Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

Not the least remarkable of the physical changes thus produced by civilisation, is the diversity of complexion which it gradually affects. It appears certain, for example, that the races who peopled the northern and western parts of Europe, subsequent to the dark-skinned Iberians, were all of the fair or xanthous style of complexion; but this is by no means the case with the great mass of people who are supposed to have descended from them. “It seems unquestionable,” says Prichard, “that the complexion prevalent through the British Isles has greatly varied from that of all [?] the original tribes who are known to have jointly constituted the population. We have seen that the ancient Celtic tribes were a xanthous race; such, likewise, were the Saxons, Danes, and Normans; the Caledonians also, and the Gael, were fair and yellow-haired. Not so the mixed descendants of all these blue-eyed tribes. The Britons had already deviated from the colour of the Celts in the time of Strabo, who declares that the Britons are taller than the Gauls, and less yellow-haired, and more infirm and relaxed in their bodies.” The Germans have also varied in their complexion. The ancient Germans are said to have had universally yellow or red hair and blue eyes,—in short, a strongly marked xanthous constitution. This, says Niebuhr, “has now, in most parts of Germany, become uncommon. I can assert, from my own observation, that the Germans are now, in many parts of their country, far from a light-haired race. I have seen a considerable number of persons assembled in a large room at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and observed that, except one or two Englishmen, there was not an individual among them who had not dark hair. The Chevalier Bunsen has assured me that he has often looked in vain for the auburn or golden locks and the light cerulean eyes of the old Germans, and never verified the picture given by the ancients of his countrymen till he visited Scandinavia,—there he found himself surrounded by the Germans of Tacitus.” In the towns of Germany, especially, the people are far from being a red-haired, or even a xanthous race; and, from the fact that this change has been developed chiefly in towns, we may infer that it depends in part on habits, and the way of living, and on food. Towns are much warmer and drier than the country; but even the open country is much warmer and drier than the forests and morasses with which Germany was formerly covered. The climate of Germany has, in fact, changed since the country was cleared of its vast forests; and we must attribute the altered physical character of the Germans to the altered condition under which the present inhabitants live.

It was the conquests of Rome that first scattered the seeds of civilisation in Western Europe. There it has grown up into a stately and nearly perfect fabric on the shores of the Atlantic, gradually losing its perfection as it proceeds eastwards, until it reaches the semi-barbarism of Russia, and the still deeper barbarism of Upper Asia. Our limits hardly allow of our inquiring what influence this civilisation is calculated to exert in future upon the ethnological condition of the Continent, although it is a question of great importance, as foreshadowing the chief changes which may be expected to result from the state of chronic strife upon which Europe has now entered. We can only remark that the grand action of progress and civilisation is to develop _the mind_, and so convert the units of society from a mass of automatons into thinking and self-directing agents,—conscious of, and able to attain, alike their own rights and those of their nation. Hence follows the growth of liberty within; and, without, the gradual establishment of union between scattered sections of the same race. Supposing, then, that the progress of civilisation in Europe be unobstructed, we may calculate that wherever we now see internal despotism, there will be liberty,—wherever we see foreign domination, there will be national freedom,—and that, after a little more training in the stern school of suffering, the Continental nations, grown wiser, will make an end of the present arbitrary and unnatural territorial system of Europe, and arrange themselves in the more natural, grander, and permanent communities of race.

It was doubtless a perception of this truth that caused the French Emperor recently to declare that “the age of conquests is past.” We regret to think, however, that the statement is somewhat premature,—for Europe is still far from that happy climax of civilisation which in the preceding sentences we have indicated. Moreover, there are two very opposite periods in the life of nations when the race-principle reigns supreme, their first and their last;—just as, in the case of individuals, men often adopt in old age, from the dictates of experience, principles which in youth they had acted upon from instinct. Now, Europe at this day presents both of these phases of national life existing simultaneously, at its eastern and western extremities; and it seems probable that the development of the race-principle in its early form among the Slavonians, will take precedence of its development in maturity among the civilised races of the Continent. There is every indication that the Panslavism of Russia will precede the coalescing of the Teutonic tribes into a united Germany—or of the Romano-Gallic races of France, Spain, and Italy, into that trinity of confederate states which Lamartine so stoutly predicts. Nay, may not this Panslavism of Russia, by a short-lived political domination, be destined to prove the very means of exciting the ethnological affinities of the rest of Europe, and of thereby raising up an insuperable barrier to its own progress, as well as involuntarily launching the other nations on their true line of progress?

The fag-end of an article is little suitable for the discussion of such really momentous topics, and we especially regret that we cannot proceed to consider the effects which the progress of civilisation is likely to exert upon Russia itself. Any one, however, who is disposed to supply for himself the deductions from the above principles, will feel that his labour in so doing is not without its recompense, by establishing the consolatory truth that, so far as human eye can discern, “a good time coming” is yet in store for Europe,—though, alas, what turmoil must there be between this and then!

THE GANGETIC PROVINCES OF BRITISH INDIA.[35]

Disguise it as we may, conquest to the conquered must ever be a bitter draught.

