LETTEKS ON INDIA, EDWARD SULLIVAN, AUTHOE OF " RAMBLES IN NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA ;" " THE BUNGA- LOW AND THE TENT;" "FROM BOULOGNE TO BABEL-MANDEB ;" " A TRIP TO THE TRENCHES ;" ETC., ETC. TO JOHN TREMAYNfc, ESQ. LONDON : SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET. 1858. WNRY MORSE STEPNOW DS NOTICE. THE following Letters were printed for private circulation several weeks before the recent change of Government. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Introductory . . . . .1 CHAPTER II. Want of general knowledge on Indian subjects Objects of present inquiry Absolute necessity of acquiring the sympathy of the Natives Anomalous nature of our Indian Empire Necessity and great difficulty of colonization Value of India . . 16 CHAFPER III. The amount of cant that pervades Indian discussions Nature of our patent of right to India The cruelties of the Sepoys partly dic- tated by their religion Not new in History . .31 CHAPTER IV. Prestige Near is my shirt, but nearer is my skin Our Indian Empire too large Grievous want of Educated Europeans Blighting effects of inefficient rule State of Madras Districts of Tanjore and Guntoor . . 39 CHAPTER V. Composition of the Indian services Necessity of India to the exist- ing condition of the upper middling classes Rewards of educated labour Indian wealth diverted from its former channel Flou- rishing condition of matrimony amongst Anglo-Indians Conti- nued drain on the capital of India . . . 4'J VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. PAGE Good government more difficult to define than bad Absurdity of a double government Composition of Court of Directors Their remaining power very limited Their distribution of patronage honest and just Danger of intrusting Indian patronage to the Queen's Government . . . .58 CHAPTER VII. Ordinary qualifications of a President of the Board of Control His Secretaries His Duties and Power Difficulty of arriving at the truth on Indian matters Entente cordiale between President and Chairman . . . . .69 CHAPTER VIII. Danger of hasty legislation Causes of Parliamentary apathy about India Blame attached to the House of Commons Want of In- dian statesmen Lord Ellenborough Government patronage Suggestions for distribution of patronage . . .77 CHAPTER IX. British and Native territory Extent of British India Its divisions and comparative importance Its population Different social condition of England and India Revenue Native powers . 91 CHAPTER X. Government of India Governor- General Supreme Council English Law Insufficient number of civilians Impossibility of performing their appointed work Mofussil Courts General venality of officials Self-convictions . . . 102 CHAPTER XI. Native army Causes of the Mutiny High-caste Sepoys Devo- tion to their caste Impossibility of exterminating Sepoys Real Cause of the Mutiny Cruel betrayal of Horse Guards' patron- age Want of Justice to Indian officers . .117 CONTENTS. Vll CHAPTER XII. PAGE Constitution of Anglo-Indian Army Average number during ten years Expense Qualities of Native troops Irregular Cavalry Force requisite Iniquity of Native Police Their number, power, and oppression . . . .134 CHAPTER XIII. Public works Native and British territory British injustice Value of irrigation Necessity of Mercantile element to good government of India Profit attending judicious investments . 149 CHAPTER XIV. Mistaken views of Caste and Religion Difficulty of arriving at truth of Missionary labour Nature of the Conversions Im- mense Missionary agency Abbe Dubois Archbishop of Agra Difficulties of language Critical taste of Hindoos . .165 CHAPTER XV. The two Bills The Mercantile classes Reform required in India itself . . . . . .191 CHAPTER XVI. Suggestions for Government of India Concluding Remarks . 198 CHAPTER XVII. Conclusions . . . . . .212 Appendix ..... 222 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. WHEN these letters were originally printed, I had no intention whatever of submitting them to the tender mercies of a critical public: they were in- tended for private circulation only, and on that account possibly contain freer remarks on men and matters, than is advisable in a work that courts publicity. Be that as it may, for some reason or another, probably because everything on India goes down now-a-days, they have attracted more attention than I expected, and consequently, to use the stereo- typed phraseology of modest authors under similar circumstances, "I have consented to give them to the world." The multitude of books of all sorts, sizes, shapes, and prices, on every imaginable subject, is one of the 2 LETTERS ON INDIA. inflictions of the age. The number of those who write, is quite out of all proportion to those who read, and till these numbers are more fairly balanced, I question whether we should not display more real zeal for knowledge, and more regard for our own limited intellects, by increasing the existing taxes on knowledge, than by repealing those we have. No- body gams by the present multiplicity of books; those who read a little of what is written on any one subject, get confused before they can arrive at a fair conclusion about it ; whilst truth herself, overwhelmed by diverse opinions, runs the chance of sharing the fate of that young man at Athens, who was actually smothered under the cloaks of the enthusiastic spec- tators in the Odeon, who fancied they detected in him a likeness to the statues of Hector. In these days, when the liberty, if not the ability, to write, is common to all, no apology is expected from an author who sees fit to impart an idea to his friends or acquaintances ; but " he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, "and when he undertakes to multiply ad infinitum, " this same unmeaning thing he calls a thought," the case is altered, and he is justly expected to give his reasons in writing, for thus adding to the already overstocked world of letters. My reason for publishing at the present time is very simple; it is merely to induce every man who LETTERS ON INDIA. 6 has time and inclination to think for himself on this great Indian question. The following letters are suggestive, not didactic, and I wish rather to point out possible alleviations, than to advocate specific remedies. On all matters, great and small, the world is most unequally divided between those who do form their own judgments, and those who do not; of course I do not expect to influence any of the former. "'Tis with our judgments as our watches; none Go just alike, and each prefers his own." A man will tell you what o'clock it is by his watch, and when and where he set it, and why he must be right; but I never yet met one who was willing to alter his time to suit that of another; whilst those who take their time from their neigh- bours, will sec so much in these letters contrary to their immemorial tradition of Indian Government, that their ideas are not likely to be much influenced by them ; but there are always a certain number in the transition state, whose judgments are undergoing the process of solidification, and it is quite possible that a stray thought or two sown broadcast, may attract the attention of some of them, and under more favourable auspices, and in a better soil, assume a form of practical utility. No man ever intends to be convinced by an argu- 4 LETTERS ON INDIA. ment, written or spoken, if lie can possibly help it; he enters on the subject armed with his own ideas, which he believes to be the best in the world. If he is convinced, he is defeated, and naturally disgusted; he may be obliged to desert his own stronghold, but it is very improbable that he will immediately take refuge in that of his opponents. Of course argu- ment will occasionally triumph, as in the case of those two brothers, a Roman Catholic and a Protes- tant, who meeting to discuss their adverse faith, found each other so convincing, that they actually converted each other, and parted the very reverse of what they came; but this was a remarkable excep- tion, and does not affect the general rule, that no man is convinced by argument. But although you cannot convince a man, you may occasionally induce him to consider, and that is a process far more con- ducive to real truth than rapid conversion ; let a man once convince himself, and his energy in defence of his new principles will only be eclipsed by the deter- mination with which he will attack his old. The question of Indian Government is not like the thousand and one that yearly agitate our political world; it is the greatest question that has affected this country since she has attained her present lofty place amongst nations; directly or indirectly, India has been one of the chief stepping stones to England's greatness ; the question, therefore, of the permanence LETTERS ON INDIA. 5 of our rule in that country, affects every individual in this; and those who seek to make party capital out of their country's difficulties, are no true men ; it is a question that should unite in earnest thought every politician of the day; the paltry gratification of party triumph, should in this case yield to the far grander motive, the glory and permanence of the British empire. For once, at least, hereditary ani- mosities and party feuds, should disappear before the great emergency of the State. It is not many weeks since these letters were first printed, but during that short period most important and unforeseen events have agitated the political world. A cloud that when first seen on the horizon, appeared no bigger than a man's hand, suddenly increased to the proportion of a thunder-storm, and broke over the heads of a secure and confident Cabinet, with a force as irresistible as it was unex- pected. The most popular Minister since the days of Pitt, backed by a Cabinet remarkable for high rank and territorial possessions, was defeated by an incongruous majority of friends and foes, and forced to resign office without confession and without shrift, to the excessive astonishment of all parties in the State. Count Walewski accused England, in the face of Europe, of harbouring traitors and encouraging assassination, and Lord Paluierston pleaded guilty to 6 LETTERS ON INDIA. the charge ; but the Commons of England repudiated the accusation, and by a small majority declared they did not consider their country's honour safe at that particular moment, in the hands of those who were so little inclined to defend her institutions. I believe the general feeling of the country fully sup- ports this expression of mistrust. Although John Bull has of late years been cruelly tried in his pocket, he has always paid ; but in this case his little pride is hurt, and even though he may feel his laws are not quite perfect, he cannot bring himself to alter them at what appears to him very like dictation. Moreover, it does appear strange, that the ill-worded despatch of a foreign minister should be necessary to instruct a veteran statesman, who has been a member of almost every government during the last forty years, that our laws are ineffi- cient, and must be amended. And if they are really as bad as the late Ministry acknowledges them to be, surely some one must have known it, and the country may justly complain they were not advised sooner, and an opportunity taken to legislate on the subject with more dignity and deliberation. Probably in no period of English history has the country been so inert and supine, and so blindly sub- servient to the dictation of her Ministers, as during the last few years. The useless and costly wars, and the still more senseless truces we have made of late, LETTERS ON INDIA. 7 imply that our boasted common-sense has lamentably decreased in quality, or is buried away somewhere in a napkin. Our Ministers have treated us much as falconers of olden days did their birds ; they keep us carefully hooded during their good pleasure, and then fly in at any quarry that suits their purpose ; always throw- ing up the lure of flattery and promises, when they wish to draw us back to our thraldom. I consider it quite refreshing to see the thinking classes of the country rouse themselves from their dormouse con- dition to undertake some of the responsibilities of a self-governing people. John Bull redivivus, although he may occasionally be rude and hasty, is a much more interesting animal than the British Lion half asleep, having his nose tickled with a straw. We are told by the Press of the country that we (the public) are serious losers by the change of Ministry; but I confess I can't see it: individually, the late Cabinet are no great loss, and their laissez allez po- licy and off-hand legislation on many important ques- tions, cannot have added much to our national power or reputation ; whilst on the Indian, which imme- diately concerns us all, I consider we are actual gainers by the change. I cannot understand how those who have dragged us into expensive wars with Rangoon, Persia, and China, without our consent, almost without our 8 LETTERS ON INDIA. knowledge, deserve our particular gratitude or affec- tion: we are a great maritime power, and can, at will, send fleets and armies against enemies who are very indifferently furnished with those articles; we can talk bombastically and even nobly, about avenging the national flag, and repressing barbaric incivility, &c., &c., &c., and " Call fire, sword, and desolation, A godly thorough reformation," when administered to those who incur our displea- , sure. But, after all, there is neither glory nor profit in such war: the victor suffers quite as much as the conquered ; we may send thousands of troops in big ships thousands of miles to occupy a few mud forts and destroy a few half-armed soldiers, to occupy a pestilential territory, when we already have twice as much as we know what to do with, or even to storm a populous city, and capture an Imperial Commis- sioner; but all this costs us quite as much money as it does our opponents, and the only permanent effect on this country is to increase our taxation and lessen our chance of doing good at home. Another reason why I think the late change of Ministry is beneficial to the country is, that it has put an end to the unparalleled unanimity with which all the leading journals supported the late Govern- ment ; for the first time during the present genera- tion, the Leviathan of the Press was a Ministerial LETTERS ON INDIA. 9 organ; and so immense is its influence on public opinion, that I consider the liberties of England can never be quite safe when the policy of a minister, possessing a majority in Parliament, is supported to the very letter by counsel so overpowering as " The Times." The country has literally no time to think : a particular policy is proposed in an easy, off-hand way; a subservient majority quashes discussion and hurries it through the House, when the Leviathan takes it up out of doors, and, in half a dozen leaders of surpassing talent, convinces a man against his reason, or at any rate convinces him that he has no chance of opposing the rush ; this is the way we were hurried pell-mell into the war with China and Persia, and but for the present suspension of united power, should have hastily passed both Indian and Alien Bills. The late Government was delighted to be called liberal, but it would be difficult to show how it could have been more exclusive ; it did not boast half the self-raised men the present Tory Government can. There is an immense deal of nonsense talked in poli- tical circles about hereditary policy; the only policy that is really hereditary is that which enjoins a suit- able provision for hereditary Dowbs, and this is an article of faith that even antiquity cannot endear to the public : hereditary policy is not one of the re- quirements of a Constitutional Government; we have a Constitution strong and well-defined, and all we 10 LETTERS ON INDIA. want is, that it should be kept in order, and gra- dually moulded to meet increasing requirements or inevitable change. It does not signify to us one twopence whether Lord or Commoner, Whig or Tory, hold the reins of Government, so long as they possess average common-sense, strict honour, and in- tegrity : if, in fact, they govern for the country and not for themselves or friends. To suppose that cer- tain old families supply the only stock from which statesmen are made, is an antiquated doctrine suited only to those families themselves, it has no weight whatever with the country ; any party that governs in strict accordance with the Constitution, is as good as another, and nothing can be more fatal to the doc- trine of Constitutional Government than to suppose its existence depends upon the predominance of any one party in the State. If the principle of Constitu- tional Government is worth anything, it ought, by this time, and I believe it has, if men would only follow them, laid down such broad highways of foreign and domestic policy, that the State can travel by herself, and requires only the careful assistance of men of ordinary talent, and sterling honour and inte- grity, to check her, or move ahead, as circumstances may dictate ; if all the vaunted advantages of Con- stitutional Government has not done this for us, in what way is it better than the other hundred-aud-one systems at work in the world? LETTERS ON INDIA. 11 It is curious that this late freak of political fortune should have brought to the direction of Indian affairs the very statesman I pointed out to you some weeks before as most fitted to handle them. Whatever may be the current opinion respecting the comparative merits of past and present Ministers of War, Chan- cellors of the Exchequer, and First Lords of the Treasury, there can, I suppose, be no doubt whatever, that the country is an immense gainer by the change of dynasty in Cannon Row. In the place of an official who did not profess to know much about India, we have a great statesman who has made Indian politics and legislation a study. We cannot see into the future, but at any rate we may fairly expect better things of the present than of the late President of the Board of Control. The late Presi- dent was on bad terms with the powers in Leaden- hall Street; and, to use his own words, was satisfied with laying the reins on the necks of the Directors, and liberally applying the spurs a cockney mode of equitation that generally ensures a fall at the first obstacle. Under the late regime, Leadenhall Street and Can- non Row resembled a remarkable temple of red tape, sacred to the Goddess of Misrule, that stood some winters ago on the snow-clad heights of Sebastopol, in which certain heads of departments, although living under the same roof, were not on speaking 12 LETTERS ON INDIA. terms, and only condescended to communicate from adjoining rooms by written correspondence, properly copied and docketted. This original conception for increasing the complication of business and multiply- ing the immediate wants of a destitute and perishing army, appears to have been considered applicable to the present urgent requirements of India ; but already determination and energy have broken through the absurd trammels of custom and routine, and effected one of the great objects of the India Bill of the late government. Everybody knows that the present President of the Board of Control has no particular reason to love the Directors ; they cut him short in the proudest career open to a subject of this country, that of Governor General of India, and have only recognized his rule by striving to efface every vestige of his policy ; but he does not take the opportunity presented by the cry of unpopularity to display irri- tation and triumph in his turn : on the contrary, now that India requires anxious thought and unity of action, the past is entirely forgotten, and instead of adopting the independent policy of his predecessors, he is down constantly at Leadenhall Street, consult- ing personally with the Directors, and taking council with them, on the great Indian questions. This is niy idea of administrative capacity, and these are the sort of men, whether nobles or commoners, Whig or Tory, that the country wants to do her work. LETTERS ON INDIA. 13 The advent of Lord Ellenborough to the direction of Indian affairs at this moment, appears to me almost providential; and should circumstances favour the elevation of Sir John Lawrence to supreme rule in India, we may fairly hope that with energy and experience in our councils at home, and executive abroad, we may yet firmly re-establish our rule, and for the future enlist the sympathies as well as ensure the obedience of the people of India. Since printing the following letters, I have been told that much that I have written about missionary labour will give serious offence to the great body of those good and earnest persons who judge of the things of this world more by what they should be, than by what they really are. I should be ex- cessively grieved if such were the case ; but as it is impossible to write on Indian matters without some allusion to the religion of the country, and the pro- spects of Christianity, so having certain opinions on the subject I am of course bound to state them : but they are convictions, not evidence, and can probably be most effectually disposed of by printed reports and statistical returns. Independently of my convic- tion that very few real Christians, not nominal ones, have rewarded missionary labour in India, there is another more important reason why I do not regard with so much admiration our missionary institutions in the far country; it is the urgent and yearly 14 LETTERS ON INDIA. increasing necessity that exists in this country for the labour of every earnest man, who is willing to devote himself to the great cause of Christianity. There are communities in this very city amongst whom infidelity is elevated to a doctrine, and whose open vaunt is of their strength and increasing num- bers. Should we not strive to sweep our own house before we undertake to clean that of our neighbour? Our enemies are active, and unwearied, and power- ful at our very threshold : how, then, can we afford to send on foreign service a single soldier of the Cross? Is it really our duty to hurry away to distant lands in search of heathens, when we have hundreds of thousands far worse, sapping the very foundations of our faith at home? I believe not. To my mind, home missions are our appointed task ; and I believe it is better to bring back to the pure precepts of our faith one amongst the hundreds of thousands of professed infidels in our crowded com- munities, who have fallen away from the faith of their fathers, than to convert to a nominal Christianity thousands of Hindoos, who confound then- Trinity with ours, and believe everything the Sahib teaches them without thought and without understanding. I firmly believe that one earnest energetic man would do more for the cause of Christianity in one month in the dens of vice and misery in the metropolis and elsewhere, than fifty men, equally earnest and LETTERS ON INDIA. 15 laborious, would in the cities and plains of India in a year. Every shilling spent in the name of Christ amongst these starving, perishing thousands, would do more for the good cause, than the hundreds of pounds spent on costly establishments in unheard-of places. This is my firm belief; but, as I said before, what are individual convictions to the facts and eloquence of Exeter Hall? 16 LETTERS ON INDIA. CHAPTER II. Want of general knowledge on Indian subjects Objects of present inquiry Absolute necessity of acquiring the sympathy of the Natives Anomalous nature of our Indian Empire Necessity and great difficulty of colonization Value of India. A FEW months ago, India was no more a subject of general conversation than Kamskatka or Siam are at present; it was not the fashion and anybody who broached the subject was almost certain to be put down as a bore, or shunned as the hero of a tiger story. Now it is just the reverse : wherever you go, and whoever you meet, you hear of nothing else the conversation of all classes, high and low, is of Brahmins, and Rajpoots, and sepoys continually. Everybody has now something to say on the subject of India; and free and enlightened constituencies, and mechanics' institutes, are daily and nightly mys- tified, by amateur statesmen and orators, on subjects that a year ago were scarcely tolerated by the hardy men of business to whom they were unavoidable inflictions. Such being the case, why should not you and I join the rank of "drivellers," as you would call them, and exchange a few ideas about LETTERS ON INDIA. 