Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 76, No. 466, August, 1854

by Various

THE ETHNOLOGY OF EUROPE.

“There were brave men before Agamemnon,”—heroes before there was a Homer to sing them, says that prince of sensible poets, Horace. It is not less true that there were nations before history—communities, races, of which the eye of civilisation never caught a glimpse. In some cases, before the light of history broke in upon their seclusion, these old types of mankind, losing their individuality, had become merged in a succeeding and mightier wave of population; in others they had wholly disappeared,—they had lived and fought and died in perfect isolation from every focus of civilisation, and left not even a floating legend behind them in the world. Man’s mortality—the destiny of the individual to pass away from earth like a vapour, making room for others, heirs of his wisdom and unimbued with his prejudices—is the most familiar of truths; but the mortality of nations, the death of races, is a conception which at first staggers us. That a family should grow into a nation,—that from the loins of one man should descend a seed like unto the sands on the sea-shore for multitude, appears to our everyday senses as a natural consequence; but that nations should dwindle down to families, and families into solitary individuals, until death gets all, and earth has swallowed up a whole phase of humanity, is a thought the grandeur of which is felt to be solemn, if not appalling. The conception, however, need not be a strange one. Facts, which reconcile us to everything, are testifying to its truth even at the present day. It is not long since the Guanches in the Canary Islands, that last specimen of what may once have been a race, and the Guarras in Brazil, dwindled out of existence in their last asylum,—expiring at the feet of the more lordly race which the fulness of time brought to their dwellings.

Not to mention the Miaou-tse in China, and other relics of Asiatic races, the same phenomenon is more impressively presented to us among the Red Men of America, where the old race is seen dying out beneath our very eyes. Year by year they are melting away. Of the millions which once peopled the vast regions on this side of the Mississippi River, all have vanished, but a few scattered families; and it is as clear as the sun at noonday, that in a few generations more, the last of the Red Men will be numbered with the dead. Why, is it asked, are they thus doomed? In the suburbs of Mobile, or wandering through its streets, you will see the remnant of the Choctaw tribe, covered with nothing but blankets, and living in bark tents, scarcely a degree advanced above the beasts of the field. No philanthropy can civilise them,—no ingenuity can induce them to do an honest day’s work. The life of the woods is struck from them,—the white man has taken their hunting-grounds; and they live on helpless as in a dream, quietly abiding their time. They are stationary, they will not advance; and, like everything stationary, the world is sweeping away. They sufficed for the first phase of humanity in the New World. As long as there was only need for man to be lord of the woods and of the animal creation, the Red Man did well; but no sooner did the call come for him to perfect himself, and change the primeval forest into gardens, than the Red Man knew, by mysterious instinct, that his mission was over,—and either allowed himself, in sheer apathy, to sink out of existence among the pitiless feet of the new-comers, or died fighting fiercely with the apostle of a civilisation which he hated but could not comprehend.

Far back in the history of Europe and of our own country—or rather, we should say, in periods entirely pre-historic—it is now known that a similar disappearance of a human race has taken place. Celt and Teuton, we fancy, were the first occupiers of Europe,—but the case is not so. A wave or waves of population had preceded even them; and as we dig down into the soil beneath us, ever and anon we come upon strange and startling traces of those primeval occupants of the land. In those natural museums of the past, the caves and peat-bogs of Europe, the keen-witted archæologists of present times are finding abundant relics of a race dissimilar from all the human varieties of which written history takes cognisance. The researches of Wilson among the peat-bogs of the British Isles have brought to light traces of no less than two distinct pre-Celtic races inhabiting the land,—one of which had the skull of a singularly broad and short, square and compact form, while the head of the other race was long and very narrow, or “boat-shaped.” The exhumations of Retzius show that precisely similar races once inhabited Scandinavia. The caves and ossuaries of Franconia and Upper Saxony prove that in Central Europe, also, there were races before the advent of the Celts; and the researches of Boucher de Perthes, amid the alluvial stratifications of the river Somme, indicate a not less ancient epoch for the cinerary urns, bones, and instruments of a primordial people in France.

“Here,” says M. de Perthes, “we naturally inquire, who were these mysterious primitive inhabitants of Gaul? We are told that this part of Europe is of modern origin, or at least of recent population. Its annals scarcely reach to twenty centuries, and even its traditions do not exceed two thousand five hundred years. The various people who are known to history as having occupied it—the Gauls, the Celts, the Veneti, Ligurians, Iberians, Cimbrians, and Scythians have left no vestiges to which we can assign that date. The traces of those [originally] nomadic tribes who ravaged Gaul scarcely precede the Christian era by a few centuries. Was Gaul, then, a desert, a solitude, before this period? Was its sun less genial, or its soil less fertile? Were not its hills as pleasant, and its plains and valleys as ready for the harvest? Or, if men had not yet learned to plough and sow, were not its rivers filled with fish, and its forests with game? And, if the land abounded with everything calculated to attract and support a population, why should it not have been inhabited? The absence of great ruins, indeed, indicates that Gaul at this period, and even much later, had not attained a great degree of civilisation, nor been the seat of powerful kingdoms; but why should it not have had its towns and villages?—or rather, why should it not, like the steppes of Russia, the prairies and virgin forests of America, and the fertile plains of Africa, have been overrun from time immemorial by tribes of men—savages, perhaps, but nevertheless united in families if not in nations?”

We shall not dwell at present upon the relics of these races who have thus preceded all history, and vanished into their graves before a civilised age could behold them. We shall not accompany M. de Perthes in his various excavations, nor, after passing through the first stratum of soil, and coming to the relics of the middle ages, see him meet subsequently, in regular order, with traces of the Roman and Celtic periods, until at last he comes upon weapons, utensils, figures, signs and symbols, which must have been the work of a surpassingly ancient people. We need not describe his discovery of successive beds of bones and ashes, separated from each other by strata of turf and tufa, with no less than five different stages of cinerary urns, belonging to distinct generations, of which the oldest were deposited below the woody or diluvian turf,—nor the coarse structure of these vases (made by hand and dried in the sun), nor the rude utensils of bone, or roughly-carved stone, by which they were surrounded.[^[30]] Neither need we do more than allude to the remains of a fossil whale recently exhumed in Blair Drummond moss, (twenty miles from the nearest point of the river Forth where, by any possibility, a whale could nowadays be stranded), having beside it a rude harpoon of deer’s horn—speaking plainly of the coexistence, in these remote pre-Celtic times, of human inhabitants. Even above ground there are striking relics scattered over Europe which it would be hazardous to assign to any race known to history. Those circles of upright stones, of which Stonehenge is the most familiar example, date back to an unknown antiquity. They are found throughout Europe, from Norway to the Mediterranean; and manifestly they must have been erected by a numerous people, and faithful exponents of a general sentiment, since we find them in so many countries. They are commonly called Celtic or Druidic; not because they were raised originally by Druids, but because they had been used in the Druidical worship, though erected, it may be, for other uses, or dedicated to other divinities,—even as the temples of Paganism afterwards served for the solemnities of Christianity. All that we know is, that, having neither date nor inscription, they must be older than written language,—for a people who can write never leave their own names or exploits unchronicled. The ancients were as ignorant on this matter as ourselves; even tradition is silent; and, at the period of the Roman invasion, the origin of those monuments was already shrouded in obscurity. A revolution, therefore, must have intervened between the time of their erection and the advent of the Legions; and what revolution could it be in those days save a revolution of race? “The Celtæ,” says Dr Wilson, “are by no means to be regarded as the primal heirs of the land, but are, on the contrary, comparatively recent intruders. Ages before their migration into Europe, an unknown Allophylian race had wandered to this remote island of the sea, and in its turn gave place to later Allophylian nomades, also destined to occupy it only for a time. Of these ante-historical nations, archæology alone reveals any traces.”

Passing from this strange and solemn spectacle of the death and utter extinction of human races, once living and enjoying themselves amidst those very scenes where we ourselves now pant and revel in the drama of existence,—let us look upon the face of Europe as it appears when first the light of history broke upon it. Since then, there have been remarkable declines, but no extinction of races. As if war and rivalry were a permanent attribute of the species, when the curtain first rises upon Europe, it is a struggle of races that is discernible through the gloom. A dark-skinned race, long settled in the land, are fighting doggedly with a fair-skinned race of invaders from the East. The dark-skins were worsted, but still survive—definitely in detached groups, and indefinitely as a leaven to entire populations. That dark-skinned race have been called Iberians,—the fair-skinned new-comers were the Indo-Germans, headed by the Gaels or Celts. When the two races first met in Europe—the blond from the south-east, meeting the dark in the west—they encountered each other as natural enemies, and a severe struggle ensued. The Celts finally forced their way into Spain, and established themselves there,—became more or less amalgamated with the darker occupants, and were called Celt-Iberians. Ever since, these two opposite types have been commingling throughout Western Europe; but a complete fusion has not even yet taken place, and the types of each are still traceable in certain localities.

There was thus an Iberian world before there was a Celtic world. One of the pre-Celtic populations of the British Isles was probably Iberian; and their type, besides leavening indefinitely a portion of the present population, is still distinctly traceable in many of the dark-haired, dark-eyed, and dark-skinned Irish, as well as occasionally in Great Britain itself. The Basques, protected by their Pyrenean fastnesses, are a still existent group of nearly pure Iberians; and of their tongue, termed Euskaldune by its speakers, Duponceau long ago said:—“This language, preserved in a corner of Europe, by a few thousand mountaineers, is the sole remaining fragment of perhaps a hundred dialects, constructed on the same plan, which probably existed and were universally spoken, at a remote period, in that quarter of the world. Like the bones of the mammoth, and the relics of unknown races which have perished, it remains a monument of the destruction brought by a succession of ages. It stands single and alone of its kind, surrounded by idioms whose modern construction bears no analogy to it.”

The Bretons form another isolated but less distinct group of still existent Iberians. To this day they present a striking contrast to the population around them, who are of tall stature, with blue eyes, white skins, and blond hair—communicative, impetuous, versatile—passing rapidly from courage to timidity, and from audacity to despair;—in other words, presenting the distinctive character of the Celtic race, now, as in the ancient Gauls. The Bretons are entirely different. They are taciturn—hold strongly to their ideas and usages—are persevering and of melancholic temperament;—in a word, both in morale and physique, they present the type of a southern race. And this brings us to the question—whence came these Iberians? M. Bodichon, a surgeon distinguished for fifteen years in the French army of Algeria, observes that persons who have lived in Brittany, and then go to Algeria, are struck with the resemblance which they discover between the ancient Armoricans (the Bretons) and the Cabyles of northern Africa. “In fact, the moral and physical character of the two races is identical. The Breton of pure blood has a bony head, light-yellow complexion of bistre tinge, eyes black or brown, stature short, and the black hair of the Cabyle. Like him, he instinctively hates strangers. In both, the same perverseness and obstinacy, the same endurance of fatigue, same love of independence, same inflexion of voice, same expression of feelings. Listen to a Cabyle speaking his native tongue, and you will think you hear a Breton talking Celtic.” Impressed with this resemblance, M. Bodichon was induced to reflect on the subject, and at last came to the conclusion that the Berbers who primally peopled Northern Africa, and the dark-skinned Iberians of Western Europe, belonged to the same race. He thinks that, as Europe and Africa were once united at their western extremities, previous to the convulsion which produced the Straits of Gibraltar, this Iberian population passed into Spain by this primeval isthmus, and thence diffused themselves over Western Europe and its isles. Whether this were actually the case, it is hard to say; but it is important to note that Sallust, quoting “the Punic books which were ascribed to King Hiempsal,” exactly reverses the course of migration, and states that the progenitors of the African Moors were Medians and Persians who had marched through Europe into Spain, and thence into Mauritania—though whether overland by the isthmus, or by boats across the strait, is still left to conjecture. Prichard thinks the Libyans and Iberians were distinct races, but owns that they were found intermingling in the islands and along the western shores of the Mediterranean. Of course it may be taken for granted that among these Iberians thus spread over Africa, Spain, France, and the British Isles, local differences would exist—just as there is a perceptible difference between the Anglo-Saxons of the Old World and those of the New; but there is little doubt that the Scoti of Ireland, the Iberians of Spain, and the Berbers of Africa, belonged to a fundamentally identical race.

