient, to works of authority.

These depositories contain two different kinds of law, known respectively as Comfrequently been quoted in modern times. * Bracton wrote Temp. H. III., and has Glanville, who wrote Temp. H. II., is, I believe, considered rather out of date.

mon and Statute Law. The Statute Law consists of Acts of Parliament, and the Common Law comprises a number of old traditions, long since reduced to writing by a variety of text-writers, and a series of judicial expositions and comments on every branch of the law, contained in a great number of reported decisions upon particular states of fact. I may observe once for all-what must be obvious enough to any one who impartially considers the subject that the power which the Judges possess of pronouncing, with authority, which of several views upon a particular subject is the true one, and what are the principles to be followed upon questions arising for the first time, is a qualified power of legislation. The Criminal Law may, therefore, be said to consist of two branches, of which each is subject to increase by a species of legislation proper to it; the Statute Law, by the unqualified legislative powers of Parliament; the Common Law, by the qualified legislative power intrusted to the Judges.

ANCIENT AGRICULTURE.

It were easy to sketch the progress of agriculture all over the world from the earliest times to the present day. Mankind at first were shepherds, as soon as the savage life of a hunter began to be of less necessity and repute. Sacred writ in these times makes mention of the flocks and herds which roamed over the plains of Mesopotamia and Palestine, when the latter country is first mentioned. It is in later times that we hear of it 'flowing with milk and honey,' and all those products of grain, &c., which mark more advancing civilisation. The Carthaginians, among others, seem early to have left treatises upon the subject, translated by a decree of the Roman Senate, and the foundation of the works of Varro. Shortly after came the various Roman writers, and among them-not the least instructive, as well as practical-Virgil; who, notwithstanding some mistakes, has furnished us with precepts applicable even up to the present time. The maxim that a crop of flax or oats exhausts the soil, though the third exhausting crop mentioned by him, the poppies, applies not here, will still warn the over-greedy husbandman amongst us. And still the warning was needed, and the greedy race not extinct fifteen hundred years or more after his time, when Tusser, in his Five Hundred Points,' repeated it:

VOL. XXVI.

'Still crop upon crop many farmers do take, And reap little profit for greediness' sake.' Columella and Pliny have left much instruction, and a maxim of the latter, Latifundia perdidêre Italiam, is still the subject for discussion with political economists, as to the effects of large and small farms respectively. But it must be remembered, as an element of this discussion, that the Romans, like the ancient Chaldeans and Syrians, cultivated by slaves; and however a valuable crop, like tobacco in Virginia, or for some time sugar in the West Indies or elsewhere, might repay such expensive cultivation, we see one reason why Italy was ruined in the very fact of the waste occasioned by this most ruinous expenditure of power. The Romans found corn unprofitable by slave labour; they had recourse to pasture; a double evil was incurred; they were dependent on the precarious events of winds and waves for daily food, and at the same time the decay of the peasant population, the ancient Marsi pubesque Sabella, left them at the mercy of a hired soldiery, and the stalwart might and resistless sinew of the northern Goths.

Perhaps a similar cause to that of slave labour for many centuries retarded the progress of Europe and England. The Germans, who overran the greater part of Europe, are described by Horace and Cæsar as roaming over unmeasured acres, without steadiness or patience to take even more than one fugitive crop on the same land. So long as this state of things existed, no settled cultivation or improvement of course could occur; and though the feudal system was in some degree a bond of society for national defence, the uncertainty of the tenure of land, the exclusively military character of the system generally, and the oppression in which the lower peasants were kept (it existed longer in the Continent, it is true, than in Britain, though here we see traces of it long enduring in the name of Villeyns), were effectual bars to the progress of agricultural improvement. In Britain, the first substitution of cereal diet for lacte et carne was owing to the Romans, and under them we became a flourishing (for the time) and exporting country. Britain was then a habitat for the vine; and from its decay some have drawn the inference,, we believe erroneously, that our climate has deteriorated. We do not doubt that in the warm vales, such as those of the Severn, the best part of

P

'Nature's noble garden,' it would still be possible to rear that more congenial product of southern climes. The true theory is, that as the sugar-cane was once cultivated in Spain and elsewhere, but has since emigrated, so a similar change has occurred to the vine. After the Wars of the Roses, agriculture began to make some progress. By this time the midland counties had become enclosed, and taken some shape and form to the agricultural eye. The settlement amongst us of the Flemings had given an impulse to what is still one of our four chief products, the growth of wool. What the cattle were in those early times there are some means of ascertaining. A little salt beef was the only provender, for several of the winter months, of a nobleman's household; and probably the rushes which strewed the floor were the best support of the aged bullocks, which might improve on the summer pastures, but had difficulty in the months of winter to keep skin and bone together. As great a contrast would be seen between such and a modern two-year-old Durham steer, as if we could place at present a modern substantial Lincolnshire yeoman beside the fen man of Queen Elizabeth's time, who farmed, or fished, or fowled for a precarious livelihood, and, half amphibious, waded through the unwholesome Sloughs of Despond on stilts.

Let praise, where due, be awarded to the monks, for to them certainly we owe much of agricultural improvement. They first started the drainage of the fens, which it needs only to mention to the inhabitant of Cambridgeshire, of Lincolnshire, and other adjoining counties, for him at once to appreciate.

The works of Tusser, of Jethro Tull, and Fitzherbert, appearing in the middle of the sixteenth century, reduced to system a few plain precepts, though some of them but little accord with modern notions. Tusser's moral sentiments of 'good husbandry housewife,' and his eschewing of raskabilia—a race, we fear, amongst hired servants still existing are precepts of wisdom never to be forgotten. Fitzherbert's works are probably less known to the public in general than those of Tull and Tusser, but they are understood to have been of great benefit to English farmers, and his description and correct ideas of the plough and other

implements show perhaps more science than could naturally be expected at so early a period.

