succeed. Mr. Hunter holds this last doctrine to be the safer of the two, from the This is the order passed by one who hopes English point of view. His argument ap for the secret favour of the Almighty, who pears to be that, if India be a kingdom of praises God, and prays for blessings and peace Islam, the extreme duties of the Mahomeon his Prophet. tan code will always be more or less in"JAMAL, IBN-I-ABDALLAH SHEIKH UMAR-UL-cumbent on all the faithful in that counHANAFI, try; whereas, if India has become a coun

“The present Mufti of Mecca, the Hon-try of the Enemy, its condition need no

the Koran, should think it worth while to assign all sorts of reasons for his inability to concur in a conclusion which has admittedly brought comfort to large numbers of sincere Mahometans.

"

admit it to be a religious duty to overthrow it whenever they can. They consider it the bitterest of wrongs to be placed on an equality with Hindoos. 'Hindooism," says Mr. Hunter, who, as a The discontent of a great religions com- modified philo-Mahometan, feels himself munity seems at first sight to Englishmen compelled to express his dissent from the a phenomenon with which they are ex- opinion, "is, to the Mahometans, the mysceedingly familiar. The bulk of the Ma-tery of abominations, a system of devilhometans, if they look upon the British worship and idolatry unbroken by a single Government of India with no great affec- gleam of the knowledge of the One God." tion, are, nevertheless, inclined to acqui- In this spirit, the Mahometans resent the esce in it, provided only they are let principle of what is called "disestablishalone by a small knot of "irreconcilable' ment as applied to themselves; although agitators. The parallel seems complete, in their case it is not coupled with disand Englishmen are at once led by their endowment. Though they are bound by pratical instinct to ask what is the "mes- their religion to desire the destruction of sage of peace" which can be sent to the our Government, they nevertheless proMahometans. How can the agitators be fess to be unable to do without its help in disarmed? What are the real grievances their religious affairs. Such a state of feelof the Mahometans? are they remediable? ing and opinion puts almost insuperable and how? We are afraid it must be an- difficulties in the way of the redress of swered that the experience of Englishmen grievances by the British Government, is here at fault. In the first place, the fettered as it is by moral restrictions growMahometans are not, like the Irish Roman ing out of the civilization from which it Catholics, a majority of the people. Al- has issued. Mr. Hunter, indeed, has conmost all Indian statistics of population are vinced himself that the Mahometans of worthless; only the other day it was pub- India have two specific grounds of reasonlicly stated in the Legislative Council of able complaint, and is more doubtfully Lower Bengal that the Lieutenant-Gov- persuaded that they have a third. We ernor of that province did not know with- are sorry to say that his examples of in ten millions what number of persons genuine grievances seem to us to do little were under his administration. The fig- more than illustrate the difficulties of ures, however, which are usually given, Indian government. It would certainly assign to the Mahometans of India thirty be possible to apply a remedy to the first millions of souls, and to the Hindoos not and smallest of them, but the process less than a hundred and fifty millions. would amount to an equivocal and retroThe people of India consists, therefore, grade step. Another of them cannot practically of Hindoos, who, without pos- possibly be touched without the grossest sibly any very warm loyalty to the British injustice to the Hindoos, and the redress Empire, have, nevertheless, accepted it for of the third would, in our judgment, be a good or for evil, and who unreservedly ac- grave injury to the Mahometans themknowledge that their present Government selves. is much the best they have ever had. Under such circumstances, all that the English rulers of the country can manifestly do, is to observe strict impartiality between the sections of the population, to secure to all equal civil rights, and to hold itself aloof from the religious organization of all, and from their religious concerns. Unfortunately, it is exactly this policy of indifference and non-intervention which constitutes the general grievance of the Mahometans. Their complaints are not those of the Irish Roman Catholic majority; they are those of the Protestant minority, with the singular difference, however, that the Mahometans have no historical claim on the consideration of the English, and, so far from affecting to form the bulwark of their empire, openly