How any race first came into a country, is a matter of little moment, especially when the epoch of their arrival so far transcends the dawn of history as does that of the Iberians. Even the first wave of the Celtic migration had reached the West before any scrutiny of their progress was possible; for when tradition first dimly opens upon Gaul, about 1500 B. C., its territory was occupied by these two primitive and distinctly-marked Caucasian races—the Celts and Iberians: the one fair-skinned and light-haired, the other a dark race; and each speaking a language bearing no affinity to that of the other—precisely as the Euskaldune of the present Basques is unintelligible to Gaelic tribes of Lower Brittany. Some of the subsequent waves of Celtic or Scythic migration come within the ken of history; and it is remarkable that the line of march which these followed, after passing the shores of the Black Sea, seems to have been along the “Riphæan Valley,” which lay to the north of the Carpathian mountains, and stretched to the Baltic. Now, if we look at the contour map of Europe in Johnston’s Physical Atlas, we see a narrow strip of the lowest elevation extending from the Black Sea to the Baltic—nowhere rising to the second line of elevation, i.e. more than 150 and less than 300 feet above the level of the sea,—and turning to the geological map, we find that this same tract is overlaid with recent diluvial deposits. We know that the Scandinavian region is rising, and it is probable that all the plain of Sarmatia has partaken of the elevation,—and before the barriers of the Thracian Bosphorus burst, it is quite certain that the waters of the Caspian, the Euxine, and the Baltic were united by that “ocean-river” of which Homer, Hesiod, and all the old bards sing, and by sailing along which, both the Argonauts and Ulysses are reported to have passed northwards into the western ocean. The existence of this vast belt of water, stretching from the southmost point of the Baltic to the Caucasus, is probably one reason why the Slavonians were late of appearing in southern Europe, and why no sprinkling of them or of the Mongols is to be found among the early settlers of South-western Europe. All the early migrations into Europe proceeded from Caucasian or sub-Caucasian regions—a circumstance which, considering the known simultaneous existence of roving hordes and a great population on the Mongolian plains, can hardly be accounted for on the supposition that the face of Eastern Europe has since then undergone no change. But on the supposition we make, the chain of the Ural Mountains and this large Mediterranean basin would for long act as restraints upon any tendency of the Mongolian population to move westward, or of the Slavonians to move southwards.[^[31]]

The next wave of population which flowed westwards was the Cimbri or Cimmerians,—a people cognate to the Celts or Gaels, yet by no means closely related. About the seventh century B.C., as may be inferred from Herodotus, a clan of this race abandoned the Tauric Chersonese, and marched westwards,—this Cimbrian migration, however, like most others, not being conducted in one mass, but by successive and sometimes widely-severed movements. Three centuries afterwards we find the Cimbri on the shores of the Northern Ocean in Jutland; and between the years 113 and 101 B.C., we find the race all on the move, and setting out on that southward career of devastation which eventually brought them into Gaul, Spain, and Italy. The Belgians seem to have been a Cimbrian tribe which had preceded the main body; for when, in this invasion, the Cimbri reached Northern Gaul, the Belgæ immediately joined them as allies against the Celts,—and it seems also proven that the Cimbri and Belgæ spoke dialects of the same language. The Celts, routed by the invaders, were impelled to the south and east, doubtless trespassing in turn upon the dark-skinned Iberians. It was immediately after this inroad that Cæsar and his Romans entered Gaul, and commenced his Commentaries with the well-known statement:—“All Gaul is divided into three parts, of which one is inhabited by the Belgians, [or Cimbri, in the north]—another by the Aquitanians [or Iberians, in the south-west],—and the third [or eastern], by those who in their own language, call themselves Celts, and who in our tongue are called Gael (Galli). These races differ among themselves by their language, their manners, and their laws.” Previous to this time the Teutons had settled in central Europe, and in alliance with Celtic tribes made incursions into Italy.

We have now reached a period at which the population of Europe becomes greatly mixed, in consequence of the constant rovings and incursions of the various races and tribes of which it was composed. It is interesting to note the effect of such a state of things upon the physical characteristics of the people. And first it is to be observed, that, with extremely rare exceptions, conquest is not attended by extermination. When one people, even in semi-barbarous times, conquers another, it does not annihilate and rarely displaces, but for the most part only overlays it. The annihilating process, of which a sample may be seen in America, only takes place in the rare case of the meeting of two nations, in such widely different states of civilisation as to render amalgamation impossible,—and even in this case only when the inferior race is so intractable as to resist all obedience to the superior. Displacement—which is obsolete now, since advancing civilisation has rendered conquest political only—was pretty common two thousand years ago, when Europe was thinly and nomadically peopled, and tribes migrated en masse. In this way, for example, the Cimbri wedged themselves in among the Celts in Northern Gaul, and took possession of a large tract in Northern Italy. But soon after the Christian era—chiefly in consequence of the increasing density and settled habits of the population—conquest ceased to produce either extermination or displacement, and consisted merely in the overlaying of one population by another much less numerous but more powerful. Thus the Normans in England and the Franks in Gaul were but a handful compared to the conquered population; and consequently, though they might give their laws and even their name to the country, they could not materially alter the physical character of the people.

The chief influence which, in the case of two races mingling, determines the preservation or extinction of types or national features, is simply the numerical proportion existing between the two races thus amalgamating. When races meet and mix on equal terms, and with no natural repugnance to each other (in other words, cæteris paribus), the relative number of the two races decides the question—the type of the smaller number, in this hypothetical case, inevitably disappearing in the long run. Take, for example, a thousand white families and fifty black ones—place them on an island, and let them regularly intermarry; and the result would be, that in the course of time the black type would disappear, although there is reason to believe that traces of it would “crop out” during a very long period. And if two fair-skinned races were brought into contact in a similar manner, and in similar proportions, the extermination of the less numerous one would be even sooner effected. The operation of this law is well illustrated in the lower animals. Cross two domestic animals of different breeds—take the offspring and cross it with one of the parent stocks, and continue this process for a few generations, and the result is that the one becomes swallowed up in the other. This is the theory; but in the actual world races never intermarry with such theoretical regularity and indifference. Each community of mankind has, as its conservative element, a tendency to form unions within its own limits; and if a foreign element is once introduced into a population, the operation of this predilection tends to preserve the type of the lesser number for a much longer period than mere theory would assign to it. The stranger-hating and obstinate-tempered Bretons and Basques, for instance, by intermarrying among themselves, have thus preserved the type of the old Iberians through three thousand years, although surrounded on all sides by the fair-haired Celts. In the case of a conquering race like the Franks and Normans, there is generally less isolation than this; but then, the way in which the amalgamation between the conquerors and the conquered takes place, is such as to give a great advantage to the former. The sons of the conquerors may wed the daughters of the conquered, for the sake of their lands; but it is comparatively seldom that the daughters of the invaders will condescend to tarnish their scutcheon by becoming wedded to and merged in the class of the vanquished. The principle of caste is all-pervading, even when nominally repudiated; and thus, as the male ever influences most directly the type of the offspring, a small number of conquerors may for long perpetuate their line in comparative purity, even though surrounded by myriads of a different race.

From all this it results, that when a small body of foreigners is shot into the middle of a large population, as it were in virtue of a mere casual impetus, and not owing to higher qualities and organisation on the part of the aliens, the new-comers are quickly absorbed into the general mass of the population, and their type, in course of time, wholly disappears. The history of Italy throws important light upon this subject. Successive hordes of barbarians broke into and overran that country, powerful from their rude energy, but numerically weak, and inferior in mental condition to the conquered race. Again and again did human waves of Visigoths, Vandals, Huns, Herules, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Normans roll in succession over the Italian plains; and even the Saracens for a time held possession of some of its fairest provinces; yet what vestiges remain in Italy of these barbarian surges? The first three passed over it like tornados; the two next, after contending with the Goths, were expelled from the land; and of the whole conglomerate mass but small fragments were left, too insignificant to materially influence the native Italic types. The Lombards, indeed, remained, and implanted their name on a portion of the peninsula; but, with this fragmentary exception, the aboriginal population of Italy has remained unaltered in blood and features since the early times when the Celts and Cimbri made settlements in its northern provinces. And thus the normal law is fulfilled, in the invaders being swallowed up in the mass of the native population,—leavening it, of course, more or less, but ever tending towards ultimate extinction.

When a really conquering race, however—one superior alike in physical and mental power to the subjugated population—invades a country, and, instead of being expelled, or passing onwards like a transient whirlwind, continues to hold the realm in virtue of superior power, such a race, as we have said, may long and almost indelibly perpetuate their features in the land. In such a case they in reality, if not in name, form a caste; each one of the invaders becomes a noble; and when they make exceptions to the practice of intermarrying among themselves, it is only that they may more widely diffuse their lineaments, by forming matrimonial or other unions with the female portion of the native race.[^[32]] Thus the feudalism of the all-conquering Normans was a system of caste, by means of which they long maintained the purity and pre-eminence of their race in the countries which they conquered; as may best be seen in French history, where the vieux noblesse, even in 1789, were the lineal descendants of the soldiers of Clovis; and where the distinction between noble and roturier was kept up with such rigid and antiquated pertinacity, that at length the Celtic population, becoming more and more developed alike in intellect and resources, threw off the whole foreign system like an incubus, and returned to those principles of equality and volatility in government which distinguished their ancestors of old Gaul.

We may remark in conclusion, on this topic, that the ascendancy of certain families of mankind is due not only to their superior physical, but even more to their superior mental organisation, which ever keeps them uppermost, and enables them to mate themselves with whom they please. It is a remarkable fact, as illustrative of the native vigour of some races, that there is not a head in Christendom which legitimately wears a crown—not a single family in Europe whose blood is acknowledged to be royal, but traces its genealogy to that Norman colossus, William the Conqueror. This has been well shown by M. Paulmier;[^[33]] but we may add, as a curiosity which lately attracted our own notice, when looking at the portrait of the Conqueror—namely, that a strong resemblance exists between his fine and massive features and those of the present Czar of Russia. Both are distinguished by the same broad brow and arched eyebrows (not each forming a semicircle, as seems to be the meaning of the term “arched” when applied to eyebrows nowadays, but both combining to form an oval curve, vaulting over the under part of the face, as was the meaning among the Greeks), the same thick straight nose, and the same massive and beautiful conformation in the bones of the jaw and chin. The face of the Czar, however, we must add, is not equal in solid strength and intellect to that of his great progenitor.