It is impossible for nations to be entirely disinterested. The rewards of the victors cannot be reaped without trenching upon the rights of the vanquished.

Three centuries have gone by since Machiavelli wrote, yet still does the Italian mutter his words, “Ad ognuno puzza questo barbaro dominio;” and all the material benefits which the peasantry of Lombardy often admit that they enjoy under their present masters, cannot abate the aversion of the people of that province to the Austrian rule.

There are more points of resemblance than we may like to confess between the position of Austria towards Italy, and that of England towards India. In both cases, the bulk of the conquered, especially the agricultural classes, have little to complain of, and are on the whole passively contented and reconciled to a yoke which, as far as they are concerned, presses, perhaps, but does not gall; in both cases, all of a higher order, all upon whom ambition can have any influence, must feel more or less discontented with a condition necessarily attended with a diminished chance of advancement, and a mortifying stagnation of hope. Both of the dominant powers ought to regard this frame of mind not as a fault, but as a moral malady, and to direct their best efforts to the cure of an affection naturally resulting from the depressed position of those brought by conquest under their sway.

What the sanative measures of Austria may have been, and into the causes of their failure, we need not stop to inquire, but may proceed at once to consider in how far we have, in this respect, acquitted ourselves of our obligations to those over whom we also rule mainly by the right of conquest and superior strength.

Not being gifted, like many of our contemporaries, with power to take in the totality of the gorgeous East at one comprehensive glance, we must examine our Indian empire in detail, and for the present confine our remarks to the Presidency of Bengal, with its appendage the Lieutenant-Governorship of Agra.

The guides whom we propose to follow in the prosecution of our inquiries into the state of these Gangetic provinces, their past and present condition, and their future prospects, are the authors enumerated at the foot of the page, each of whom may be regarded as a representative of one or other of the schools into which those interested in the work of Indian administration may now be said to be divided.

The history of our civil administration of the Gangetic portion of our Eastern territory divides itself into three distinct periods. The first, extending from the victories of Clive in 1757, to the commencement of Lord Cornwallis’s system in 1793, may be called the heroic and irregular; the second, dating from the year last mentioned, and continuing till the accession of Lord William Bentinck in 1829, may be designated the judicial and regular; and the third, stretching from that time to the present day, the anti-judicial and progressive period.

During the first of these periods, it is in vain to deny that gross abuses prevailed, and that many acts of oppression were committed by those very individuals among our own countrymen, whose heroism in the field and sagacity in council were the subjects of admiration to such natives as were brought into communication and contact with them.

A degree of intimacy thus subsisted between the European rulers and natives of higher rank, such as, in these days, is only to be found where the native has been by education assimilated in some degree to the Englishman.

It is stated by Mr F. H. Robinson, that men who had left India at that early period, could not believe those who, in after years, told them of the social estrangement prevailing in that country, and of the reluctance evinced, even by Mahommedans, to share a repast with a Christian.

Engaged, as the English of those early days were, in a struggle for political existence, their deportment towards natives of rank was influenced by the often-felt necessity of winning them over to their interests; and thus our national disposition to be contemptuously churlish towards those who differ from ourselves in language, complexion, and manner, was kept for a while in abeyance. At that period, therefore, we find traces of friendly personal feeling subsisting between Englishmen and natives, and expressed by the latter, even in the same breath with the most earnest protestations against the mal-administration of the country then in our hands. Striking instances of these conflicting feelings are exhibited in that most curious work entitled _Syar-ul Mootekherin_, which may be translated into a “Review of Modern Times,” or more literally, “Manners of the Moderns.” This history of the events attending the downfall of the Moghul and the rise of our own power in India, was written by a Mahommedan gentleman, of the name of Mir Gholan Hussein, whose descendants, if we are not misinformed, continued under our rule to hold possession of certain lands in the province of Behar, since lost to them in a manner likely to be chronicled among the events of the third of the three historic periods to which we have alluded.

If even at this distance of time it is painful to read the reproaches bestowed by the author on our internal administration, it is still consolatory to find one, to whom neither partiality nor flattery can be imputed, recording his unfeigned admiration of the personal conduct of many of our countrymen in those early days.

Of Warren Hastings the author writes with enthusiasm. He records all of that great man’s troubles with his council; and gives, if we remember right—for we have not been able to find a complete translation of the work in London—a circumstantial account of the duel with Francis, fought, according to English custom, with _tummunchas_ (pistols), in a _bugishea_ (garden); and then after narrating the complete dispersion of the factious opposition by which he had been thwarted, he breaks out in a triumphant tone, with an exclamation like the following: “Now did the genius of Mr Hastings, like the sun bursting through a cloud, beam forth in all its splendour.” In describing an action fought in the vicinity of the city of Patna, in the year 1760, the native author dwells with delight upon the conduct of his friend Dr William Fullerton, who, in the midst of a retreat in the face of a victorious enemy, on an ammunition-cart breaking down, stopped unconcernedly, put it in order, and then bravely pursued his route, and “it must be acknowledged,” he adds, “that this nation’s presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery, are past all question.”