1 7 India? We do not often spoil a good argument by too speedy an assent in each other's opinions; and happily this is a subject on which we can disagree till doomsday. The reason why everybody has hitherto avoided the subject of India is, that no general information existed in this country regarding it; either a man had been there and knew a great deal (or, what came to the same thing, thought he did), or he had not, and knew nothing at all. When such men met, the subject was mutually tabooed; the one did not care to throw his pearls before swine, and the other was naturally unwilling to expose his profound ignorance. I have never seen two such men meet in society, and mutually turn away their heads from the subject of India, but I have been reminded of an old story in Plutarch : The courtiers of Queen Bere- nice remarked with surprise that their mistress and a woman of Lacedasmon meeting out walking, both turned away their heads at one and the same instant ; on inquiry, they discovered that the queen could not bear the smell of butter, or the peasant endure scents and perfumes. Thus it is not only on the subject of India, that opposite causes produce the same result. But, as I said before, the events of the last few months have changed all that; and the narrations of sufferings and atrocities we may hope are exag- c 18 LETTERS ON INDIA. gerated, and of heroism and devotion it is impossible to exaggerate, have swept aside the indifference of fifty years, and caused one and all of us, with anxious eye, to " Look to the East, where Ganges' swarthy race Shall shake your tyrant empire to its base; Lo ! there rebellion rears her ghastly head, And gleams the Nemesis of native dead : Till Indus roll a deep purpureal flood, And claim her long arrears of northern blood." Of course the allusion to " tyrant empire " and " northern blood " is a poetical fiction ; but it proves that in Byron's time party feeling must have been quite as much divided on Indian matters as at present. At first sight the increased interest taken in all Indian subjects would promise the best results; but, unfortunately, the cacoethes loquendi frequently does more to confuse than to convince, and tends rather to the spread of theory than of truth ; and if we are to judge of the average amount of information exist- ing in this country on Indian matters by the speeches and suggestions that find their way into the public press, I fear we must come to the conclusion, that in the countless numbers of present counsellors there is anything but wisdom. Most of the public speeches have been confined to senseless abuse of the natives : and the letters that crowded the papers with impos- LETTERS ON INDIA. 19 sible theories and suggestions for launching the Leviathan, were not a whit more ridiculous in their way than many that have lately appeared regarding the subject of Indian government. A man of your logical habit of thought (though, by the bye, I remember an occasion when you experienced some difficulty in defining a syllogism right off) will know as well as any one how neces- sary it is to all sound conclusions to avoid the " a non causa pro causa " form of reasoning in argument. If a wrong cause is once assigned in any argument, and its truth admitted, there is an end of all chance of arriving at the truth : and there are now so many false causes assigned and credited for the present state of India, that it is quite an open question in my mind, whether the future progress of the country does not run a greater chance of being swamped by the busy interference and hasty legislation of the many headed, than it formerly did from their undis- guised indifference. There appears to be a very strong desire in many quarters to step quietly over the causes of the mutiny, and to let bygones be bygones, as the ex- pression is: this delicacy for national or individual shortcomings is simply absurd. If we do not know exactly what have been our errors of commission and omission during the past, how can we possibly guard against like ones for the future? When a merchant c2 20 LETTERS ON INDIA. lias lost largely in any transaction, he naturally tries to discover whether the misfortune was owing to the rascality or inefficiency of his clerks, or to his own mistaken ideas of commerce; he does not blindly rush into a similar operation without some kind of inquiry. You and I are not revengeful folk ; and if we hold a private inquest over the prostrate empire of India, it is not for the purpose of bringing in verdicts of " wilful murder " right and left, and hanging and gibbeting w r ith insane severity; a verdict of man- slaughter, justifiable homicide, or even accidental death, will quite satisfy us. There is no desire whatever in this country to split hairs on Indian matters, or to pick out the identical feather that broke the camel's back. We don't want victims at all, but we want the truth ; we want to see whether the load was really too heavy not with the object of punishing those who placed it there, but, if possi- ble, to guard against a like accident for the future. Throughout this Indian excitement, the desire to visit our misfortunes on individuals has not been one- tenth part so great as it was during the Crimean war. The reason is simple. In the Crimea, interest was felt to be at the root of every appointment and every misfortune. In India it has not ; there, our misfor- tunes have been more owing to age than interest: LETTERS ON INDIA. 21 some of those \vlio somewhat disappointed public expectation were too old; and it was naturally felt that it was very hard to blame men because nature had inconveniently prolonged their existence, or had not broken her universal laws in their favour, by endowing them with energy beyond their years. But, indeed, when one looks at the deeds of those who have come prominently forward during this Indian campaign, there are not many, old or young, that we can dare to censure. From the very commencement of the mutiny, the public have thought fit to adopt the sanguine tone of official ignorance, or the frothy bombast of the leading journals, and to insist that the disturbance was nothing at all, and, once suppressed, would add immeasurably to our strength. If any one was ever rash enough to lament certain delays in the first out- break of the mutiny, or to allude to the possibility of the revolt spreading, he was immediately called a croaker, and told that, instead of being a misfortune, the prolonged siege of Delhi was in fact the most fortunate thing in the world for this country, as all the mutinous sepoys would congregate there, and be exterminated in one lot; and that, as for the popula- tion or native' princes taking part against us, it was impossible ; that they were, in fact, so devoted to our rule, that, except by doing nothing, or "looting" an unprotected treasury or two, they were at a loss how 22 LETTERS ON INDIA. to display their affection! We were even told to consider the mutiny itself as a benefit almost a pro- vidential arrangement! If you can prove that an attack of small-pox or a thirty-days' fever improves a man's constitution, why then it is possible the mutiny may have its advantages ; but not otherwise. Our power has been in peril from one end of the peninsula to the other, and even now is dormant, or extinguished in some portion of our dominions ; that of course may also be a subject of congratulation ; but surely those who are not long-sighted enough to see far away into the future, may be pardoned for not throwing up their hats ! At present, it is scarcely a question of how we are to rule the country in the best manner, but how we are to reconquer it as quickly as possible ; and when we talk of revising our laws and increasing our revenue, we must confess it is rather like disposing of the bear's skin before we have caught the bear. I am one of those who believe that India will never pay to keep, unless it is perfectly satisfied with our rule ; the expense of controlling even a passive resistance would ruin us. We can only retain our hold of many of the provinces, and collect the revenue, by the suiferance of the millions who inhabit them; if that is withdrawn, we must go. A wide- spread dislike to our rule, if only just sufficiently active to prevent their paying their taxes without LETTERS ON INDIA. 23 compulsion, would be sufficient to render the country utterly useless to us ; 50,000, or even 80,000 Euro- peans, scattered amongst a population of nearly 200,000,000, not perfectly friendly, must always be an existence over a volcano, and can never be free from the greatest danger and anxiety: a mere shudder of the mass would drive us from the country. Under no possible condition of the human race can 50,000 or even 80,000 men be sufficient to exercise a lengthened dominion over a population of four thousand times their number, not perfectly docile and contented; 50,000 European troops can never form a foundation sufficiently strong to support a permanent British empire in India. Whenever I contemplate our Indian empire, I am reminded of the strange dream of Nebuchadnezzar, so miraculously interpreted by Daniel ; "Nebuchadnezzar, the king, saw a great image whose brightness was excellent; and the form thereof was terrible: this image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay." Our image has also been formed of the precious metals, and its foundation been composed of iron and miry clay the European and the sepoy. Although these dis- cordant materials mingled, they never united. They supported the superstructure for a time; but from want of care, or inevitable destiny, the miry clay has fallen away, and our image is endangered. 24 LETTERS ON INDIA. Whether any amount of legislative skill or fore- thought can ever make the British empire in India permanent, is a problem which the future alone can solve ; when we examine it, all reasoning from ana- logy fails us ; we cannot, in all the great conquests of the world, all the dominations of race over race, narrated in history, find one that bears the slightest similarity to British rule in India; it stands alone in the history of the world. There is no single instance on record of a country inhabited by two hundred millions of the human race being retained in any lengthened servitude by a people residing twelve thousand miles away, differing from them in religion, morality, and tradition; and who are as far separated from them in every quality of mind and body, as the eternal bounds that limit the diversity of the human species will permit, without partial colonization or gradual amalgamation of races. Every nation, without exception, that has hitherto reduced another to permanent subjection, has, more or less, cemented conquest by colonization; and whether we look at the conquest of Gaul and Britain by the Romans, of Spain by the Carthaginians, and subsequently by the Moors, of Europe by the Turks, of Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards, and Brazil by tne Portuguese, of Hindostan by the Affghans, and atterwards by the Moguls, and China by the Tartars, \\e shall find they all, more or less, planted colonies; LETTERS ON INDIA. 25 and it is ;in undoubted fact that, in proportion to the number and strength of these colonies, their rule was more powerful and more enduring. It would almost appear as if colonization is the only condition on which Providence will permit the substitution or lengthened subjugation of one race by another; and as far as history hitherto instructs us, permanent conquest is but another word for vigorous and successful colonization. Up to this period, England has in no degree colonized India, or encou- raged an amalgamation of races; nor is there any probability, not to say possibility, of her doing so. Whether our inability to colonize will entail upon us the short supremacy that has marked the con- quests of all other countries that have neglected this principle, it is hard to say; our empire may be in- tended to endure without it, but undoubtedly it is an anomaly in the history of conquest, and contrary to all the laws that hitherto have regulated the subjec- tion of one race to another. British supremacy, an establishment of two generations, is but a thing of yesterday; compared with the great conquests we have enumerated, and even in comparison with those that were least enduring, it is as nothing. The Romans were masters of the fairest portions of Britain during four centuries, and ruled France alto- gether nearly 600 years; the dominion of the Moors in Spain lasted 800 years ; that of the Affghans and Mogul conquerors, severally 2 over the country, and that if he clears out all the present offenders, their successors will be just as bad. He knows perfectly well, that even if he accuse, he will never convict them. In native bribery, the greatest secrecy is preserved, and both giver and receiver would perjure themselves with their last breath, sooner than admit the fact. Overwhelmed with labour, enervated perhaps from climate, irritated with the rascality and unfathomable deceit of those over whom he is expected to adjudicate, the magistrate is obliged to leave much to his clerks ; his necessity is their opportunity, and trust them for making the most of it. Whilst he is engaged in listening to one suit, the mohurrim or clerk is taking down the deposi- tions of another case, to await his leisure; making his bargain either with the accuser or defendant ; writ- ing whatever answers are best suited to his purpose, without any regard to the actual evidence of the witnesses; sometimes actually leaving his desk to make some new bargains with one of the parties of the suit, and not unfrequently changing sides at the very last moment, and re-dictating evidence already falsified, to suit the views of the party who has at the eleventh hour increased his bid. Under the hands of these accomplished rogues, the depositions assume the form of special pleadings in favour of the person, whether culprit on prosecutor, or whose side they may be retained. i 114 LETTERS ON INDIA. In the Mofussil courts, or those held by magistrates in the interior of the country, there is no public prosecutor; the labour and expense falls on the injured individual; and no complication of outrage or persecution will ever induce those who have once been fleeced by the officials, who surround the magis- trate's court, voluntarily to undertake the duty again. In many cases, the plaintiff or witness suffers far more than the criminal against whom the offence is established. On the most trivial cases, the witness is ordered to attend the magistrate's court, sometimes a distance of fifty, sixty, or even one hundred miles ; here he is exposed to the ill treatment and extortion of the native officials ; debarred from his usual means of livelihood ; and harassed with the distressing con- viction that his wife and family are unprotected and in want. So severely are these hardships felt, that no person will voluntarily submit to them. It too often happens, that in order to procure a conviction, it is necessary to seize and send both prosecutor and witness to the magistrate, where they are kept in restraint, often in prison, till they bribe the native officials, and pay a sufficient sum to induce them to hurry on the trial, or to quash it altogether. In some districts, owing to the paucity of officers, the judicial and ministerial functions are still com- bined. A judge has to catch a thief in the morning, and try and convict him after tiffin; or he has to LETTERS ON INDIA. 1 1 ") leave his court with all the attendant prisoners, wit- nesses, and prosecutors, to the tender mercies of his officers, whilst he goes rogue-hunting at the other extremity of his district. There is no fact connected with the internal economy of British India, not even the practice of torture itself, that carries with it such a painful train of ideas, as the number of self-convicted prisoners. In England and France scarcely four per cent, are convicted on their own evidence, whilst in India, the proportion of those who plead guilty, and are con- victed on their own pleading, amounts to seventy in every hundred! This extraordinary proportion is not the result of working on the good principles of a man's character, but of promises of forgiveness, or threats of punish- ment, of tempting promises of present pardon and future reward, or of fearftil threats of corporal punishment, and of insult and destitution heaped on his wife and children. The same grievous want of Europeans that causes the administration of justice in the Mofussil to be so imperfect* also stagnates the whole civil administra- tion of the country. British India is divided into districts, of every imaginable shape and population, with an average population of between 800,000 and 1,000,000. To direct, control, and report on the whole civil polity and domestic economy of these i 2 116 LETTERS ON INDIA. principalities ; to administer justice, to collect revenue and adjust taxation ; to see to the proper appropria- tions of all the sums for roads, schools, tanks, wells, surveys, charities, &c., there are never more than six, and generally either three or four civil officers of the Company. We see at once the impossibility of these men, however laborious and energetic, com- pleting individually a hundredth part of this Hercu- lean labour. They must depend almost entirely upon their native clerks and assistants for informa- tion, and for the execution of their orders; every information that reaches the ears of the collector must come through the native officials; and in a country where, as I said before, venality is no crime, and any number of men can be procured to swear black is white for one anna a day, it is easy to perceive how difficult it must be to arrive at the truth of anything in India, and how impossible to remedy it when dis- covered. Say what we will, it is a farce to suppose that four or five men are sufficient to govern with justice and advantage nearly a million of men differing from them in every possible respect of thoughts and habits, spread over a country somewhat more exten- sive than Yorkshire; and we can understand that, under the circumstances, what the natives see of English rule is not always the fertilizing and health- bearing stream we love to paint to ourselves in this country. LETTERS ON INDIA. 117 CHAPTER XI. Native Army Causes of the Mutiny High-caste sepoys Devotion to their caste Impossibility of exterminating sepoys Real cause of the Mutiny Cruel betrayal of Horse Guards patronage Want of justice to Indian officers. AT this moment, when the sepoy, " like a horse full of high feeding, madly has broke loose, and bears down all before him," the condition of the Anglo- Indian army naturally occupies the greater part of public attention. Much does it need inquiry, and well will it repay it. Just now the sound of the drum and tongue of war are the only arguments with which to plead our interest with the maddened sepoy of Bengal ; but the storm cannot last; and if we wish to keep India, we must study well the constitution of the legions that threaten our supremacy in the East. All the world knew that India was a conquered country, only to be held by the sword ; but the world was scarcely prepared to find that we had blindly allowed our sword to rust, till it broke in our grasp, and was useless but against ourselves. For years the native army has been rotten to the 118 LETTERS ON INDIA. bone ; and the only marvel is, not that the mutiny has now broken out, but that it did not do so years ago. Many reasons have been given for the present revolt: with one, the want of European officers, is considered a sufficient cause ; with another, the pre- ference shown to men of high caste; whilst a third attributes much harm to our wanton disregard of caste. The invariable superiority of the irregular cavalry regiments, with three or four European officers only, is a sufficient answer to the first supposition, and proves that it is not so much the quantity as the quality of the officers employed that must be relied on to maintain the efficiency of the native troops. The second supposition is not so easily disposed of: there is no doubt whatever that the present revo- lution, for the purpose of expelling or extirpating the English, has been planned and organized by the high-caste Hindoos and Mussulmans of Hindostan; and the fact of great numbers of these high-caste men having been enlisted in our service, has given them remarkable facilities for carrying out their de- signs. The rationale of enlisting the high-caste na- tives was very simple, and its policy apparently rea- sonable enough; it was a compromise that their power on the one hand, and our weakness on the other, rendered at the time very politic. We were not strong enough to declare at once all high- caste men our enemies; and it was considered that, by LETTERS ON INDIA. 119 taking them into our service, we might make them our friends ; and it may now be considered quite an open question, whether the rebellion would not have taken place years ago if our pay and pensions had not, for the time, attached all the most warlike races in the country to our interest. Before the British occupation of Hindostan, the high-caste Hindoos and the high-caste Mussulmans were the lords of the soil. The great zemindars and landed proprietors of India were all of high-caste; and, of course, they were the class most affected by our occupation of territory : they consequently have been our enemies from the very first : and as their power has diminished in an inverse ratio to our progress, so has their enmity increased. Disguise their feelings as they may and they have done so very well by taking service with us, and availing themselves of some of the means of progress and civilisation we have put within their reach they have in reality always hated us, and been at the bottom of all the riots and mutinies that have disturbed our rule in India; they have always been the exponents and falsifiers 'of English ideas and policy to the multi- tude; and so great has been the dislike of the high castes of both creeds to English supremacy, that at any moment during the last thirty years Hindoos and Mussulmans have been ready to sink the here- ditary and religious animosities of eight hundred 120 LETTERS ON INDIA. years, and make common cause to get rid of their powerful enemy. The high-caste Mussulmans and Hindoos, like the descendants of the Moors of Spain, retain their legends of former wealth, and treasure up the little deeds of ancient possessions ; but, unlike the present race of Moors, whose expectations of again ruling in Cordova or Seville are probably indistinct enough, they are impressed with the strongest conviction of the certainty of their speedy resumption of the wealth and importance of their forefathers. Every revolution or change would naturally enlist the sympathies of men so animated; and when the founders of the sepoy army advocated the enlistment of these high-caste malcontents, we cannot say they acted without rea- son. Moreover, the splendid forms and warlike na- tures of these high -caste races, to whom the profes- sion of arms is as completely hereditary as ever it was amongst the Norman nobles of Europe, was always a sufficient cause for trying to secure them to our service. They must be soldiers ; and if soldiers, they must fight. It was certainly better to have them with us than against us. I believe we were right to enlist high-caste men; but having done so, we should have displayed more judgment in our treatment of them. Instead of exacting from them the inflexible obedience of military discipline in- stead of changing the bridle for one more powerful, LETTERS ON INDIA. 