The operation of these physiological laws upon the population of Europe has been interestingly illustrated by the recent researches of a French naturalist of high reputation, M. Edwards. This gentleman, after perusing Thierry’s History of the Gauls, made a tour through France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, engaged in careful study of the present population in relation to the ancient settlers; and he asserts that now, after the lapse of two thousand years, the types of the Cimbri, the Celts, and Iberians are still distinctly traceable among their living descendants, in the very localities where history first descries these early families. Of the inland eastern parts of France, tenanted of old by the Gauls proper, and which were never penetrated into by the Cimbri, who took quiet possession of their outskirts, M. Edwards thus speaks:—“In traversing, from north to south, the part of France which corresponds to Oriental Gaul—viz., Burgundy, Lyons, Dauphiny, and Savoy—I have distinguished that type, so well marked, which ethnographers have assigned to the Gauls.” That is to say, “the head is so round as to approach the spherical form; the forehead is moderate, slightly protuberant, and receding towards the temples; eyes large and open; the nose, from its depression at its commencement to its termination, almost straight—that is to say, without any marked curve; its extremity is rounded, as well as the chin; the stature medium;—the features thus being quite in harmony with the form of the head.” Of the northern part of ancient Gaul, the principal seat of the Belgæ or Cimbri, he says:—“I traversed a great part of the Gallia Belgica of Cæsar, from the mouth of the Somme to that of the Seine; and here I distinguished for the first time the assemblage of features which constitutes the other type, and often to such an exaggerated degree that I was very forcibly struck,—the long head, the broad high forehead, the curved nose, with the point below, and the wings tucked up; the chin boldly developed; and the stature tall.” In the other parts of France (exclusive of the south and west, anciently occupied by the Iberians), M. Edwards found that the Cimbrian type had been overcome by the round heads and straight noses of the Gauls, who were the more numerous because the more ancient race in those parts, and had covered the whole country before the arrival of the Cimbrians.

Passing into Italy, he continues his examinations. “Whatever may have been the anterior state of matters,” he says, “it is certain, from Thierry’s researches and the unanimous accord of all historians, that the Peuples Gaulois have predominated in the north of Italy, between the Alps and the Apennines. We find them established there at the first dawn of history; and the most authentic testimony represents them with all the character of a great nation, from this remote period down to a very advanced point of Roman history. This is all I need to trouble myself about. I know the features of their compatriots in Transalpine Gaul—I find them again in Cisalpine Gaul.” The old “Gallic” settlers in northern Italy appear to have been Cimbrian. After describing the well-known head of Dante—which is long and narrow, with a high and developed forehead, nose long and curved, with sharp point and elevated wings—M. Edwards says that he was struck by the great frequency of this type in Tuscany (although a mixed Roman type is there the prevailing one) among the peasantry; in the statues and busts of the Medici family; and also amongst the effigies and bas-reliefs of the illustrious men of the republic of Florence. This type is well marked since the time of Dante, as doubtless long before. It extends to Venice; and in the ducal palace, M. Edwards had occasion to observe that it is common among the doges. The type became more predominant as he approached Milan, and thence he traced it as to its fountain into Transalpine Gaul. The physical characteristics of the present population, therefore, correspond with the statements of history, and show that the ancient type of this widespread people, the Cimbri, has survived the lapse and vicissitudes of two thousand years.

In passing through Florence, M. Edwards took occasion to visit the Ducal Gallery, to study the ancient Roman type,—selecting, by preference, the busts of the early Roman emperors, because they were descendants of ancient families. Augustus, Tiberius, Germanicus, Claudius, Nero, Titus, &c., exemplify this type in the Florentine collections; and the family resemblance is so close, and the style of features so remarkable, that they cannot be mistaken. The following is his description:—“The vertical diameter of the head is short, and, consequently, the face broad. As the summit of the cranium is flattened, and the lower margin of the jaw-bone almost horizontal, the contour of the head, when viewed in front, approaches a square. The lateral parts, above the ears, are protuberant; the forehead low; the nose truly aquiline—that is to say, the curve commences near the top and ends before it reaches the point, so that the base is horizontal; the chin is round; and the stature short.” This is the characteristic type of a Roman; but we cannot expect now to meet with absolute uniformity in any race, however seemingly pure. Such a type M. Edwards subsequently found to predominate in Rome, and certain parts of Italy, at the present day. It is the original type of the central portions of the peninsula, and, however overlayed at times, has swallowed up all intruders. As a singular corroboration of the French ethnographer’s observations, Mr J. C. Nott, an American surgeon and naturalist, says:—“A sailor came to my office, a few months ago, to have a dislocated arm set. When stripped and standing before me, he presented the type described by M. Edwards so perfectly, and moreover combined with such extraordinary development of bone and muscle, that there occurred to my mind at once the beau-ideal of a Roman soldier. Though the man had been an American sailor for twenty years, and spoke English without foreign accent, I could not help asking where he was born. He replied in a deep strong voice, ‘In Rome, sir!’”[^[34]]

In Greece the Hellenes and Pelasgi are two races identified with the earliest traditions of the country; but when we appeal to history for their origin, or seek for the part that each has played in the majestic drama of antiquity, there is little more than conjecture to guide us. Greece did not come fairly within the scope of M. Edwards’ researches, yet he has ventured a few note-worthy observations in connection with this point. He thinks the same principles that governed his examination of Gaul may be applied to Greece; and that the Hellenes and Pelasgi might be followed ethnologically like the Celts and Cimbri. Perhaps the most important remark which he makes is that which refers to the differences between what he calls the heroic and historic—or what is generally termed the ideal and real types of the Greek countenance. The ancient monuments of art in Greece exhibit a wide diversity of types, and this at every period of their history. Of the two great classes into which these may be divided, M. Edwards says:—

“Most of the divinities and personages of the heroic times are formed on that well-known model which constitutes what we term the beau-ideal. The forms and proportions of the head and countenance are so regular that we may describe them with mathematical precision. A perfectly oval contour, forehead and nose straight, without depression between them, would suffice to distinguish this type. The harmony is such that the presence of these traits implies the others. But such is not the character of the personages of truly historic times. The philosophers, orators, warriors, and poets almost all differ from it, and form a group apart. It cannot be confounded with the rest: it is sufficient to point it out, for one to recognise at once how far it is separated. It greatly resembles, on the contrary, the type which is seen in other countries of Europe, while the former is scarcely met with there.”

This observation is just. The head of Alexander the Great is nearly allied to the pure classical or heroic type; but this case is an exception—and the lineaments of Lycurgus, Eratosthenes, and most other specimens of old Greek portrait-sculpture, are, with the exception of the beard (if indeed such an exception is now requisite), very much like those which one meets with daily in our streets. “Were we to judge solely by the monuments of Greece,” continues M. Edwards, “on account of this contrast, we should be tempted to regard the type of the fabulous or heroic personages as ideal. But imagination more readily creates monsters than models of beauty; and this principle alone will suffice to convince us that such a type has existed in Greece, and the countries where its population has spread, if it does not still exist there.”

In corroboration of this conjecture, it may be stated that the learned travellers, M.M. de Stackelberg and de Bronsted, who have journeyed through the Morea and closely examined the population, assert that the heroic type is still extant in certain localities. M. Poqueville likewise assures us that the models which inspired Phidias and Apelles are still to be found among the inhabitants of the Morea. “They are generally tall, and finely formed; their eyes are full of fire, and they have a beautiful mouth, ornamented with the finest teeth. There are, however, degrees in their beauty, though all may be generally termed handsome. The Spartan woman is fair, of a slender make, but with a noble air. The women of Taÿgetus have the carriage of a Pallas when she wielded her formidable ægis in the midst of a battle. The Messenian woman is low of stature, and distinguished for her embonpoint,” (this may be owing to a mixture with the primitive race of the Morea, who, as Helots, long existed as a distinct caste in Messenia); “she has regular features, large blue eyes, and long black hair. The Arcadian, in her coarse woollen garments, scarcely suffers the symmetry of her form to appear; but her countenance is expressive of innocence and purity of mind.” In the time of Poqueville the Greek women were extremely ignorant and uneducated; but, he says, “music and dancing seem to have been taught them by nature.” He speaks of the long flaxen hair of the women of Sparta, their majestic air and carriage, their elegant forms, the symmetry of their features, lighted up by large blue eyes, fringed and shaded with long eye-lashes. “The men,” he says, “among whom some are ‘blonds,’ or fair, have noble countenances; are of tall stature, with masculine and regular features.” They have preserved something of the Dorians of ancient Sparta.

It would be erroneous, however, to conclude from this that Greek art owed everything to the actual. The type existed more or less imperfectly in the population, but Phidias and the Greek artists took and developed it, by the aid of the imagination, into that perfect phase of physical beauty which we justly term the beau-ideal. A nation’s beau-ideal is always the perfectionment of its own type. It is easy to see how this happens. In nations, as in individuals, the soul moulds the body, so far as extrinsic circumstances permit, into a form in accordance with its own ideas and desire; and accordingly, whenever a marked difference exists in the physical aspect of two nations, there, also, we may expect to find a variance in their beau-ideals. Not, as is generally supposed, from the eye of each race becoming accustomed to the national features, but because these features, are themselves an incarnation and embodiment of the national mind. It is the soul which shapes the national features, not the national features that mould the æsthetic judgment of the soul. It is not association, therefore, that is the cause of the different beau-ideals we behold in the world, but a psychical difference in the nations which produce them,—a circumstance no more remarkable than those moral and intellectual diversities in virtue of which we see one race excelling in the exact sciences, another in the fine arts, a third in military renown, and a fourth in pacific industry. We may adduce, in curious illustration of this point, the well-known fact that Raphael and many other eminent artists have repeatedly given their own likeness to the imaginary offspring of their art,—not real, but idealised likenesses. How was this? From vanity? No, certainly; but because the ideal most congenial to them, which they could most easily hold in their mind, and which it gave them most pleasure to linger over and beautify, was the ideal constituted by the perfectionment of their own features. There is something more than mere vanity in the pleasure usually derived from looking into a mirror; for when the features are in exact or nearly exact accordance with the desires of the framing Spirit within, there must always be a pleasure in the soul looking upon its own likeness: even as it experiences a similar delight when meeting with a being of perfectly congenial nature—in other words, its spiritual (as the other is its physical) likeness. It is to be expected, cæteris paribus, that this pleasure will be most felt by those who are gifted with much personal beauty, and whose features are most perfect of their kind; for in their case there is more than ordinary harmony between the soul and its fleshly envelope. Accordingly, no artist ever painted himself more than the beautiful Raphael. And we could name an eminent individual, now no more, as rarely gifted with physical beauty as with mental powers, to whom the contemplation of his portrait was almost a passion. Some of our readers may recognise the distinguished man of whom we speak. No one less vain or more noble-hearted than he, yet his painted likeness had always a fascination for him. “It is a curious thing,” he used to say, “how I like to look at my own portrait.” Was it not because, in that beautifully developed form and countenance, the spirit within had most successfully embodied its ideal, with little or no hindrance from extrinsic circumstances, and accordingly rejoiced, though it knew not why, in the presence of its own likeness?