In abatement of these praises, he adds the following reflections: “If, to so many military qualifications, they knew how to join the art of government, no nation would be preferable to them, or prove worthier of command; but such is their little regard to the people of these kingdoms, and such their apathy and indifference for their welfare, that the people under their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and distress.”

Though this censure is in so far unfair, that all is, in Oriental fashion, imputed to the ruling power, without allowance for the circumstances of a period of troublous transition, it is evidently penned in an honest and friendly spirit; and evinces no repugnance whatever to the domination of the English, provided they would acquire some better knowledge of “the art of government.” In another passage he recounts how gallantly a Hindoo of high rank, Rajah Shitab Roy, co-operated with Captain Knox in attacking an immensely superior force, and how heartily, on returning to Patna, the English captain expressed his admiration of his Hindoo ally, exclaiming repeatedly, “This is a real Nawab; I never saw such a Nawab in my life.”

Soon afterwards the French officer with the force opposed to the English, the Chevalier Law, having been deserted by his men, remained by himself on the field of battle, when, bestriding one of his guns, “he awaited the moment of his death.” His surrender and courteous reception are dwelt on with evident delight; and, after stating how a rude question addressed to the Chevalier by a native chief was checked and rebuked by the English officer, he makes the following observation:—“This reprimand did much honour to the English; and it must be acknowledged, to the honour of these strangers, that as their conduct in war and in battle is worthy of admiration, so, on the other hand, nothing is more modest and more becoming than their behaviour to an enemy, whether in the heat of action or in the pride of success and victory.”

These extracts, borrowed from the notes to the third volume of Mill’s History, might be supported by many other passages of a similar tendency in the native work itself; and all tend to prove that the social estrangement since prevailing between our countrymen and the native gentry has not had its origin in the religious scruples of the latter, or in any decided aversion on their part to a closer intercourse with the strangers to whom Providence has assigned the mastery over their land.

This view is confirmed, in as far as the Mahommedans are concerned, by what Mrs Colin Mackenzie tells us of the comments of the Afghan chiefs on the reluctance of their co-religionists in Hindostan to share a repast with their Christian rulers, and the absence of any fellowship between the two classes is traced by that lady to the very cause to which it is in our opinion also mainly to be ascribed; namely, to our peculiar and somewhat repulsive bearing towards all who differ from ourselves in tone of thought, in taste, or in manners.—With a scrupulous respect for the persons and property of those among whom we are thrown by the accidents of war, or trade, or travel, we too often manifest a great disregard for the feelings; and as insults rankle in the memory long after injuries are forgotten, we find that liberal expenditure and strict justice in our dealings cannot make us as popular as our rivals the French, even in countries where we paid for all, and they for nothing, that was supplied or taken. Now, it is well remarked by Mr Marshman, at p. 63 of his Reply to Mr Cobden, that “everything in and about our Eastern Empire is English, even to our imperfections;” and among them we need not be surprised to find an undue scorn of all that is foreign, heightened by the arrogance of conquest and the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to a dark complexion. This last is a more potent principle than in our present humour of theoretical philanthropy we may be disposed to admit; but it seems to be born with us, for it may be seen sometimes in English children at an age too young for prejudice, or even a perception of social distinctions.

It was said by “the Duke,” that there is no aristocracy like the aristocracy of colour; and all experience in lands where the races are brought into contact, proves the correctness of the aphorism.

During the first thirty years of our ascendancy in India, this most forbidding of our national characteristics was kept in check by the exigencies of our position; and the consequence was, that, notwithstanding all the corruption of the time, we were then individually more popular than we have ever been since. There was so little of what could be called European society then to be met with throughout the country, that Englishmen were drawn into some degree of intimacy with natives, in order to escape from the painful sense of total isolation and solitude. That this intercourse was favourable to morality in the highest sense of the term, is more than we can venture to affirm; each party too often acquired more of the faults than of the virtues of the other. But still, bad as the public and private life of Anglo-Indians was at that period, and however great the corruption that prevailed, these defects in those who ruled were perhaps more tolerable to the governed than the ill-mannered integrity of a succeeding generation.

The abuses had probably gone on increasing, and the palliating courtesy most likely diminishing, when a new era was ushered in by the arrival of the first Governor-General of superior rank, in the person of the Marquis Cornwallis.

We must refer our readers to Mr Kaye’s pages for a clear description of the state of the Bengal Presidency at the commencement of this the second of the three periods into which we have assumed that its history may be distributed. Our space will not allow of our entering into the controversy about the merits of the system then introduced by Lord Cornwallis and his coadjutors, but we gladly make room for the following picture of the state of the peasantry in Bengal, sketched as we are assured by an eyewitness, in the course of the year 1853.

“What strikes the eye most in any village, or set of villages, in a
Bengal district, is the exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluttish
plenty surrounding the Grihasta’s (cultivator’s) abode, the rich
foliage, the fruit and timber trees, and the palpable evidence against
anything like penury. Did any man ever go through a Bengalee village
and find himself assailed by the cry of want or famine? Was he ever
told that the Ryot and his family did not know where to turn for a
meal, that they had no shade to shelter them, no tank to bathe in, no
employment for their active limbs? That villages are not neatly laid
out like a model village in an English county; that things seem to go
on, year by year, in the same slovenly fashion; that there are no
local improvements, and no advances in civilisation, is all very true.
But considering the wretched condition of some of the Irish peasantry,
or even the Scotch, and the misery experienced by hundreds in the
purlieus of our great cities at home, compared with the condition of
the Ryots who know neither cold nor hunger, it is high time that the
outcry about the extreme unhappiness of the Bengal Ryot should
cease.”—(P. 194.)