121 as the horses became more difficult to manage, we substituted one easier; and relaxed in their favour certain well-defined principles of discipline, without which no army can be considered healthfully organ- ized. We either spoilt them or feared them. We gave them the inch, and little by little they got the ell. We yielded to them till they were almost ex- alted into the condition of the Praetorian guards of declining Rome. We stroked the tiger in order to hear him purr; and, as the Eastern proverb says, he who does so is very likely to lose a finger in the attempt. The mistake was not in enlisting the high- caste races of Hindostan, but in ignoring all esta- blished principles of discipline and obedience when they had entered our service. We now come to the third supposed cause of the mutiny that of trifling with the prejudices of caste we pretended to recognise and respect. I believe there is little doubt that, whether with reason or not, the feeling has got abroad amongst the sepoys that we intend to undermine and finally abo- lish all the restrictions and prejudices of caste. No doubt the report had no foundation but the mis- chievous inventions of those who wished to rouse the sepoys against us; but the ignorance of native character that permitted such a rumour to remain uncontradicted, allowed time for the smouldering embers of suspicion to burst into the fierce flame of 122 LETTERS ON INDIA. conviction, and has converted into ruthless foes hun- dreds of thousands who were willing enough to have remained our friends. " Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep ;" and whilst the Governor- General in council con- tented himself, after a fatal delay of three weeks or a month, with launching a ponderous proclamation, in- tended to reassure the native mind, the light boats of rumour spread swiftly and uninterruptedly through the whole of the country, confirming two hundred millions in their dread. It was most unfortunate that our blundering policy should have been per- mitted to create amongst the natives of India the belief that their caste was threatened; for it was a cry to which all would respond, and it has united against us high and low, and has tinged their con- duct with a ruthlessness to their foes, and a devotion to their cause, that only religion could impart. Apart from the thousands of scoundrels to whom murder and rapine are at any time ample inducements for revolt, there is no doubt that many a hundred fine tall fellow, who has met his death with fanatical daring in the streets of Delhi or Lucknow, or with Stoical indifference on the parade grounds of Pesha- wur or Bombay, believed implicitly that he was dying a martyr to the faith and caste of his ances- tors, threatened by his English rulers. And al- LETTERS ON INDIA. 123 though no doubt his hopes are childish, and his creed absurd, what Christian of us all dare to throw the first stone of ridicule or contempt on a faith that will enable forty men, one after another, to endure what in their sight is the most disgraceful of deaths with as much composure as they would dress on parade, and with loudly expressed scorn for any who should prefer life to the traditional injunctions of his caste. We may stigmatize as fanaticism and ignorance the Stoicism displayed by nearly all the sepoys who have died on the scaffold, or been blown from the guns; but how should we describe a like constancy displayed by men of our race in defence of the Chris- tian faith? We easily believe what we wish, says Caesar, and we judge of others' sentiments by our own. We are unwilling to allow, even to ourselves, that patriotism, the desire to rid himself altogether of a race uncongenial in every way, the very natural desire to recover the lost patrimony of his race, the terror of losing his cherished caste and ancient faith, can have impelled the sepoy to mutiny; we wish to suppose that murder and rapine, and the perpetra- tion of devilish cruelties too horrible to utter, have been his only motive; we desire this to be the case, and therefore we easily believe it is so ; and thus, by believing what we wish, and by judging of the native sentiments of caste, religion, morality, and cruelty by our own, we at once illustrate the truth of the 124 LETTERS ON INDIA. great warrior's epigram, and the injustice of our own ruthless animosity. You hear wiseacres constantly talking of extermi- nating the present race of high-caste sepoys, as if they were rabbits in a warren, and of recruiting else- where. Have they any idea of the constitution of the Bengal army, for instance, when they talk thus airily of extinguishing its high-caste element ? There are in that army upwards of 30,000 men of the Raj- poot race, and upwards of 20,000 Brahmins, the two highest castes of Hindoos. In the Bengal army, the high-caste men, viz., Brahmins and Rajpoots, com- pose two-thirds of the entire number; the inferior castes and Mussulmans making up the remaining third in equal proportions ; the Christians only num- bering one per cent. ! In the Bombay army the pro- portion of high-caste men is not quite so great; but still it is considerable. In a regiment of 725 men I saw at Nuggur in 1853, there were about 400 high- caste Hindoos : 100 Piwarris, or horse-keeper caste ; 70 or 80 Mussulmans, and a few Christians, and other castes : so that it is not only in Bengal we have the high-caste element to deal with. In Madras the proportion is lower; there not being probably more than 50 or 60 high-caste men in a regiment. In the Bengal infantry the Mussulmans number one in four ; in Madras and Bombay, one in five or six. But in the cavalry of Bengal and Madras, they are as near LETTERS ON INDIA. 125 as possible half-and-half. These high sepoys of the Bengal and Bombay armies do not belong to any particular sects of Brahmins or Rajpoots; and al- though many of them come from Oude and the Doab, the classes from which they are recruited are not confined to those districts, but scattered over the whole land of Hindostan. Doubtless, if fortune fa- voured us, and we had plenty of European soldiers, we might destroy the 50,000 or 60,000 sepoys com- prising the high-caste element of the Bengal army ; but can we also annihilate the classes from which they spring, and who to a man are animated by the same prejudices and warlike natures? Putting aside altogether the question of our moral right to do so, have we the power of exterminating, root and branch, the Brahmin and Rajpoot races of Hindostan? If not, why do we indulge in the empty and senseless bombast with which our papers are crammed? But the disaffection of the high castes, both of Hindoos and Mussulmans, has drawn with it the sympathy of the lower castes. Those regiments that have muti- nied have done so to a man, so that the class des- tined for immediate destruction is considerably in- creased; and we must be prepared to dispense our summary justice on the whole of the numberless castes and classes from whose ranks the native army has hitherto been recruited. To estimate fully the advantages the sepoy has 126 LETTERS ON INDIA. sacrificed to his caste, his religion, his prejudices, his ambition, his lust for rapine and murder, or whatever may have been the impelling cause, we should com- pare his pay and position with that of the ryot or labourer of the country. The pay of the sepoy is from seven to nine rupees a month for a private, and forty to sixty for a native officer ; and after fifteen years' service, he retires with a pension of from four to fifty rupees a month, according to his rank. A rupee is two shillings, so that the sepoy receives about sixpence halfpenny a day ; and after fifteen years retires with a pension of threepence or four- pence a day : the ryot earns about three halfpence or twopence halfpenny at the most, and the labour he has to perform for that is severe. When we remember that the actual necessaries of life are at least ten times as cheap as in England, we shall see that the sepoy army is comparatively one of the best paid armies in the world ; and that in throwing over the Company's Raj they are also throwing away an amount of pay, and, what the native values a great deal more, a certain pension, that he can never expect to enjoy under any other rule whatever. The mutiny of the Bengal army can neither be traced to the paucity of European officers, to the preference shown in enlisting high-caste men, or even to the foolish tampering with caste, though doubtless that has been a most serious cause. No ! if we want LETTERS ON INDIA. 127 to discover really and truly the reason why nearly one-half of the native army is in open mutiny and the other half useless why the millions that have been spent in equipping paying, and drilling these 300,000 men are now so much thrown into the sea, we must look higher than the sepoy, higher than his caste, creed, or ambition we must, in fact, look to the fountain-head at once, and visit more than half the disgrace, misery, and ruin of the present mutiny on the high authorities of the Horse Guards at home, who, for the last fifty years, have been selfish enough to turn all the high military appointments of India into a refuge for their needy and destitute friends and relations, and with a persevering want of patriotism, remarkable even in that hot-bed of jobbery, have per- sisted in sending out the halt, and the fat, and the blind, and the incompetent, for no other earthly reason than that they happened to have family in- terest, or to be personal friends. The shamefaced manner in which the high military appointments of India those on which the honour and glory of the country, and the permanence of our rule, actually depended have been openly jobbed by those in authority, does indeed appear an insult to the head of the state, and a mockery of an imperial parliament and a so-called self-governing people ; and one is at a loss which most to marvel at, the asinine meekness of the country, that has for years endured in patience 128 LETTERS ON INDIA. a prostitution of patronage so ruinous to our power and insulting to our reason, or the recklessness of those who have dared thus openly to set at nought the requirements of the nation, and the palpable rules of common sense. During the last twenty years these abuses have reached a pitch that challenges the credulity of any reasonable man ; and one scarcely knows whether disgust for those who made the appointments, or commiseration for those who accepted them, is the stronger feeling. About five or six years ago, more or less, the three chief commands in India were held by three old Peninsular officers ; gallant men enough, no doubt, and able perhaps to handle a brigade in the days when George IV. was prince, but who, weighed down with the infirmities of threescore years and ten, and suddenly transplanted from their clubs, and their soft carpets, and their short whist, and other metropolitan enjoyments, to the climate of India, retained about as much of their former energy as a Bengal Lascar does in a snow-storm in the Channel: they were perfectly useless. Of these three veterans, one was so nervous, that it was generally understood throughout the army that no salutes were to be fired till he had alighted from his horse ! an- other was so fat and unwieldy that horse exercise was out of the question, and he was obliged to be lifted into his bandy ; whilst the third was the LETTERS ON INDIA. 129 blindest man, probably, ever seen without a dog, and could not cross the room without assistance ! With the perfect knowledge that to such men was intrusted the duty of controlling the discipline, rewarding the merit, and raising the energy of an army numbering over three hundred thousand men, can we even feign surprise at the rapid growth of all the military evils that have so much contributed to the present crisis? " Save us from Horse Guards appointments ! " has been the cry of every officer of Indian experience since the days of the massacre of Caubul ; and, when we look at those who have been sent out men who have only served campaigns in London, Windsor, and Dublin can we wonder that officers, who during a whole life have been living in a semi state of campaign in Affghanistan, Scinde, the Punjaub, and the Deccan, should mistrust their energy and expe- rience? Some years ago, when danger threatened India, they sent out a Napier; but 110 sooner was it passed, than he was succeeded by a Gomm, to be again followed by an Anson. Not that I wish to say a word against either of them. The former was a smart officer thirty years ago; and even in 1851 or 1852, was quite up to the command of two or three regiments at the Mauritius ; but the control of two or three hundred thousand men in India was a very different thing, as we now unfortunately know ; K 130 LETTERS ON INDIA. and I honestly believe that General Anson was, without exception, one of the first men, take him in any point of view you like, that ever went to India, and that his death was most unfortunate for the country ; but he was perfectly untried, and owed his appointment solely and entirely to interest. In their present alarm, the Horse Guards have sent out a soldier of fame ; but who amongst us doubts for a moment, that if we pass safely through the present ordeal, and the country again sleeps over its Indian duties, the Horse Guards' pets will imme- diately monopolise and betray the great interests of India ? Strange as it may appear in one so great, the Duke of Wellington was the greatest enemy the Company's officers ever had: he never would recognise either the propriety or the advantage of employing Indian officers in high commands in India. He systema- tically ignored their claims and services with a scrupulous exactness, that might have been mistaken for a sense of duty had it not too plainly borne the stamp of prejudice. As is the case with most men, his weaknesses have found a far greater number of servile copyists than his acts of real greatness. How often have officers of the greatest merit, men of European fame, who in other countries would have been selected for the highest commands, returned to this country heralded by the applause and admira- tion of their countrymen in India, and sanguine in LETTERS ON INDIA. 131 the conscious knowledge of arduous duty nobly per- formed, had all their generous aspirations dashed to the ground, and all their ardour turned into bitter- ness, by the insolent impertinence of the Horse Guards officials, or the more studied hauteur of their chief. Whatever maybe his claims and services ("and they really have no time to enter into them, with so many well-connected officers awaiting their turn"), the Indian officer is made at once to feel, by the cold shoulder of the Triton himself and the ill-concealed triumph of his surrounding minnows, that he is not one of the elect, and may look in vain for any of the loaves and fishes destined for those who can prefer better claims than those of mere service. " Vitia erunt donee homines ; " there will be abuses in Government so long as there are men; and it is lost labour to attempt to arrest the exercise of private patronage. It is part of our nature, common to all, to prefer our relations or friends to strangers, and to believe them better; it is a feeling that has probably existed since the days of Adam, and will continue through all time. There are many cases, moreover, in which patronage may be exercised without doing harm to anybody; the appointment of an attache, for instance, or a clerk in the Foreign Office, the promotion of a lieutenant or two in the navy, the filling up of staff appointments in time of peace, the K2 132 LETTERS ON INDIA. selection of Queen's council or governors of unheard- of islands, or even bishops, signify very little, and the country is very foolish to disturb itself about them. But there are other cases of patronage that do affect everybody individually and collectively, that threaten our honour and reputation and even existence as a great nation, and which it is the duty of every Englishman to oppose; the exercise of pa- tronage that sends incompetent men to command our armies in time of war, that appoints old women and worse than old women, decrepid old women to control the destinies of a country like India, this is an exercise of patronage we are all alike bound by the first great law of self-preservation to expose and defeat. When we remember that in the present crisis the Presidency of Bengal alone has been able in one cam- paign to send into the field the two Lawrences, Sir James Outram,Neill, Nicholson, Edwardes, Chamberlain, and Wilson, I think we must allow that the Company's officers may fairly complain that, till the temporary appointment of Sir Patrick Grant, not a single Com- pany's officer has ever held the high military appoint- ments of India. It hardly required the late debate on Sir H. Have- lock's pension to prove to the country that it is still the policy of the Horse Guards " To damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer ; And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer" LETTERS ON INDIA. 133 at all who rest their claims for promotion on Indian services alone ; but it remains to be seen how much longer the country will permit a quasi aristocratic clique to disparage all the rights and exploits of Indian officers in favour of the more pacific claims of family connexions or Parliamentary interest. 134 LETTERS ON INDIA. CHAPTER XII. Constitution of Anglo-Indian Army Average number during ten years Expense Qualities of native troops Irregular cavalry Force requisite Iniquity of native police Their number, power, and oppression. WE will now take a view of the constitution of the Anglo-Indian army ; and we shall see that, as its unreasonable dimensions have been the unforeseen cause of England's greatest danger, so has its enor- mous cost been the chief cause of the utter prostra- tion and poverty of India. It is a hundred-mouthed hydra, that, having devoured the substance, is now craving for the hand that fed it. I take it for granted that the first step towards ameliorating the general condition of India must be made by reducing the present enormous expenditure within more reasonable limits, arid employing the capital thus saved in roads, and tanks, and other remunerative undertakings. The army, as the most glaring in- stance of misapplied resources, the most imminent of the many diseases at present threatening the body politic of India, must come first under the scalpel. The force of the Anglo-Indian army, at the out- break of the mutiny, may be thus enumerated : LETTERS ON INDIA. 135 *Ilegiments. 24 European Infantry (Queen's) of . . . 1,000 men 4 European Cavalry (Queen's) of ... 700 9 European Infantry (Company's) of . . 800 155 Native Infantry of . . 1,000 55 Native Infantry (Irregular) of. . . . 800 and about 30,000 Cavalry, Regular and Irregular, including Contingents: or thirty-seven regiments of European troops, and upwards of 250 regiments of native troops, numbering together rather over 270,000 men ; besides a very large force of European and still larger number of native artillery; altogether, the Anglo-Indian army might roughly be estimated at 290,000 men of all arms. Of that number, the Europeans never amounted to 40,000 men, or one- sixth of the entire army ; a frightful discrepancy, which no possible superiority of race can warrant. The cost of the several arms of the service is some- what as follows : Regiments. European Infantry (Queen's) cost .... 60,000 European Cavalry (Queen's) 80,000 Native Infantry (Regular) 28,000 Native Cavalry (Regular) 38,000 Native Infantry (Irregular) 26,000 Native Cavalry (Irregular) 18,000 Taking an average of ten years, there has never * The exact number of Regiments is not of so much importance as the gross total of the troops. 136 LETTERS ON INDIA. been less than 260,000 Queen's and Company's troops in India; and only at one period during the year 1847 did they number more than 290,000. For the last few years they have fluctuated between 280,000 and 290,000 men of all arms. During the same period the Company's troops have never fallen below 230,000, and never risen above 270,000 men; they are now between 250,000 and 260,000 men.* This number includes regular and irregular in- fantry and cavalry, and European artillery and infantry. In Bengal, the Queen's and Company's during the last ten years, have never numbered less than 130,000, and in 1853 almost reached the maximum of 170,000 men. In Madras, during the same period, the number of Queen's and Company's troops have remained very steady, between 60,000 and 70,000 men. In Bombay, during the same period they have never exceeded 60,000 men, and are now somewhat under 50,000. The cost of this enormous force considerably ex- ceeds ten millions sterling ; a ruinous sum to impose on the progress and prosperity of a country whose industrial resources have for more than half a cen- tury been wilfully or unavoidably neglected. The army must be^reduced and that largely ; the question for Parliament now to settle is, how that can be effected without relaxing our hold on the country. European artillery is even more expensive than * See Thorburn's Diagrams. LETTERS ON INDIA. 137 European cavalry. Thus we see that the cost of the European element, Company's and Queen's, including artillery, is somewhat under three millions; whilst that of the native element cannot be safely 'estimated at less than eight and a half millions, exclusive of native artillery and commissariat. The regular native infantry costs half as much as the European infantry ; and the regular native cavalry costs more than half as much as a regiment of Queen's cavalry. Now there can be no doubt whatever that, for all fighting purposes, one regiment of Queen's infantry is worth four regiments of natives ; and one regiment of Queen's cavalry worth any number of regular native cavalry, for they are actually worth nothing at all. But we have already seen that the present cost of the European element is scarcely one-third of that of the native ; and, therefore, by disbanding the whole native force, and doubling the number of Europeans, we should, at one half of the present expenditure, have an army at least six times as efficient ! But, unfor- tunately, the climate of India utterly negatives any plan that is based on the employment of European troops alone. The duties of collecting revenue, per- forming the necessary patrol and police duties, sup- plying the innumerable prison and pilgrimage guards, and, in fact, all duties where exposure to the sun is necessary, is fatal to Europeans. All these must be left to natives ; and it may be received as an unques- 138 LETTERS ON INDIA. tiouable fact, that, if we are to retain possession of India, we must have a native army. The whole native army, as at present existing, is rotten to the core; and, from whatever cause it may have arisen, the spirit of disaffection exists largely in the Bombay and Madras armies. We have not as yet dared to move large bodies of those troops against the mutinous sepoys of Bengal. The British empire in India has been tottering to its very base; and the unexampled heroism of our own troops has alone saved it. They have performed prodigies ; and the deeds of the handful of heroes who, during the hottest months of the Indian solstice, have, under Havelock and Sir Colin Campbell, contended success- fully in the field against ten times their number of splendid troops, perfectly drilled, armed, and officered, and supplied with all the munitions of war, is un- paralleled in the history of war. England may indeed be proud of her children; but she has no right to expect from them such self-sacrifice. Let us consider the qualities of our native troops. The regular infantry, composed of men averaging five feet nine inches, sober, willing, and obedient, were certainly very splendid troops, and the most orderly and economical in the world; but they have drunk of the stream of violence, and are mad ; they never again can be trusted with European arms and discipline. The regular cavalry is probably the worst LETTERS ON INDIA. 