But to return to ethnography, and trace out the successive changes which have taken place in the population of Europe. As we have already observed, the great ebb and flow of nations was over by the Christian era. The population had become comparatively dense, so that room could no more be made for tribes of new-comers—and settled in their habits and occupations, so as no longer to admit of their shifting or being driven to and fro like waves over the land, as was the case while they were in the nomadic state. And as the nations became consolidated, they began, however feebly at first, to live a national existence, and to put forth national efforts of self-defence against those who assailed them. On these various accounts, the system of conquest by displacement, which marked the pre-historic and in a faint degree the early historic times, was brought to an end,—the conquests of the Northmen being the last examples of the kind; and these being hardly worthy of the name, as they were marked rather by the political predominance of the new-comers, and by an overlaying rather than by any displacement of the native population. For all useful purposes, therefore, we may conceive that at the Christian era the various nations of Europe were arranged on the map very much as they are now,—the only exceptions worth mentioning being the influx of the Magyars and Turks, and the southward progress of several of the Slavonian tribes through the old Byzantine provinces into Greece.

“Had a Roman geographer of the days of the Empire,” it has been well observed, “advanced in a straight line from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he would have traversed the exact succession of races that is to be met in the same route now. First, he would have found the Celts occupying as far as the Rhine; thence, eastward to the Vistula and Carpathian mountains, he would have found Germans; beyond them, and stretching away into Central Asia, he would have found the so-called Scythians,—a race which, had he possessed our information, he would have divided into the two great branches of the Slavonians or European Scythians, and the Tartars and Turks, or Asiatic Scythians; and finally, beyond these, he would have found Mongolian hordes overspreading Eastern Asia to the shores of the Pacific. These successive races or populations he would have found shading off into each other at their points of junction. He would have remarked, also, a general westward pressure of the whole mass, tending toward mutual rupture and invasion,—the Mongolian pressing against the Tartars, the Tartars against the Slavonians, the Slavonians against the Germans, and the Germans against the Celts.”

Although the early history and migrations of the Slavonians are involved in greater obscurity than that of either of the other two great branches of the European population, it is erroneous to suppose that they are a recent accession out of the depths of Asia. It was evidently a branch of them that Herodotus describes as peaceful, pastoral, and agricultural tribes located near the shores of the Black Sea. Instead of entering Europe via Asia Minor and the southern borders of the Euxine, as many of the Celtic and Teutonic tribes did, they appear to have taken the route by the north of the Caspian and Black Seas, and probably advanced southwards into Europe on the gradual and ultimately sudden subsidence of the waters of the inland sea which primevally stretched from the Baltic eastwards to the Sea of Aral.

This race, which now constitutes the largest ethnographical unit of population in Europe, numbering nearly eighty millions, has never yet been examined in rigorous detail. The earliest and best developed of its tribes is the Polish, which, though it has in recent times been subjected by the Russo-Slavons aided by the German powers, has not yet lost its nationality; and it is probable that, in the course of the future, the mighty Slavonic race will yet give rise to several distinct states. Both in features and complexion there is much diversity to be found in the various tribes which it comprises; but, if we consider the immense numbers of the race, and the different climes and temperatures under which they are located, it must be allowed that they are more homogeneous in character than any other people in Europe. The general type of the Slavonians is thus described by M. Edwards:—

“The contour of the head, viewed in front, approaches nearly to a square; the height surpasses a little the breadth; the summit is sensibly flattened; and the direction of the jaw is horizontal. The length of the nose is less than the distance from its base to the chin; it is almost straight from the depression at its root—that is to say, without any decided curvature; but, if appreciable, it is slightly concave, so that the end has a tendency to turn up; the lower part is rather large, and the extremity rounded. The eyes, which are rather deep-set, are [unlike those of the Tartars] perfectly on the same line; and when they have any particular character, they are smaller than the proportion of the head ought to indicate. The eyebrows are thin, and very near the eyes, particularly at the internal angle; and from this point are often [like those of the Tartars] directed obliquely outwards. The mouth, which is not salient, has thin lips, and is much nearer to the nose than to the tip of the chin. Another singular characteristic may be added, and which is very general, viz., their small beard, except on the upper lip

Having thus briefly and imperfectly glanced at the ethnographical features of Europe prior to the Christian era, we come now to note, equally briefly, the accession of foreign elements which the Continent has received subsequently to that period. The first of these is the memorable one of the Jews. Unlike the other incomers, they came not as conquerors, nor in a mass—but as isolated exiles, seeking new homes where they might be suffered to preserve their religion and gain a livelihood. A military race when in the land of their fathers, in Europe they developed only that other feature of their nation, the passion for moneymaking. In pursuit of this object they have settled in every country of Europe; and, in spite of persecutions innumerable, continue to preserve to this day their religion and their national features. Despite the warm passions of the Hebrews, which, even when in their own land, repeatedly led both the people and their princes into the contraction of sexual alliances with other nations, the Jewish blood on the whole is still much purer than that of any other race—the foreign elements from time to time mingled with it being gradually thrown off by innumerable crossings and re-crossings with the native stock. At present there are about two millions of Jews in Europe, and in the rest of the world about a million and a half. The modern Jews, while preserving the national features, present every variety of complexion save black—for the black Jews of Malabar are not Jews at all, but the descendants of apostate Hindoos. In regard to the matter of complexion, which varies so much with the climate and condition of the people, we shall say something by-and-by; but we shall here give some remarks of Mr Leeser, a learned Jew of Philadelphia, on the curious diversities of complexion so remarkably observable among the Hebrew race:—

“In respect to the true Jewish complexion, it is fair; which is proved by the variety of the people I have seen, from Persia, Russia, Palestine, and Africa, not to mention those of Europe and America, the latter of whom are identical with the Europeans, like all other white inhabitants of this continent. All Jews that ever I have beheld are identical in features; though the colour of their skin and eyes differs materially, inasmuch as the Southern are nearly all black-eyed, and somewhat sallow, while the Northern are blue-eyed, in a great measure, and of a fair and clear complexion. In this they assimilate to all Caucasians, when transported for a number of generations into various climates. Though I am free to admit that the dark and hazel eye and tawny skin are oftener met with among the Germanic Jews than among the German natives proper. There are also red-haired and white-haired Jews, as well as other people, and perhaps of as great a proportion. I speak now of the Jews north—I am myself a native of Germany, and among my own family I know of none without blue eyes, brown hair (though mine is black), and very fair skin—still I recollect, when a boy, seeing many who had not these characteristics, and had, on the contrary, eyes, hair, and skin of a more southern complexion. In America, you will see all varieties of complexion, from the very fair Canadian down to the almost yellow of the West Indian—the latter, however, is solely the effect of exposure to a deleterious climate for several generations, which changes, I should judge, the texture of the hair and skin, and thus leaves its mark on the constitution—otherwise the Caucasian type is strongly developed; but this is the case more emphatically among those sprung from a German than a Portuguese stock. The latter was an original inhabitant of the Iberian Peninsula, and whether it was preserved pure, or became mixed with Moorish blood in the process of centuries, or whether the Germans contracted an intimacy with Teutonic nations, and thus acquired a part of their national characteristics, it is impossible to be told now. But one thing is certain, that, both in Spain and Germany, conversions to Judaism during the early ages, say from the eighth to the thirteenth century, were by no means rare, or else the governments would not have so energetically prohibited Jews from making proselytes of their servants and others. I know not, indeed, whether there is any greater physical discrepancy between northern and southern Jews than between English families who continue in England or emigrate to Alabama—I rather judge there is not.”—Types of Mankind, p. 121.

The Huns and Magyars were the next tribes who made their way into Europe; and their advent, fierce, rapid, and exterminating, was conducted like a charge of cavalry. They hewed their way with the sword through the Slavonian and other tribes who impeded their march; and after being for a brief season the terror of Europe, they settled en permanence on the plains of Hungary, where for upwards of a thousand years they dominated, like a ruling caste, over the surrounding Slavonic tribes. The influx of this warlike race took place by two migrations,—firstly, of the Huns, under Attila, in the fifth century; and, secondly, of the Magyars, under Arpad, in the ninth. The type of the two races was identical; it is peculiarly exotic, and unlike any other in Europe. It belongs to the great Uralian-Tatar stem of Asia; but, strangely enough, though they differ in type from the Fins, the Magyars speak a dialect of the Finnish language,—which shows that the two races must have been associated in some way at a remote epoch, and before either of them emerged from the depths of Asia. M. Edwards thus describes the Magyar type:—“Head nearly round; forehead little developed, low, and bending; the eyes placed obliquely, so that the external angle is elevated; the nose short and flat; mouth prominent, and lips thick; neck very strong, so that the back of the head appears flat, forming almost a straight line with the nape; beard weak and scattering; stature short.” The Magyars did not belong to the Caucasian stock; and their long-continued supremacy over tribes decidedly Caucasian, is a nut to crack for those ethnographers who deduce everything from race, irrespective of the habits and state of development of particular nations.

The next alien race which entered Europe was the Gypseys, the history and peculiarities of which strange people present many curious analogies with those of the Israelites. “Both have had an exodus; both are exiles, and dispersed among the Gentiles, by whom they are hated and despised, and whom they hate and despise under the names of Busnees and Goyim; both, though speaking the language of the Gentiles, possess a peculiar language which the latter do not understand; and both possess a peculiar cast of countenance by which they may without difficulty be distinguished from all other nations. But with these points the similarity terminates. The Israelites have a peculiar religion, to which they are fanatically attached; the Romas (gypseys) have none. The Israelites have an authentic history; the Gypseys have no history,—they do not even know the name of their original country.” Everything connected with the Gypsey race is involved in mystery; though, from their physical type, language, &c., it is conjectured that they came from some part of India. It has been supposed that they fled from the exterminating sword of the great Tartar conqueror, Tamerlane, who ravaged India in 1408–9 A.D.; but Borrow’s work furnishes good ground for believing that they may have migrated at a much earlier period northwards, amongst the Slavonians, before they entered Germany and the other countries where we first catch sight of them. All that we know with certainty is, that in the beginning of the fifteenth century they appeared in Germany, and were soon scattered over Europe, as far as Spain. The precise day upon which these strange beings first entered France has been recorded,—namely, the 17th of August 1427. The entire number of the race at present is estimated at about 700,000,—thus constituting them the smallest as well as the most singular and distinctly marked of races. But if their numbers be small, their range of habitat is one of the widest. They are scattered over most countries of the habitable globe—Europe, Asia, Africa, and both the Americas, containing specimens of these roving tribes. “Their tents,” says Borrow, “are pitched on the heaths of Brazil and the ridges of the Himalaya hills; and their language is heard in Moscow and Madrid, in London and Stamboul. Their power of resisting cold is truly wonderful, as it is not uncommon to find them encamped in the midst of the snow, in slight canvass tents, where the temperature is 25° or 30° below the freezing-point according to Reaumur;” while, on the other hand, they withstand without difficulty the sultry climes of Africa and India.

