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the believer in Krishna is averse to a propagator of the Koran being placed in authority over him, and vice versâ. -Secondly. The same argument holds good of the numerous tribes and sects whom I have described at the beginning of this chapter: again, many possessed of the highest integrity are nevertheless deficient in mental qualifications,* and vice versâ. Also, thirdly, the inhabitants of a province or district are much irritated at a native of another province being placed in authority over them: this is. within the knowledge of all who ever paid the slightest attention to the feelings of the nation at large. The people of Central India dread the Hindûs and Mahomedans of the Deckan and Hindostan; and the Bengalees, although in several instances qualified for office if removed beyond the corrupting sphere of family influence, are looked down on with contempt in the Upper and Western Provinces.— Fourthly. In a country where the pride of ancestry and purity of birth are looked on as superior to every other consideration, the appointment to high office of men who, although eligible by reason of talent and honesty, had by means of their ancestors been raised to wealth and apparent respectability during the stormy period which preceded our rule, the appointment of such would excite the strongest feelings of detestation and disgust in thousands.† -Fifthly. The most unfavourable opinions are formed of the English government, when its subordinates are corrupt and tyrannical; the difficulty of detecting such, among the native civil officers in India, is well known, and the direful

• Indeed the natives of India possessing the most acute minds, are in general those who do not understand the English language.

+ This has been felt by the native officers in our army, who were much mortified whenever they saw or heard of their countrymen, inferior to them in birth, placed over them in civil situations. It may be said, "Then let the native officer be raised also." But it should be recollected that the civil power has been held predominant in India from our first acquisition of rule.

injustice which they caused at Allahabad and Cawnpore, in confiscating the landed property of a whole province, is a melancholy case in point.

Respecting the other censurers on this topic, they must indeed have profited little by the length of years which has been vouchsafed to them, not to know that slaves make the worst masters, or they should reflect, in their virtuous efforts for the general good, that government may, by a well-meant but partial benificence, materially impede universal welfare, for the moment a native is vested with the slightest official authority (as is correctly observed by the talented and benevolent author of Central India), he is well known to stretch it, in the absence of his superior, to a degree which is almost incredible, unless to those who have witnessed the passiveness and arrogance of the ruled and ruling natives, arising from the lengthened bondage and misrule to which they have been so long and so fatally subjected.

On this point I have the powerful testimony of Mr. Rickards himself, as to the dreadful tyranny of native subordinates when the country fell into our power, and, as Mr. Rickards justly observes, "the settled habits of man cannot change like the aspects of an April sky," he might have prudently withdrawn the rash and unjust assertion, that," the Honourable Court, the inspired high priests of the temple in Leadenhall-street, would have the British public believe, that a semi-demi state of clothing and starvation is an object of idolatrous worship to the natives of India!"+

The following is the calmer and correctly expressed sentiments of a warm but injudicious advocate of the natives of India :

Rickards' India, vol, i.p. 248.

+ Ibid. p.69.

Difficulties in the way of employing natives in high office, until better educated and trained for the duties thereof, as explained by Mr. Rickards' words." In comparing European with Indian society, it should also be remembered, that besides the greater tyrants in their respective spheres, the country was every where covered with subordinate officers, such as nabobs, dewans, foujedars, amildars, tehsildars, jagheerdars, zemindars, poligars, talookdars, rajas, naiks, wadegars, and various others; all of whom exercised their powers in the same arbitrary spirit as pervaded the higher departments of the state.

"Many of these officers who were powerful enough from local causes, or the natural strength of the country they possessed, not only opposed, but maintained their independence of the superior authority; exercising in their little circles the rigours and caprices of despots, even to life and death, with impunity. In the territories conquered or ceded to the Company's government, these persons or their descendants were still found to possess and to exercise the same powers. Swarms of harpies were thus spread in every direction, even to the mundils and potails of villages, and despotism established, as it were in detail, in every corner of the land.

"Power was here a license to plunder and to oppress. The rod of the oppressor was literally omnipresent; neither persons nor property were secure against its persevering and vexatious intrusions. The common transactions of life became objects of punishment or extortion:—and no other principles being known or dreamt of in India than arbitrary power on the one hand, and abject submission on the other, a state of society was fixed and rooted in the manners, the poverty, and the ignorance of the people, of which no parallel nor resemblance is any where to be found in European states.

"Of the officers above mentioned (others might be added), it is requisite to keep in mind that they all held their situations at the will and pleasure of the sovereign power. Though some of the offices were considered hereditary, still there was no security for the inheritance against the caprice of rulers, or the violence of rivals who might set themselves up to contest the possession.* The sword was the sole guardian of private as of public rights. From this entire absence of security to the uninterrupted enjoyment of office or property, the holders of power, from the highest to the lowest, were naturally more rapacious in its exercise; rapacity begat poverty, and poverty ignorance, so that not an element or principle existed among the people to counteract, to check, or to mitigate the rigours of a tyranny which has thus triumphed for ages in India, without change, or the means of change in itself; and consequently by reaction, confirming the immutability of all submitted to its sway."+

Any man who pretends to the slightest practical legislalative wisdom, would ask himself, before censuring the government for not placing the natives of India in the highest situations, from what class or community the "officials" were to be selected? Were men, who from "the highest to the lowest" considered "power a license to plunder and oppress," to be vested with an authority, which, according to Mr. Rickards, would meet with "no element or principle among the people to counteract or check it,

* In a note to this, Mr. Rickards details a case to shew what sense the Mahomedans entertained of the right of inheritance, even under the Emperor Shere Khan, "one of the ablest men of his age," viz. that "there were no hereditary estates in India among Mahomedans, for that all lands belonged to the king, which he disposed of at pleasure," yet, Mr. Rickards says, "that excepting the sanguinary part, the East-India Company follow the example of the Mahomedans!"

+ Rickards' India, vol. i. p. 254.

abject submission being fixed and rooted in Indian society for ages!"

From among men, who, according to the same author (page 41), exhibited (Mr. Rickards makes it present) "one uniform picture of pauperism and degradation; practising evasion, fraud, and duplicity; equally lost to the feelings of patriotism; indifferent to life and its concerns, and prone to indolence and crime." Was it, I seriously ask Mr. Rickards, from among such men that the Company's government were to fill the highest offices of the state? I venture to answer for Mr. Rickards in the negative, notwithstanding his sarcasms against the "monstrous and unnatural doctrines of the wise, just, and lenient* administration of the British government."

Any person who has ever conversed with the smallest community of Indians must know, that they would dread the idea of a native being placed in high authority, as a judge or revenue officer, uncontrolled by the surveillance of an European functionary; the preceding quotations from Mr. Rickards' work will partly explain the reason why. But before stating the measures and policy pursued by the Company's government, to introduce the natives to a greater share in the administration of the country than that which they now have, I will quote one or two other authorities as to their general character; of individual exceptions, which serve but to make the rule, I will hereafter say a few words. The following opinion of Bishop Heber, applies to a great part of Western India:

Character of the Rohillas." The Rohillas are a clever and animated race of people, but devoid of principle, false and ferocious. Crimes are very numerous, both of fraud and violence, and perjury almost universal. When the

*The italics are Mr. Rickards' own.

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