has been sitting since 1821), and as Mr. Mangles states, "redress has been almost co-extensive with the evil; the lands were bought by the officers of the court or by their creatures; it was a business of most shocking fraud. The perpetrators had got to such extreme insolence and impudence in their chicanery, that I understand some of the papers of sale were drawn up in the name of dogs and jackalls to make the matter ludicrous." (Lords 598.)

Colonel Briggs thus speaks of the gentry that came within his sphere of observation: "The native gentlemen, the Mahrattas particularly,* neglect their education very much; they are a good deal like the ancient gentry here, who thought more of war and the sword and field-sports, than of education; the Rajah of Sattarah always complained to me that he could get none of his chiefs to allow their sons to be educated; he found he had a great difficulty in getting the young nobles or gentlemen to learn anything." (Lords 4144.)

Mr. R. Davidson, who went out to India in 1804, and passed the greater part of his life as an indigo planter, holding land for sixty or seventy miles along the banks of the Ganges as high up as Bauglepore, stated in evidence : "I should say decidedly, with reference to the state of society among the Hindoos, that it is very artificial, and consequently a very bad order of a great community." (Lords, May 1830, 3734.)

Mr. Sinclair, who had extensive experience as a collector

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* Major-General Sir S. Smith, of the King's service, thus speaks of the Mahrattas with whom he says he is best acquainted: They are naturally a very intelligent people, but have for ages been in fact a military people, and a very lawless set, arising from the bad governments which were then over them, so their intelligence is not yet of a nature to apply to all uses." (Commons, October 1831.)

This is the candid opinion of an old and experienced officer, who declares himself to be "a great advocate for bringing the natives forward."

in the southern provinces, says, in his evidence before the Commons in August 1831, "the character of the natives is such that they seem to have no idea of justice or truth; they consider justice as deciding in their favour, and injustice as deciding against them, and they have not much idea of gaining justice except by means of bribery; they have great confidence in the Europeans generally, but the only reason that they have not absolute confidence in them is, that they are afraid they will be imposed upon by the native servants around them; and, therefore, even in the Zillah Court they bribe the servants of the judge, although the judge may be a person of unimpeachable character." In another place Mr. Sinclair says, "I do not think the natives are frank or generous, and gratitude is a word which does not exist, I believe, in any of the native languages. P. 641. "They are exceedingly submissive, perhaps more so to the native officers than to Europeans, and they generally bury their accumulated capital." Ib.

Were it not an invidious, and indeed most irksome task thus to dwell on the unfavourable character of a whole people, I might heap evidence upon evidence; sufficient however has been adduced to explain the inevitable necessity of the policy heretofore pursued, in cautiously admitting the natives to offices of trust, which might be used for the oppression of the mass of the people;* and which experience has unfortunately demonstrated to be the case too often. To judge of the moral or intellectual qualities of one hundred million of persons by isolated specimens is

Mr. Rickards admits this in almost every part of his able work. At p. 567 he says: "The corrupt influence of the native collectors, and of persons interposed between European collectors and the peasantry, is incapable of effectual control. Violence, corruption, and artifice on the one hand, are met by deceit, hypocrisy, and cunning on the other; what one tries to extort, the other endeavours to withhold." At page 590, Mr. Rickards contends that the zemindars, or landed gentry, are proverbial throughout India as oppressors and extortioners."

the very height of absurdity; most assuredly if I were to indulge my private feelings and speak of such Hindoos as Rammohun Roy, and Dwarkanaut Tagore, or of Prussunu and Ramnath Tagore, and many others, particularly the Parsees, I should with difficulty find language in which I might express my thoughts, without bordering on apparently excessive eulogy. The profound philosophy with which the name of the first is associated in every part of the civilized globe; the official and commercial knowledge that characterizes the second; and the comprehensively liberal principles, combined with intense devotion to their country, and an ardent attachment to the British government, which so pre-eminently distinguish both, are too well known to require comment; but even these generous patriots (and they have sacrificed more for their countrymen, in a pecuniary as well as personal manner, than is generally known) do not wish to see the Hindoos immediately installed into the highest offices;* they wisely prefer their gradual induction in proportion to the progress they make in knowledge and morality; a course which has been carefully pursued for several years by the government. Mr. Rickards himself says, in his evidence before the Lords: "Of late years the natives have been more extensively employed than formerly as local judges or justices with limited authority; there are no doubt instances of corrupt and vicious conduct among the natives so em

