for hewing living bodies to pieces; for massacreing prisoners in cold blood, and making hillocks of their bodies, and pyramids of their heads for public shew; for hunting down the inhabitants of whole provinces like wild beasts; with other like modes of royal amusement, may be feasted to satiety in the history of the Mussulman conquests and governments of the Deckan, which is little more than a continued series of those disgusting barbarities.”*

It is indeed difficult to reconcile the numerous contradictions which the volumes before me present; at one moment the ravages of the Moguls are eloquently and feelingly narrated; and at another, their downfall is lamented with an-" Alas! the pageantry and ceremonials of imperial state now affected by Ackbar Shah, is but the wreck of fallen greatness, the poor remains of that wealth and splendour which was once the pride of the Mogul throne."+-Mr. Rickards will permit me to enquire, does he sigh over the departure of splendour' which, according to his own shewing, had its origin in the devastating conquests, or rather butcheries, commanded by the dynasty of Ackbar? or does he lament the dispersion of hordes of gold and silver, which were exacted by the cruelest tortures from a feeble but industrious peasantry? Away with such puling sentimentality; other and sterner times are arrived, when the happiness of a nation is considered of more consequence than the wealth and splendour,' with which the despicable pride of a Mogul, or any other despot, may

* Timour was justly denominated the "firebrand of the universe." The Westminster Review for July 1832, says he was "one of the greatest wholesale butchers of humanity ever heard of; he plundered and massacred in India, without distinction of religion or sex, and his track was marked by blood, desolation, famine, and pestilence!" Aurengzebe persecuted the Hindoos in a similar manner to the other Mahomedan tyrants; Tippoo Saib circumcised all the Brahmins he could get hold of, and, as the reviewer says, " subjected 60,000 christians to the same operation in a single province."

+ Rickards' India, vol. i. P. 220.

desire to uphold his tyranny with; when the true test of a monarch's greatness consists, not in the massiveness of his plate, the grandeur of his equipages, the number of his retinue, the splendour of his palaces, the costly pageantry of his guards, no, nor even in the glory of his victories, but in the degree of domestic comfort which encircles the hearth of the meanest peasant; and happy is it for India that the rulers who have won and worn the sovereignty thereof, have acted on this sublime principle, instead of ministering to the passions or vanity of a host of licentious, feeble, and cruel princes.* Mr. Rickards admits, that the Mogul emperor, whose fallen greatness he laments over, fearing to trust himself in the hands of the Mahrattas, or even of Abdallah," after wandering a fugitive throughout the empire, fell into the hands of the English in 1764, who settled him at Allahabad with a district and a revenue of 38,00,000 rupees." This, Mr. Rickards must admit, was honourable treatment to a fugitive monarch, without a shilling or a subject. But Shah Allum, either through weakness or perfidy, joined the Mahrattas in a little time against the English,† and in 1803, as Mr. Rickards admits,

*At pages 148 and 149, Mr. Rickards thus describes a part of the Mogul proceedings in India: "The prisoners taken were inhumanly massacred; insurrections in the provinces were also incessant, so that the work of war and blood was perpetual; massacres were common to every reign, when the butchery extended, not only to the parties immediately concerned, but to their vassals, dependents, and even acquaintances; not even weeping mothers, nor their smiling infants at their breasts, were pitied or spared! To prevent the accumulation of property in a few hands, the wealth and estates of Musselmans and Hindoos were, without distinction, seized upon and confiscated; no man durst entertain his friends without a written permission from the vizier, and the different public offices were filled with men, whose indigence and dependence rendered them implicitly obedient to the dictates of government!"

+ A Mahomedan historian famed for his impartiality, named Golaum Hossein Khan, is less tender than Mr. Rickards for the fate of the Great Mogul. In his able work, entitled "A View of Modern Times," he says, "when the Emperor Shah Allum was carrying on

war

the East-India Company again rescued the Mogul from poverty and imprisonment, fixed him at Delhi with the name and title of emperor, and a revenue of fifteen lacs of rupees per annum; certainly less than before, but still so great as four hundred guineas a day! Will Mr. Rickards still continue to assert, that this is tyranny, or rapacity?

I turn now to give the same author's description of the Mahratta governors, whom he states to have been "quite equal to the Mussulmans in the dreadful atrocities they perpetrated, and the devastating ravages with which they desolated the countries through which they passed; their route being easily traced by ruined villages and destroyed cultivation; plundering as they went along,* and seizing, by violence or by treachery, all that was valuable or conducive to their present security or ulterior views; controlled by no fixed laws, and by no better sense of right than the power of the sword.”

