ludicrous if it were not lamentable. To-day he has to assess damages according to the customs sanctioned by Akbar; to-morrow to marshal assets in bankruptcy, conformably with the orders of Basinghall Street; and next day to settle a question of legitimacy according to Brahminical traditions. What would the people of London think if a cavalry officer were made Recorder, a colonel of marines Common Serjeant, and a first class prizeman in gunnery appointed to preside at Bow Street? But with all the fine bureaucratic talk about the protection of Parliament having been extended and applied, it is clear that, in matters of judgment, justice, and mercy, any qualifications, or disqualifications, are still deemed immaterial in India. To seats in the Supreme Courts, native practitioners at the bar are not only now admissible, but are actually admitted; and English judges who have sat with them are forward to acknowledge how honourably and usefully they bear themselves. This is something, and it would, indeed, be much, if, beyond the Presidential cities, the fact were practically brought home to the minds of the community; but, whatever may be the code of civil or criminal law, the adjudication of ordinary disputes between man and man must be local, if it is to be prompt, cheap, and intelligible; and if it be not, it signifies comparatively little what it is, or what it is believed to be. The indigenous tribunal of Punchayet has been all but suspended by the imposition of a system of stipendiaries, whose unacquaintance with the infinite details of social life, renders them ineffably feeble in their best attempts to exereise any moral or equitable sway. The people must be idiots to reverence law so administered ; but the blame lies neither with commissioners, assistants, or deputies, who have to administer as best they may the system they have found existing; it will hereafter lie at the door of pruning-knife of suzerain control, but for the axe of ruthless annexation. When war against the Mahrattas had left the Company without a pagoda to sustain the public credit or to pay their troops, Lord Hastings bribed the Vizier with the pinchbeck title of King to give him a million sterling out of his private treasure. When war against the Afghans needed new resources, Lord Auckland made a fresh treaty requiring the surrender of half his territory to sustain additional troops. On every occasion the diplomatic engagements dictated at Calcutta and imposed at Lucknow were profuse in professions of respect for the dynasty and acknowledgment of its sovereign rights. To the last Oude was flattered with egregious assurances of friendship and consideration, until at a blow all was swept away. When absorption and incorporation had been determined on, differences of opinion arose in the Supreme Council as to the mode of proceeding in point of form. The Viceroy affected to have scruples. He would have preferred declaring the treaties broken by the failure of Vajid Ali to fulfil the conditions of efficient government embodied in the treaty of 1837; he would then have withdrawn the contingent, without which the city and the palace would have been left defenceless against banditti; and when insurrection and anarchy had spread alarm among the neighbouring provinces, he would have been prepared for armed intervention at the request of the King, or without waiting for it. But he has left on record a confession that this would have been a circuitous method of attaining the end which General Low, Mr Peacock, Mr Grant, and Mr Dorin thought it less dishonouring to bring about by more direct and summary means. The Board of Directors and Board posed on all spontaneous local activity, warlike or peacefulis not bought unnecessarily dear? Does rural or urban industry thrive within the precincts of the great imperial pound? Does it delve and weave, speculate and spin, with the energy and profit necessary for the accumulation and the diffusion of wealth? Are the people of India growing rich or poor? Is the taxation they pay really light or really heavy? Is the government sum in short division, which gives a quotient of a few shillings a head, as against nine times as much which we pay, a true or a fair statement of the fact, or merely a statistical delusion? How ought this comparison of taxation to be made? We might as well take an average of the length of the tails of the dogs and horses, or of the backbones of the bipeds in human form, for the purposes of such a comparison. The wonder is how men in high office could ever have been betrayed into talking in such fashion. If taxes were paid in bone or blood, to divide their sum into the aggregate of blood and bones, might have some reason or sense in it; but there is literally no sense in a bald capitation estimate of fiscal burthens; for the only ingredients of the computation worthy of attention or care are palpably omitted. Taxes are a deduction not from men's bodies, but from their purses. If their purses are small and nearly empty, a tax of a rupee may be extortionate; if their purses are deep and full, the exaction of a £5 note may be light. If we compare the £50,000,000 of Indian revenue with the £72,000,000 of British revenue, the sole question worth asking is, how do the national incomes stand, out of which the two amounts are drawn. All else but this is mere irrelevancy and trifling. What then do we find? From the most authentic sources we gather that the total production of the Indian Empire is under £300,000,000 a year; was never disallowed by the Board of Directors, whose ratification was in point of fact never deemed necessary in the case of a new treaty. "No one in India, at Lucknow or at Calcutta, ever doubted the validity and binding force of this treaty until Lord Dalhousie found that it stood in the way of his scheme of appropriating all the revenues of Oude." 1 Sir H. Lawrence and Sir W. Sleeman both publicly expressed their conviction that the Central Government was endued by it with all the powers necessary for securing in Oude an efficient and humane administration; and Lord Hardinge, in 1847, impressively warned the Court of Lucknow that, under and by virtue of the treaty, they were liable to have the powers of government sequestered if they were not properly discharged. But sequestration is not synonymous with confiscation; and the suspension of a spendthrift's allowance does not mean the appropriation of his estate. It is not unworthy of note that Lord W. Bentinck, the most lenient and considerate of men, contemplated temporary interposition in Oude, in the hope and with the view of introducing juster and sounder principles of local administration, and that he obtained the sanction of the Court of Directors in case he should think fit to make the experiment. But who will debit his memory with contemplation of the crime perpetrated in 1856? We have his own clear definition of his meaning. "It may be asked of me,-when you have assumed the management, how is it to be conducted, and how long retained? I should answer, that acting in the character of guardian and trustee, we ought to frame an administration entirely native,—an administration so composed as to individuals, and so established upon the best principles, as should best 1 Bell's Retrospects and Prospects, chap. v. |