* Mr. Sullivan, whose noble conduct in Coimbatore, in endeavouring to improve the condition of the natives, endears him to every wellwisher of his species, says, that in Mysore "the whole civil and military administration rests with the superior class of natives, instead of being vested in Europeans; but the lower orders of natives are not by any means so well off under the native government of Mysore, because it is a most oppressive one;" he adds, "the higher class are not absolutely better paid under the native government, but they have various perquisites, &c." Mr. Chaplin says, that "in some of the districts of the native chiefs, nothing can be worse than the condition of the lower orders." (Commons, October 1831.)

ployed, but when moral improvement is more generally introduced among them, their manners as well as their principles will assume a higher scale."

Mr. Crawfurd, who cannot help at times stating fairly and impartially the difficulties with which the Company have to contend, says "India indeed is not exactly the field where the most rapid improvement can be looked for, even under the freest operation of this indispensable principle," (i.e. placing the feeble and ignorant Indians in a state of wholesome collision, and fair emulation, with the strong and intelligent Europeans.)" Here there are obvious circumstances connected with distinctions of race, of complexion, of religion, and of manners, which will more or less obstruct or narrow its beneficial influence.”—Again, Mr. Crawfurd says truly, "the conversion of the Indians, whether civil or religious, must necessarily be gradual, and will be the safer and more efficient for being so." (P. 87.)-Independent of its spiritual consequences, the influence which the degrading superstition of the Hindoo religion exercises over civil society is pernicious and demoralizing, far beyond that of any other known form of worship."—" The Indians, as they improve, must prudently and gradually be admitted to a share in their own administration." Colonization Pamphlet.

This is precisely the line of policy adopted by our government functionaries; they are endeavouring by education and encouragement to give a lofty tone to the rising generation, which of course is most susceptible of good impressions. Mr. Rickards himself admits that "the governments of India, as well as the Court of Directors, have been most anxious to improve the state of the peasantry; the orders of the Court of Directors, abound with able and humane instructions to their governments abroad, for a just administration of the territories com

mitted to their charge. Many of these very able letters are now in print, and do great credit to the Directors of the East-India Company. I particularly refer to those which treat of protections to the peasantry."

But the same gentleman subsequently says, that "the exactions and fraudulent impositions and oppressions committed by the native subordinate public servants employed to realize and collect the revenue,* on the peasantry, have hitherto presented an insuperable bar to the benevolent wishes of the Court of Directors and local authorities being carried into effect;" and he asserts in the next answer (question 3965) that the Hindoos are still little protected against the artifices of designing men; "more especially of the natives filling official situations;" and that a very able minute by the Marquis of Hastings, on a regulation passed in 1821, contains in the preamble "a long and minute detail of the enormities that have been committed by our native servants, both in the revenue and judicial departments of the service."†

* Mr. Rickards devotes forty pages of the second volume of his excellent, but jaundiced work, to detail the extraordinary frauds of a native collector in the small district of Coimbatore, "who was named Cass Chitty, and whose frauds and contrivances," Mr. Rickards says, "would prove that the Hindoos are not a nation of incapables." The embezzlement proved against this man, after five years' office, amounted to £237,547! This was even but a portion of the injury done, for the roguery of Cass Chitty extended through all his subordinates. How Mr. Rickards could deliberately sit down and pen strictures against the government for not placing the highest situations at the control of the natives, after declaring "discoveries similar to that of Cass Chitty's have been the result of local enquiry in Salem, Rajahmundry, Tanjore, Malabar, and many other parts, not to mention the Bengal provinces;" is indeed almost unaccountable! it is a melancholy instance of obliquity of vision.

+ Mr. Chaplin, who takes a warm interest in the natives of India, describes the Mahratta brahmins of the Deccan, who conduct all the business of the country, as "an intriguing, lying, corrupt, licentious, and unprincipled race of people: when in power, coolly unfeeling, and systematically oppressive." (October 1831.) This gentleman also states, that he has seldom employed the natives who have been brought up at the presidencies as agents in the interior, as they bring with them "extremely corrupt habits."