"The districts," Mr. Rickards, continues, "which

war against the English nation on the plains of Azimabad, it was made known that the emperor designed to march thither in person. Although the inhabitants had received no benefits from him, they seemed to have but one heart and one voice on the occasion; but when he arrived amongst them, and they experienced from his profligate officers and disorderly troops the most shameless acts of extortion and oppression, whilst on the other hand they observed the good conduct and strict discipline of the English army, the officers of which did not suffer a blade of grass to be spoiled, and no kind of injury done to the feeblest peasant, then, indeed, the sentiments of the people changed, and the loyalty which they once bore to the emperor was transferred to the English, so that when Shah Allum made his second and third expeditions they loaded him with imprecations, and prayed for victory to the English."

• The quantity of plunder, and the value thereof, abstracted at various times from the Hindoos, is detailed with much minuteness by Mr. Rickards; and it must astonish every one where such immense treasures could be had, and how speedily they were re-collected, did we not know what a salient power there is in Hindostan, and how rapidly the most destructive disasters are recovered from by an industrious people, of commercial habits, and few wants.

resisted, were overrun with fire and sword, the inhabitants tortured and murdered, and the country left a dreary waste, to forewarn others of their fate if not averted by ready compliance with these lawless exactions."*

The annexed sketch of Mahratta barbarity affords a melancholy illustration of the dreadful state to which the great mass of the people were reduced by the combined barbarities of the Mussulmans and the Mahrattas, from which, in a few years, they were so happily rescued by the East-India Company :

Description of the Mahratta conquest of Delhi, by Mr. Rickards." In 1759, Abdallah again turned his attention towards Hindostan; and in 1761 made himself master of its devoted capital. He laid the city under heavy contributions, and enforced the collection with such rigour and cruelty,. that the unfortunate inhabitants, driven to despair, took up arms. The Persian ordered a general massacre, which, without intermission, lasted seven days. The relentless guards of Abdallah were not even then glutted with slaughter; but the stench of the dead bodies drove them out of the city. A great part of the buildings were at the same time reduced to ashes; and many thousands who had escaped the sword, suffered a lingering death by famine, sitting upon the smoking ruins of their own houses. Thus the imperial city of Delhi, which in the days of its glory extended thirty-four miles in length, and was said to contain two millions of people, became almost a heap of rubbish. But this was not all; for the Mah

* The uninformed English reader must be told, that the Mahrattas are a part of those Mr. Rickards terms "mild, peaceable, honest Hindoos, capable of every virtue and every acquirement that can adorn the human mind!" But he admits, in another place, that the character of the Mahrattas has ever been, as it still is, that of the most rapacious plunderers! vol. i. p. 269.

rattas had now marched towards Delhi, to oppose Abdallah with an army of 200,000 cavalry. On their approach Abdallah evacuated the city, which the Mahrattas immediately entered, and filled every quarter of it with devastation and death. Not content with robbing the miserable remains of Abdallah's cruelty of every thing they possessed, they stripped all the males and females naked, and wantonly whipped them through the streets. Many now prayed for death as the greatest blessing, and thanked the hand which inflicted the wound. Famine began to rage among the unfortunate citizens to such a degree, that men fled from their dearest friends as from beasts of prey, for fear of being devoured. Many women devoured their own children; while some mothers of more humanity were seen dead in the streets, with infants still sucking at their breasts."*

Many other quotations might be adduced to support Mr. Rickards' descriptions of the Mahrattas, were it necessary. Mr. R. states also, with reference to the "mild and amiable" Hindoos in general, that " their governments bear as full and distinct a stamp of covetousness and rapacity, of the love of power, and disregard of the means of acquiring it, as any of the Mahomedan states ;"+ -that "they have ever been, as they now are, in principle and practical operation, pure despotisms;"§ and that "the Brahmins, by whom the affairs of the Hindoo governments are almost wholly directed, have never yet been sparing of

* Rickards' India, vol. i. p. 218.

After the fall of the Moghul power in Hindostan, Rajpootana became a prey to the Mahrattas, who visited the country annually, to plunder and exact contributions; and whose progress was consequently marked by the greatest enormities.-Rickards' India, vol. i. p. 233.