The first wrong which the Mahometans are alleged by Mr. Hunter to have suffered, suggests some singular reflections. The Indian Government has, for nearly ten years, ceased to appoint certain functiona ries called Kazees. There is no priesthood for Islam, but, as we have more than once observed, there is no distinction between religious and secular law, and these Kazees, the "depositaries and administrators of the domestic law of Islam," as Mr. Hunter calls them, discharge duties for Mahometans closely akin to priestly offices. For many years the Government kept in its hands the appointment of the Kazees, just as it provided for the maintenance and services of certain Hindoo temples. But, after the suppression of the Sepoy Mutiny, the cry arose in England that the English

whole native public believe these func-
tionaries to be open to bribes, and even if
the opinion were unjust, the constructions
of law which the courts were bound, under
the old system, to accept, were in the
highest degree unintelligent.
A great
part of the Mahometan law of succession,
as interpreted by official expositors, was
neither more nor less than an elaborate
mystification of a simple arithmetical prob-
lem.

in India were "ashamed of their Christi- to oppress the litigant and to remove one anity." In deference to the feeling which great security against corruption. The at that time animated every English newspaper and almost every sermon, the Indian Government, at the same time that it promised, through a proclamation issued in the name of the Queen, scrupulously to respect the usages and customs of the natives, adopted a series of measures intended to sever the modified connection it had hitherto maintained with the native religions. In pursuance of this policy, it caused the endowments of Hindoo temples, which had hitherto been retained in its The next grievance of the India Mahomtreasuries or administered by its officers, etans noticed by Mr. Hunter is, according to be transferred to native trustees, and it to English ideas, at once extremely natudiscontinued the appointment of Mahome- ral and nearly irremediable. They are tan Kazees. The Hindoos have repeatedly being superseded by the Hindoos in the protested against the first measure, on the ranks of the public service. The Mahomground that they have no confidence in etan sovereigns, to whom the English trustees of their own religion; but the have succeeded, occasionally employed Mahometans, according to Mr. Hunter, Hindoo Ministers, out of regard to their object to the second for a much more wonderful dexterity in squeezing their remarkable reason. They declare that own countrymen and co-religionists, but their own religious theory requires the the great bulk of the functionaries emKazees to be appointed, not by themselves, ployed in carrying out an elaborate adminbut by the Government. This view, if it istrative system were naturally Mahomebe a sound one, can only be explained by tans. Nearly all the highest posts in the the fundamental assumption of Mahometan theology, that all Mahometans live under Mahometan sovereigns; but no more paradoxical position can be conceived than that in which it places the existing Indian Government. It does not believe in the Koran, and its Mahometan subjects are perplexed with the question whether loyalty to it does not savour of sin; yet these last are said to declare that they have no religious organization of their own which can supply them with Kazees, and to make it a grievance that these semireligious officers are no longer appointed by their infidel rulers. The measure of 1863 can doubtless be reversed, if only the English religious world will avert its eyes and hold its tongue; and from the purely political point of view, it will be a very simple matter to resume the nomination of Kazees. Yet we should like to be informed on a point on which we gather little from Mr. Hunter's pages. Will the resumption touch the real grievance ? We have a strong suspicion that what a certain class of Mahometans resent is the practice, now universal with the Indian courts of justice, of going for themselves to the actual sources of Hindoo and Mahometan jurisprudence, instead of consulting certain persons who used, so to speak, to be official depositaries of native law. But to revert to the old fashion of taking the law from law officers would be

Indian public service are now occupied by Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen; but a multitude of minor offices have natives of the country for their incumbents, and from these the Mahometans are being gradually, but completely, expelled by the Hindoos. It does not, by any means, seem to the Mahometans a great or unnatural injury that they should be kept out of the higher grades of employment by men of the conquering race; and, indeed, if Englishmen abandoned the largest part of the offices which they now occupy to natives of India, the gain, under the English system of appointment, would be not with the Mahometans, but with the Hindoos. The wrong bitterly resented by the Mahometan malcontents is the promotion over their heads of vile infidels, whose religion (to repeat Mr. Hunter's energetic phrase) is a "mystery of abomination;" who were always somebody's slaves, and who, less than a century ago, were the slaves of the faithful. Yet the causes of the substitution of Hindoos for Mahometans have only to be stated, and it will be seen to be inevitable. In the first place, the Hindoos vastly outnumber the Mahometans; in a fair competition, more public servants will be chosen out of 150 millions of men than out of thirty millions. Again, the Hindoos are greedily absorbing the new Western knowledge which the English have introduced, and therefore for a gov.

