: cisely the instruments of Government, which a philanthropist would advocate; but we belie or deceive ourselves when we declare or fancy that our Government is maintained otherwise than by the sword. And in pronouncing it to be so, we are far from admitting that it must therefore be one of oppression. The land that has for nearly a thousand years been held by the sword, and that has as often changed hands, as that sword has been blunted, or the grasp that held it relaxed; the land that knows no principality of longer standing than our own; that in its length and breadth, within the last fifty years, has seen Moguls, Patans, Mahrattahs, Pindarees; and mixed miscreants of every caste and clan rooting up the old families, and settling themselves in their places-how could any Government, however beneficent, subsist for a day simply by its civil policy on the ruins of such a tempest-tost land? How in a day convert tribes, who have lived only by war to habits of peace; how make cultivators, who for centuries have never paid a rupee, but under fear of the sword or the scourge-how induce them to pay their dues, unless they know that the civil officer has the power of calling in the military and that the latter is prompt and bold? It has been the fashion to exalt the Mahomedan conquerors at the expense of the British Government; and some of those, who have most benefited by the latter and possibly have in their sphere oppressed the subject, against the views, opinions and orders of their masters, have been loudest in vituperation of them; but let any impartial person turn over the pages of Dow-a violent hater of the system of his day, and we fear with too much reason— and see how little cause there is for singing the praises of the Moslem rule, beyond that of the Christian. War, eternal war, was then the sole business of royalty. Akbar made some laws for the protection of the people, but he is almost a solitary exception; and having spent the half-century of his reign in eternal battles and ceaseless marches, he could have had but little time to look to the improvement and cultivation of his empire. In the early days of his reign, every province was in rebellion, and with him, as with his predecessors and successors, while Guzerat was being subdued, Cashmere or Bengal would be in arms; and while the royal troops were employed against those states or in the Deccan, the Punjab or Delhi itself would be in revolt. A freak or favor to an It is a curious fact, that not only has the power of the Nizam, the kingdom of Oude and all the Mahratta States risen within the last century; but that the families of the three bordering States, Burmah, Nepal, and Lahore have been established within that period. individual would for a time remove the Hindu capitation tax; while once in a century a tyrannical Governor would be trodden under the feet of the imperial elephants. Seldom was the honest Minister or Governor (when such rare creatures appeared) rewarded, whilst the bold and the unprincipled amassed treasure and bequeathed it to their children. Mark the fate of Akbar's great minister Byram-the man to whom he owed. his throne; whilst the Saadut Allys and Nizams have left kingdoms to their descendants. Our only wonder is, when reading the Moslem annals that such men as Asoph Jah, and his father, and Mohabat Khan, should have lived (generally) prosperously and died in their beds. Utter selfishness was the Moslem motive; the high roads, the seraes, the plantations-were they for the people? Not at all, but for the royal progresses to Cashmere. The expence of one Badshahe serae would have built a dozen for the people. Throughout the country it was the same. In the direction the king was likely to travel there would be roads and conveniences; but elsewhere the people might sigh in vain for paths, for water, or for shelter. The Newabs of Oude, and Kings of Juanpore and of the Deccan did the same. They beautified the neighbourhood of their own favourite residences, made roads to their country seats, built bridges over the rivers in their way, sunk splendid wells and planted lines of trees. Some of our own magistrates in the times of the good old close-borough system did the same; and to this day European convenience is more regarded than native wants-the collector-and-magistrate being often considered more sacred than the thousands of poor around him. Despotism, unchecked power in whatever hands and in whatever quarter, produces the same fruit; and we would divest our minds of all clannish feeling in discussing its merits. Wars and their train of ills were not confined to the Mahommedan times or States, in India. A glance at the old Hindoo annals will shew that if the country so suffered in Moslem times, it was not more free from such distractions in what are called the bright days of Hindu supremacy. Every where we see that the present occupants of the soil are not the aboriginals; and almost every district in India has its particular legend, how a Rajput, or other band, drove out, or enslaved the original holders; while another tale will perhaps tell of how the late conquerors were themselves overwhelmed; and how they eventually merged into another and a bolder race. We doubt whether India was ever under an universal monarch; and the Kings of the Hindu States of Oude, Kanouge, Muttra, Hustunapore, (Delhi,) &c. &c. played but the game that warriors of every age and every clime have ever played. They prospered, or sank; they conquered, or were themselves led captive; and then, as in later days, independent kingdoms disappeared, and small states rose into great ones. Not content with the usual and tolerably sufficient grounds for war, we read that Prithora the brave, the hero of a hundred fights, amused himself with carrying off the brides of the several kings, of whose intended marriage he had information. He thus brought on himself many wars, and eventually thereby lost his throne-but he lost no credit, and is to this day the hero of Rajput Romance. It would seem, indeed, to be mere idleness to write and talk of the happiness and purity of a people, who deified the perpetrators of every crime, and whose very worship sanctioned every abomination. When we read of the hundreds of thousands that took the field with the Persian Kings and with the Moguls; and consider that they had no commissariat, we may imagine the frightful famines that such armies themselves experienced, and the more frightful afflictions they caused to the countries through which they passed. Dow, in his preliminary dissertation to Ferishta, writes of bazars, &c. in camp; but no where do we find that there were any regular establishments of the kind; Brinjaries (themselves plunderers of the worst description) carrying grain, followed the camp or did not, according to the individual