139 and most useless arm of any service in the world, not excepting the Neapolitan and Roman heroes, who mutually run away when they meet each other. They have always been notorious for their ineffi- ciency in all military matters more important than escort or parade; and their only use has been to escort governors, or to supply newspaper artists with startling pictures of dusky warriors dashing fiercely through imaginary Persian squares. Their recent brutality has been in exact proportion to their former cowardice. The irregular infantry is com- posed chiefly of the warlike spirits of the countries where they are raised ; the best is composed of Sihks, Affghans, Ghoorkas, Beelooches, and other isolated tribes ; and although not so imposing in appearance as the Bengal Sepoys, they are hampered by no caste, and will go anywhere ; their cost is about the same, and it is not too much to say they would be doubly efficient. If the regular native cavalry is the worst in the world, the irregular cavalry is almost the best : those only who have seen them on their native plains, and heard the accounts of their incredible marches and daring deeds, their chivalrous sense of honour and exalted notions of the profession of arms, can have any idea of the excellency of the irregular cavalry corps of India ; and although their efficiency is at least six times as great as that of the regular cavalry, their cost is not above half. 140 LETTERS ON INDIA. Tims whilst the regular infantry can never again be trusted, and the regular cavalry can only be relied on for their inefficiency, the irregular infantry and the irregular cavalry both present us with troops cheaper, more reliable, and more useful. On every score, therefore, of economy and effi- ciency, any future native army we may possess should be raised and organized entirely on the irre- gular system. A good deal has lately been written in the papers about enlisting Cingalese, Dyaks, and Malays from the Archipelago, but these are merely the suggestions of one ignorant of the races he mentions. The Malays, from mismanagement, or some other cause, will no longer take service with us ; and the Ceylon Rifles, formerly entirely recruited from that race, have now to go to the Cape and the Mauritius for Hottentots, Kafirs, and Fingoes. The Dyaks and Cingalese are probably the most pusillanimous races in the world; they are small, feeble, and un warlike, and would stand as much chance against the stately Bengal Sepoy as a Mexican greaser would with a life guardsman. It is probable that, for some years at least, the present number of 40,000 European troops, and the present force of irregulars, consisting of fifty-five regiments of infantry, and forty- one of cavalry, will scarcely be sufficient for the patrol of the country ; and it becomes a question, how many Europeans LETTERS ON INDIA. 141 this country can afford to keep in India, and what irregular force should be raised to assist them. It is calculated that to replace the losses by climate and indiscretion, Europeans in India must be re- recruited at the rate of twenty-five per cent, per annum. There is no doubt that, by a more rational partition of our army, and by withdrawing regiments from colonies where a police would be more effective, we should have many more disposable troops with- out any great addition to our present army, and be able to spare 18,000 men yearly for service hi India. That would represent 70,000 men, which is probably about the maximum we could afford to keep in the country. The force may be thus stated: 50,000 infantry, at a cost of 3,000,000; ten regiments of calvalry, costing 800,000; and 10,000 artillery, costing 1,000,000 ; which would give us an army of somewhat under 70,000 Europeans, at a cost rather less than 5,000,000. If to these we add an irregular force, consisting of 55 Regts. Irr. Inf. 1000 men at 28,000 = 55,000 at 1,540,000 50 Regts. Irr. Cav. 500 men at 18,000 = 25,000 at 900,000 80,000 at 2,440,000 we should possess altogether an army consisting of 70,000 Europeans, and 80,000 natives, costing a little over 7,000,000 ; and thus have an army half 142 LETTERS ON INDIA. the size, but twice as efficient, for less than two- thirds of the cost of our present army. Nobody doubts that, with improved means of transit, 150,000 men are amply sufficient for all the requirements of India. It will probably be objected, that the sweeping re- moval of half our native army would deprive of their professions and means of livelihood some 3,000 European officers of all grades. Such an objection should be at once dismissed from the mind; no pro- ject can really have for its aim the advancement of Indian civilization, the development of Indian re- sources, and the firm establishment of English supre- macy, that advocates the removal of a single educated European from the country. It is the want of a sufficient number of educated Europeans scattered through the country, and brought into intimate communication with the native popula- tion, that more than anything else constitutes the great impediment to the solid foundation of our rule. Ah 1 officers so removed from military employment should be transferred to a police corps, organised on somewhat the same principle as the Irish police, or our naval coast guard establishment; where they would find much more interesting and profitable em- ployment in liberating the natives from their present intolerable tyranny of a native police, than in drinking strong military sherries and brandy pawny LETTERS ON INDIA. 143 at the head-quarters of their regiment. But here we enter on a subject that perhaps, of all others con- nected with our rule, is the most disgraceful, and calls most urgently for reform. If the army is the hydra whose hundred mouths have devoured the substance and drained the wealth of the country for more than fifty years, and blasted all her hopes of fair prosperity, the police has been the ravening wolf whose insatiable appetite has cruelly and unceasingly gnawed at the very vitals of all social liberty and progress. It is probably impossible to devise any system that is more certain to eradicate all freedom of thought and action, and to degrade to the lowest possible pitch the morality of the human race, than the pre- sent system of village and Government police in India. To one unacquainted with the country, the absolute power possessed by the Government and village police over the liberty, property, and even lives of the natives, is incredible; and we have only to read the remarks of Colonel Sleeman,* and the reports of Mr. Halliday on the system of village police, and the Parliamentary Blue Book on torture, to acknowledge at once with shame, that neither Austrian nor Russian police, Roman sbirrhi, or Nea- politan spies, ever possessed half the power of evil daily exercised by the native police of India. It is * See Appendix. 144 LETTERS ON INDIA. rather startliDg to be told, that after a continued occupation of the country for fifty or sixty years, during which three or four generations of English- men have ruled and passed away from India, the liberty, possessions, and even lives of upwards of a hundred millions of our subjects are still at the mercy of an organized army of myrmidons, paid by our Government, acting nominally under our in- struction, and justifying every act of oppression and wrong by the authority of British magistrates and ministers of justice. Recruited from the lowest ranks of the population, directed by native officers who know no law but the will of the highest bidder, the Government police are an object of terror to all the poorer classes of India. Their services are always in the market, ready alike at the call of the ill conditioned, who purchase their assistance to wrong and oppress their neighbours, or of the timid and orderly, who are willing to pay heavily for pro- tection. Instead of being agents of justice, and defenders of right, the police is everywhere the inseparable companion of extortion and wrong; and there is little doubt that they are indirectly the cause, and directly the perpetrators of more crimes than all other classes of India put together. A native will suffer almost any amount of ill-treatment and fraud, rather than invoke the aid of the police ; he knows full well that if he is rich, his wealth will attract LETTERS ON INDIA. 145 their cupidity, and if poor, his poverty will as surely excite their revenge. Oftentimes has the wretched native, who, smarting under the first sense of oppres- sion, has paid largely to secure the assistance of the police, been too happy soon after to pay quadruple the sum, to be allowed to suffer in peace. The Government system is simple, and would be good enough, if there were European officers enough to regulate the conduct of the subordinates. Every collectorate is subdivided into twelve or fifteen dis- tricts, called Thanahs, varying in extent from 100 to 1,000 square miles, and containing on an average probably from 60,000 to 80,000 inhabitants; every district is under the control of a native officer called a Darogah, with twelve or twenty men, and to his tyranny and unrestrained avarice are committed the property and happiness of the entire population of his district. Almost invariably raised to his position by favour or plotting against his superiors, he knows that at any time he again may be removed to make way for a more successful rogue; his sole object, therefore, is to make the most of the time and oppor- tunity that is given him ; and we have only to glance through the police reports, before referred to, to see that he does not fail in the laudable object. The office is almost invariably filled by men of low caste and no character ; and so abhorred and dreaded has the mere title of Darogah become throughout the L 146 LETTERS ON INDIA. country, from its having been invariably associated with all the most atrocious cases of cruelty and ex- tortion, that no respectable native of caste and esta- blished position is ever found willing to take it ; and almost the first step towards cleaning the Augean stable of Mofussil justice should be to change at once the hated title. All the high caste men and soldiers of fortune resort to the regular or irregular armies, whilst the police is the refuge for the lowest and most despised of all castes and religions ; their pay is proportioned to their low position in the social scale, and is little more than half of that re- ceived by the Sepoys. If the number of European officers were sufficiently increased, either by the organization of a distinct corps, or, as I before pro- posed, by appointing officers of the regular army to the position of Darogah of each one of these districts, the whole system would work well, and the social improvement of the native of India take a start that now is impossible. The Government police in India would then resemble the Irish constabulary, or the naval coast-guard stations of these islands. I cannot fancy any officer with a soul above beer and billiards, preferring the monotony of mess life in cantonments, to an independent superversion of justice over 500 or 600 square miles of country, and 60,000 or 80,000 inhabitants. The chowkedar, or village police, are worse even LETTERS ON INDIA. 147 than the Government police; they are thirty times more numerous, and therefore possess thirty times the opportunity of harassing and oppressing the natives : the village system of police is one of the most ancient, as it is, without doubt, one of the most fatal institutions of the country.* In Bengal and the north-west alone the village system intrusts with the power of oppression and extortion upwards of 150,000 of the greatest ruffians in the country; the village policeman is the fawning sycophant of every zemindar, or rich native, who will pay him for oppressing and pillaging the weak; he is to the timid villagers of India what the fierce retainers of Front-de-Bceuf and Malvoisin were to the Saxon villagers of England : recruited almost without exception from the scum of all classes nominally receiving six shillings a month, but frequently getting no pay at all, and growing rich on extortion and wrong robbers by inclination, habit and caste slaves of the strong and tyrants of the weak these men serve no purpose but to hamper justice and foster tyranny; and the atrocities they perpetrate and the cruelties they commit, avowedly by the direction of Government, but in reality to please some wealthy native, or for their own private schemes of extortion, are enough to make the British name cursed in every village in India. * See Appendix. L 2 148 LETTERS ON INDIA. No plan for the amelioration of India can effect any real good, that does not commence with the establishment of a just and honest police, under the immediate control of European officers, in the place of the present abominable and fatal system. LETTERS ON INDIA. 149 CHAPTER XIII. Public Works Native and British territory British Injustice Value of Irrigation Necessity of Mercantile element to good government of India Profit attending judicious investments. WHENEVER the Company are brought to bay and have actually to fight to the death, the question of what the most enterprising and scientific race of the present age have done during a period of fifty or sixty years to develop the resources of the richest country in the world, and to ameliorate the condition of the millions it has undertaken to govern, will naturally occupy much of the attention of Parliament and of the country. The result of such an inquiry will tell severely against the Company; the causes of the result will be equally condemnatory of the Home Government ; the enemies of the Company will point to Blue Books, and evidence of various kinds, to show that not only have we not excelled the native rulers who preceded us in the Government of India, but that we have actually fallen short of them; whilst the Directors will refer to returns and estimates, which nobody will 150 LETTERS ON INDIA. understand, for what has been done, and to railroads and telegraphs for what is now doing, to prove that their rule has been most beneficent; they will urge, and justly so, the debt incurred by the bellicose policy of the Home Government, by the wars of Rangoon and Afghanistan, of Scinde and the Pun- jaub, as a sufficient excuse for any shortcomings in the path of progress ; but no amount of argumenta- tion can alter the great fact, that neglect of our public works, from whatever cause it may have arisen, has been the most disgraceful and disastrous feature of our rule. It is impossible to exaggerate the evil ; and no amount of estimate or evidence can throw the slightest doubt on the fact, that during the last fifty years, the works that foster prosperity, and on which in many districts public wealth alone depends, have suffered from neglect, that might perhaps have been equalled, but could not be ex- ceeded, by the worst native power that can rule in the country. There is no room for argument on the subject; facts speak for themselves; the countries we have held the longest, although formerly the richest, are now the poorest, whilst those last annexed are com- paratively wealthy; as I said before, we have held Madras longer than any other part of India. It was the richest district of the peninsula, it is now the poorest. Oude, on the other hand, our most recent LETTERS ON INDIA. 151 acquisition, has for many hundred years been the head-quarters of Mussulman domination ; and whilst we are told it was a plague-spot on the otherwise healthy surface of the country, which every con- sideration of policy and even general philanthropy should induce us to occupy, we find, when we have annexed it, that it is without any exception the most wealthy and prosperous country in India ; its fertility and cultivation exceed anything our territories can produce, and its population amounts to the un- paralleled average of 300 to the square mile. It is no use arguing against facts ; it is no use proving by self-eulogistic arguments, that we rule India so much better than the natives, when we find their territory rich, ours poor, r their population abounding, whilst ours is yearly decreasing, and seeking in emigration, to Ceylon and the West Indies, the means of subsistence their own country denies them. After all, in a country like India, where every man can go where he likes, population must be a great proof of prosperity. If our government were so much better than that of Oude; if, in fact, the native rulers were the blind, insensate tyrants we are tauffht to believe, would not the inhabitants of that O ' country leave in great numbers, and seek in neigh- bouring districts, equally rich, all the vaunted benefits of European justice and enlightenment? But that is not the case ; bad as their government may be, they 152 LETTERS ON INDIA. prefer in to ours, and often quit our territory for those of the remaining native princes. After all, is it strange that of two bad governments, they should prefer the one their forefathers have lived under for countless generations, to one of strangers, and but of yesterday? I do not wish to be misunderstood: I think it is impossible to exaggerate the nature and extent of the debt we have incurred to the people of India, by neglecting the works of irrigation which we received with the country, and on which alone the wealth and even existence of many millions of the population depends. We have deprived the natives of the power of increasing, or even of preserving those works handed down to them by their ancestors, on the score that we could do it better and more effectually than they : and we have not done it at all ! We go to church and we sympathise with the rebellion of the Israelites against the unfeeling task- masters of Pharaoh ; ought we to be content with a feeling of sympathy for injustice that drove a nation to despair several thousand years ago? Ought we not to apply the moral to ourselves, now, in our own dominions and in the present generation? The Egyptians maintained the original tale of bricks, but deprived the labourers of the means of making them. " Go get you straw where ye can : yet not aught of your work shall be diminished." We demand the same tax from the native of India, LETTERS ON INDIA. 153 but deny him the only means by which his land may be made to produce abundantly : where is the differ- ence between the Egyptians and ourselves? Year after year has the cry gone up from the overtaxed Ryot that the supplies of water were diminishing, or had ceased, and that their crops had withered or not sprung up : and what have we done ? Too often sent down a fresh collector with stronger powers ; or even called out the military to enforce the tribute : " There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, make bricks." With what face can we, a Christian people, with our Bible affording us an historical warning on this very subject; with what face, I say, can we, when the land-tax falls short of our expecta- tion, and famine decimates the land, say to our starving subjects, " Get ye unto your burdens ; ye are idle, ye are idle." May they not with truth answer, "Behold thy servants are beaten ; but the fault is in thine own people." " Qu' on laissoit crier les Poules, dont avoit ac- coutume de manger les oeufs," said the Prince of Nassau, when he was told the Hollanders were grumbling at his grievous exactions. It is all very well to take a certain number of eggs ; but if you take them all the hens stop laying, and what then ? The following is the evidence of Colonel Cotton, one of the Commissioners appointed to report on the public works of Madras : 154 LETTERS ON INDIA. " So generally, indeed, have I found the works in a defective state, that I believe I may say that nearly all the tanks in the country, and nearly all the channels water less than they did; many only one- fourth, and great numbers from one-half to three- fourths." And, again, in page 6 of the same Report : " The extent of irrigation may be judged from the fact that in fourteen of the chief Ryotwar irrigated districts, the number of tanks and channels consider- ably exceeds forty- three thousand in repair, besides ten thousand out of repair " So that under our civilized rule, and in a country where the prosperity, and, as I before said, even the existence of many millions depend on the artificial supply of water, the inhabitants have altogether lost one-fifth of the magnificent works of irrigation left them by their barbarous ancestors, whilst they only derive one-half of the former advantages of those that remain. It is lost labour to say more on this subject. We know as well as the native the priceless value of irrigation in a parched and burnt-up land ; and any one of us who will go to the country, can see as well as he that his rulers have cruelly neglected the work that of all others conduced most to his wealth and happiness. " The lotos, placed aloft in the thousand temples of LETTERS ON INDIA. 155 India and Egypt, demonstrates the strong traditional veneration for the aquatic element, which descends down to the generations of Asia from the first specu- lative race of human philosophers," says the historian of Indian Antiquities. The magnificent works of irrigation left by the native princes of the Carnatic, in fourteen districts alone, represent a capital of fifteen millions ; one of them is capable of supplying the " aquatic element " to thirty-two villages for eighteen months; and when we remember that of these, one-fifth are actually useless, and the remain- der deprived of half their utility by our indifference and neglect, we must acknowledge we have betrayed one of the most important trusts we undertook in the occupation of the country; and that in thus cruelly ignoring one of the great instincts of the Asiatic race, we have deserved the enmity of millions of the present generation, and shall scarcely escape that of those who come after. It seems a hard thing to say, but I confess the con- viction is strong upon me, that during fifty years our rule has in no way whatever benefited the general community of India : the greater portion of our sub- jects are as poor as they can be, and yet live. They might have been more oppressed under their native princes; they could not possibly have been poorer. India at least those portions that have been longest in our possession is scarcely a country at a stand- 156 LETTERS ON INDIA. still, but one retrograding, one in which capital and energy are being annually diminished. Wages are as low as they can be, and energy consequently low too ; the whole country appears impoverished ; and through scores of districts, once comparatively rich and pros- perous, the former owners of large tracks of land are now happy to gain a miserable livelihood by culti- vating with their own hands a small patch of their former extensive possessions. The worst of it is, nobody gains by this wide-spread decay ; our revenue is every year collected with greater difficulty, and the natives become more poverty-stricken and miserable. We are told that we rescued India from native tyranny that was intolerable; but this was not always so the name of Actemad-ul-Dowlah, Prime Minister of Jehanjire, is to this day reverenced in Hindostan. And why? Let us quote the words of the native historian : " He regarded the industry of the people, not only as the sources of wealth and prosperity, but also as the surest defence against foreign foes, and the best preservative of internal quiet. Manufactures nourished under his auspices ; but it was to the improvement of agriculture that he especially devoted his attention and measures : religious persecutions were unknown, and Hindoos and Mussulmans were equally the object of his care, and placed equally under the direction of his law." This was in the beginning of the seventeenth LETTERS ON INDIA. 157 century, when the first Englishman set foot in India. More than two hundred years have elapsed since then, during nearly a hundred of which we have ruled the country. In what degree do your most benefi- cent professions exceed the policy of this Mahom- medan minister ? and why is all this ? Not because Englishmen are less enlightened than the minister of Jehanjire, or the native princes of five hundred years ago ; not that they are less humane or indifferent to the wants and sufferings of their fellow-men; but their interests are not in the country ; they are only there for a season, and look forward with impatience to leaving the country altogether. India is not their country, nor the natives their fellow-countrymen; the progress or prosperity of India does not affect them; their salaries and pensions are the same whether a district yield a hundredfold, or whether it yield nothing at all; they are merely middlemen, placed to manage certain properties, which they may certainly improve, and which it is their duty perhaps to do, but not their particular interest. Duty without any more immediate inducements may be sufficient to keep up the energy of the minority of mankind; but it is useless with the majority; they require something rather more personal. Where the induce- ments to exertion are so small, the loss of energy so great, and the field of labour so vast, you want five or six men to do the work of one not one to do the work of six. 158 LETTERS ON INDIA. Many of the civilians who now rule India, came to the country thirty years ago, before England had entered on that high-pressure rate of progress that is so astonishing and at the same time so dangerous. They have adopted the ideas and measures they found in force on their arrival, and have allowed things to go on in the same way, without any endea- vour to ameliorate them, or indeed any perception of the inanimate state of the country. There can be no doubt whatever that, in any government which professes to base its hope of success on the progress and development of the commerce and resources of the country, the mercan- tile classes ought to be strongly represented. In the government of India they are entirely ignored : not one of the many enlightened men who have resided for years in the country, and preside over the great mercantile firms in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, have any more to do with the government of the country and the development of its resources, than the passing stranger, or the cadet last arrived from school. It is too ridiculous that a practical mercan- tile people like ourselves should permit a country, whose wealth and consequent advantages to ourselves depend entirely upon its increased trade, to be governed during fifty years without one single com- mercial authority being engaged, or even consulted, in the administration of its affairs. Of all classes, LETTERS ON INDIA. 