the old.

ernment of the Western type, they are far other; and that, if the Mahometans are more efficient servants. The Mahome- elbowed out of the public service, it would tans, on the other hand, stand almost be a singular remedy to give them more wholly aloof from the English schools and of the learning which keeps them out of colleges. Mr. Hunter analyzes at much it. If they were a majority of the natives length, and with no small sympathy, the of India, there might be strong reason for causes of their distaste for education on dealing tenderly with their prejudices; Western principles; yet there is reason but they are a minority: and it would be to believe that the feeling which is grossly unjust to let the skill in Persian strongest with them is less dislike for the poetry and Arabian theology, which they new learning than reluctance to shake love to cultivate, be counted as a qualifi themselves free from the vast burden of cation for the public service equivalent to "How can we possibly compete the positive knowledge of the Hindoos. with the Hindoos?" said a highly-placed It must further be remembered that these Mahometan functionary to a friend of ours. are, after all, the grievances of only a "If we would be thought gentlemen, we small fraction of the Mahometans - the must speak and write Persian; if we lettered and learned class, with whom would be considered religious men, we the writer of the volume before us may must read Arabic; for purposes of com- be supposed to have principally associatmunication with the greatest part of our ed. If they were redressed to the utmost, Indian co-religionists, we must write and the Wahabee would still preach as activespeak Hindustani; if we would converse ly as ever; for, in truth, the fibre which with our wives, we must talk Bengali; most promptly responds to the pernicious for purposes of business, we must at least exhortations of these fanatics lies deep know some English. But these Hindoos in a very different part of the body continue to speak unblushingly the patois social of India. We have ourselves no of the district in which they were born, doubt that the true grievance to which and the whole of their mind and of their the Wahabee preachers address themenergies they give to your language, your science, and your literature. How can we, staggering under the weight of all these languages, and of all the religious and secular learning which goes with them, have the smallest chance of winning in a race in which success comes by knowledge of English, or at least by sympathy with English ideas?" We believe this to be a substantially true account of the Mahometan difficulties, and they result from the democratic character of Mahometanism. Hindooism, too, has at its back a difficult classical language, and a vast mass of false science and useless learning; but the burden weighs on a priestly aristocracy, and not on the multitude, which is left to imbibe what knowledge it pleases. A Hindoo of one of the lower castes commits a deadly sin if he reads the Vedas; but every Mahometan ought in strictness to know more or less of the Koran, and the whole community of the faithful is encouraged by every influence to master as much as possible of the law, literature, and philosophy of Mahometanism.

There is much to command sympathy in Mr. Hunter's complaints of the indirect discouragement by the British Government of the learning so dear to its Mahometan subjects. Yet we must, in fairness, recollect that this grievance of the Mahometans is not consistent with the

selves with advantage is neither educational nor official, but agrarian. We, too, like Mr. Hunter, have seen Wahabee documents and notes of Wahabee sermons. They, of course, contained much which Mr. Hunter has found in them; but they contained something else, on which he places comparatively slight stress. They certainly spoke of the danger and dishonour of living under an infidel government. They called for a sacred war, and predicted its success. The "kingdom of Heaven is at hand," they said; but then they added, "in that kingdom there will be neither landlord nor tenant." That strange blunder, the Cornwallis settlement of Bengal, which placed a peasantry with ancient rights under an extemporized landed proprietary, is the real root of this dangerous movement. The Wahabees have their chief success in Eastern Bengal, simply through the accidental circumstance that in Eastern Bengal a Mahometan peasantry is at the mercy of Hindoo landlords. This is not the proper place for discussing one of the most difficult of Indian problems; but it is important to observe that the only serious grievance of the Mahometans has no special nor distinctive character, but is shared by a multitude of Hindoos.

