of what, though an unquestionable truth, was tortured in its application to appear a sentiment condemnatory to the landlord. Mr. Drummond declared that property had its duties as well as rights, and in the declaration he meant to imply that, failing in the one, the other became invalidated; at least, such was the popular reading and acceptance of the maxim. The consequence was, the "duties of property" being all estimated by those who were to benefit by the exercise, were so enormously stated, that no tenure could coexist with them. Landlordism was thus outlawed, and the landlord proscribed. The lieutenant-governor of Bengal, Mr. John Peter Grant, has improved upon this proceeding in Bengal; he has so palpably enlisted himself in the ranks of the ryot, that he has, within a very short period, undermined not only an industrial interest of great wealth, but actually unsettled the tenure of land throughout the country. From time immemorial the peasant has been a borrower. It is his condition, and one which he neither resents nor complains of. He tills his land by means of advances made to him; and the system, be it good or bad, is native to the soil, and has prevailed in Bengal from time immemorial. It is certainly one which no planter could have struck out: the disadvantages to him are great and manifold; it is the source of continual anxiety, litigation, and loss. The dishonest ryot has at his disposal a whole armoury of fraud; he can be indolent, and not till at all; he can till too late; he can, as it has happened, so injure the seed as to arrest germination, and then, on the assumption of a natural failure of the crop, substitute rice for himself, and evade all his liabilities; he can accept advances from two sources, and leave the result to litigation; he can affect to hand over the crop in payment of some feudal charges on the soil. There is, in fact, no limit to his power of evasion; and what with an ill-administered law, corrupt police, and false witnesses ever at call, the planter has but a sorry chance in such a conflict. Add to this, that the crop, which twenty-four hours' neglect may ruin, requires something like a Chancery suit to establish a right in. Imagine all this, and whenever discontent with your lot in life invades you, thank God you are not an indigo grower in Bengal.

To what, then, will it be asked, is attributable the extraordinary animosity the government officials have shown, and are yet showing, to the indigo planters? To answer this question effectually would lead us much further than the limits of our present brief sketch would permit, and draw us into a discussion and comparison of the India of former days with the India of our own time. India had long been a "close borough.” "The Company" and its servants had excluded from the soil all save those connected with the administration, and the very thought of colonisation was repugnant to all their opinions. It is true, Sir Charles Metcalfe, in 1829, expressed his sincere regret that we had not in India the security that would follow upon a settlement of Englishmen on the soil; and Lord W. Bentinck stated his entire concurrence in the sentiment. Still the "civil servant' saw with dismay the prospect of a rival power, and discouraged by every means within his reach the "European settler."

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It is far easier to understand this jealousy than to explain it. The "Old Indian," as he is called, who had exercised for his life-long a despotic sway over the natives, never questioned or arraigned, saw himself being gradually

surrounded by a society of men fully his equals in capacity, acquirements, or station, and who had carried with them from the mother country that spirit of criticism on governmental acts which ultimately resolves itself into public opinion. He perceived that the immunity of silence could no longer be enjoyed, and that he was as responsible on the Ganges as on the Thames. This new aristocracy was peculiarly hateful to the old, whose pretensions it ridiculed, and whose privileges it assailed. Between the once "lords of the pale" and the new settlers there could be neither liking nor respect. Every instinct of the one was opposed to the tastes and habits of the other; and although free settlement in India be now a legal enactment, such is the influence of official tyranny and a studied system of insult, that the "interloper" is still a pariah in the land, and every discouragement thrown in the way of British colonisation in India.