159 the mercantile is the one that should be most strongly represented in a commercial country. The councils of the three presidencies ought to comprise the leading merchants of the country ; and their know- ledge of the great science of commerce and inter- national trade, and their go-ahead principles, would do much to quicken and instruct the tardy energies of old Indians. It is acknowledged on all hands, that the only way to increase the prosperity of India, and to raise its revenue, is to develop its productive resources. Who so fit to aid and advise in that matter as those to whom trade and commerce are a profession, and of necessity a study ? The profit that awaits judicious investments in the public works of that country are enough, indeed, to congregate merchants and capitalists from all parts of the earth. Of thirty-nine works of irrigation undertaken in the Madras presidency, thirteen paid at the rate of 134 per cent, per annum on the capital expended; twenty-three from 3i| to 47 \ per cent.; and only three were unremunerative. Taking an average of the whole, we find the direct profit to be 691 ; or, deducting all engineering expenses, we have a clear profit of 53 2 per cent. ! !* In Ceylon, which resembles India more than any * See page 113, Madras Blue Book Public Works. 160 LETTERS ON INDIA. of our other dependencies, the leading merchants exercise a very important influence in the executive government. They are made members of council, commissioners of roads and public works, and, in fact, possess the power of effecting those ameliora- tions which it is their immediate interest to carry out. Who so likely to advocate improved means of transit and increased development of resources as those who can appreciate at once their advantage and their loss? It is only necessary to cross from Ceylon to the mainland to see at once the marked advantage exercised by the commercial and mercantile element in the interior development of a country. We have had Ceylon thirty years; and the whole island is intersected in all directions by excellent roads, on which buggies can travel at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. We have had Madras one hundred years; and there is not a road, so to speak, extend- ing twelve miles out of the capital. I myself have been twelve hours overcoming the difficulties and delays of six miles of a road that is marked in all maps as one on which you might drive a stage-coach ten miles an hour! The immense difference in the prosperity of Ceylon and Madras, owing to the more systematic improvements in the means of transit, may be gathered from the fact, that, whilst in the former the wages are twice as high, the cost of trans- port is four times less than it is in Madras. LETTERS ON INDIA. 101 Naturally, when a man's prosperity depends upon certain improvements of transit and communication, his every energy will be enlisted to secure it. Ubi dolor, ibi digitus, "Where the sore is, there will every one scratch." Neither individually nor collec- tively do the civil servants in India profit by internal improvement. Individually and collectively every merchant in Ceylon does. The want of communica- tion is his sore ; and there he will scratch till he gets relief. In India it is nobody's particular business to get roads. Nobody feels the shoe pinching; and, therefore, nothing is done. We should make it a sine qua non with any future government of India, that the mercantile interest be fully and powerfully represented. In fact, it ought to be the most power- ful interest in the country. The English are an impulsive people They neglect their duty for two or three generations, and then set to work with a sudden energy that frequently defeats its own aims. After leaving India without any means of communication whatever for fifty years, we are now rushing headlong into countless railroads, that will be as costly as they are useless. I believe myself that we ascribe far too much importance to time ; and we often make a grievous error in applying the notion that time is money to everything. It is not of the excessive value we love to consider it in this country ; and I am often at a loss to discover what If 162 LETTERS ON INDIA. real benefit the human race has derived, either in peace or war, from these wonderful means of locomo- tion and communication. Of course it is a luxury, and a very great one too, and one that, once enjoyed, can never be dispensed with ; but I believe its benefi- cial effects on the race of man are essentially superfi- cial. What good has it done to this generation ? Has it united the various races of the world? drawn more closely the general band of brotherhood ? Has it lessened our jealousies, or made nations less prone to quarrel ? Is Europe more free or more enlightened ? Has it encouraged religion or lessened vice? Has it improved the condition of the masses, or brought the comforts and necessaries of life nearer to the toiling millions of the human race? I don't believe it has. I don't believe that railroads and telegraphs have done much to increase the prosperity, liberty, and civilisation of the world's inhabitants ; but still I vote for broad gauges, express trains, and sixty miles within the hour. In India, where they have not a decent road of any description, the introduction of high speed, expensive railroads is simply absurd; and any thinking man will see, on examination, that the Stock Exchange and the capitalists of England, and not the ryots of India, are intended to benefit by their construction. Time is not money in India ; the natives do not wish to travel forty miles an hour, and their agricultural LETTERS ON INDIA. ] 63 produce of cotton and rice, the great staples of the country, will not pay for high speed : what is required is cheapness and security, and not speed. Hitherto the natives have been travelling at the rate of ten miles a day; any system of tram or horse-railroads, such as those proposed in Madras twenty years ago, that would enable them to travel ten miles an hour, would be a greater transition of speed for them than the introduction of railroads in this country, that raised our speed from ten to forty miles an hour. If these plans had been carried out, India would now be covered with a net-work of tram-roads connecting all the great cities in the empire, instead of only pos- sessing 300 miles of high-speed railway, scattered over a continent far greater than Europe, and without the slightest prospect of their being connected during the next fifty years. Whilst this gigantic imposition is thus slowly carried out, all the ordinary means of improvement are neglected; common roads, tram- roads, and horse railroads, water communication, and all other means of improvement are carefully laid on one side to make way for the railroads. In the mean- time, whilst the grass is growing the horse is starving, and will starve unless he breaks loose and gets away. One of the first acts of the Imperial Parliament should be to nominate a committee of unprejudiced M 2 164 LETTERS ON INDIA. men to determine which is the most reasonable mode of transit to introduce into India ; one that is cheap, secure and immediate in its results, or that which is most expensive, and must take at the least a quarter of a century to develop. LETTERS ON INDIA. 165 CHAPTER XIV. Mistaken views of Caste and Religion Difficulty of arriving at truth of Missionary labour Nature of the conversions Immense Missio- nary agency Abbe Dubois, Archbishop of Agra Difficulties of language Critical taste of Hindoos. No subjects connected with India have been so much misrepresented and misunderstood in this country as the great questions of caste and religion. Whilst, on one hand, we are told that the wide-spread alarm of forcible conversion, and the dread of compulsory abolition of caste, caused by the mischievous zeal of the missionaries, has induced the panic-stricken sepoys to mutiny ; we hear, on the other, that timi- dity in the exercise of our own faith, and an undue regard to the prejudices of our subjects, have been the true cause of the evil. Caste is the oldest institution in the world ; it is as ancient as tradition ; and before it all existing institu- tions are as things of yesterday. The caste and reli- gion of the Hindoo are indissoluble : one represents the oldest religion, the other the most ancient aris- tocracy in the world. The aristocracy of the high- caste natives of India is the antiquity of race ; with us in Europe it is generally but antiquity of wealth ; 166 LETTERS ON INDIA. and, despise as we may the childish practices and degrading effects of this double institution, no man will venture to esteem lightly the trust of the Hindoo in tradition that connects him with the days of fable, or his confidence in a theology that was ancient before the Pyramids arose on the banks of old Nile, and which has constituted the sole object of the faith of countless millions of his race. The English have always been tolerant of the prejudices of caste and the practices of the Hindoo religion; and no foreign power that has yet ruled India has been able to set them at defiance. This most necessary toleration has been distorted by mistaken zealots into an organised plot concocted by our rulers for the encouragement of Hindooism at the expense of the Christian faith; and there are thousands in this country who believe that, whilst our Bishops slink about unnoticed and unhonoured, our troops are turned out to present arms to all the wooden gods and goddesses that periodically peram- bulate the streets of native cities. The very reverse is the case. Hindoo deities have received no honours from soldiers in our service for the last twenty years ; and the recognition of the episcopal dignity is loudly announced to the natives of the capitals of British India by a salute of thirteen guns, whenever the bishop leaves or returns to the presidency. The several and contradictory reports of the success of LETTERS ON INDIA. 167 missionary labour in India illustrate the two opposite extremes of the parable of the sower ; and, according to the authorities you consult, you are alternately marvelling whether there is actually one Christian in India, or whether, throughout the greater part of the country, the once powerful creed of Brahma is not forced to hide its diminished head amidst stony rocks and impenetrable jungles. Whilst one relates in glowing and triumphant terms the growth of the seed that fell into good ground, another, in sad and chastened spirit, will tell how all he attempted to sow fell among thorns, and was choked. These opposite and contradictory reports of the ministers of the Gospel will excite no wonder, when we consider the opposite and contradictory causes that often send labourers to the vineyard. " O domus antiqua, quam dispari dominaris domino ! " exclaimed a French bishop, when told of a young clergyman who refused to marry a lady he had deceived, till threatened with the loss of his bene- fice. And certainly the inducements that lead shep- herds to the sheep-fold are as various and dis- cordant as those that swell the ranks of any other profession. There are scores of earnest simple-minded men in India who pass their whole lives in preaching the Gospel to the Hindoos, without any hope or possibi- lity of bettering their condition in this world ; they 168 LETTERS ON INDIA. have no object either in magnifying or diminishing the success of their efforts : such men, almost with- out exception, tell the same sad tale of the utter failure of all their labour. But there is another class, who still retain a little of the old leaven, whose minds are not quite so unspotted from worldly motives; who, in fact, in their banishment, have a hankering after tidy parsonages, pretty wives, and clerical port, or perhaps find enjoyment in the lauda- tion of the pious; these men have a reason, and a very sufficient one too, for magnifying their successes, and diminishing their failures. The sad laments of the former over disappointed hopes and wasted years, find the echo of conviction in our hearts ; whilst in the marvellous successes of the latter, we recognise the pious frauds without which they cannot replenish their store. The enthusiasm of the thousands of good, and benevolent, and generous Christians who support missionary enterprise, requires to be periodically encouraged by incontrovertible narrations of infantine devotion, mature excellence, and death-bed conver- sions ; and the marvellous reports of missionary suc- cess in the far country, are not so much intended for general circulation as to quicken the generosity of the elect. The experienced fisher in the teeming waters of the ocean knows well enough that a mackrel is most LETTERS ON INDIA. 1G9 easily caught with a bit of its own bright tail; and the crafty fisher in the abundant streams of Christian charity soon finds that to a saint the most attractive bait is an artificial imitation of its own excellence and goodness. " Oh, cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, With saints doth bait your hook." But what really is the plain English of one of these marvellous conversions in India, and elsewhere? A low-caste man, having done something that has de- prived him of the little caste he had, comes to the Padre Brown or Padre Jones of the district, and with admirable condescension expresses a desire " to take master's caste," and eat anything. He is, straight- way, baptized and the next mail takes home a flaming account of the glorious conversion of poor heathen So-and-so, all his friends and relatives, and the ecstatic state of Padre Brown's mind thereat. Every now and then the generosity of good Chris- tians at home is roused by some touching instance of death-bed conversion in one of the hospitals. Some miserable low-caste Hindoo, with as much spirit as the worm whose form he dreads to assume in the next world, feels himself dying, and with the natural instinct of humanity, that clings to anything at the end, asks to see the Padre of the hospital who, pro- bably, has been kind to him, and treated him more like a human being than any one else. He dies with 170 LETTERS ON INDIA. the Padre at his side; and, almost before he has passed away, his scarce coherent words, expressing his firm belief in the Padre, and his utter discredit of all else besides, become public property, and his name figures in the next Tuesday's report as adding another to the glorious list of missionary triumphs. But the sudden conversion of this poor spirit- broken outcast is, I fear, but a questionable kind of benefit to the true faith ; '' Heaven scarce believed the conquest it surveyed, And saints with wonder heard the vows he made ;" or, rather, that were made for him. And nobody knows better than the good Padre himself that, if this poor pariah had recovered, he would not pro- bably have been, for the future, very solicitous about " the true faith of a Christian." These observations are not made in an unchristian spirit. I do not wish for a moment to deny the la- bour and good intentions and exemplary lives of by far the greater number of missionaries in India; I believe fully that they live more in accordance with the strict injunctions of the Christian faith than any other class of Europeans in India ; but when I assert that the result of their labour is small and dispro- portioned to their numbers and efforts, I am only expressing the convictions of many of the wisest and most experienced men in the country. Of course, I have read, and marvelled at, the statistics of mission- LETTERS ON INDIA. 171 ary labour at Madras, and elsewhere; I have been told of the thousands of communicants, the hundreds of catechists, and the scores of ordained natives, that have rewarded the exertions of the pious in that country, and I have been triumphantly asked, is not this something? certainly, it is: but not in the sense implied by the interrogator; these figures represent so many hundreds or thousands of human beings freed from a degrading tyranny and a childish faith, and so far it is something : but it no more represents that number of Christians than our ticket-of-leave men with chaplain's certificates do reformed convicts. Alas ! these goodly figures carry small conviction to my mind ; and when I consider the exertions of the 22 Missionary Societies who supply the 443 agents in India, and the sums expended by this vast agency, I declare I am only surprised the number is not twenty times as great. It is the lowest caste only who form the staple of Christian converts, and when one considers that they have everything to gain and nothing to lose by the change; that they are told, that if they take the Sahib's caste they will be better than even the revered Brahmin; my only wonder is, that they do not all embrace Christianity en masse ; and I maintain that the same labour, and the same sums expended amongst our heathen at home, would have been fifty times as successful. Infidelity, hatched in the hotbeds of misery and vice of our 172 LETTERS ON INDIA. crowded cities, rears aloft its hideous front, and, \vith a beastly crowd of attendant vices, boldly stalks abroad, destroying with its pestilential breath thou- sands that come within its reach. Where is the sense or reason of leaving this monster unhurt to seek in foreign lands one far less fatal? In our gin palaces, and in the suffocating workshops of our capital, we have sacrifices that are quite as frightful, and far more numerous than the self-immolations of Juggernauth, or the triumphant suttee of a few Hin- doo widows. Should not the hecatombs of victims that glut the shrines of intoxication and vice, and the lengthened torture and death of the overtasked needlewomen of this country, induce us to look more anxiously at home before we turn our eyes abroad? Of course, it will be urged, that these are calamities inseparable from great communities ; and so indeed they are ; but though they cannot be cured, they are capable of mitigation, and notwithstanding all that is done, so much yet remains, that, as I said before, when I consider these things, I grudge every man and every shilling that goes elsewhere. I am sorry to say I cannot believe in the vast suc- cesses of missionary labour : I have seen a good deal of them in different parts of the world ; I have been the guest of missionaries - on the Prairies of the far West, and on the banks of the mighty rivers of tro- pical America; on the site of old Memphis, and LETTERS ON INDIA. 173 amidst the forests and jungles of India and Ceylon ; I have conversed on the spot with men whose lives had been passed amongst the fierce Red Men of the north, and more timid aborigines of the south ; the Arabs of the Desert, and the Hindoos and Bhuddists of our far off possessions; and all the honest men inva- riably told me they were doing no good, and all the hypocrites laid claim to miracles. How constantly when the traveller approaches the spot where he had been led to suppose the seed had taken root and multiplied a hundredfold, or sixtyfold, does he look in vain for the gentle spirit, and fair fruit of Christianity, and find instead the fatal bram- bles of the thousand vices of nascent civilization! At any Missionary Meeting at Exeter Hall, you may get at the bright side of missionary labour in India ; but what is the reverse? What is the account of those earnest Christians, who, sent out by their Church, owe nothing to voluntary contribution, and have no end or object in exciting the religious enthusiasm of their fellow-countrymen? What was the melancholy experience of the abbe Dubois, who for thirty-two years laboured unremittingly in the work of Chris- tianity? That during that protracted labour he had made between two and three hundred converts, but they were all from the low castes, and became Chris- tians from interested motives ! There were in his day, also, numerous congregations of professed Christians, 174 LETTERS ON INDIA. who would attend the Sahib's church or chapel, but they also attended their own temple and priest, with equal indifference. If a high-caste man loses his caste, he will beggar himself to pay the necessary fines to recover it; he would rather die than forfeit his caste ; but he would rather die a thousand deaths than renounce his faith ; and it almost as reasonable to expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to assist at a suttee, or to officiate on the shrine of the Hindoo Moloch, as for a high-caste Hindoo to become a Christian. Five-and-thirty years have elapsed since the return of the abbe Dubois; but time makes no difference in the veneration of the high-caste man for his tradition and his creed. The Christian faith is still recruited from the lowest castes, and I marvel not at their numbers, but at their paucity. The answer of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Agra to M. de Lanoye, who, in 1851, "inquired what progress our religion was making amongst the natives," displays still more strongly the almost hope- less task of contending against the faith of the Hindoo: "Des progres!" said the bishop, sadly shaking his head; "mais quelle influence pouvons- nous avoir 1'esperance d'exercer sur 1'esprit d'un pareil peuple? Des que nous parlons a un Hindou des miracles de Jehova ou du Christ, il se met imme'- diatement a nous opposer les miracles bien plus sur- prenants de Krichna, qui eleva une montagne sur LETTERS ON INDIA. 175 son petit doigt en guise de parapluie, pour mettre sa bergere a 1'abri d'un orage. II ne doute aucunement de la realite de nos recits ; il n'est surpris que d'une chose, c'est de la simplicite de nos dogmes et de nos miracles. En pareille matiere, rien ne lui semble trop extraordinaire. Si vous lui racontiez que pour depiller les yeux des Corinthiens, Saint Paul a fait descendre sur la terre le soleil et la lune, et les a fait ensuite rebondir a leur places respective comme des ballons, sans le moindre inconvenient pour aucune des trois planetes, il le croirait sans difficult^; les legendes boudhiques et puraniques 1'ont blaze a cette egard ; mais, a 1'exemple du chevalier de la Manche, il se rappelerait aussitot un folie plus incroyable en- core de son type ideal, c'est-a-dire de Krichna." With such statements before him, I fear the sad conviction must occasionally cross the mind of the unprejudiced observer who visits the country, that, whatever may be the future progress of Christianity in India, the labour of the missionary is now about as well rewarded as that of Ulysses, when he sowed the seashore with salt; and that their eloquence would be better expended in preaching to the fishes with St. Anthony, than in attempting the conversion of the Hindoos. Many other obstacles besides the want of faith interfere with missionary labour in India ; the greatest of which is the difficulty, if not impossibility, of expressing yourself with eloquence and power in a foreign tongue. 176 LETTERS ON INDIA. St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues; he never had to undergo the drudgery of learning a language, but was always ready at a moment's notice to converse and preach in that of the land on which he happened to be shipwrecked, or the country into which he had wandered. Chinese, Cingalese, and the other twenty or thirty languages of the far East, were all equally familiar to this polyglot saint; but somehow the gift is wanting to the missionaries of the present day. Englishmen are not first-rate lin- guists at any time; and we know how many of our acquaintances are sufficiently fluent even in French, to argue critically on profound questions of theology, or even to preach a sermon in that language. The audience, I fear, who came to pray, would be very apt to remain to scoff: and it is well to remember that the gift of tongues is not more common on the banks of the Jumna than on those of the Thames. The educated Hindoos are especially critical in all matters connected with composition and delivery; their language and articulation are soft and musical, and their holy writings remarkable for elegance of diction, and the poetry of the descriptions; and it requires no great amount of imagination to under- stand that a clerically attired missionary, although possibly earnest and patient to a degree, expounding " Doctrines orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks" LETTERS ON INDIA. 