The last accession which the population of Europe received was accomplished by an irruption similar to that of the Huns, but on a grander scale. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the Osmanli Turks swept across the Hellespont and Bosphorus, and in 1453 established their empire in Europe by the capture of Byzantium. In proportion to its numbers, no race ever gave such a shock to the Western world as this; and, by its very antagonism, it helped to quicken into life the population and kingdoms of central and eastern Europe. It is semi-Caucasian by extraction, but, coming from the northern side of the Caucasus, and pretty far to the east, the original features of the race had a strong dash of the Tartar in them. The portrait of Mahomed II., the conqueror of Byzantium, may be taken as a fair sample of the primitive Turkish type,—indeed a more than average specimen, for among all nations the nobles and princes, as a class, are ever found to possess the most perfect forms and features. The Turkish tribes who still follow their ancient nomadic life, and wander in the cold and dry deserts of Turkistan, still exhibit the Tartar physiognomy—even the Nogays of the Crimea, and some of the roving tribes of Asia Minor, present much of this character. The European Turks, and the upper classes of the race generally, exhibit a greatly superior style of countenance, in consequence of the elevating influences of civilisation, and of their harems having been replenished for four centuries by fair ones from Georgia and Circassia,—a region which, as Chardin long ago remarked, “is assuredly the one where nature produces the most beautiful persons, and a people brave and valiant, as well as lively, galant, and loving.” There is hardly a man of quality in Turkey who is not born of a Georgian or Circassian mother,—counting downwards from the Sultan, who is generally Georgian or Circassian by the female side. As this crossing of the two races has been carried on for several centuries, the modern Ottomans in Europe are in truth a new nation—and, on the whole, a very handsome one. The general proportion of the face is symmetrical, and the facial angle nearly vertical,—the features thus approaching to the Circassian mould; while the head is remarkable for its excellent globular form, with the forehead broad and the glabella prominent.

The natural destiny of the Turks in Europe, like that of ruling castes everywhere when holding in subjection a population greatly more numerous than themselves, is either to gradually relax their sway and share the government with the subject races, as the Normans in England did,—or, if obstinately maintaining their class-despotism, to be violently deposed from the supremacy. The increasing development of the Greek and other sections of the population of European Turkey has of late years made one or other of these alternatives imminent; but the extensive reforms and liberalisation of the government simultaneously undertaken by the Ottoman rulers, and the remarkable abeyance in which they have begun to place the distinctive tenets of the Mahommedan faith, promised, if unthwarted by foreign influences, to keep the various races in amity, and admit Christians to offices in the state. The history of the last fifteen years has shown this system of governmental relaxation growing gradually stronger—so that Lord Palmerston was justified in saying that no country in the world could show so many reforms accomplished in so short a time as Turkey. And after the recent exploits of the Ottomans in defeating simultaneously the attacks of Russia and of the Greek and Montenegrin insurgents, and the Turkish predilections even of those provinces which were entered by the Christian forces of the Czar, it cannot be doubted that the Turkish rule was on the whole giving satisfaction, and that, if unaided by foreign Powers, no insurrection against the supremacy of the bold-hearted Osmanlis had the slightest chance of success. It was this state of matters which alarmed the ambitious Czar into his present aggression; for he felt that now or never was the time to interfere, if he did not wish to see a Turko-Greek state establish itself in such strength as to bid defiance to his power. We may add, that, whatever be the issue of the present contest, it must tend to a further and higher development of the Turkish character. The contagion of Western ideas, disseminated in the most imposing of ways by the presence of the armies of England and France, cannot fail to impress itself on the slumbrous but awakening Ottomans, and not only expand their stereotyped civilisation into a wider and freer form, but possibly to strike also from their religion the more faulty and obstructive of its tenets.

Such are the elements of the present population of Europe,—a population which, in its western and southern portions, no longer presents distinct masses of diverse tribes, and whose various sections every century is drawing into closer contact. The progress of commerce and civilisation produces not only an interchange of products of various climes, and of ideas between the various races of mankind, but also a commingling of blood; and as the most nobly developed races are always the great wanderers and conquerors, it will be seen that the progress of the world ever tends to improve the types of mankind by infusing the blood of the superior races into the veins of the inferior. The settlements of the Normans are an instance of this. And a still more remarkable, though exceptional, exemplification of the same thing may at present be witnessed in America—where the Negroes, transported from their native clime, have already become a mixed race, owing to the relation in which all female slaves stand to their masters, and the consequent frequent crossing of the European blood with the blood of Africa. In point of fact, there are slaves to be found in the Southern States, who, like “George” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, are as Caucasian in their features and intellect as their masters,—a circumstance fraught with considerable danger to the White caste in these States, because producing the extremest irritation in these nearly full-blood “white slaves,” and at the same time providing able and fiery leaders for the oppressed Negro race in the event of an insurrection and servile war.

But the great variety of countenance and temperament in Western and Southern Europe is not due merely to actual crossings of the commingling races. Civilisation itself is the parent of variety. The progress of humanity produces physical effects upon the race, which may be classed under two heads, one of these being a general physical improvement, and the other increasing variety. Take an undeveloped race like the Tartars or Negroes, and you will find the aspect and mental character of the nation nearly homogeneous,—the differences existing amongst its individual members being comparatively trivial. Pass to the Slavonians, and you will perceive this uniformity lessened; and when you reach the nations of Western Europe, you will find the transition accomplished, and homogeneity exchanged for variety. The explanation of this is obvious. Just as all plants of the same species, when in embryo, are nearly alike, undeveloped races of mankind present but few signs of spiritual life; and therefore their individual members greatly resemble one another,—because the fewer the characteristics, the less room is there for variety, and the more radical and therefore more universal must be the characteristics themselves. Pebbles, as they lie rough upon the sea-shore, may present a great uniformity of appearance; but take and polish them, and a hundred diversities of colour and marking forthwith show themselves;—even so does civilisation and growth develop the rich varieties of human nature. As these mental varieties spring up within, they ever seek to develop themselves by corresponding varieties in the outer life,—placing men now in riches, now in poverty, now under the sway of the intellect, now of the passions, now of good principles, now of bad, and moreover leading to an infinite diversity of external occupation. The joint influence of the feelings within, and of the corresponding circumstances without, in course of time comes to affect the physical frame, often in a very marked manner; and, indeed, it is well known that even so subtle a thing as the predominant thoughts and sentiments of an individual are almost always reflected in the aspect of his countenance. Nations, when in a primitive uncultured state, differ as widely from those at the apex of civilisation, as the monotonous countenance and one-phased mind of a peasant contrasts with the rich variety of expression in the face of genius, whose nature is quickly responsive to every influence, though often steadied into a masculine calm. Let any one inspect the various classes of our metropolitan population, and he will perceive an amount of physical, mental, and occupational variety such as he will meet with nowhere else in the world—presenting countenances deformed now by this form of brutal passion, now by that, ranging upwards to the noblest types of the human face, the joint product of easy circumstances and high mental and spiritual culture. It is all the result of civilisation, which ever tends to break up the uniformity of a population, and allows of its members rising to the highest heights or sinking to the lowest depths,—thus breaking the primitive monotony of life into its manifold prismatic hues.

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).

Incomplete indeed, to use Mr Kaye’s words, would any victory have been, if these brave men and tender women, who had so well endured a long and fearful captivity, had been left behind; and it is well to reflect that we were saved from this reproach by the ascendancy of the milder principles of rule in the mind of the officer upon whom the chief command at this moment, we may almost say providentially, devolved.

Many more instances are recorded, in the chapter just quoted, of the influence of a contrary spirit on the closing events of the Afghan war; but we must pass on to what happened in Scinde, where the anti-judicial principle may be said to have reached its climax.

The following is Mr Campbell’s short and flippant account of that transaction, reminding us in one passage of a letter from the Empress Catherine to one of her French correspondents, wherein she congratulated herself “qu’il n’y a pas d’honneur à garder avec les Turcs”:—

“But though we withdrew from Cabool, our military experiences were not yet over. On invading Afghanistan by the Bolan Pass, Scinde became a base of our operations, and troops were there cantoned. When our misfortunes occurred, it was supposed that the Beloch chiefs would have liked to have turned against us, but dared not—did not.

“Major-General Sir C. Napier then commanded a division in Bombay; he was a good soldier, of a keen, energetic temperament, but somewhat quarrelsome disposition; had at one proud period of his life been in temporary charge of a petty island in the Mediterranean, but was, I believe, deposed by his superior—most unwisely, as he considered; and he had ever since added to his military ardour a still greater thirst for civil power—as it often happens that we prefer to the talents which nature has given us those which she has denied us. He was appointed to the command in Scinde; and Lord Ellenborough, an admirer of heroes, subsequently invested him with political powers. He soon quarrelled with the chiefs, and came to blows with them. Their followers were brave, but undisciplined, and they had no efficient artillery. An active soldier was opposed to them; he easily overcame them, declared the territory annexed, and was made Governor of Scinde.”

Now, the Beloch chiefs had no other right to the territory than the sword; and we, having the better sword, were perfectly justified in taking it from them if we chose, without reference to the particular quarrel between Sir Charles and the chiefs, the merits of which have been so keenly disputed, and on which I need not enter. But the question was one of expediency; and this premature occupation of Scinde was not so much a crime as a blunder,—for this very simple reason, that Scinde did not pay, but, on the contrary, was a very heavy burden, by which the Indian Government has been several millions sterling out of pocket.

“The Ameers had amassed, in their own way, considerable property and treasure, which the general obtained for the army. He was thus rewarded by an unprecedented prize-money, and with the government of Scinde, while Bengal paid the costs of the government he had gained. Scinde was so great a loss, for this reason—that it was not, like other acquisitions, in the midst of, or contiguous to, our territories, but was at that time altogether detached and separated by the sea, the desert, and the independent Punjab; while on the fourth side it was exposed to the predatory Beloches of the neighbouring hills. Consequently, every soldier employed there was cut off from India, and was an expense solely due to Scinde; and while a great many soldiers were required to keep it, it produced a very small revenue to pay them. It is, in truth, very like Egypt—that is, it is the fertile valley of a river running through a barren country, where no rain falls. But there is this difference—first, that while no broader, it is not so long, nor has the fine delta which constitutes the most valuable portion of Egypt; second, that while Egypt is free from external predatory invasion, Scinde is exceedingly exposed to it; and, thirdly, that while Egypt has a European market for its grain, Scinde has not. Altogether, the conquest was, at the time, as concerns India, much as if we had taken the valley of the Euphrates.

“Half a dozen years later, when we advanced over the plain of the Indus, and annexed the Punjab, we must have arranged to control Scinde too, directly or indirectly, as might be done cheapest; but during those intermediate years it was a gratuitous loss, and the chief cause of the late derangement of our Indian finances.”—(Pp. 137–139).

The better sword gives the better title! When such is the doctrine maintained, even by a man of the pen, we cannot wonder at its finding a ready expositor in the man of the sword.

But, in truth, Mr Campbell’s sword plea, having the merit of honesty and openness, is by far the best that has been advanced; and yet, as he shows, it is only available in support of the right, and not of the policy, of the measure. After-events, he observes, alluding to the conquest of the Punjab, have given a value to Scinde, which in itself it did not possess; but he has omitted to remark that the one event very probably grew out of the other. The Sikhs, who not only had refrained, like the Ameers, from molesting, but had even assisted us in our recent difficulties, had some reason for apprehending that, in due time, the policy pursued in Scinde would be extended to their own more inviting country; while, as if to remove an obstacle to an apparently desired misunderstanding, Sir George Clerk was promoted to the nominally higher post of lieutenant-governor of Agra, and an officer, his very opposite in every quality excepting earnest zeal and undaunted courage, was appointed to be his political successor at Lahore.