It is therefore against the planters as a class, and not against indigo as a product, that this war is waged. It was doubtless far easier to carry on the "Queen's government" in the olden time, when no intelligent middle class existed, when the sway of the governing descended to the governed without any interposing medium of public opinion, and where the thought of comment on an enactment was an utter impossibility. That men should regret the days of their irresponsible power, or, what is pretty much the same, their unquestioned exercise of rule, is natural enough. The former administrators of India enjoyed something like the immunities of a priesthood. Occupying a station of considerable eminence, possessed of a special knowledge, engaged in interests so remote from the mother country, and so totally unlike any that prevailed there as to secure them against hostile criticism, no wonder if men so placed arrogated to themselves very distinctive claims and very dominant pretensions. It was not only their ambition, but their interest to make India a "speciality." So long as they were able to say, "These habits could not obtain here; such modes may suit you in England, but would be utterly inapplicable here in Bengal" -so long as they could presume that India was a land to which all home traditions and habits could never be adjusted-they were safe. They well knew if the time arrived that India should become an open territory, like any other possession of the crown, that their sway would be over; and they clearly foresaw that nothing would more certainly determine the limit of their power than the introduction of a class over whom they could neither exercise an arbitrary control nor an irresponsible influence. In a word, the day on which the British settler could establish himself in India was the last of that feudalism which had hitherto guided her destinies.

The settler could not be rejected or denied admission, but his tenure might be rendered precarious, his property might be jeoparded, his prospects endangered, and his very life imperilled. The system of Indian legislation offered immense facilities to this end. A control that began at Calcutta, and was felt vibrating on every extreme court of justice throughout the empire, a sway that could filter down from the highest tribunal of the land to the humblest magisterial bench, was an agent of irresistible power. It was infinitely more potent than any written law, for it was the spirit and essence of which laws are fashioned. Nothing could be more simple, with such an agency, than to discourage any pecu

liar enterprise, or destroy any especial undertaking. The "mot d'ordre" once issued, the local officers could find no difficulty in carrying out the will of his superiors; nor was the task rendered harder by the fact that, as in the present case, it afforded the plausible pretext of defending the poor man against the rich one, the humble tiller of the soil against the great and wealthy capitalist.

There is not, perhaps, a nation in the world which has so often been the dupe of its own mock philanthropy as England. From the indiscriminating cruelty which hunted down the landlordism of Ireland, to all the exaggerated folly of our prison discipline, wherein our sympathy for the criminal transcends all our compassion for suffering honesty, we are alike the slaves of the same mawkish sentimentality. Into this same category the Bengalese ryot was enlisted, less, be it owned, out of compassion for himself than as a means of attacking his supposed enemy. That enemy was the British planter! Without stopping to argue a point, which in reality would be argued when it was stated; without waiting to show that he who affords capital for the working of an enterprise which cannot be worked without capital, and who, neither exacting usurious conditions nor inserting vexatious clauses in his contract, on the contrary, is thrown, by the very nature of his bargain, almost on the good faith of the individual he deals with-that such a man, however exposed to injury, can have little opportunity of oppression-without, I repeat, halting to demonstrate that in the present condition of India no other mode save that now practised is open to the cultivation of this crop, I would simply point to the disastrous condition to which governmental interference has brought those for whose pretended benefit it was exercised, and how ruinous have been the counsels that have separated the ryot from his employer.

The "strike" has had all the evil consequences of such tactical movements at home. And every letter from the indigo districts of Lower Bengal tells the same tale of anarchy, and disturbance, and repudiation by the ryots of all contracts made with their landlords and employers.

It is to this state of things the attention of the home legislature will speedily be called. In one shape or other the question must be answered, "Is India to be given up to the prejudices of a privileged class of officials? or are her interests to be consulted, and her progress assured, as though she really were an integral part of the British empire?"

THE TASTE FOR WINES IN ENGLAND.

Of all the commercial changes made last year by parliament, the most important, both from the difficulties by which it was surrounded, and the marked though gradual influence which it is already beginning to exercise on the trade between England and France, is the alteration of the duties on wines. It formed one of the provisions of that celebrated instrument— the Commercial Treaty of 1860-that the duties upon a portion of light wines of France and on the Rhine should be reduced to one shilling per gallon, upon others of a different description from the same localities to one shilling and sixpence, this latter duty to be leviable also on a portion of the lighter wines of Portugal, Spain, and the countries round the Mediterranean, while a two-shilling duty was still imposed upon the greater portion of Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian wines, and also upon those which we import from southern France. These changes have at present been most successful. Under their influence the total importation of wines into this country has increased by more than one-third, the supply from France in particular having more than doubled. In spite of the unfavourable and disastrous succession of seasons last year-the spring, the summer, the autumn, and the winter alike almost unparalleled -wine alone of all the articles in the tariff showed no diminution in the amount of revenue which it had been estimated we should obtain from it. The decrease which it was believed that those changes which we have indicated above would effect, was estimated-with a fair allowance for increased consumption-to be 830,0007.; the actual falling off amounted to 493,000l. The importation of wine in 1859-60 into this country amounted altogether to 9,176,000 gallons, of which 1,156,000 gallons were French. In 1860-61 the total importation was 12,509,000 gallons, of which those which came from France amounted to 2,631,000, being in this particular item an increase of 127 per cent. on the amount of the previous year-an important and interesting change not merely as a first step towards a change in the consumption and condition of the people, but as a proof, on the principle that an increase in importation means a corresponding increase of exportation, of increased commercial activity between two rival and powerful empires.