177 on a pulpit improvised for the occasion, and hammer- ing away in a language with which he is at best but most imperfectly acquainted, on a subject with which they are accustomed to associate every quality of poetry and eloquence, may excite the w r onder, and perhaps the ridicule, of his audience; but, without miraculous interference, cannot possibly shake their faith in their own priests and records. Of all countries in the world, India is the one that gives the least encouragement to the conscienti- ous Christian missionary. In New Zealand were dis- covered races of men without any distinct faith what- ever; the ground was lying fallow, and where the seed fell it took root, and brought forth good fruit apparently (for they say parson meat is not half so much cared for as formerly). In Africa, also, there are millions who are innocent of any object of wor- ship but an indefinite fetish, which does not enlist their very earnest sympathies, and which they will always sell for a glass of grog ; and in China there is an utter indifference to every established form of worship, that affords the strongest hope of future Christianity. But in India the case is very different ; there the missionary has not only to plant, but, before he can get a seed into the ground, he has to clear away the primaeval forests and impenetrable jungles of thousands of years of prejudice and tradi- tion; he has at the threshold to contend with a dis- N '178 LETTERS ON INDIA. tinct and elaborate system of theology, expounded and defended by the most subtle theologians in the world, armed with all the arguments and experiences that the sophistry of the most ancient school of philosophy has sharpened for their defence. The theology of the Hindoos is, without doubt, the most ancient in the world. They have a history, complete in all its parts, that dates back 2,000 years before the Messiah, and which treats of Hindoo his- tory for millions of years before. Their Shastas, supposed to be 1,500 years older than their Vedas, are the oldest books of any description in the world ; and they have a tradition, that in the fourteenth cen- tury, Cuttub-ul-din, the Affghan, found a stone in a temple, that dated back 40,000 years. All this may be false, and probably it is; but that does not much signify, when it is implicitly credited by every Hindoo, from Cape Comorin to the Five Rivers. The Brahmins maintain that they can trace back their religion to a period far anterior to any era of ours. They boldly date their records before the flood; and count the antiquity of the world by mil- lions of years instead of thousands ; and the answer they give to all attempts at conversion is simple, but hard to evade. Truth, says the Brahmin, was from the beginning; the most ancient religion contains most truth; mine is the most ancient, and therefore the most true. Of course the groundwork of every system of LETTERS ON INDIA. 179 theology must be faith ; and without implicit faith no religion could exist an hour. Christians possess that faith in their revelation, the Hindoo in his. " De- mandez a ce crepaud ce que c'est la beaute," says Voltaire, "il vous repondra que c'est sa crepaude." If you ask a Hindoo what is his notion of religion, he will point to his own scriptures as containing the beauty of holiness ; talk to him of faith, and you will find that his, ridiculous as it may be, is as strong as yours, and ready at any moment to endure as much or more; and few, I imagine, who have had oppor- tunities of judging, will deny that the Hindoo lives in more strict accordance with his professions than we Christians do. The high-caste natives maintain that in our endea- vours to extend our faith, we have availed ourselves of the powers of government : and that the success which the Mussulmans obtained with the sword, we have ensured by the no less dreaded enactments of the law: we, of course, deny the accusation; but is it true? A Hindoo relies as implicitly on his idea of a future state as any Christian can on his, and be- lieves that, without the observance of certain reli- gious rites at his death, his soul will never escape from the dreaded torments of a " dog's body," or a woman,* or some other denizen of the purgatory of * Those who believe in the transmigration of souls dread nothing so much as the possibility of assuming the form of a woman. N 2 180 LETTERS ON INDIA. those who rely on the tenets of Metempsychosis for future happiness ; by Hindoo law a son is obliged to perform these necessary ceremonies, and the neglect of them affects his right of inheritance ; and so im- portant are they esteemed, that, if a man have no son, he is allowed to adopt any one he chooses, who, in the eye of his law, is in every respect his very son. By English law, the son, if a Christian, may dispense altogether with those sepulchral rites ; and the law of adoption, the last hope of the childless Hindoo, is ig- nored: these innovations are direct attacks on the caste and faith of the Hindoo, and although we may call it merely justice, and the duty of civilization, it may still appear to those who are attached to such institutions by immemorial tradition the height of tyranny and injustice. Suppose the Chinese were to conquer a Roman Catholic country, and to deny to dying Christians the right of extreme unction, it would not affect their trust and confidence in a future state more completely than do these enactions of our legislature the hopes and peace of the faithful Hin- doo. Say what we will, we have, thoughtlessly perhaps, or even for the best, interfered legally with the strict observance and tradition of the Hindoo ritual, and it is worth while now that there appears a disposition in this country to interfere more authoritatively, to weigh well the opinion of Sir Thomas Munro, one of the greatest men who ever went to India, on this very LETTERS ON INDIA. 181 subject. " In every country, but especially in India, where the rulers are so few and of a different race from the people, it is the most dangerous of all things to tamper with religious feelings. They may be apparently dormant; and when we are in unsatis- factory security, they may burst forth in the most tremendous manner, as at Kellore. They may be set in motion by the slightest incident, and do more mischief in one year than all the labours of missionary collectors would repair in a hundred. Should they produce only a partial disturbance, which is quickly put down, even in this case the evil would be lasting ; distrust would be raised between the people and the Government, which would never entirely subside, and the districts in which it hap- pened would never be so safe as before." The following is the opinion of the abbe* Dubois, published in 1820, and quoted by Colonel Sykes, in his very able speech before Parliament. " The Hin- doos are a people entirely different from all others. You may, if you choose, exercise over them the most despotic sway ; you may oppress them by every kind of tyranny; you may overload them with taxes, and rob them of their property; you may carry away their wives and children, load them with chains, and send them into exile to all such excesses they will, perhaps, submit ; but if you speak of changing any of their principal institutions, either religious or civil, 182 LETTERS ON INDIA. you will find a quite ungovernable people, never to be overcome on this point; and it is my decided opinion, that the day when Government shall pre- sume to interfere in such matters will be the last of its political existence. " All know that nothing is better calculated to pro- duce irritation, opposition, and resistance, than con- tradiction ; above all, when the contradicted party is the strongest and most obstinate. Now, such is precisely the effect produced by the interference of the new reformers with the prejudices of the Hindoos, and I have reason to apprehend that the opposition of the latter will increase in proportion to the extent of the contradiction to which they may be exposed, until it shall finish by some explosion, which may make all India a theatre of confusion and anarchy, to which it will be in the power of no Government to apply a remedy." The Hindoos do not seek to shake the faith of others, nor will they yield one atom of their own. " We want not," say the Brahmins, " that others should adopt our worship ; let all men adhere to the religion of their fathers;" and without considering what the particular religion of their fathers may be, what profession of faith can be more noble? Do we not always doubt a man who deserts the religion of his fathers? And why should the Hindoo change now? why should he desert a creed that is as old as LETTERS ON INDIA. 183 tradition for one that is comparatively new, and which, alas ! the feuds and jealousies of its own ad- vocates lead him to suppose is in many points incon- sistent? The Hindoo thinks he is right; can we prove to him he is wrong? Has our conduct and behaviour during the last hundred years been such as to prove to him that he is wrong ? It is not enough that we know the Christian religion to be the best, unless we can make it appear so. " II ne suffit pas d'etre belle il faut paraitre," is a truism fully appre- ciated by many a pretty woman as she puts the last touches to her toilette; and it is one not a little applicable to rival creeds. Our faith is pure, and reasonable, and elevates the physical and moral con- dition of those who live up to its precepts ; but it is no use our knowing such to be the case, unless we can lead the Hindoos to think so too. Up to this time we have done little to prove it; and the natives of India do not appear to be much impressed with its superiority. The learned Hindoos are far from being bigots, and are perfectly tolerant of all other creeds. They teach that the Great Being takes delight in a variety of worship. They are always ready to discuss the chief points of their faith, when their opponent will enter into it in the spirit of tolerance and justice; but the laughter of the fools, who think it a Chris- tian duty to throw contempt on a faith they cherish 184 LETTERS ON INDIA. far more than life itself, is met with scorn and hatred as bitter and as deep. Your Brahmin is a good sophist, and readily assents when he sees that by so doing he can overthrow the entire structure of his opponent's argument. He will agree with you so far as to disarm you ; and many a sanguine missionary has been disappointed, when, on concluding what he fancied a victorious argument with, " Well, I hope you are at last convienced !" he is met with, " Many thanks ; but I am far more uncertain than before." The Brahmin says, " You want me to believe in Christ. Well, I have no objection. Your Christ is only another name for one of the emanations of the Supreme Deity. Christ is our Chrisna, the fourth or fifth avatar of Vishnu, or the preserver. Our Chrisna, like yours, was born of poor parents, and cradled in a manger ; and if you look at our temples, you will see the cows licking him, and that is why we worship the cow. But you are less favoured than we are. The Supreme Being has vouchsafed to us nine avatars, and there is a tenth to come ; whilst you have only one. And how did you treat your God ? With cruelty and death. We did not so disgrace the Godhead." This, of course, is only so much trash ; but it carries conviction to the minds of all Hindoos. When you throw ridicule on a wooden or stone deity, and ask scornfully whether he can hear and see, &c., you are answered immediately, " Oh, that is one of the LETTERS ON INDIA. 185 mysteries of our faith ;" and if, on the other hand, your adversary is inquisitive, and asks questions about your Trinity, what can you say ? " When I have baled the sea dry, thou shalt understand the Trinity," said St. Austen to a convert, who tackled him on that subject ; and if St. Austen could not explain it, how can we ? And how can you answer better than by repeating your opponent's own words, " Oh, that is one of our mys- teries." With the choice of two mysteries, you cannot be surprised that he should prefer the one that has been cherished by his ancestors for a thousand generations, to one introduced but as yesterday by a stranger, if not an enemy. The high-caste Hindoos do not dislike us on account of our religion ; and so long as it does not induce us to interfere with the free exercise of his own, it is matter of the most complete indifference to him whether Christ or Mahommed is the object of our worship. The good Bishop Heber lived with the Hin- doos, travelled amongst them, and talked with them ; and the wide-spread grief of the whole native population of British India at his premature death, proves at once the absence of any feeling of bigotry or intolerance towards the creeds of others. At Madras and Bombay, subscriptions were opened to raise monuments in honour of this real benefactor of the human race ; and, although the subscriptions were limited to the lowest sums, in order that all might be able to contribute, the amount collected in a few days was considerable. Rich and 186 LETTERS ON INDIA. poor, citizens and villagers, Brahmins and Banians, and even those of the lowest caste, all exerted themselves to contribute their mite. Their indifference regarding the creed of their rulers is even more remarkable ; and the eventful history of the Begum Sumroo, the mother-in-law of Djce Sombre, a Mahommedan girl bought in the bazaar by the Rajah of Sindhana, who, in spite of embracing Christianity and marrying in succession two Christian husbands, ruled the most fertile part of the Doab for twenty-four years, building the finest church in India, and leaving at her death large endowments for the church and clergy, proves how a strong will may always set at naught the religious prejudices of the Hindoos. Of course this feeling of toleration is not shared by the Mussulman population of India : their fierce creed teaches, as their first and most important duty, the forcible conversion of all who disagree with them ; and the dictum of the Prophet, that proselytisrn will excuse barbarities, founded on the supposition that every Mussulman slain increases the number of true believers, whilst that of every opponent adds to the number of demons, is as strong to this day as in the first year of the Flight. Independently of our having supplanted them, the Mahommedans hate us for our faith alone; and from them we can never expect religious quarter. But they are not the dominant race in India ; and so long as we keep the Hindoos on our side the intolerance LETTERS ON INDIA. 187 of the Moslems need cost us no alarm. Our religious policy is contained in the answer of Lord Wellesley, when accused of having been lukewarm regarding the spread of Christianity : " A British governor-general," said he, " could not do more, and a Christian could not do less." For once in this world of contradictions our policy, with regard to missionary labours, should go hand-in-hand with our duty. We should, as Christians, exercise our worship as openly, and as strictly, as pos- sible. We should proclaim everywhere our willingness and anxiety to receive all ages, sexes, and castes, who will come to us ; and, if possible, offer such inducements as may tempt them to our creed. The best and the most eloquent men in the world may preach to the Hindoo, till the Millennium ; but, unless you can show him sufficient inducement in his condition in this world to change his belief regarding the next, it will be all vain and vexatious labour. The establishment of Christian villages in different districts where the arts of agricul- ture, and the science of common things, are better Understood than amongst the natives, would soon have the effect of weaning the Hindoo from his faith. If he is to be miserable, he will prefer to remain miserable as a Hindoo, than miserable and despised as a Christian. But once show him that his worldly comfort and pros- perity will be increased by the change, and he will very soon leave caste and the tyranny of the Brahmins to his less enlightened fellows. In religious matters the Hin- 188 LETTERS ON INDIA. doos resemble their own elephant. You may tempt or bribe them, but never force them. And this is a know- ledge that should keep us even from the mere suspicion of having recourse to any underhand means of disgracing their faith or caste ; and, much as we may despise the degrading effects of the childish worship of Brahma, we must always remember that its votaries do not see with our eyes, and that to them it has still the strongest of all claims, that of being the faith of their fathers. The more I consider our Indian empire, the more satisfied am I that, in its present form it cannot last. It is founded on the shifting sands of native caprice, and no amount of legislative talent can make such a foundation sure. Our possessions are far too large for the machinery we employ to keep them in motion. The executive cannot possibly perform its duty; and, although British rule is not vicious, it is utterly in- efficient, and is attended by those thousand evils that frequently render a weak government more fatal to those living under it than a positively bad one. In Asia, the power of England stands on a quick- sand : in Europe it is founded on a rock. The latter may last for a thousand years: the existence of the former must always be precarious. We must not cut away too much from the rock, in order to steady the shifting sands, lest we imperil both without establishing either. This crisis affords the country a good opportunity of LETTERS ON INDIA. 189 deciding the great question of what sacrifices we can make to retain our Indian empire, without perilling what is far dearer to us our power and position as a great European nation. The extent of the sacrifice should be distinctly ascertained; and we should con- vince ourselves that there is a point, beyond which any further sacrifice is attended with danger. Parliament must decide this question. And it is absolutely necessary for the safety and honour of England, that in approaching it they should throw aside all party feeling, and have but one object in view the glory and prosperity of this great empire. Members of Parliament do not profess at present to have much knowledge of Indian affairs ; and it would be not only dangerous, but most insulting to the country, for them to pretend to legislate on them off-hand, with- out preparation or inquiry. Before any sweeping reform is sanctioned by the Legislature, many a prolonged sitting, and much laborious investigation, should prove to the country that their representatives have deserved success even if they do not obtain it. It is a farce to appoint a committee to examine into the state of India generally ; the subject is so vast, that no committee, however carefully selected, could possibly undertake it with any prospect of success. The only chance Parliament has of coming to a sound conclusion on Indian affairs is by examining them piecemeal, little by little ; several sub-committees should be nominated, 190 LETTERS ON INDIA. and to each should be intrusted one particular subject : the array ; public works, including the system of rail- ways; revenue and taxation, including the opium and salt taxes; the police; the administration of justice; the general question of annexation ; the state of caste ; creed and Christianity would each, separately, occupy a committee for many a month. These several sub-com- mittees should report to a committee composed of the ablest men of both Houses and of all parties ; who again should advise Parliament and the country. By this means our representatives would acquire considerable information of Indian subjects; all chance of party legislation would be avoided, and we should learn what is the exact position of India with regard to this country what are its advantages, and what its drawbacks ; and we should arrive at some approximate conclusion of how much England may risk for her Indian possessions, and at what point she must sternly negative any further sacrifice. LETTERS ON INDIA. 191 CHAPTER XV. The two Bills The Mercantile Classes Reform required in India itself. HAVING arrived at this last stage of the proceedings, I fancy I hear you and others, who have waded thus far through what Charles Lamb would call " the dull droppings of ray brain," ejaculate, " cui bono? " It is all very well ; there is some truth in it, and more non- sense ; but what, after all, is the good of it ? What is the use of parading the streets bawling, Fire, fire, when everybody is thoroughly awakened ? True, king ; but although those actually in the house itself are awak- ened, many in the immediate neighbourhood will not believe there is a fire at all ; they still say it is no- thing ; merely a chimney that wanted sweeping, that it will soon burn out, and even save the expense of the sweeps ! It is a pleasure to awaken such people, even though they are irritated and insist upon shutting their eyes again immediately. Those who delight to hear pleasant things will pronounce all herein contained the croaking of some discontented son of Imlah; and you or H. will quote with classical emphasis " Arquatis omnia lurida videri," which you will have to explain to those of your friends " who don't catch the exact words," 192 LETTERS ON INDIA. a sudden failure of the sense of hearing that frequently attends the perpetration of a Latin joke, to signify- that, " All things seem yellow to the jaundiced eye," and probably leave some of them under the pleasing impression that I am suffering from a bilious attack. As I said at the commencement, these letters are merely suggestive, and do not pretend to inform the public how to put their fire out ; but merely suggest some small means for diminishing the probability of its recurrence. We have two Bills for the Government of India, proposed by two parties in the State, each of which is believed by its supporters to be very good ; but as neither party have the majority requisite to carry either of them in their entirety, it is probable they will be thrown together, and the good of both of them eliminated. Inasmuch as I repudiate altogether the idea of Indian legislation being made a party question, and consider it very improbable that any Bill will be introduced so faultless as to enable its con- structors to dispense with the suggestion of any party in Parliament, I consider the plan a very good one ; and if there were a dozen Bills to be treated in the same way, instead of two, so much the better, and so much the greater chance of getting the necessary quantity of truth, out of what must necessarily contain much error. We must not, however, run away with the idea that because two negatives sometimes make an affirmative, that therefore two positives will always do so ; on the LETTERS ON INDIA. 