It is cheering to read in the chapter of Mr Kaye’s work, from which the above extract is taken, the proofs that the labours of Cornwallis and his able coadjutors have not been fruitless, and that the peasantry of the part of India more immediately under their care, are not, as some have asserted, to this hour suffering from their blundering humanity.

It would indeed be most mortifying to think that regulations, pronounced at the time of their promulgation by Sir Wm. Jones and the best English lawyers in India (though, in the true spirit of professional pedantry, they would not allow them to be called laws), to be such as would do credit to any legislator of ancient or modern times, should really in operation have proved productive of little or no good.

The preambles to some of the first of these regulations are worthy of notice, even on the score of literary merit; and it is impossible to peruse them without feeling that they must have proceeded from highly cultivated minds, deeply impressed with the importance of the duty on which they were engaged.

It was the recorded opinion of the late Mr Courtenay Smith, of the Bengal Civil Service (a brother of the celebrated Sidney Smith, and, like him, a man of great wit and general talent, though unfortunately his good things were mostly expressed in Persian or Hindostanee, and are thus lost to the European world), that succeeding governments have always erred as they have departed from the principles of the Cornwallis code; and that it would have been well if they had confined their legislation to such few modifications of the regulations of 1793 as the slowly progressive changes of Oriental life might have really rendered necessary.

For very nearly thirty years the government of Bengal resisted the tempting facility of legislation incident to its position of entire and absolute power, and was content to rule upon the principles, and in general adherence to the forms, prescribed by those early enactments.

The benefits resulting from this system were to be seen in a yearly extending cultivation, a growing respect for rights of property, and the gradual rise in the minds of the people of an habitual reference to certain known laws, instead of to the caprice of a ruler, for their guidance in the more serious affairs of life.

The counterbalancing evils alleged against it were, the monopoly of all high offices by the covenanted servants of the East India Company; the accumulation of suits in the courts of civil justice—a result partly of that monopoly, and partly of the check imposed by our police on all simpler and ruder modes of arbitrement; and its tendency, by humouring the Asiatic aversion to change, to keep things stationary, and discountenance that progress without which there ought, in the opinion of many of our countrymen, to be no content on earth. Indeed, the very fact of the natives of Bengal being satisfied with such a system, would, we apprehend, be advanced as a reason for its abolition—a contented frame of mind, under their circumstances, being held to indicate a moral abasement, only to be corrected by the excitement of a little discontent. But, in truth, there was nothing in the Cornwallis system to preclude the introduction of necessary amendments.

The great reproach attaching to it was the insufficient employment of natives, and the exclusive occupation by the Civil Service of the higher judicial posts. Now, we hope to make it clear, by a brief explanation, that the correction of both of these evils might more easily have been effected under the Cornwallis system, than under that by which it has been superseded. There are, as we have remarked at the outset of this article, questions of difficult solution inseparable from conquest; among which, that of the degree of trust to be reposed in the conquered is perhaps the greatest.

Where attachment can hardly be presumed to exist, some reserve in the allotment of power appears to be dictated by prudence; and to fix the amount of influence annexed to an office to be filled by one of the subjugated, so as to render its importance and respectability compatible with the supremacy of the ruling race, is far from being so easy as those imagine who, in their reliance on certain general principles of supposed universal application, leave national feelings and prejudices out of account in making up their own little nostrums for the improvement of mankind.

Under the Cornwallis system, there was an office which, though then always filled by a member of the Civil Service, seemed, in the limitation as well as the importance of its duties, to be exactly suited for natives to hold. When the civil file of a district became overloaded with arrears, the government used to appoint an officer to be assistant or deputy judge. To him the regular judge of the district was empowered to refer any cases that he thought fit, though there his power ceased, as the appeal lay direct to the provincial court from the award of the deputy.

The deputy being made merely a referee without original jurisdiction, was a wise provision for keeping the primary judicial power in the hands of the officer charged with the preservation of the peace of the district, while importance and weight were given to the office of the deputy, by making the appeals from his decisions lie to the Provincial Court, and not to his local superior. A single little law of three lines, declaring natives of India to be eligible to the office of Deputy Judge, would, by throwing a number of respectable situations open to their aspirations, have provided for their advancement, without any disturbance of institutions to which the people of the country had become accustomed and reconciled. Again, as to the monopoly of higher judicial office by members of the Civil Service, the Cornwallis system, perhaps, provided a readier means of abating even this grievance than will be found in that by which it has been supplanted.