genius and forethought of the monarch or general of the day; but when Dow goes on to tell us that each horseman received from sixty to two hundred rupees* per month, we can understand the value of his several dissertations. We doubt whether under any native ruler, in any age, Hindustani horsemen received all their pay in cash; or if our present rate of twenty rupees per month to Irregular Horse was ever materially and continuedly exceeded. And whatever was paid was in assignments on distant lands, or in at least half grain and food as rations for man and beast, and the small balance only in cash. Dow goes on to say (page xviii. preface) that on such high pay, the soldiery could afford to encourage the grain-dealers, &c., who flocked in from neighbouring towns and villages as armies advanced; but the traveller Bernier, with much more apparent truth, tells us that there were no towns worth mentioning between Delhi and Agra, and that the banks of the Jumna above Delhi, being the line of the imperial progress towards Lahore and Cashmere, were extensive hunting grounds; that the imperial cortége usually left the high road, and sported through these Shikargahs, while the troops moved more directly forward. * Page xviii. Preface to Dow's Hindustan. We know that every where in the east, the track of an army is marked by desolation-that villages and towns are abandoned even at the intelligence of a coming hostile force. In the south of India, as the historian Wilkes, tells us, such flights are called wulsa, the people burying their valuables, and carrying with them a few day's grain-flying to the hills or the nearest fortress, and when the enemy remained longer than their supplies lasted famine and death ensuing. While we should all endeavor, abstaining from idle selfcongratulations, to soften the rigour of the British yoke, it is only fair to our country to shew that the English in India are not the monsters they are sometimes represented; and that although much remains to be done; many improvements to be made; many legislative enactments to be set forth, and acted on; much to be done, much to be undone--much for us to do, more for us to let alone; we have less to learn than is generally thought from either our Mahomedan or Iindoo predecessors. Lord Valentia fifty years ago travelled in a palankeen to Lucknow, and wrote a book, in which he stated that the Moguls had roads or causeways from one end of their dominions to the other. Mr. Buckingham, a quarter of a century afterwards declared, and in his time not untruly, that there was not a good road in India above Barrackpore--and still more recently we have heard a somewhat similar declaration made at a great public meeting in Calcutta. But let the period of our rule be counted, and let it be considered that it does not materially exceed the united length of the reigns of Aurungzebe and Akbar, and then let it be remembered that we have a trunk road from Calcutta to Delhi; a better road than the Moguls or the Romans ever had; and that not a district in India but has its branch roads, all doubtless more or less defective, wanting more or less bridges, ghats, seraes, wells, &c.; but still shewing that some attention is now being paid to the important subject. Let any impartial person visit the Punjab, where he will scarcely see such a vehicle as a hackery, or throughout the country alight upon a road; let him then travel to Oude, where his experiences will be similar, and then let him cross the Gogra and enter the Gorruckpoor District, not half a century in our hands. At once he will find himself in a country abounding with good roads, many of them bridged-and every year the number of bridges and other improvements are increasing. In this one district alone we doubt whether there are less than a thousand miles of road. We say, let these comparisons be fairly made, and then let England be exempted from the vituperations and unfair comparisons with which she is sometimes assailed; and rather let those who would so assail her, honestly do their own work; and however humble be an individual's sphere, no one of us but has the opportunity, if not of making a road, building a bridge, or a serai; at least of planting a tree, or of preserving one that is planted. But if even this small means is denied us, no poverty can prevent us from setting a good example to those around us, by shewing all that come within our influence, that a Christian is not to be recognised only by wearing a hat and coat, and by attending neither at the mosque or the temple: but by purity of life and honesty of conduct. But though compelled, in candour, to admit that without sword-government the British in India could not maintain their position, we feel strong in our hearts the conviction that one good magistrate may be better than a regiment one sound law, well administered, better than a brigade; that civilians must co-operate with the military; that neither unaided could maintain our empire, but that a happy admixture of a just civil adminstration with the strong hand will retain the country in peace and happiness as long as it is good that we should hold it; and it is not by believing either ourselves or our laws all purity, or all corrup tion, that we are likely to come to a right understanding of what is best for India, but by a close study of its past history; of the mistakes, and the injustice of former rulers, Hindu, Mabommedan and European; and then by setting ourselves down, each in his own sphere, and honestly working out the details of a code honestly and ably prepared; not shifting and changing from day to day, but founded on experience; and suitable to a rude and simple people, who like all people under the sun prefer justice to law, and the speedy obtainment of their ends. to eternal dangling about the precincts of dilatory courts. But it behoves us, under every view of the case, to keep up our strength. Debility, the result of apathy and negligence, would be nothing short of a state of crime. There are few national, as there are few bodily ailments, which have not their seat in debility; and any very apparent symptoms of weakness in the dominant power, would, under the present combination of circumstances, plunge the country into a state of terrible disorder and gird about with desolation every province in Hindostan. Let us see then what is our military strength-what are our means of national defence. Glance at the map,* and see the enormous expanse which the Indian Army is employed to * We may avail ourselves of this opportunity strongly to recommend the Map, which we have named at the head of this article. It is distinguished by accuracy of detail and great typographical excellence; and is, on the whole, the best and most convenient of all the Maps of India, which have been published. |