“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.