Nothing can be more extravagant than the scheme of sending out barristers from Westminster Hall, to undertake, without any intermediate training, the management of districts in Bengal and Hindostan. Sir William Jones himself, unintelligible as he was, on his first arrival, to the natives of India, would have failed if he had undertaken such a task. This visionary proposal has happily received its _coup de grace_ from Sir Edward Ryan, the late Chief Justice in Bengal, in his evidence before the Commons’ Committee; but it does not, in our opinion, follow that the aid of lawyers trained in England is therefore to be altogether discarded in providing for the administration of justice in India. Although the man fresh from England would be sadly bewildered if left by himself in a separate district, it does not follow that he should not, after some preparatory training, be able to co-operate vigorously with others. The horse will go well in double-harness, or in a team, who would upset a gig, and kick it to pieces.

If barristers chose to repair to Bengal, and, while there practising at the bar of the Supreme Court, would study the native languages, it appears to us that, on their proficiency being proved by an examination, they might have been advantageously admitted, under certain limitations as to number, into the now abolished Provincial Courts.

Had these experimental provisions in favour of natives of India, and barristers from England, been found to succeed, their eligibility to every grade in the judicial branch of the service might have been proclaimed, and the most plausible of all the complaints against our system of Indian government would thus have been removed. But improvement without change was not to the taste of those by whom the last of our three administrative periods was ushered in; and in further confirmation of Mr Marshman’s remark, already cited, on the parallelism of movement in England and in India, it was in the changeful years 1830 and 1831 that a revolution was effected in our system of internal administration, which has since given a colour and a bent to our whole policy in the East. In the course of those two years the magisterial power was detached from the office of the judge, and annexed to that of the collector; the Provincial Courts were abolished, their judicial duties being transferred to the district judges, and their ministerial functions of superintendence and control to commissioners, each with the police and revenue of about half a dozen districts under his charge.

Two Sudder, or courts of ultimate resort, were established, one at Calcutta, the other at Allahabad in upper India; but all real executive power centred in the magisterial revenue department, presided over by two Boards, located, like the Sudder Courts, at Calcutta and Allahabad.

One of the new provisions then introduced abolished the office of Register, or subordinate Judge, held by young civilians conjointly with that of Assistant to the Magistrate. This was a most serious change, for it abolished the very situation in which young civilians received their judicial training, and fitted themselves for the better eventual discharge of the higher duties of the judicature.

The Registers used to have the trial of civil suits for property, if not more than five hundred rupees (£50) in value. The abolitionists urged the injustice of letting raw youths experimentalise upon small suits, to the supposed detriment of poor suitors. There was a show of reason in this mode of arguing; but those who used it did not give due weight to the consideration that these youths were to become the dispensers of justice to all classes, and that it was better for the country to suffer a little from their blunders at the outset, than to have them at last advanced to the highest posts on the judgment-seat without any judicial training whatsoever. But, in fact, the whole argument was based upon a mere assumption. The young Registers certainly committed occasional blunders, as old Justices and Aldermen, if we are to believe the daily papers, constantly commit them in England; but, on the whole, their courts were generally popular and in good repute among the natives. The young civilian had often a pride in his own little court of record, liked to know that it was well thought of, and was sometimes pleased to find parties shaping their plaints so as to bring them within the limits of his cognisance.

They thus often acquired a personal regard for the people, whom it was their pride, as well as their duty, to protect—a feeling which has since, we fear, been too much weakened. The young civilians of the present day, though excellent men of business, and accomplished linguists, have seldom any individual feeling for the natives, whom they regard in a light for which no word occurs to us so happily expressive as the French term, “les administrés.” Thus it happened that the abolition of Registerships proved almost the death-blow to the Cornwallis system, and shook, not merely the framework, but the very principles of judicial administration throughout the country. It was followed up by a series of measures, all calculated to lower the judicial department of the service, and to prove to the natives that the protection of the law, promised in the still unrepealed regulations, was thenceforward to prove illusory, wherever it was required to shield them from the encroachments of any new scheme or theory finding favour for the moment with an executive government ruling avowedly upon principles of expediency, and seeking every occasion to shake off the trammels imposed upon its freedom of action by the cautious provisions of the Cornwallis code.

The people soon found in their rulers under the new system a scrupulous discharge of all positive duties, combined with a diminished consideration for native prejudices, a neglect of many punctilios of etiquette, and a stern hostility to every exceptional privilege exempting an individual in any degree from the operation of the rules of general administration. This last-mentioned tendency showed itself particularly in the case of the rent-free tenures, which had for some ten years previously been undergoing revision.

These landed tenures were held under grants from former rulers, exempting the grantee and his heirs from all payment on the score of revenue, though sometimes, as in our own feudal tenures, imposing upon him obligations of suit and service in some form or other.

When the framers of the Cornwallis code, in 1793, determined on recognising the validity of every such tenure as was held under an authentic and sufficient grant, a provision was at the same time made for their being carefully recorded and registered.