The question which we wish to raise, and as far as possible discuss, in the following pages, is not one of revenue or of commerce. It is to the social aspect of these commercial changes, to their probable effect on the taste and condition of the people of this country, that we wish to invite attention. There is in the history of our varying taste for wines, which we as a nation have exhibited, and in the circumstance of our national character as affected by a particular and prevailing vice, enough to render this question one of interest and importance, quite apart from the fiscal and commercial considerations which it involves.

There may be many arguments in favour of climate, of national temper, and of habit, all tending to confirm and strengthen a country's natural, almost instinctive, preference for its home produce-for wines produced from the grape which is the cultivation of its own soil. Yet this is only partially true. The increasing desires which create the new supplies and

the new necessities of mankind apply as strongly and as generally in stimulating the production and consumption of wine of all sorts as they do in the case of all other products of industry and civilisation. They have been, and no doubt are still, capable of restraint and even of extinction from external causes, such as a prohibitive system of duties, or confined and limited international intercourse. But with unfettered trade, and a free agency of the simple principle of supply and demand, it is susceptible of historical proof that no such thing exists as an exclusive taste for particular wines indigenous to a country.

With the simple observation that the celebrated wines of antiquitythe Chian, the Lesbian, the Cæcuban, and Falernian-appear to have possessed no mere local reputation, but that, on the contrary, even in the Homeric age importation of foreign wines was a fact, we pass to an exclusively English view of the question. What evidence is there at the present time of the existence of a so-called national taste in England for wine? The United Kingdom has long had the reputation of producing the three most drunken races on the face of the globe, and even now the average consumption per head of spirits in this country is double what it is in France. Yet within a quarter of a century-mainly coincident with the period during which the statesmen and parliament of this country have instituted and well-nigh completed a series of commercial reforms unexampled for their practical wisdom and beneficent results-our consumption of wine, beer, and spirits, in spite of an increase of population, has diminished by more than half a million of gallons; while in regard to non-intoxicating beverages, coffee, tea, cocoa, the average consumption per head has increased by more than one-half.

Among the numerous consequences of a restricted commercial inter course in other words, of an oppressive system of duties on articles oforeign produce, are the perverted views of principles and things which grow up amongst us; thus wine has come to be regarded as the rich man's luxury, and as such, of all others, the fit subject for taxation. But luxury and necessity are merely relative terms-relative to the state of things in which we find ourselves. That which is one man's luxury has come to be considered another's necessity; and so in the daily round of each man's life, almost of national existence, the luxuries of to-day are the necessities of to-morrow. In the seventh century the use of wheaten bread was confined to the aristocracy, and generally held to be the luxury of the few; now the cheap loaf is regarded as the stay of human existence, and has become a political question, capable of shaking the whole fabric of society. Meat, again, is not regarded by the agricultural population so much as a necessity as a luxury, while to the population of towns it has become indispensable. And so with regard to the various productions and wants of society, it is in vain to draw a distinction between luxuries and necessaries without appealing to the means of supply, the ultimate arbiter between them.

Luxuries, then, naturally dwindle down into necessities; but, on the other hand, the reverse of this progression may be brought about by artificial means, by fiscal regulations and commercial restrictions. Philosophers, and the projectors of new religions, have sometimes interdicted the use of wine. Mahomet erected its prohibition into a law, to which a large portion of the human race has given the sanction of its obedience.