Though he is little disposed to state any case too favourably for the party opposed to us, this peculiarity in our relations with the Sikhs, immediately before their invasion of our territory, is frankly admitted by Mr Campbell. After mentioning various military movements calculated to give them alarm, he describes a political difficulty as to certain lands belonging to the Sikh state, lying on our side of the Sutledge, which he says had been so managed by two successive political agents, Sir Claude Wade and Sir George Clerk, that through their personal influence “it had so happened that our wishes were generally attended to.” He thus concludes:—

“Sir George Clerk having been promoted, new men were put in charge of our frontier relations, and seem to have assumed as a right what had heretofore been yielded to a good understanding. In 1845 Major Broadfoot was political agent. He was a man of great talent and immense energy, but of a rather overbearing habit. In difficult and delicate times he certainly did not conciliate the Sikhs.... Altogether, I believe the fact to be, that had Sir George Clerk remained in charge of our political relations, the Sikhs would not have attacked us at the time they did; it might have been delayed: but still it was well that they came when they did.”—(Pp. 142, 143.)

The annexation of the Punjab followed hard on the conquest of Scinde, and both events may be regarded as sequels to the Afghan expedition, and this again as but a fuller development of the anti-judicial school, which, since the downfall of the Cornwallis system, has held almost undisputed sway on the banks of the Ganges.

When a government essentially despotic, like that of British India, spontaneously engages to adhere to the rules of judicial procedure in dealing with its own subjects, a pledge is thereby given to neighbouring states that towards them also its conduct will be regulated on principles of justice and moderation.

We admit that the ruling power may thus sometimes create obstructions to its own progress along the path of improvement; but it seems probable that such self-imposed restraints should more frequently operate (to borrow a term from the railway) as “breaks” to save it from precipitately rushing into acts of rashness or injustice.

History confirms these conclusions, and shows the practical result to have been precisely what a priori reasoning would have led us to expect.

Five great wars were waged in India during the second or judicial period of its administration—that is, from 1793 to 1830. These were—the Mysore war in 1799, the Mahratta war in 1803, the Nepaul war in 1814, the Pindaree war in 1817, and the Burmese war in 1825. There is not one of these against which even a plausible charge of injustice can be maintained by our bitterest foreign foes, or most quick-sighted censorious countrymen.

The acuteness of Mr Cobden himself would be at fault if he were to try to make out a case against the authors of any one of these wars, to satisfy a single sensible man beyond the circle of the “Peace Society.”

But how is it with the wars which have occurred since, wandering from judicial ways, the rulers of Gangetic India have pursued whatever course for the moment found favour in their own eyes, with little or no reference to the feelings of their subjects, and with hardly a show of deference to the laws enacted by their predecessors?

The Afghan war of 1838, the Scinde affair of 1843, the Gwalior campaign of 1844, have each in their turn, especially the two first-named, been made the subject of comments neither captious nor fastidious, but resting on indisputable evidence, and supported by reasoning such as pre-formed prejudice alone can resist. The two wars in the Punjab come under the category of the just and necessary; and Lord Hardinge’s generous use of the privileges of victory, at the close of the first of these hard-fought conflicts, did much to re-establish our character for justice and moderation. But still these wars are, we fear, coupled in the minds of the people of India with those out of which they sprang, and share in the reproach attaching, in their estimation, to the invasion of Afghanistan and the conquest of Scinde.

We have now reached a point where we may stop to consider the several merits of the works on our list at the head of this article. Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet is written in a frank conversational style, indicative of his earnest sincerity and his real sympathy with the people of the Upper Ganges, among whom his official life has been spent. We could wish occasionally that his language was a little more measured, for there are passages to startle some of his readers, and so to impair the general effect of his otherwise interesting pamphlet.

Of the style, as well as the matter, of Mr Campbell’s more elaborate work, hardness is the chief characteristic. Indeed, he seems to discard all ornament from the one, and all sentiment from the other, and to aim at nothing beyond correctness as to his facts, and positiveness as to his deductions. In this he fully succeeds. His volume is a repertory of useful facts, and his conclusions can never be misapprehended. Some of Mr Campbell’s descriptions also are amusing; and we insert, as a specimen of his lighter style, the following sketch of the day of a magistrate and collector in Upper India, that functionary whose labours are so little known to any but those of his own service, or the people among whom he lives. After enumerating many out-of-door duties despatched in the course of an early morning’s ride, the description thus proceeds:—

“At breakfast comes the post and the packet of official letters. The commissioner demands explanation on this matter, and transmits a paper of instructions on that; the judge calls for cases which have been appealed; the secretary to Government wants some statistical information; the inspector of prisons fears that the prisoners are growing too fat; the commander of the 105th regiment begs to state that his regiment will halt at certain places on certain days, and that he requires a certain quantity of flour, grain, hay, and eggs; Mr Snooks, the indigo-planter, who is in a state of chronic warfare with his next neighbour, has submitted his grievances in six folio sheets, indifferent English, and a bold hand, and demands instant redress, failing which he threatens the magistrate with Government, the supreme court, an aspersion of his character as a gentleman, a Parliamentary impeachment, a letter to the newspapers, and several other things besides. After breakfast he despatches his public letters, writes reports, examines returns, &c.

“During this time he has probably a succession of demi-officials from the neighbouring cantonments. There is a great complaint that the villagers have utterly, without provocation, broken the heads of the cavalry grass-cutters, and the grass-cutters are sent to be looked at. He goes out to look at them, but no sooner appears than a shout announces that the villagers are waiting in a body, with a slightly different version of the story, to demand justice against the grass-cutters, who have invaded their grass-preserves, despoiled their villages, and were with difficulty prevented from murdering the inhabitants. So the case is sent to the joint magistrate. But there are more notes; some want camels, some carts, and all apply to the magistrate; then there may be natives of rank and condition, who come to pay a serious formal kind of visit, and generally want something; or a chatty native official who has plenty to say for himself.

“All this despatched, he orders his carriage or umbrella, and goes to cutcherry—his regular court. Here he finds a sufficiency of business; there are police, and revenue, and miscellaneous cases of all sorts, appeals from the orders of his subordinates, charges of corruption or misconduct against native officials. All petitions from all persons are received daily in a box, read, and orders duly passed. Those setting forth good grounds of complaint are filed under proper headings; others are rejected, for written reason assigned. After sunset, comes his evening, which is probably like his morning ride, mixed up with official and demi-official affairs, and only at dark does the wearied magistrate retire to dinner and to private life.”—(Pp. 248–249).

Mr Kaye’s essay recommends itself by the same easy flow of language as made his History of the Afghan War such agreeable reading. His plan does not admit of his giving more than a series of sketches; but his outlines are so clear, and his selection of topics to fill up with is so happy, that we can safely recommend his volume to any one who, without leisure or inclination for more minute study of the subject, may still wish to obtain some general idea of the administration of our vast Eastern empire. In a note at page 661, Mr Kaye informs us, that in the summer of 1852 the Duke of Newcastle told the Haileybury students that, during a recent tour in the Tyrol, he had met an intelligent Austrian general who, in the course of conversation on our national resources, said that he could understand all the elements of our greatness except our Anglo-Indian empire, and that he could not understand. The vast amount of administrative wisdom which the good government of such an empire demanded, baffled his comprehension.

The Austrian general, perhaps, would not have readily assented to the explanation of the marvel given by the young French naturalist, Victor Jaquemont, who, in a letter dated from the confines of Tartary, in August 1830, thus writes to a relative in Paris: “The ideas entertained in France about this country are absurd; the governing talents of the English are immense; ours, on the contrary, are very mediocre; and we believe the former to be embarrassed when we see them in circumstances in which our awkwardness would be completely at a stand-still.”—(English translation of Victor Jaquemont’s Letters, vol. i. p. 169).

The lady whose three volumes come next under our notice is certainly one of the most intelligent travellers of her sex who has visited India since the days when Maria Graham, afterwards Lady Callcott, amused her readers in England, and enraged many of her female acquaintances in India, by describing the latter as generally “under-bred and overdressed.”

It is curious to observe how little change the lapse of forty years seems to have made in the outward peculiarities of Anglo-Indian drawing-room life, and how much in unison the two fair authors are in their remarks on their own countrymen.

Mrs Colin Mackenzie, however, has enjoyed opportunities which her predecessor could not command, of observing the private and domestic side of Oriental life, and has evinced a wonderful aptitude in turning these opportunities to the best account. The great charm of her work is that it admits us within the Purdah, and lets us see what is hidden from all European masculine eyes,—the interior, namely, of an Asiatic household.

It is pleasing to read an English lady’s lively account of her own friendly intercourse with families of another faith, upon whom her industrious energy, quickened and regulated by a zeal for her own religion, openly avowed and studiously exhibited as her main motive of action, cannot, we imagine, have failed to produce a deep and lasting impression. We trust that Mrs Mackenzie’s example may be followed by many of our countrywomen; for the information in which, of all others, the English functionaries in the East are most deficient—that regarding natives in their private and domestic sphere—is precisely what our ladies alone have the power to acquire and impart. Mrs Mackenzie, it is true, mingled chiefly with the Afghans, who are a more attractive race than the people of India.

The Afghans, also, must have felt inclined to open their hearts to the wife of one who, both as a soldier in the field, and afterwards as a captive in their hands, had commanded the sincere respect of those among whom he was thrown. But though all cannot have her advantages, there is no lady whose husband holds office in India, who, if she makes herself acquainted with the languages of the country, will not find native women of rank and respectability ready to cultivate her acquaintance, and thus afford her the means of solving some of those problems of the native character which elude all the researches of our best-informed public functionaries. Having said thus much in praise of Mrs Mackenzie’s book, we cannot but censure most strongly the attempt at spicing her work with gossipping tales calculated to wound the feelings of private individuals among her own countrymen, and even of the officers of her husband’s own service, with whose characters she deals with a most unsparing degree of reproachful raillery, designating individuals as Colonel A., Major B., or Captain C. of the — Regiment, stationed at such a place, so that there cannot be a doubt as to whom the anecdotes, which are always to the discredit of the parties, refer.

The difficulty of commenting on a posthumous work is much enhanced when the author happens to have been, like the late Sir Charles Napier, one whose errors of the pen are more than redeemed by a career of long and glorious services. Still, though this consideration may soften, it ought not to silence criticism, for errors never more require correction than when heralded by an illustrious name. An additional reason for not passing over the last work of so distinguished a man is, that it contains many admirable remarks on the Native army, well deserving to be detached from the mass of other matter in which they are imbedded. The contents of the book may be classed under three heads: Censure of individuals; censure of public bodies; suggestive remarks on the civil and military administration of India.

On whatever comes under the first of these heads, our strictures shall be brief.