This duty of registration was, however, either totally neglected or very imperfectly performed, and the consequence was, that by collusive extensions of their limits, and other means, such as it would be tedious to explain, the rent-free tenures were gradually eating into the rent-paying lands forming the main source of the revenues of the state. Careful revision, therefore, became necessary, and was in fact commenced so far back as the year 1819. The inquiry was intrusted to the officers of the revenue department; but for some time permission was left to those discontented with their award, to bring the question at issue between them and the Government before the regular courts of justice for final decision. This process proving too tardy, in about ten years afterwards a sort of exchequer court, called a Special Commission, was erected for the trial of appeals from the decisions of the revenue authorities on the validity of rent-free grants. This commission was filled by officers of the judicial branch of the service, and their proceedings, carried on in strict conformity with the practice of the courts of civil justice, gave no offence, and created no alarm, notwithstanding that extensive tracts were brought by their decisions under the liability of paying revenue to the state. But not long after the country had entered into the third period of its administration, the revenue authorities got impatient of all restraint, and sought to break through the impediments of judicial procedure and rules. The primary proceedings, being intrusted to young deputy-collectors, were carried on with a rapidity which rendered due investigation utterly impossible, and all real inquiry must have been deemed superfluous by juniors, who saw their superiors gravely pronounce, even in official documents, that the very existence of a rent-free tenure was an abuse, and ought to be abated.

We have said that the forgeries practised by some, and the extension of their privileges by others of the holders, rendered strict investigation of rent-free tenures an immediate necessity and a duty. Still, it was to be borne in mind, that our faith was pledged to the recognition of all _genuine_ grants, and that, in the larger of these tenures, the fallen nobility and gentry of the land found their solace for the loss of power, place, station, hope of advancement, and all that gives a zest to the life of the upper classes in every part of the globe; while the smaller tenures of the kind constituted, in many instances, the sole support of well-descended but indigent families. There was something to move the compassion even of a universal philanthropist, in the thought of the humble individuals of both sexes to whom a sweeping resumption of all such tenures was in fact the extinction of almost every earthly hope. The Indian government itself, though at that period described by Mr F. H. Robinson (p. 12) as “a despotism administered upon radical principles,” became startled at the havoc which the zeal of its subordinates was committing among this class of sufferers, and interfered to mitigate the severity of their proceedings. Many of the “soft-hearted” seniors of the Civil Service rejoiced at a resolution which relieved them from an odious and painful duty. But thus reasons a strong-minded junior on what he regards as a feeble concession:—

“Unfortunately the long delay in making the investigations had
established in their seats the fraudulent appropriators of the
revenue; and when it came to be taken from them, the measure caused
great change and apparent hardship to individuals in comfortable
circumstances; hence arose a great cry of hardship and injustice. We
were still most apt to view with sympathy the misfortunes of the
higher classes; many soft-hearted officers of Government exclaimed
against the sudden deprivation; and some of the seditious Europeans,
who find their profit in professional attacks on Government, raised
the cry much louder. But the worst of the storm had expended itself; a
little firmness, a little voluntary beneficence to individual cases,
and it would have ceased; and the temporary inconvenience to
fraudulent individuals would have resulted in great permanent addition
to the means of the state; but the Bengal Government is pusillanimous.
Since Warren Hastings was persecuted in doing his duty, and Lord
Cornwallis praised for sacrificing the interests of Government, and of
the body of the people, it has always erred on the side of abandoning
its rights to any sufficiently strong interested cry. It wavered about
these resumptions. It let off first one kind of holding, then another,
then all holdings under one hundred beegas (about seventy acres),
whether one man possessed several such or not: life-tenures were
granted where no right existed. Finally, _all_ resumed lands were
settled at _half_ rates in perpetuity, and the Board of Revenue
intimated that they ‘would be happy to see all operations
discontinued.’ The result therefore is, that the Government have
incurred all the odium and abuse of the measure, have given the cry
more colour by so much yielding, and in the end have got not half so
much revenue as they ought to have had. There has been an addition of
about £300,000 to the annual revenue, at an expense of £800,000.”[36]

According to Mr Campbell’s calculation, a stricter enforcement of the resumption laws might have doubled the above sum; but as only the smaller tenures were let off, it is scarcely possible that more than half as much again as was actually realised could have been wrung out of the remnants to which the Government so timidly, as he asserts, abandoned its rights. An addition, therefore, of about £450,000 to our annual income would have been all that we should have gained by a measure violating the most solemn pledge given to the people that every VALID grant should be respected, reducing many families to ruin, and shaking the general confidence in our honesty and good faith. Though the passage cited is open to many objections on the score of arbitrary assumption and false reasoning, it is to its hardness of tone that we would chiefly draw our readers’ attention, as strongly confirmatory of the following remark, taken from Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet:—

“I have said enough, I think, to demonstrate that the disaffection
which exists is traceable to the despotic character our administration
has of late years assumed, simultaneously with its sedulous diffusion
of liberal doctrines; to the unhappy dislike of natives, as natives,
which has crept in among the servants of Government; to the many acts
of abuse, oppression, and arbitrary misgovernment, arising as much
from misguided zeal as from evil intention, which, on the part of the
administrative officers, harass and vex the people.”—(P. 31).