The author of Village Communities in the East and West has recently said, "When we have to some extent succeeded in free

ing ourselves from that limited concep- tains neutrality between rival religions tion of the world and mankind, beyond with something like the tolerant disdain which the most civilized societies and (I of a Roman Proconsul. No book illuswill add) some of the greatest thinkers trates more vividly than that before us do not always rise; when we gain some- the difficulties of that most extraordinary thing like an adequate idea of the vast- of experiments, the British Empire in Inness and variety of the phenomena of hu- dia. So far as they here appear, they man society; when, in particular, we have may be summed up in the remark that learned not to exclude from our view of the Anglo-Indian Government is bound, earth and man those great and unexplored by the moral conditions of its existence, regions which we vaguely term the East: to apply the modern principle of equality, we find it to be not wholly a conceit or in all its various forms, to the people of a paradox to say that the distinction be- India-equality between religions, equaltween the Present and the Past disap-ity between races, equality between inpears. Sometimes the Past is the Present." dividuals in the eye of the law. But it Those who can read under the lines has to make this application among a colof Mr. Hunter's wonderfully-interesting lection of men (a community they can pages may see, if they please, the Europe- hardly be called) to whom the very idea an life of many different centuries flow- of equality is unknown or hateful. All ing on in one and the same current. Once Mahometans are, indeed, equal theoretagain, the stalwart barbarians of a hun- ically among themselves, but their equaligry country treat the rich lands of their ty has for its indispensable basis the abcivilized neighbours as their natural prey; solute subjection of everybody else. once more the wondering devotee exhorts What Hindoos think of equality among to the Crusade, and rebukes princes for men will best be gathered from an anectheir godless sloth; again the Highland dote. A Brahmin lawyer in great pracchiefs meet in conclave, compromise an tice was a year or two ago seeking to esinfinity of disputes and rivalries, and tablish himself in the good graces of an burst at last upon the plains below; Rob Anglo-Indian functionary by enlarging on Roy alternately musters his men on their the value of Bentham's philosophy, in so native hills, and slinks in disguise through far as it placed the standard of law and the Lowland cities; comfortable Jacobite morals in the greatest happiness of the gentlemen get tired of conspiracy, and greatest number. The Englishman exseek excuses for making their peace with pressed some surprise that the principle Government; Wesley and Whitfield should be so much applauded in a country preach to excited multitudes; the detec- like India. "No doubt," rejoined the tive of the day outdoes the exploits at- high-caste Hindoo, after a glance round tributed to him in the latest sensational the room to assure himself that nobody novel. In the midst, the British Gov- was within earshot-"No doubt it is one ernment keeps the peace, administers jus- difficulty that, according to my religion, a tice with a purity rare in the West and Brahmin is entitled to exactly five-andabsolutely foreign to the East, legislates twenty times as much happiness as anyon the principles of Bentham, and main-body else!"

LITERATURE APPRAISED. The great body of | paper, which is sufficiently shown by the rephilosophers, poets, and novelists of the day sults of general sales. As regards the common will be interested in the following information class of books here alluded to, if in fair average concerning the future of their works. It is writ- condition, they will be found to range as folten in a new and corrected" edition of the lows:- - Small books, 32mo, and 16mo, and Appraisers' Pocket Assistant, and runs thus: 12mo, per vol., from 2d. to 8d.; octavos, in "It may be said that the common run of general, from 8d. to 1s.; large-sized sup., 1s, to books of which ordinary house libraries consist, 2s. 6d. Quartos and folios, according to subsuch as novels, annuals, magazines, poetry,ject and condition, from 2s. to 8s. or 10s. Porttravels, adventure, divinity, history, and edu- folios of prints, &c., according to number and. cational works, after a few years' use, are quality, from £1 to £2. Pall Mall Gazette. worth but little more than their value as wasteLIVING AGE. VOL. XXIII.

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