We find in the list of those censured, the names of so many of the best and ablest men who have taken part in Indian affairs, either at home or in the East, that we feel loth to give any additional publicity to what we have read with pain, and would gladly forget. Public bodies being fair targets to shoot at, the censures coming under the second head are open to no objection excepting such as may arise from their not standing the test of close examination. The Court of Directors, the Supreme Council of India, the whole body of the Civil Service (with one or two exceptions), the Political Agents, the Military Board in Calcutta, and the Board of Administration in the Punjab, follow each other like arraigned criminals in the black scroll of the author’s antipathies. To notice all that is advanced against those included in this catalogue would be impossible, for a few lines may contain assertions which it would fill a folio to discuss. Of the East India Company, the instrument through which India has been providentially preserved from the corruptions of an aristocratic and the precipitancy of a more popular rule, Sir Charles Napier’s view is not more enlarged than what we might have got from his own Sir Fiddle Faddle, of whom he has left us (at page 253) so amusing a description. Though capable, as we shall soon see, of rising above the prejudices of his profession on other points, he looks at this singular Company and its governing Court with the eyes of a Dugald Dalgetty, who, while pocketing the commercial body’s extra pay, accounts it foul scorn to be obliged to submit to such base and mechanical control.

But none are all bad, and we rejoice to see it admitted at page 210 of the unfriendly book before us, that “the Directors, generally speaking, treat their army well;” and at pages 49, 261, that the Company’s artillery, formed under the rule of these very Directors, is “superb, second to none in the world—perfect.” Yet it never seems to have occurred to the author, that those under whose rule one department has reached perfection, are not likely to blunder in every other, as in his moments of spleen he made himself believe. So able a man as Sir C. Napier could not always be blind to his own inconsistencies; and accordingly, in the midst of some declamation on what India might be under royal government, he seems to have been suddenly brought up by a thought about what the Crown Colonies really are.

From this dilemma he escapes by saddling one distinguished personage with the blame of all that is wrong in the colonies, and thus punishes Earl Grey for the speech about Scinde, made by Lord Howick, some ten years ago, in the House of Commons.

To the Supreme Council of India, though he was one of their number, the author never makes any but disparaging allusions. Discontented with being a commander-in-chief under a ruling body, of which he was himself a member, he sought to be recognised as the head of a separate military government. He wished, in short, to be, not what the Duke of York was in England, but what, under peculiar circumstances, the Duke of Wellington was in Spain during the war in the Peninsula. In this he was not singular; for we suspect that the real cause of that uneasiness in their position, stated at page 355, to have been manifested by many of Sir C. Napier’s predecessors, is to be found in a desire on their part for such an independency of military administrative power, as is totally incompatible with the necessary unity and indivisibility of a government. Yet it is admitted that, in England, “when war comes, the war-minister is the real commander,”—(p. 220.) The author evidently felt how much this admission must tell against his own complaints of undue interference with his authority; for he endeavours, by some feeble special pleading, to abate its effect, and to prove the “poor Indian general,” with his £15,000 a year, to be more unfavourably placed than his confrère in England.

One circumstance, however, is such, that while the latter is excluded from the Cabinet, the former can take his seat at the Council-Board, and his part in the guidance of the counsels of the State.

It is, we think, greatly to be regretted that Sir C. Napier did not more frequently avail himself of this privilege, for by keeping apart from the Supreme Council he lost the benefit of free personal communication with equals, and incurred the evil of having none near him but subordinates, whom he could silence by a word or a look.

The Civil Service is represented simply as a nuisance requiring immediate abatement.

We are told that “a Civil form of government is uncongenial to barbarous Eastern nations.” There is some truth in this, if a proper stress is laid on the word barbarous. In the first chapter of the fourth part of his work, Mr Kaye has shown how, in reaching the outskirts of civilisation, we are brought into contact with rude tribes like the Beloches in Scinde, “to whose feelings and habits the rough ways of Sir C. Napier were better adapted than the refined tenderness or the judicial niceties of the gentlest and wisest statesman that ever loved and toiled for a people.” But the error of such reasoners as Sir C. Napier is, that they would treat all India as barbarous, and rule it accordingly. Now, with all our respect for Sir C. Napier’s talents, we doubt much whether he would have governed the more civilised provinces of Upper India better than the late Mr Thomason, whom he condescends to praise—(p. 37); or managed the subtle and well-mannered Sikhs with more tact and skill than Sir George Clerk during the perilous period of our disasters in 1841–42.

It is true that the utter failure of the system in operation in the Punjab is confidently predicted at p. 366; but it is consolatory to find, from the very last Indian newspapers, that no progress is making towards a fulfilment of this prophecy; but that, on the contrary, a reduction of taxation has been effected by the Board, such as would be felt as a boon by the tenant-farmers of England, its influence having been counteracted by nothing but by the effects of an excessive plenty.

It is creditable to the candour of the Bengal Civil Service, that its members themselves furnish the information to be turned against their own body, and it is from a work published by the Hon. F. J. Shore, in 1837, that Sir C. Napier has borrowed his most plausible charges.

On this we can only observe, that Mr Shore, in his zeal for the improvement of his own service, forgot that what he wrote would be read by the ignorant and the unfriendly; by those who could not, and by those who would not, comprehend the real scope and meaning of his words.

The faults imputed by him to his brother civilians are mainly those of manner, already noticed by ourselves as being common to the English, generally, in their deportment towards strangers in every clime.

If we were writing only for those who know what British India is, our ungrateful task of correcting errors might here conclude; but it is upon those to whom that country is unknown that the work before us is calculated to produce an impression, and therefore we must try, in as few words as possible, to point out one of its most striking inaccuracies. On referring to the pages noted below,[^[37]] the reader will find a series of assertions, to the effect that in Bengal the army is scattered over the country for the protection of the Civil servants. From the Indian Register of this very year, it appears that, in the country below Benares, which, in extent and population, is about equal to France, there are only about ten battalions;[^[38]] the half of these being stationed at Barrackpore, in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta. In the provinces above Benares, under the rule of the Lieutenant-governor at Agra, with a somewhat smaller but more hardy population, it appears that there are thirteen stations occupied by regular troops; of which eight are close to large towns, such as in every country require to be watched—or else purely military posts. There are only five other places where regular troops seem to be stationed, and of these, one is on the frontier of Nepaul.

Admitting that the Civil power derives its support from the knowledge of a military force being at hand, still the exhibition of the latter is as rare on the Ganges as on the Thames; and a magistrate would sink in the opinion of his superiors, and of his own service, if he were to apply for the aid of troops in any but the extreme cases in which such an application would be warranted in England. It would be just as rational to argue that our provincial mayors and magistrates in England are hated, because troops are stationed at Manchester, Preston, or Newcastle, as to adduce the distribution of the regular Sepoys in Bengal and Upper India as a proof of the hatred borne to the Civil servants, through whose administration that vast region is made to furnish forth the funds to support the armies with which heroes win victories and gather laurels.

What is meant by “guards for civilians” it is hard to guess. The Lieutenant-governor at Agra is, we believe, the only civilian, not in political employ, who has a guard of regulars at his house. In some places in Upper India, regulars may be posted at the Treasury, for the same reason that a corresponding force is posted at the Bank of England in the heart of London; but even to the Treasuries in the lower provinces no such protection is given.

Sir C. Napier, we suspect, has confused the collector with the collections, and fancied the force occasionally posted to protect the latter to be, in fact, employed to swell the state or guard the person of the former. That regular Sepoys should be employed to escort treasure is much to be regretted; but treasure is tempting, and the mode of conveyance on carts very tedious, the ways long, the country to be traversed often very wild, and the robbers in some quarters very bold. It is not often that in England bullion belonging to the State has to be conveyed in waggons; but when this happens, it is, we think, usually accompanied by a party of soldiers.

It would be tedious to follow out all the mistakes made about Chuprassees and Burkundazes—the former being a sort of orderly, of whom two or three are attached to every office-holder, military or civil, to carry orders and messages, in a climate where Europeans cannot at all hours of the day walk about with safety; and the latter being the constabulary, employed in parties of about fifteen or twenty at the various subdivisions into which, for purposes of police, each district is laid out. To form them into battalions would be to strip the interior of all the hands wanted for the common offices of preventive and detective police.

We now gladly turn to the more pleasing duty of pointing out the brighter passages, and rejoice to draw our reader’s attention to the strain of kindly feeling towards the men and officers of the Company’s army, both European and Native, pervading the whole work.

It is pleasing to observe the anxiety expressed by so thorough a soldier, to see the armies of the Crown and Company assimilated to each other, and all “the ridiculous jealousies entertained by the vulgar-minded in both armies”[^[39]] removed. It is delightful to read the assurance given by such a man that, “under his command, at various times, for ten years, in action, and out of action, the Bengal Sepoys never failed in real courage or activity.”[^[40]] It is instructive to learn from so great a master in the art of war, that “Martinets are of all military pests the worst;”[^[41]] and still more so to read his earnest and heart-stirring exhortations to the younger of his own countrymen not to keep aloof from Native officers;[^[42]] and his declaration that, even at his advanced age, he would have studied the language of the Sepoys, if his public duties had not filled up all his time. Our space will not allow us to give any specimens of the author’s style. It is ever animated and original. There was no need of a signature to attest a letter of his writing, for no one could mistake from whom it came. Though deformed by occasional outbursts of spleen, our readers may find much to admire in the narrative of the expedition to Kohat.[^[43]] It will be well, however, after reading it through, to take up the Bombay Times of the 14th of December last, to see what progress is being made by the very Board of Administration so contemptuously spoken of in the narrative,[^[44]] towards reducing the turbulent Afridee tribes to a state of enduring submission and good order.

Long practice had given great fluency to the author’s pen when employed in what we may call anti-laudatory writing, but this sometimes led him into that most pardonable of plagiarisms, the borrowing from himself, as in the following sentence, at page 118: “He,” meaning the Governor-General, “and his politicals, like many other men, mistook rigour, with cruelty, for vigour.” If our memory is to be relied on, this very antithetical jingle may be found in a pamphlet, published some twenty-five years ago, about the alleged “misgovernment of the Ionian Islands.” The author’s political speculations, when unwarped by prejudice, were generally correct, and we fully concur with him, and, we may add, with his predecessor, the late Sir Henry Fane, in the opinion expressed at page 66, that the Sutledge “ought to bound our Indian possessions;” and we now fear that, having crossed that river, we must also throw the Indus behind us, and fulfil the prediction hazarded at page 374, that, “with all our moderation, we shall conquer Afghanistan, and occupy Candahar.” Sometimes, however, his disposition to paint everything en noir has misled our author even upon a military point, as in the following instance: “The close frontier of Burmah enables that power to press suddenly and dangerously upon the capital of our Indian Empire; and such events are no castles in the air, but threatening real perils. The Eastern frontier, therefore, is not safe,”—(p. 364).

In former days, when the Burmese territories were dovetailed into our district of Chittagong, there might have been some ground for this opinion, supposing the Burmese to have been, what they are not, as energetic a people as the Sikhs. But a glance at the map might satisfy any one that with our occupation of Arracan, a country so intersected by arms of the sea as to be impassable for any power not having that absolute superiority on the water which a single steamer would give us, all danger of invasion from that side has for the last twenty-five years been at an end.

The mention of Burmah naturally leads to the next work in our list, that of Mr J. C. Marshman, the well-known editor of the ablest of the Calcutta journals, the Friend of India.