We have already recorded our assent to Mr Marshman’s remark on the thoroughly English character of our Indian empire and its administration; but we have, moreover, to observe, that, in the application of new principles even of European growth, India often outstrips the mother country. That which in England is still theory has in India become practice. There are not wanting in England people to maintain that all grants of olden times ought to be forfeited, and their proceeds applied to the purposes of general government. If these people had their way, they would certainly resume the lands of the deans and chapters, probably those of the schools and colleges, and possibly such also as are devoted to the support of almshouses, and other charitable institutions scattered over the face of the country. These speculations in England evaporate in pamphlets, and cannot for a long time assume any more positive form than that of a speech in the House of Commons. But the following passage in Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet shows us how differently such matters are ordered in India:—

“The Government have systematically resumed, of late years, all
religious endowments; an extensive inquiry has been going on into all
endowments, grants, and pensions; and in almost every one in which the
continuance of religious endowments has been recommended by
subordinate revenue authorities, backed by the Board of Revenue, the
fiat of confiscation has been issued by the Government.”—(P. 17).

Again, there are many in England who would gladly reduce the landed possessions of great proprietors, like the Duke of Buccleuch and others, to more moderate dimensions; but they hardly venture to put forth speculations upon a measure which, in India, has been carried into positive and extensive execution.

The fourth chapter of Mr Kaye’s work contains a clear and admirable account of the recent settlement of the provinces of the Upper Ganges, in the course of which the reader will meet with the following passage:—

“There was a class of large landed proprietors, known as Talookdars,
the territorial aristocracy of the country. The settlement officers
seem to have treated these men as usurpers and monopolists, and to
have sought every opportunity of reducing their tenures. It was not
denied that such reduction was, on the whole, desirable, inasmuch as
these large tenures interfered with the rights of the village
proprietors. But the reduction was undertaken in too precipitate and
arbitrary a manner; and the Court of Directors acknowledged that it
had caused great practical embarrassment to Government, against whom
numerous suits were instituted in the civil courts by the ousted
talookdars, and many decided in their favour.”—(P. 265).

The redress afforded by these decisions of the civil courts has not, we fear, been sufficient to avert the ruin of such members of the “territorial aristocracy” as had the hardihood to withhold their adhesion to a scheme for their own extinction. The principle of that scheme was to grant, in the form of a per-centage on the revenue realised from the village communities of what had been his domain, a pension to the talookdar who was willing, for such a consideration, to give up all the other advantages of his hereditary position. Many of these men, or their immediate predecessors, had rendered us great service in the war by which we acquired the country; but they stood in the way of a favourite scheme, and before its irresistible advance they were compelled to retire. The provision made for their future wants may have been a liberal one; but how would the Duke of Buccleuch or the Marquess of Westminster like to be thus pensioned off?

The truth had better be frankly avowed; the object aimed at is, to get rid of the old territorial aristocracy altogether,—indeed, it is so stated by Mr Campbell in the following sentences:—

“It is, I think, a remarkable distinction between the manners of the
natives and ours, and one which much affects our dealings with them,
that there does not exist that difference of tone between the higher
and lower classes—the distinction, in fact, of a gentleman. The lower
classes are to the full as good and intelligent as with us; indeed,
they are much more versed in the affairs of life, plead their causes
better, make more intelligent witnesses, and have many virtues.

“But these good qualities are not in the same proportion in the higher
classes; they cannot bear prosperity; it causes them to degenerate,
especially if they are born to greatness. The only efficient men of
rank (with, of course, a few exceptions) are those who have risen to
greatness. The lowest of the people, if fate raise him to be an
emperor, makes himself quite at home in his new situation, and shows
an aptitude of manner and conduct unknown to Europeans similarly
situated; but his son is altogether degenerate. Hence the
impossibility of adapting to anything useful most of the higher
classes found by us, and for all fresh requirements it is necessary to
_create_ a fresh class. From the acuteness and aptness to learn of the
inferior classes, this can be done as is done in other
countries.”—(Pp. 63, 64).

We fully subscribe to all that is here said in commendation of the lower classes of our Indian subjects, but we demur to the author’s very disparaging estimate of the capacity of the higher orders. Doubtless there are, or rather were, many dull men of rank on the banks of the Ganges; but are there none on those of the Thames?—no squires of cramped and confused notions, no fortunate inheritors of wealth content to wallow through life in utter disregard of the duties attaching to property, while fiercely jealous of its rights? It would be a sad day for our own landed aristocracy if Mr Campbell were to obtain sway in England, and try to rule that country upon the principles of which he approves in the East. But if he could, would our peasantry be _permanently_ bettered by a change tending towards a destruction of all the gradations of society? If the reply to this query should be in the affirmative, we may contemplate with unalloyed satisfaction the progress of a system the description and defence of which is the main object of Mr Campbell’s work; but if we feel any hesitation as to the future effects of such a change in England, then, human nature being much the same in every clime, we ought to have some misgivings as to its eventual results in the East. We say _eventual_, because the _immediate_ fruits of the measures described by Mr Campbell have, we are assured by him, and have heard from other quarters, been satisfactory and cheering. But is it probable that a whole nation should rest satisfied for ever in this state of flat and tame sufficiency? and can we wonder to find alongside of Mr Campbell’s picture of what ought to be the feelings towards the English of the present day on the banks of the Ganges, Mr F. H. Robinson’s gloomy account of what, in his opinion, those feelings really are? Having been compelled, as a member of the Board of Revenue, to make a communication to an old retired officer of Gardiner’s Irregular Horse, and to a Mussulman of rank, calculated to hurt the feelings of both, Mr Robinson thus describes what followed:—

“I shall never forget the looks of mortification, anger, and at first
of incredulity, with which this announcement was received by both, nor
the bitter irony with which the old Russuldar remarked, that no doubt
the wisdom of the _new-gentlemen_ (Sahiblogue, so they designate the
English) had shown them the folly and ignorance of the gentlemen of
the old time, on whom it had pleased God, nevertheless, to bestow the
government of India.”—(P. 17).