Shortly after this, perhaps, little can be remarked, except that about the year 1600 (1607 is the correct date of the passing of the first bill) began the draining of 6000 acres of fen-land in the midland district, attention being turned to the now rich, but then savage and desolate country, of which 350,000 acres are divided between Cambridge and Lincoln alone. Under the Commonwealth, several men, who deserve to be known better than they generally are, wrote practically on various branches of husbandry, and many of the less usual crops. Blythe, in his 'Improver Improved,' in 1652, treated largely, among other subjects, of draining fen-land and regaining land from the sea, and was too enlightened to fall in with what was the common popular notion at many periods in England, that large enclosures tended to prevent labour, and to be hurtful to wages. He wrote on clover and sain foin, then lately introduced, and wild woad, and madder, and saffron, and liquorice (now chiefly interesting, we believe, to one district in the West Riding of Yorkshire), rape and cole seed, and others, what we should now term speculative crops. Cromwell took some pains in introducing Flemish husbandry into Hertfordshire. With William III. came in the good Dutch root, the turnip, destined long to be tortured with unscientific treatment, that is, broadcast or otherwise, though the very pivot, for the last fifty or sixty years at least, of all improvement in scientific or high farming. Till clover and the turnip came in, agriculture in Britain can scarcely be said to have left its infancy. These introduced ameliorating crops; they abridged the summer fallow, and gave rise to a new era in affording means for a regular supply of fat meat throughout the year, to obtain which, except by the comparatively expensive corn and hay, no means could before exist. Jethro Tull was acquainted with and promoted the drill system; but few will now support his supposed plausible theories, of enabling repeated grain crops to be grown without exhausting the soil, though the utility of his system for leguminous or root crops is the essential foundation of all improvement in high farming.

The Old Bachelor in the Old Scottish Village. By Thomas Aird. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Foolscap 8vo, 324 pp. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE SCOTTISH

PEOPLE.

The Scotch are a peculiar people. Strong are the lights of their national character, and deep the shadows. From the earliest times they seem to have been grave and enthusiastic, impatient of the interference of strangers, steady in their old attachments, and slow in forming new ones. This was already their character when they were roused to oppose the systematic attempts of Edward L. to subdue their liberties; and, in reaction, there can be no doubt that this time of peculiar peril and exerted patriotism helped strongly to fix the leading features of the people. Danger tanght them suspicion, and caution, and watchfulness; and the frequent sore defeats which their little bands had to endure, in a protracted struggle with wellappointed and superior numbers, mixed a wild pathos with the stern and short breathings of vengeance vowed anew. Brief intervals of enjoyment, the more fervently enjoyed because beset by a thousand calls to renewed toil, and ever liable to be mingled with regrets for the past, and the sense of still coming danger; the grave and thoughtful consideration of grey-headed sires, mingled with the forebodings of old women, and relieved by the inspiration of minstrels, and by the fierce jest and careless farewell of the young warrior, poignant from the brooding heart, but flung recklessly forth to cheat the fears of his aged parent, or the maiden of his love; all this may account in part for the expression of our early national temper, in which humour, and pathos, and resolve, are so curiously blent. In later times, if we look to the general character of the Scotch, in connection with the external mode of the Christian faith to which they cling, we find them strongly intellectual, and impatient of anything like a spiritual yoke. The English are a reserved people: the gesticulations of the continental races are an abomination to them: they are shy in displaying the softer part of our nature: their peculiar humour is often nothing more than pathos checked, curbed, and turned queerly aside by their sense

of shame at being caught giving way tender-heartedly. Such being the national temperament, no wonder the English took kindly to the Reformation, with its more sober ritual, and less ostentatious outward show of emotional worship. If the English are reserved, the Scotch are still more so; and hence at the Reformation they proceeded much farther than their southern neighbours in reducing their religious ordinances to a severe simplicity. The attempt of England, in the time of the Stuarts, to impose Episcopacy upon Scotland, besides being in the first place directly at variance with the wishes of the latter nation, awoke the remembrance of former attempts from the same quarter to impose a civil government; and thus Episcopacy became doubly associated with the idea of tyranny, making the Scotch cling still more closely to their own form of worship. We can easily see how these great national circumstances gave strength, and sturdiness, and religious enthusiasm to the Scottish character; and it is no less easy to see that they were likely to cause and confirm the leading national faults: these are a want of courtesy and softness in the expression of even their best affections; suspicion and illiberality in their estimate of strangers, and of such as differ from them in their set opinions and modes of living; disputatious habits; pride and self-sufficiency. In matters of religion, these faults are often carried to an offensive pitch. So determined are the Scotch to discard everything like outward ceremonial observance in their worship, and keep their ground aloof from Popery and Prelacy, that they will hardly allow themselves to be decent in the house of prayer: only listen in country parishes to the clamorous confabulations of the deaf old people around the pulpit ere the clergyman comes in; look at the half of the worshippers taking their seats so soon as the minister gives any hint by the turn of his style, or the inflected cadence of his voice, that he is drawing toward the close of his prayer; see the half-dozens that are leaving the church before the conclusion of the service, and the dozens who are seizing their hats, and brushing them with their elbows during the last blessing, the end of which they seem impatiently to wait for as the signal to clap them on their heads. And then the rage of the Scotch for preaching! Why, the very days of their Sacraments