193 contrary, we have the authority of a worthy elder of the early Church that, the very reverse may occasionally be the case : St. Jordan rebuked a friar severely for merely touching a woman's hand ; " True," answered the Friar, "but she is a pious woman." "No matter for that," answered the mysogonistic saint, " earth is good and water is good, but together they only make mud." And although both the present bills may be good in the eyes of those who made them, it does not follow necessarily that united they would give us what we require. If each party so successfully assails the bill of its opponent as to prove its inefficiency be- fore the country, and remains stolidly attached to its own provisions, it is not at all impossible that a third party will step in, and leaving in the hands of each of the belligerents their cherished shell, take the oyster itself for themselves ; but we will hope all party feeling will disappear in this important matter, and that every suggestion will receive the hearty support of every honest man who considers it good, whether it emanate from Whig, Tory, or Radical at any rate, personal jealousy should not be tolerated in a discussion like the present; according to the license of party tactics, no motives are too mean, no arrogance too ridiculous to impute to a political opponent in this warfare there is no quarter. " Qui meprise Cotin, n'estime point son roi, Et n'&, selon Cotin, ni Dieu, ni foi, ni loi." 194 LETTERS ON INDIA. And already gross exaggeration, and wilful misrepre- sentation, are employed to sap the public confidence in men who can be of much service if they are only afforded the opportunity. I will not say much of either of the Indian Bills be- fore Parliament, for two reasons. First, because so many much cleverer men than myself are engaged upon them ; and, secondly, because I consider that provided, in the first place, all divided responsibility be abolished ; in the second, that the distribution of patronage be kept as much as possible out of the hands of the Government of the day ; and in the third, that the mercantile interest be fully and powerfully represented ; it is to the government of India in the country itself we must look for the permanence and prosperity of our Empire. Of the three objects I consider indispensable to a new Indian Bill, I find that of Mr. D'Israeli effects all, whilst that of Lord Palmerston only effects one ; and therefore, as far as I am a judge, the former ought, on its merits, to be a favourite at three to one. If, as I can quite understand, the present Bill is too particular in its requirements, and by restricting the Government nominations to those only who have served for certain periods in particular districts in India, (which, after all, is more an accident of service than evidence of talent), the efficiency of the whole council is impaired, these clauses can be easily amended, or entirely struck out. LETTERS ON INDIA. 195 The recognition of the rights of the commercial com- munity to a voice in the government of India is a great principle, and without it any plan would be incomplete ; and it is strange, that amongst a strictly commercial people, this important feature of the new Bill should not bring itself more home to those who think on the sub- ject. Both Bills confine themselves almost entirely to the question of the home government of India, and very little is said in either about a reduction of expenses or a change of system in India itself ; but, after all, it is there, and not here, that the great reforms are needed ; you may amend the theory of Indian government in this country till you approach an ideal of perfection, that, whether in government or virtue, or anything else, is easier to wish, than to hope for ; but it is the improved practice in the country itself that is required to ensure the duration of our supremacy, and the pro- sperity of the people themselves. The Home Government of India stands exactly in the same relation to the people of that country, that an absentee landlord does to his tenants in Ireland or else- where. His intentions may be superlative, and his in- structions to his agents excellent ; but it is in the execu- tion of them, in the spirit in which they are put into practice, that the happiness of his tenants will depend. England is the absentee landlord of India, and the Company's servants are her agents, or middle men : it behoves her, therefore, to see that all her principles and o 2 196 LETTEKS ON INDIA. instructions are carried out to the best advantage, and in the very spirit, by those to whom they are intrusted for execution. We may change the name or constitution of the Home Government, and tell the Ryot that it is no longer under the Raj of Kompanee Sahib, who he believes is an old woman, but under that of the Queen Sahib, who he will be told is a young one, that he is to live and die ; but what does he know or care about that? So long as both are 12,000 miles away, and represented by an executive equally exacting and neglectful of his interests, it will not affect him much. Without entering into any of the abstruse doctrines of political science, let us take an average definition of good government, and see how it applies to our treat- ment of India. Good government, then, may be said to have for its object, the greatest good of the greatest number, and its aim is to diminish to the utmost the pains, and to increase the pleasures of those living under its authority. No government can for an instant lay claim to the title of good, that either in theory or practice checks the prosperity of the people. Two requirements are indispensable to the existence of this phoenix ; that the governing class should have a direct interest in good government, and that they should possess identity of interest with those they govern. Both these indispensable conditions to good government are abso- LETTERS ON INDIA. 197 lutely and entirely wanting in our Indian institutions. The good of the governing few, and not of the governed many, is there the chief aim of government ; there is no identity of interests whatever between the rulers of India, and their subjects ; and beyond the natural promptings of philanthropy, the middle men who exercise sway in that country, have no interest whatever in diminishing the pains, and increasing the pleasures of the millions inhabiting the country they occupy, merely as birds of passage. These are very serious considerations, and should command the profound consideration of philosophers and statesmen ; and if we intend to improve the condition of the country, and its inhabitants, we must try to remedy in some degree these dangerous and fundamental defects of our rule. No doubt, in doing this, the ruling minority will, to some extent be the sufferers ; but in honour and justice we cannot shirk our duty on that account ; and if owing to circumstances inseparable from the anomalous condi- tions of our rule, we cannot practice that first principle of good government which acknowledges the superior claims of the majority, we have no right to occupy the country. 1 98 LETTERS ON INDIA. CHAPTER XVI. Suggestions for government of India Concluding remarks. Now then let us offer some suggestions for Indian government in the country itself. A governor-general, appointed as heretofore from England, should be supreme ruler of India. He should have no provinces under his immediate control, nor should his time be occupied with petty details, but devoted exclusively to the great ends of government ; of easing the burdens, and stimulating the progress of the immense population of the empire. He should have the entire direction of all treaties and transactions with foreign and tributary states, and the appointment and control of the whole staff employed in those services. All the great questions of finance, of revenue and taxation, of police and public works, and of the con- stitution and number of the several military and marine forces of the empire, should be regulated by himself and council in the same way as at present. He should be supreme in India, and answerable only to the authorities at home, and to parliament, for his acts or omissions. So far there would be no great change in the duties of the chief of the executive; but he LETTERS ON INDIA. 199 would be freed from those innumerable small ques- tions of detail, arising from the fatal system of cen- tralization, that makes it necessary to submit every- thing connected with the internal government of the entire, even to the dismissal or appointment of an extra sweeper to a traveller's bungalow in the southern extremity of the peninsula, to the governor-general in council at Calcutta; and thus needlessly mono- polise time and attention required for more important matters. An example of the minute nature of some of the duties of the governor-general may be gathered from the late debate in the House of Lords, on moving a vote of thanks to Mr. Halliday, when we were told that the thanks of the country were due to the governor-general himself, for providing the bullock carts that transported the troops up country, quite as much as to the lieutenant-governor of Bengal ; which appears much like thanking the prime minister of Eng- land for keeping the streets of London clear on any great occasion. The seat of the supreme government should be at Agra or Delhi, or Meerut, or some healthy station in Hindostan. This would keep the nucleus of power where it ought to be, somewhere in Central India ; it would ensure improved means of communication with Calcutta; it would be within easier reach of Bombay and the Indus ; it could not be hotter than the present seat of government, and it would be much nearer the invigorating climate of the Himalayas, which is so 200 LETTERS ON INDIA. necessary to the maintenance of European health and energy. I maintain that three reforms are urgent and neces- sary to the just government of India. A more equable adjustment of taxation that would apportion the burdens of the State on all classes of the country ac- cording to their power of bearing them ; and not confine them, as at present, to the cultivators of the land, and afford an immunity to native bankers, merchants, money lenders, and others who possess the real wealth of the country. A thorough reform of Police ; and a liberal and imme- diate development of roads and irrigation. In further- ance of these objects I would appoint a minister of finance to direct and adjust the whole taxation and revenue of the country ; a minister of police with ample powers to supervise and reform the iniquitous system of the native police ; and a minister of public works. These, together with the lieut. -governor of the province in which the seat of the supreme government was established, the commander-in -chief, and a civilian from each of the presidencies and divisions of the empire should form the council of the governor-general of India. The governor-general, the minister of finance, police, and public works, together with the commander-in-chief, might be appointed from England, or taken from the Indian services according as the most competent LETTERS ON INDIA. 201 persons could be found. The remainder of the council would of course be men of Indian experience, acquainted with the customs, wants, and prejudices of the natives, and able to explain the separate and often opposite requirements of the several kingdoms of the empire. My suggestions for the government of the several pre- sidencies and divisions would be almost identical. In each the governor's council should comprise a commis- sioner of public works, of police, and of revenue, who, together with a commander-in-chief, and a government secretary, should form a standing council ; but, during two or three months in the year, the chief magistrate or collector of every district in the presidency, together with four or five merchants selected by their own body, should meet at the seat of government or on the hills, to assist the governor and his permanent council with their advice and experience, and to explain the condition and requirements of their several districts. By this means more accurate and public information regarding the actual state of the country would be obtained, and more reality, life and energy, be instilled into the executive, than belongs to the present stagnating system; and by affording the commercial community the right of being heard on all subjects of internal communication and development, the first great requisite of good govern- ment that identifies the interests of the governing classes and the governed would in some degree be secured. We now come to the government of the several 202 LETTERS ON INDIA. districts themselves ; and here I think we shall see the real good is to be effected. In these considerations we will confine ourselves to the presidency of Madras. We have held it longer, and we owe it more than any other portion of India ; and there we should in justice initiate any reforms ; but what is applicable to Madras is applicable to all other portions of India. The Madras presidency contains twenty-two districts, varying in size from Madura, which is nearly twice the size of Wales, with a population of 1,756,700, to Coorg, which is about three times the size of Surrey, with a population of only 175,600. Each of these districts is governed by a collector, and magistrate, and their assistants. Frequently, as we have seen, the two former are combined : these officers are changed from one district to another, according to interest, promotion, or the requirements of the service. In some cases, by the rapidity with which these officials are translated from one appointment to another, you would imagine it was merely like moving a police magistrate from one county of England to another, amongst a people inherit- ing the same ideas, speaking the same language, and living under one code of laws. But the very reverse is the case : the Madras presidency contains a greater variety of nations, languages, customs, religions, and social requirements and institutions, than can be found in a similar extent of country in the world. Within the area of this presidency Tamul, Malabese, Canarese, LETTERS ON INDIA. 203 Teloogoo, and Hindostanee, languages that vary from each other as completely as Dutch from Greek, or Portuguese from Danish, are spoken by nations present- ing greater contrasts of faith, tradition, custom, and energy, than the whole of Europe can produce. You have to deal with every shade and extreme of fanaticism, faith, morality, and barbarism, from the fierce Hadji who has drank of the pool of intolerance at Zemzem ; to the dung-bedaubed Faqueer who has quaffed of the holy waters of the Ganges at Hurdwar; from the followers of Mahommed who trust to a paradise of Houris ; to those of Brahma who believe in a future of snakes ; from the Mussulman who upholds a plurality of wives; to the Nairs who prefer a plurality of husbands; from those tribes who only kill their own female children ; to the Khoonds who kill all they can kidnap. Amongst this variety of nations you meet with the extremes of courage and timidity, energy and apathy ; and human nature does not furnish a greater contrast than that existing between the hardy Mopla, who traverses with his heavy burdens the precipitous ghauts of the West, and dares to meet the English soldier hand to hand, and the spiritless Hindoo of the Carnatic, with scarce energy to scratch the soil that supports him, and who starts at the sound of a falling leaf. It is only by living amongst them for many years that the natures, tastes, and requirements of such opposite types of the human race can be understood by an English- 204 LETTERS ON INDIA. man who differs so completely from them all ; but owing to the system of removing magistrates and revenue officers from district to district this becomes impossible; they have no time to master any of the peculiarities of their subjects, and naturally soon become indifferent to all. For this reason I would allow of no transfers what- ever, except by sanction of the governor and council. A young man arriving in India to join the civil service should be immediately posted to a particular district, and to that he should belong, rising through the several grades of promotion, till his pension is secured or his liver " retired from business." His lot would thus be cast with one people, and his comfort identified in some degree with their peace and welfare. If he found any urgent demands for roads or irrigation, or any grievous obstacle to the welfare of the people, he would then have an interest in getting them remedied, instead of, as now, being indisposed to commence improvements which he knows he will not have time to complete, and which his successor may care nothing whatever about. If a district is in an unsatisfactory state, it is, under existing circumstances, far easier for a man to apply for a transfer than to attempt a remedy. A civilian confined to one district would have only one language and one code of customs to master ; if a magistrate, he would soon learn to respect those customs and traditions, without a due regard to which he could never administer strict justice, or secure the confidence LETTERS ON INDIA. 205 of the natives under his control : and if a collector, he would soon ascertain where taxation was unjust, and where public works of utility were most urgent. It is utterly impossible to exaggerate the ills arising from the constant change of magisterial and revenue authority, by which the prosperity of some districts is rendered an impossibility. In the district of Dinaj- pore, in Bengal, the magisterial authority was changed seven times in one year; imagine the delay and in- justice inseparable from so many changes, and the condition of those wretched suitors who would have to bribe seven judges' clerks, and stand the worrying and extortion of seven packs of judicial jackalls ! It is the extreme of cruelty, and must in the mind of the native associate any quality but justice with our exercise of judicial authority. Both magistrates and revenue officers should rise by seniority, or promotion, in their several districts ; and although I would not decrease the present munificent scale of pay and allowances of the civil service, feeling confident that if we want to keep down peculation, we must pay well for the services of a class of men who are above its temptations, I would so alter the system that its benefits should be more equally shared, and the present feverish pursuit of good appointments, to which so much of the prosperity of the people, and progress of the country, is sacrificed, should be rendered unnecessary. Stated salaries should not be attached to particular 206 LETTERS ON INDIA. appointments as at present, but the pay and emolu- ments of the civil servants should increase annually, as in the case of the clerks of public offices in England. A man would then go on with his work in whatever district he might be located, and would have no object in seeking a change of appointment, to the neglect and injury of the one he holds. At the first glance it appears there is a certain amount of hardship in thus restricting men to parti- cular districts ; but in truth there is none whatever ; there is no hardship in being compelled to reside within the limits of a province as large as Wales or Yorkshire, with a million of human beings dependant on your energy and justice; even Coorg, the smallest district in Madras, which is only half the size of Yorkshire, and contains only 175,000 inhabitants, affords full scope for the employment of any amount of energy ; and although it cannot be denied that some districts in India are much more unhealthy than others, you cannot, except perhaps in the Sunderbunds, find any area, of five or six thousand square miles, that does not contain many spots where the European constitution can thrive in comparative safety. Those whose lot fell in such dis- tricts would select the most healthy spots for their residence, and knowing that there they must remain, would try to preserve, by greater care and tem- perance, the health they now seek in a change of appointment : of course there would be no difficulty in LETTERS ON INDIA. 207 allowing more leave or shorter service to those whose districts were permanently unhealthy. The enlightened discharge of the duties of governing and advancing the prosperity of our fellow-men is so noble an employment that, when viewed in its proper light, the position of a judge or collector of a principality as large as Wales or Yorkshire, is most exalted. And when one considers the calibre of the present recipients of the country's honours, it is impossible to deny that a man who, during many years, can successfully control a million of men, is equally worthy of commanderships and grand crosses as any other public servant, naval, military, and diplomatic. The title of collector should be abolished as by no means implying the important duties of an officer to whose enlightened policy so much is intrusted the chief of the district should have the title of deputy governor, or something of the kind ; and his duties should be those of general supervision of justice and revenue in his district; under him should be collectors, and magistrates, and numerous assistants, covenanted and uncovenanted ; and here again we hark back to our original difficulty, the utter inefficiency of the European staff for one tenth part of the duties of government. Owing to the great expense of the covenanted service, it may perhaps be impossible to increase their number very materially, but there is no reason why uncovenanted assistants, taken from the 208 LETTERS ON INDIA. lower middling classes of the country, should not be supplied in any quantity ; the sons of farmers, trades- men, with souls above tallow OF turnips, would find in India more intellectual employment, and more chance of success in the game of life, than by emigrating with- out capital to Canada and Australia, or enlisting in the Life Guards or Police. The employment of any number of non-commissioned officers of the Queen's army, espe- cially sappers and miners, or well-conducted officers of police, to the civil services ; and the selection of a number of practical engineers and educated me- chanics, such as direct the execution of the public works of this country, could not fail to be of the greatest assistance in the development and proper administration of India. All examinations might be dispensed with in the selection of these assistants, in whom an undoubted good character would be the only indispensable quality. Any Englishman of sterling honesty and integrity, taken from the lower middling classes, would be worth, his weight in gold in furthering the execution of justice, and in remedying many of the shortcomings of our Indian government; being appointed, like their covenanted superiors, to a particular district, they would have only one vernacular to master, and it is hard if a man of any ordinary ability could not manage that in a year. So great is the temptation, afforded by superior physique and morale, to the Englishman, to impose and LETTERS ON INDIA. 209 tyrannise over the native, that, whenever they are brought into contact, the laws for the defence of the latter must be most stringent; and the uncovenanted civilian must know, and, if occasion offers, be made to feel, that anything approaching peculation or oppres- sion will be visited with instant dismissal ; although, of course, leave to Europe without any greater prejudice to individual interests than loss of service, should be granted as at present ; every inducement should be offered to the Company's servants of all grades to take more advantage of the hills and of the varieties of the Indian climate, and to resort less frequently with their families to England. In nine cases out of ten, a residence on the hills, is attended with all the benefits of a year's trip to England ; and if the Neilgherries once became a considerable English settlement, and rapid and con- venient means of communication were opened to it from all parts of the presidencies, its advantages would be found to be so great, that the families of Indian officers would soon see that it was more convenient, and economical, and more in accordance with the inte- rest of both parties for them to go out and share in the full pay and allowance of their friends and relations in India, than to bring them home on half pay, to stay with them in Europe. By this means a European colony would by degrees establish itself, and one of the first requisites to our permanent occupation of the country be secured. These suggestions for the better government of India, P 210 LETTERS ON INDIA. are the result of some reflection and much conversation on the subject with Anglo-Indians of experience ; but for all that, they may be useless and impracticable ; the gale of public opinion may blow in an opposite direc- tion, and, as the old proverb says, " to contend against a strong wind is not in the power of a weak gnat." But something must be done, and that speedily, if we wish to save England from the eternal disgrace of wil- fully trampling under foot the rights and requirements of a hundred millions of her subjects. So much has lately been written and said about the short-comings of Indian government, so many revela- tions of oppression and injustice have been made, that the fact of Indian misrule can no longer be doubted ; and the good name of England demands its immediate reform. The ancients had a very convenient way of excusing their misdeeds, by saying some deity urged them ; and Cromwell, when he cut off his sovereign's head, said " he was doing God's work." We cannot claim immunity from our duties as a nation on the former plea, and let us be careful how we apply the latter hypocritical sop to our short-comings. Don't let us tell each other that in denying the rights of good government to a hundred millions of His crea- tures, we are doing God's work ; for we are not. We have lain too long at anchor under the pleasant land of Self-praise, listening to the Syrens' melody that whis- pers soothing assurances of our might, majesty, and LETTERS ON INDIA. 