Mr Robinson goes too far when he taxes the rulers of the present day with dislike to the natives generally; but it is evident, from Mr Campbell’s own admission, that there is a strong prepossession in the minds of the young men of his school against all natives with any pretensions to rank. This feeling extending to those beyond the limits of our own dominions, has stamped on our foreign policy the character of our internal administration, and found its full development in the late Afghan war. Thirty or forty years ago, when natives, if excluded from office, were more often admitted to familiar intercourse with their European rulers, a mere regard for our own character in the eyes of our subjects would have withheld us from making an unprovoked attack upon an unoffending neighbour, and thus incurring a certain loss of reputation for a very uncertain amount of gain. This view of the case does not of course even occur to Mr Campbell as one likely to be taken by any reasonable being, and he sums up his account of the Afghan war with the following remarks, suggestive to our minds of little beyond a most earnest hope that the future advancement, doubtless in store for one of his abilities, may lead him far away from meddling with matters either political or military:—

“Such it was—a grievous military catastrophe and misfortune to us,
both then and in our subsequent relations with the country; but in no
way attributable to our policy, from which no such result necessarily
or probably flowed. To the policy is due the expense, but not the
disaster.”—(P. 136).

Mr Campbell has evidently not made very minute inquiry into the facts of the war, or he would never have hazarded the assertion contained in the following passage, that Sir George Pollock literally paid his way through the Khyber Pass:—

“Through the Western mountains only has India been invaded; for beyond
them are all the great nations of Central India, and they are
penetrable to enemies through one or two difficult passes. But these
passes are so narrow, difficult, and easily defended, that _it is
believed_ that no army, from Alexander’s down to General Pollock’s,
has ever passed without bribing the mountain tribes. In the face of
regular troops and an organised defence, all the armies in the world
could not force an entrance; but in the absence of such a defence,
experience proves that the local tribes are always accessible to
moderate bribes.”—(P. 27).

The absolute impracticability of any mountain barrier is, we believe, disputed; but, without offering any opinion on that point, we are happy to have it in our power to correct the mistake into which the author has fallen, in supposing that it was by bribing that Sir George Pollock carried his army through the Khyber Pass. It is true that, in the anxious time preceding our army’s movement from Peshawar, negotiations had been entered into with the local tribes; but we have the most unquestionable authority for asserting that, before the march towards Cabool began, the sum advanced to their chiefs, being 20,000 rupees or £2000, was demanded back from them by the political agent on the frontier, and actually repaid; so that the mountaineers had not only the clearest warning of the British general’s intention, but the strongest possible inducement to oppose him, as they did to the utmost of their power.

But our chief motive for alluding to the Afghan war is, that we may show how the spirit of the two schools, under which, according to our theory, those engaged in the work of Indian government may now be classed, showed itself even in the direction of our armies in the field. Sir George Pollock was there the representative of what would be called by us the considerate and moderate, by Mr Campbell the soft-hearted and over-cautious school; while Sir William Nott was at the head of that which, going straight to its object, tramples under foot, without compunction, every consideration that might hamper its freedom of movement. We select but a few instances in proof of our position, choosing such as, from their notoriety, can be cited without injury or offence.

As the two avenging armies, the one from Candahar on the south, the other from Peshawar on the east, drew nigh to Cabool, a powerful party, consisting chiefly of the Kuzzilbashes or Persians, who had never taken part against us, prayed earnestly that the citadel, the Bala Hissar, might be spared to serve as a place of refuge to themselves amid the troubles likely to ensue on our again evacuating the country.

This prayer General Nott would have rejected, and in so doing would have gained the applause of every member of that school by which concession to the feelings of natives in opposition to the requirements of expediency, or the sternest justice, is regarded as a proof of weakness. With this prayer General Pollock complied; and to his doing so may the safety of the ladies and other prisoners, in whose fate the whole civilised world took so deep an interest, be ascribed; for it was through the co-operation of those thus conciliated that the Afghan chief, charged with the custody of the captives, was won over to assist in their escape. General Nott was fortunately the inferior in rank; for had he commanded in chief, we have his own words for the fact, that he would have destroyed the Bala Hissar and the City of Cabool, and marched on with the least possible delay to Jellabad, of course leaving the poor captives to their fate; or, in words which, from the manner of their insertion in the pages of the historian, it is to be feared he must have used, “throwing them overboard.”—(KAYE’S _History of the Afghan War_, vol. i. pp. 617, 631).