His pamphlet is a reply to another, by Mr Cobden, entitled “The origin of the Burmese war.” Mr Cobden could not, of course, write about a war excepting to blame it, consequently Mr Marshman appears in defence of what the other assails.

We cannot devote much time to the consideration of this controversy, but at one passage we must indulge in a momentary glance.

Towards the end of the fifth page of Mr Marshman’s pamphlet our readers will find a sentence throwing some light on the origin of the war which he undertakes to defend. He there dwells, with great emphasis, on the “unexampled and extraordinary unanimity which was exhibited by the Indian journals on the Burmese question,” and describes, with much unction, the happy spectacle of rival editors laying aside their animosities, to combine in applauding the course pursued on that occasion by the Government. Editors, like players, must please, to live; and as the whole Anglo-Saxon community in the East, most especially those of the shipping and shopping interest at Calcutta, have, for the last twenty-five years, had a craving for a renewal of war with Ava, the newspaper must have been conducted upon most disinterested principles, which had opposed itself to any measure conducive to so desiderated a result.

We have now skimmed over the annals of a hundred years, endeavouring, as we moved along, to detect the ruling principle of each successive period, and to trace its influence upon the leading events of the time.

In looking forward to what is to come, we shall not speculate on the spontaneous limitation of conquest, because we feel that this will never be; for this simple reason, that we shall never sincerely wish it to be. Wars, then, will go on, until, on the north-west, we shall have accomplished all that Sir C. Napier either predicted or recommended, and until, on the south-east, we shall have added Siam to Pegu, and Cambodia to Siam. Within the geographical boundaries of India Proper, also, there are several tempting patches of independent territory to be absorbed, such as the Deccan and Oude, both of which, along with the Rajpoot and Bondela states, are all marked like trees in a forest given up to the woodman. The inexhaustible plea for interminable conquest, internal mal-administration, will ever furnish grounds for the occupation of the larger states; and though many of the smaller Hindoo principalities are admirably governed, according to their own simple notions, still, as they certainly will not square with our ideas of right, some reason will always be found to satisfy the English-minded public that their annexation is both just and expedient. Then we shall, indeed, be the sole Lords of Ind; but after destroying every independent court where natives may hope to rise to offices of some little dignity, we shall be doubly bound to meet, by arrangements of our own, the cravings of natural and reasonable ambition.

In searching for a guide at this point of our inquiry, we have hit upon the work standing last upon our list, the production of a gentleman who has extraordinary claims upon the attention of English as well as Indian readers. Mr Cameron carried out with him to India a mind stored with the best learning of the West; and during twelve years spent out there in the high posts of Law Commissioner, Member of the Supreme Council, and President of the Committee of Education, his best powers were exerted, not merely to impart instruction, but to inspire with a true love of knowledge, the native youth attached to the various institutions within the sphere of his influence.

His work is truly one of which his country may be proud, for a more disinterested zeal in the cause of a conquered people was never exhibited by one of the dominant race, than is evinced in this noble address to the Parliament of England on behalf of the subject millions of India.

Many, however, as Mr Cameron’s qualifications are for the task which he undertakes, there is one of much importance not to be found among them. He never served in the interior; never was burdened with the charge of a district; never spent six hours a day, at the least, in the crowded Babel of a Cutcherry,[^[45]] with the thermometer at 98° in the shade. His Indian day was very different from that of the magistrate collector of which we have inserted Mr Campbell’s lively description. It was passed in the stillness of his library, or in the well-aired and well-ordered halls of a college, among educated young natives, mostly Bengalees, who were about as true specimens of Indian men as the exotics in a London conservatory are of British plants.

Such a life is compatible with the acquirement of great Oriental lore, but not with the attainment of that ready knowledge of native character which is picked up by far inferior intellects in the rough daily school of Cutcherry drudgery.

This reflection has somewhat damped our pleasure in perusing Mr Cameron’s eloquent and high-toned address. We devoutly hope to see our misgivings proved to be groundless; but in the mean time we must give one or two of our reasons for doubting whether the day is at hand when the natives of England and India may meet on terms of perfect parity in every walk of life. In the first place, to judge by precedent, we doubt the strict applicability to the present question of that drawn from the practice of ancient Rome. Of the people subjugated by Rome, a vast proportion were of the same race as their victors, with no peculiarities, personal or complexional, to check the amalgamation resulting from popular intermarriage. It is in Egypt that the closest similarity to our situation in India is likely to be found, and, judging by the contemptuous tone of Juvenal’s allusion to the people of that country in his 15th Satire, we can hardly imagine that, when employed in any public capacity, the “imbelle et inutile vulgus” were placed exactly on the same footing as the Roman knights who constituted the “covenanted service” of those days in that particular province.

The geographical circumstances were also different. Rome grew like a tree—its root in the eternal city, its branches stretching forth in continuous lines to the furthest extremities of its vast domain.

Our Indian empire springs from a transplanted offshoot of the parent State. No one part of it has a firmer hold on the soil than another. It is all equally loose. Our dominion is, in fact, based upon our ships, and it is to our ships that both Englishmen and natives, in touching on the possibility of our eventual downfall, always speak of our retreating or being driven. From our ships we sprung, and to our ships we shall some day perhaps return. It is in vain, therefore, to draw, from the practice of a purely continental empire like that of Rome, rules for the government of an essentially maritime dominion such as we have established on the Ganges. Ours is a power without a precedent, and perhaps, therefore, without a prognostic. There is nothing like it in the past, and its future will probably be stamped with the same singularity as has characterised its whole existence.

We must try, therefore, to better the condition of our subjects by means such as our own experience teaches us to be best adapted to their nature. To open to them at once the civil and military services; to give to any number of them that absolute right to preferment implied in their enrolment in the ranks of a peculiar body, would not, we imagine, be to follow the guidance of experience. Presumption on the one side, and the pride of race on the other, might lead to serious jarrings between the English and the Indian members, who, though standing in the ranks of the same service, would still differ from each other like the keys of a piano-forte. It would, we think, be safer to commence, as we have already suggested, by selecting for preferment individuals from the mass of our native subjects. Situations in the judicial and revenue department may be found or created which natives can fill with great credit; but their general fitness for the office of magistrate remains to be proved. It is easy to imagine a case wherein to leave the powers wielded by a magistrate in the hands of any one open to the influences from which a fellow-countryman alone can be secure, would be, to say the least, most imprudent. Besides, there is a duty, perhaps but imperfectly performed at present, and to which, at least in the lower provinces, a native functionary would be quite incompetent, and that is, affording protection to the people against the violence of Englishmen settled in the interior as merchants, landholders, or Indigo-planters. We have now before us a letter written in excellent English by a native of Bengal, in which the following passage occurs:—“The fact is, that European traders have obtained, in many places in the interior of the Bengal Presidency, almost uncontrolled power—a power which they are seldom sufficiently scrupulous not to exert to the injury of those with whom they come in contact. It is not exaggeration to say, each Indigo-factory, together with its surrounding estate, is a little kingdom within itself, wherein avarice and tyranny hold unlimited sway. The police is too feeble to render effectual aid in suppressing the lawless oppression of the factor.”

Now, let us figure to ourselves one of Mr Cameron’s slender dusky élèves on the bench as magistrate, and (to take what ought to be the mildest specimen of a gentle Englishman) the leading member of the Peace party at the House of Commons at the bar in an Indigo-planter, taxed with oppressing the Hindoo, and we shall easily see that the law must have an almost supernatural inherent majesty, if, under such circumstances, it can be effectually enforced and impartially administered.

The regulation of the intercourse between our own countrymen not in the service of Government, and our native subjects, will rise in importance with the progress of those works in which European agency is essential to insure success. Railways, electric telegraphs, improved cotton-cultivation, steam, and all other complicated machinery, must, if overspreading the country as many anticipate, bring with them a vast increase to the European section of the community, whose influence will still be out of all proportion to its commercial strength.

To give to this little section full scope for the development of its industrial energies, and yet to restrain it from abusing its strength to the injury of the native population, is in fact the only real service ever likely to be rendered by the Law Commissions and Legislative Councils called into existence by the enactment of last session.

In as far as the natives of Bengal and Upper India are alone concerned, we are convinced that all of this cumbrous law-making apparatus is quite superfluous. The existing regulations, with occasional pruning and trimming, would, if fairly enforced and adhered to, amply suffice to meet all of their simple wants. But the natives can no longer be left to themselves. Europeans will intrude, and legislation must therefore be shaped and stretched so as to fit it to the characters of the intruders.

As at present constituted, the magistracy and the police are hardly equal to the control of British-born settlers, half a dozen of whom are more difficult to rule than half a million of natives. There prevails among Englishmen of every grade a notion of the East India Company being a body of a somewhat foreign stamp, to whose servants it is almost degrading for a free-born Britain to be obliged to submit.

The amalgamation of the Queen’s and the Company’s superior tribunals, known at Calcutta as the Supreme, and the Sudder, Courts, would, by coupling the home-bred judges appointed by the Crown with the country-trained nominees of the local government, give a weight to the magistracy acting under this combined authority, and thus fit it for the better discharge of the difficult duty of controlling and correcting the excesses of Englishmen settled in the interior. These settlers often find in the menace of an action or prosecution before a remote and somewhat prejudiced tribunal, a weapon wherewith to combat the immediate power of a functionary, amenable individually to the Queen’s Court in Calcutta, for every act which legal ingenuity can represent to be personal, and so beyond the pale of official protection.

The fusion of the two superior courts will not, in fact, lessen the personal responsibility of the English magistrate; but it will remove an apparent antagonism, calculated to keep alive a spirit of defiance towards the local authority in the breast of many an English settler, the effects of which, as described in the extract above given, from the letter of a Bengal gentleman, are felt by every native with whom he may have any dealings. Much has been written and spoken about the duty of protecting the people of India from being oppressed by the Government and its agents, but few seem to have thought of that more searching tyranny which a few strong-nerved and coarse-minded Englishmen in the interior, invested with power by the possession of land, may exercise over the people among whom they are located, and from whom they are eager to extract the wealth which they long to enjoy in a more congenial climate.

This species of tyranny will of course be most felt among the feeblest, and is, consequently, likely to be more grievous in Bengal than among the hardier population of Upper India. But wherever the Anglo-Saxon goes, he will carry with him his instinctive contempt for tribes of a dusky complexion; and where this is not counteracted by the imposed courtesies of official life, or checked by the presence of a sufficient controlling authority, it will ever be ready to break out in a manner injurious to the interests and feelings of those subject to his power.

Our future rule will, it is evident, become daily more and more European in its tone, and there will consequently be an increasing call upon those engaged in its direction to watch over the conduct of the dominant race, to restrain its arrogance, and to see that the equality announced in the laws does not evaporate in print, but is something real and substantial, to be felt and enjoyed in the ordinary everyday intercourse of life.

If this can be accomplished by legislation, the new Commissions and Councils will not have been created in vain; but if their labours end in merely adding to the existing tomes of benevolent enactments, without effectual provision for their enforcement, then we cannot but fear that our projected measures of improvement, being all of a European character, will add little to the happiness of our subjects on the banks of the Ganges, and be regarded by them merely as ingenious contrivances for extending our own power, and completing their subjugation.

THE SECRET OF STOKE MANOR: A FAMILY HISTORY.
PART III.