211 justice. Let us cut the cable at once, and stand boldly out on our voyage of progress, if we would avoid drifting altogether on these treacherous shores ; and if we are appointed to do God's work in India, let us so act that the heathen we rule, may recognise in our endeavours, the beneficial promptings of that great Being, and not merely the selfishness and indifference of his creatures. p 2 212 LETTERS ON INDIA. CHAPTER XVII. CONCLUSIONS. THE following are the conclusions to which the accompanying letters, whether justly or not, have con- ducted us 1. That the want of general information on Indian subjects is much to be regretted. 2. That if Parliament undertakes to govern India, it should at any rate go through the form of mastering a subject, of which at present it professes to know nothing. 3. That numerous and laborious committees are the only means by which this information can be acquired. 4. That since our present race of statesmen have always avoided the question of Indian government, any spasmodic legislation on their part should now be viewed with the greatest distrust. 5. That no government can reasonably be expected to produce off-hand, a system perfectly suited to the requirements of India. 6. That above all things Indian reform should not be made a party question. LETTERS ON INDIA. 213 7. That the extent of our Indian empire is far too great for the governing element. 8. That to make our rule permanent, we should either greatly increase our executive, or decrease our territory. 9. That the present staff of Europeans is not more than sufficient to develop fully the resources of one presidency. 10. That it is not sufficiently numerous to do any one thing well. 1 1 . That our rule is not vicious in theory, but ineffi- cient in practice. 12. That any reform not inaugurated by a great addi- tion to the governing element is useless. 1 3. That the abolition of double government, and the substitution of the Queen's name for that of the Com- pany, cannot of itself in any way affect the natives. 14. That it is in the country itself that an improved system is most required. 15. That every double government is in itself absurd; and that divided responsibility can never conduce to success. 16. That of the three influences operating directly or indirectly on India, the Queen's government, the Court of Directors, and Parliament, the former has exercised by far the most fatal influence on the country. 1 7. That to the wasteful expenditure of the numberless wars of annexation and aggression, undertaken by order 214 LETTERS ON INDIA. of the Home government, must be attributed the lamentable fact of taxation always having remained at its maximum, and social improvement at its minimum. 18. That, generally speaking, the members of the Court of Directors have been men of Indian experience, whilst successive presidents of the Board of Control have not. 19. That, as a rule, the former have not abused their patronage, whilst the latter almost invariably have. 20. That the upper middling classes founded and cemented our Indian empire. 21. That India is the safety-valve for the escapement of the surplus energy of the upper middling classes. 22. That its possession keeps at a very high standard the rewards of educated labour. 23. That the enjoyment of the lion's share of Indian patronage has become almost a necessity to the peaceful well-being of the upper middling classes. 24. That the removal of the present landmarks of Indian patronage would be injudicious. 25. That the individuals selected by the Directors for their civil and military services, are drawn from the very classes that it is most to the interest of this country should go to India. 26. That Indian patronage contains prizes sufficient to shake the integrity of every man from a duke to a dustman. LETTERS ON INDIA. 215 27. That therefore no ministry should be intrusted with its uncontrolled distribution. 28. That partial colonization, or amalgamation of races, is necessary to permanent conquest. 29- That, owing to the cheapness of labour, and to the impossibility of the European competing with the native in labour requiring exposure, emigration to India will always be confined to those who possess capital. 30. That therefore emigration to India must always be very limited ; but with sufficient capital and insuffi- cient numbers, there is no reason why Englishmen should not cultivate and develop parts of India, in the same way that the Americans have the Southern States. 31. That during the last fifty years England has drawn annually from five to ten millions sterling from India. 32. That to that extent has her capital been dimi- nished, and our debt to her increased. 33. That notwithstanding the little that has been done, India does offer a magnificent field for the judi- cious investment of capital. 34. That works of irrigation in particular, if under- taken with judgment, will pay from fifty to one hundred per cent. 35. That in the face of this fact we have cruelly neglected all those works of utility, by which alone her prosperity could be maintained. 216 LETTERS ON INDIA. 36. That those parts of India we have held the longest, are the most impoverished ; and those most recently acquired, are the most wealthy. 37. That Madras, which is our most ancient posses- sion, is now the poorest country in India ; and Oude and the Punjaub, lately annexed, the most prosperous. 38. That the only way to revive the prosperity of India is to increase the productive resources of the country. 39. That the interests of the commercial community are most immediately identified with this result, and therefore should be more powerfully represented in the government councils. 40. That in our proconsols in India we want men of vigour ; the iron hand and velvet glove ; the bold council and energetic action, that marks the reverse of the native character. 41. That, strange as it may appear, there are occa- sionally men better qualified for the post of governor- general, or governor of a presidency, than that untimely being, a peer born without a silver spoon in its mouth, who is always selected. 42. That if we persist in sending out governors- general and governors who know nothing about India, we ought at least to provide them with a council who do. 43. That our incessant annexation has been unprin- LETTERS ON INDIA. 217 cipled and impolitic ; and, more than anything else, has shaken the native confidence in English faith. 44. That, humbug apart, we do not continue to hold India for the sake of the gentle Hindoo, but for our own. 45. That it is the height of tyranny and injustice to interfere in any way with the caste and religion of the natives. 46. That these are the birthright he most values, and for which he will fight the hardest. 47. That you may irritate him by insults or indif- ference ; but you cannot change him one jot or tittle. 48. That, in the words of Burke, " to change the foundation of so vast a building as Indian caste and custom, is reforming particular defects by universal confusion, and like curing disease by death." 49. That unfortunately the zeal of missionaries has occasionally induced them to use the name of govern- ment in support of their own views. 50. That consequently, in many districts, the natives believed that the government did intend forcibly to abolish caste. 51. That, therefore, thousands of those now fighting against us are animated by patriotism, and devotion to the faith of their fathers. 52. That, in accordance with our vaunted admiration of liberty, we cannot in justice treat with inhumanity those who, fighting for their religion and their country, have attempted to exterminate their conquerors. 218 LETTERS ON INDIA. 53. That the atrocities of Delhi and Cawnpore, even if not exaggerated (and as yet the details rest entirely on native evidence), can excite no wonder when we remember that the sweepings of all the jails of the country have been let loose on society without restraint. 54. That the openly-expressed desire to exterminate the whole race of Sepoys, because they have attempted to free their country and faith from foreign interference, would be absurd if it were not wicked : and that a smile of derision at its impossibility is only checked by a thrill of horror at its barbarity, and astonishment at its being the avowed desire of a people vaunting the merciful faith of Christ. 55. That the police of India, both government and village, is the most iniquitous in the world, and no plan for the amelioration of India can be really effective that does not commence with the establishment of a just and honest police, under the immediate control of Europeans. 56. That the chief cause of the mutiny was the con- tinued inefficiency of the high military officers sent out by the Horse Guards. 57. That inefficient commanders naturally produce an inefficient army. 58. That veterans, who were the right men in the right place in the bow-windows of a London club, were quite the wrong men to command hundreds of thousands of Sepoys. LETTERS ON INDIA. 219 59. That Horse Guards' appointments have had a most calamitous effect on our influence in India. 60. That it is contrary to the ordinary dictates of common sense to send officers, who have learnt their duty between London, Windsor, and Dublin, to com- mand men to whom war has been a trade. 61. That the country has a right to express indigna- tion at the indifference shown by those in authority to the claims and services of Indian officers. 62. That the present army of 300,000 men is un- wieldy, and should be reduced. 63. That there is every reason to .believe that, with greatly improved means of communication, 150,000 men, 50,000 Europeans and 100,000 natives, would suffice. 64. That, under all circumstances, we must retain a native army. 65. That it should never be allowed to exceed three times the proportion of the European element. 66. That the system of an irregular force is more suited to the genius of the country than that of a regular force ; that it is cheaper, more effective, and offers greater attraction to the pick of the fighting castes of India than the regular service. 67. That on account of superior physique, high sense of honour, and immemorial usage, the high castes will always furnish the best fighting men of India. 68. That it was the discipline that was faulty in the Bengal army, not the enlistment. 220 LETTERS ON INDIA. 69. That those who advocate the employment of Cingalese, Dyaks, Malays, and Fingoes for the sub- jection of India, know nothing of the races they write about. 70. That great speed is of small value in India, except for the occasional conveyance of troops. 71 . That cheapness and facility of carriage are the great requirements of the country. 72. That ordinary roads, and not railroads, are the immediate want of India. 73. That Indian railroads are intended to benefit jobbers on change, and English speculators, rather than India or the Ryot. 74. That the most urgent public works are entirely shelved to make way for the comparatively useless rail- way. 75. That ordinary roads and tramroads could be completed in a quarter the time, and at a tithe of the expense of railroads, and would be more useful. 76. That it is in India itself that the great reforms must be initiated. 77- That magisterial and revenue duties should never be combined ; and the thief-taker should never be the judge. 78. That the appointments of commissioners of police, revenue, and public works, should be the most im- portant, and most carefully attended to, of any in India. LETTERS ON INDIA. 221 79. That all unnecessary centralization of authority in governor-general should be avoided. 80. That he should have no districts under his imme- diate jurisdiction. 81. That civilians should be stationary. 82. That the uncovenanted services be vastly in- creased. 83. That character is the only indispensable require- ment. 84. That the law for the protection of the native must be most stringent. 85. That, as a nation, we are too fond of indulging in self-praise. 86. That English rule, when applied to people of different thoughts, habits, and requirements from our- selves, is not always the unalloyed blessing we choose to consider it. 87- That we are now thoroughly awake to the fact, that in India it has been attended with many calamities. 88. That, knowing our danger, it is madness "ad Sirenos scopulos consenescere," to remain at anchor any longer within hearing of this Syrens music. APPENDIX.* Square Miles. Population. British States (Total) 837,412 131,990,901 Native States (Total) 627,910 48,376,247 British States under Governor- General 246,050 22,255,972 British States under Lieut. -Gov. Bengal 221,969 40,852,397 British States (Madras) 132,090 22,437,297 British States (Bombay) 131,544 11,790,042 British States (North West) 105,759 33,655,193 Native States (Bengal) 515,533 38,702,206 Native States (Bombay) 60,575 4,460,370 Native States (Madras) 51,802 5,213,671 DISTRICTS UNDER THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL. Total Extent 246,050 23,255,972 Nagpore or Berar .... 76,432 4,650,000 Punjab 73,535 10,435,710 Peju 32,250 570,180 Tenasserim . . . . 29,168 115,431 Oude 25,000 5,000,000 Thalum (Punjab) .... 16,762 1,762,488 Mooltan ...... 15,404 971,165 Leia 15,272 1,122,621 Lahore ...... 11,627 3,458,686 Rangoon, Peju ..... 9,800 Bassein, Peju ..... 8,900 128,189 Cis-Sutlej States .... 8,090 2,282,111 Peshawur ..... 7,588 847,695 Jullundar ..... 6,792 2,273,037 Mooltan ...... 5,634 411,386 Jhelum ...... 5,350 429,420 Dehra ...... 4,123 362,041 Goojranwalla ..... 3,752 553,383 Kangra ...... 3,207 718,955 Kohat . . . 2,840 101,232 * Taken from Thorburn's Diagrams ; a work invaluable to those inclined to study Indian statistics. APPENDIX. 223 DISTRICTS UNDER LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF BENGAL. Square Miles. Population. Total Extent 221,969 40,852,397 Arracan 32,250 540,180 Bhaugulpore 28,329 8,431,000 Assam 24,531 749,835 Dacca 20,942 4,055,800 Patna 18,319 7,000,000 Moorshedabad 15,950 6,815,876 Jessore 15,862 5,758,654 Cuttack 12,664 2,793,883 South- West Frontier (non regulation) 32,895 2,235,201 Ramgurh 8,524 372,216 Sylhet 8,424 380,000 Bhaugulpore 7,803 2,000,000 Chittagong 7,567 2,406,950 Beerbhoom 3,114 1,040,876 Behar 5,694 2,500,000 And eight more districts of all sizes and population. Any one desiring more accurate information will find it in Thorburn's Diagrams, or a return printed for the House of Commons, 28th July, 1857. DISTRICTS IN BOMBAY. Total Extent . Hyderabad . Kurrachee Shikarpoor Sattara Ahmednuggur . Candeish . Tannah . Belgaum . . Poonah . Sholapoor Ahmedabad Rutnagherry Thun and Packur Dharwar . Kaira Surat Broach 131,544 11,790,042 26,760 1,768,757 19,240 821,109 11,532 10,222 1,005,771 9,931 995,585 9,311 778,112 5,795 874,570 5,405 1,025,802 5,298 665,000 4,991 675,115 4,356 650,223 3,964 3,920 51,073 3,837 754,385 1,869 580,631 1,629 492,684 1,319 290,984 224 APPENDIX. DISTRICTS OF THE NORTH WEST. Square miles. Population. Total Extent .... 105,759 33,655,193 Benares ..... 19,737 9,437,270 Saugor and Nerbudda 15,388 1,929,587 Rohilcund .... 12,428 5,217,507 Allahabad .... 11,971 4,526,607 Meerut .... 9,985 4,522,165 Agra ;; 9,298 4,373,156 Delhi .... 8,633 2,195,180 Kumaon .... 6,962 605,910 Jubbulpore .... 6,237 442,771 Jaloun and Jansi 4,405 376,297 Bhutty Territory 3,017 112,974 Dumoh .... 2,428 363,584 Ajmere .... 2,029 224,891 1,857 305,594 Goruckpore 3,087,874 Azimghur .... 1,653,251 1,569,324 1,378,268 1,174,556 Meerut .... 1,135,072 Allyghur .... 1,134,565 Budaon ..." 1,019,161 Shajuhanpore .... 986,096 __ 851,757 Banda .... 743,872 DISTRICT OF MADRAS. Total Extent .... 132,909 22,437,297 Madura .... 13,545 1,756,791 Cuddapah . 13,298 1,451,921 Non Regulation Districts 12,564 2,316,802 Bellary .... 12,101 1,299,599 Coimbatore .... 8,151 1,153,862 Nellore .... 7,959 935,690 Salem ..... 7,499 1,193,377 Canara ..... 7,152 1,056,333 North Arcot .... 6,580 1,485,873 Malabar .... 6,050 1,514,909 APPENDIX. 225 Ganjam Tinerelly South Arcot Guntoor Masulipatam Vizagapatam Rajahmundry Tanjore Kurnool Trichinopoly Chingleput Coorg Total Extent Hyderabad, c Bombay Golab Sing's Nepaul Madras Joudpore Gwalior Mysore Bhawlpore Kattywar Pe Odeypore or Mewar MADRAS (continued). Square miles. Population. 5,758 926,950 5,482 1,269,216 5,020 1 ,006,005 4,752 570,083 4,711 520,866 4,690 1,254,272 4,501 1,012,086 3,781 1,676,086 3,278 273,100 2,922 709,196 2,717 583,462 2,116 175,600 NATIVE STATES OF INDIA. 627,900 48,376,247 ^izam Territory . . 95,337 10,666,080 60,575 4,460,370 minions . . . 60,000 3,000,000 54,500 1,940,000 51,802 5,213,671 35,672 1,783,600 33,119 3,228,512 30,886 3,460,696 25,200 925,000 Chiefs . . . 19,850 1,486,900 ;war .... 11,619 1,161,400 And a few others. THOSE who desire to know more of the intolerable evils entailed on the native community by an inefficient administration of justice and tyrannical police, will find their curiosity satisfied, and their indignation aroused, by a perusal of a small book, published at Benares, in 1848, called "Revelations of an Orderly," by Paunchkouri Khan. It is a work of fiction, written much in the form of Hajji Baba and Anastatius. It professes to be " an attempt to expose the abuses of administration, by relations of every-day occurrences in the Mofussil Courts ; " and it is Q 226 APPENDIX. the opinion of those most conversant with the subject, that it is truthful and scarcely exaggerated. "C'est une experience eternelle," says Mon- tesquieu, "que tout homme qui a du pouvoirest porte a en abuser ; ilva jusqu' a ce qu'il trouve des liinites." The myrmidons of justice in India possess unrestricted power, and their abuse of it does indeed know no limit. Paunchkouri Khan discourses instructively on the want of a uniform practice in the magistrate's offices. It was his lot, he tells us, to serve under several masters. Their power and propensity to enforce each his own peculiar rule and mode of practice, appear particularly to have struck his attention. " One," he says, " has a passion for turning everything topsy-turvy. Nothing that has been proposed or done by his pre- decessor, can be right. One objects to time-honoured usage, and asks the spectacled sheristadar, Why ? according to what regulation is that done ? The old man, almost old enough to be his grandfather, stands before his Excellency, and with folded hands replies, According to custom, Sahib, from a long time ago." "Custom bed d!" or, in more polished language, "look at the regulations," is the only answer he gives to the claims of immemorial tradition. Other masters are content to see only through the spec- tacles, and hear only with the ears of their Umlahs. With such an official, custom is everything. He respects everything he finds esta- blished. Everything goes to rack and ruin from his easy temper. He shows too much, whilst the opposite character shows too little, deference to the opinion of his officers. The great fault in the administration of justice arises from the power officials possess of altering the rule of practice as they please ; so that instead of every Zillah being governed on uniform principles, the modes of procedure of no two Zillahs are similar. I believe these evils would be considerably remedied by the magis- trates remaining stationary in their own districts, where their own practice, whether right or wrong, would at any rate maintain some kind of uniformity. Imagine the condition of justice in the districts men- tioned in these letters, where the administration was changed seven times within the year ! This book contains numerous and most startling anecdotes of the tyranny, extortion, and duplicity of the myrmidons of justice throughout the country; and narrates, as every-day occurrences, the frightful tortures inflicted by the police to extort money or confession, and even to compel wretched prisoners to accuse themselves of crimes they never committed, merely that the officers themselves might obtain the praise and rewards of energy and skill. And when we remember that these accounts of acts then notorious in India, were given to the world hi 1848, and that it was not till 1856, eight years afterwards, when the Revelations of the APPENDIX. Madras Torture Commission, horrified the uninitiated, and put the matter beyond a doubt, that Indian officials would allow even the possibility of such acts being perpetrated in British territory, we have certainly some excuse for not receiving as Gospel, all the reports on Indian prosperity that the authorities have thought proper to issue. However, it of is no use going deeper into these subjects ; the public- have been led to the water, and very dirty it is, and if they don't wish to drink, no power can make them. If any man rfoes wish to learn the real condition of justice in the Mofussil, let him glance through the Report of the Madras Torture Com- mission : " The Minute by Mr. Halliday." In M. Valbezen's recent work on India, an article on "The Administration of Justice in Bengal," in Vol. VI. of the " Calcutta Review," and the " Revelations" of the afore- named Paunchkouri Khan; if he does no/, if he thinks it better to dream on in the comfortable belief that our rule sheds nothing but blessings on India, let him carefully avoid any authentic narrations from t he- country. Those who desire information regarding Public Works, Roads, Tank-. Water Communication, Harbours, Irrigation, should turn to the Blue Book on Public Works, in Madras, printed by order of the Ilou-t of Lords. The invaluable matter contained in that ponderous tome is, however, most agreeably condensed by Colonel Cotton, Madras Engineers, in a small book on Public Works in Madras. In that will also be found many valuable suggestions and calculations about Horse Railroads and Tram- roads. The " Calcutta Review" is replete with valuable matter on all Indian subjects ; and it is astonishing that, being the only periodical possessing a specialite on Indian matters, it should have been so little read. A Return showing the distribution of Patronage by the Court of Directors and Board of Control, from 1840 to 1857, both inclusive. The total number of Commissions and Civil Appointments amounted to 5,477. The following were the classes whence they were drawn : Sons of Military, Medical and Marine Officers and Chaplains in the Company's Service . . 1,465 Sons of Civil Servants in Company's Service . 400 Sons of Naval, Military and Medical Officers in II. M. Service .... .717 Sons of Clergymen ...... 580 Sons of Professional Men and others . . . 2,315 Total . . 5,477 An instahce that mistaken zeal on the part of missionaries, have occasionally had a dangerous effect on the native mind. 2-28 APPENDIX. Extract from a letter by Sheik Hedayut Ali Subadur and Sidar Bahadoor, Bengal Sikh Police Battalion, published in the " Times :" "After these events (about 1852), the missionaries requested all the moularies and pundits (Mahommedan and Hindoo Priests) to assemble : and when assembled, asked them why they shut up their women; that they ought to let them out like women of other countries : told them that they ought not to circumcise their children, or give them the Janeo or sacred cord, or marry them till they arrived at eighteen years of age ; and that none of the above forms should be carried out without the permission of the magistrate of the district. These questions and remarks caused great fear in the minds of the Mahommedans and Hindoos ; they said, amongst themselves, ' if the Government insists upon our acting up to these orders, what next shall we not be compelled to do against our customs and religion ?' To talk over this matter many persons of both religions met at Calcutta ; the missionaries of the Mofussil also spoke to the same effect to the villagers, so that all, more or less, became more alarmed for their religion, and displeased with the Government, for they thought the missionaries dared not give such orders without the consent of the Government " F. Shoberl, Printer, 51, Rupert Street, Haymarket, W. C/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA I TRRARY - ' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 315 DS kk? S95 1