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.