START UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY MICROFILMED 1992 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE BERKELEY, CA 94720 MAY BE COVERED BY COPYRIGHT LAW TITLE 17 U.S. CODE REPRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE THROUGH UC BERKELEY GENERAL LIBRARY INTERLIBRARY LOAN OFFICE . Parker, Henr AUTHOR : ’ Meredith y The empire of the middle TITLE :¢lasses. Being nos. | ond 2 of Short sermons on Indian texts PLACES London DATE : 1858 VOLUME : CALL pg Hoy M NEG : 90- NO © P3 Yi176 FILMED AND PROCESSED BY LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, CA 94720 JOBNO. | 7 9 Apt | 1 © le | = [ie DATE 8 9 2 L28 Js fue REDUCTION RATIO Q Lr DOCUMENT oy 9 S 1% £ 2 R Sd : Loita ida bid dad ton india botbstol hibit GENERAL LIBRARY UNNUMBERED PAGE LS] Pagination begins on p-6, pp: [I-5) not designated. EMPIRE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. NOS. 1 AND 2 OF SHORT SERMONS ON INDIAN TEXTS. By HENRY MEREDITH PARKER, BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE, RETIRED LIST. “ Ace Haideregh! Ace Haideregh! Ace Ilaideregh! Kay anchunaun mahee, nehaun shud zeeree megh.”— Hafiz. “Alas! Alas! Alas! That so bright a moon should sink in so black a cloud.” LONDON : W. THACKER AND CO., 87, NEWGATE STREET. CALCUTTA : THACKER, SPINK, AND Co. DBounay: THacker axp Co. 1858. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. “A PLAN FOR THE HOME GOVERNMENT OF INDIA,” with Provisions calculated to prevent or limit the Evils and Dangers of Patronage. Price 1s. “ Among the numerous pamphlets to which the great Indian crisis has given birth, many of them distinguished only by their prejudice and ignorance, we occa- sionally alight upon one to which either the name of the writer or the unusual good sense of its contents attracts our respectful attention. Prominent among these productions of exceptional merit is one by Mr. H. M. PARKER, a distin- guished member of the Bengal Civil Service, and well known throughout India as a sparkling and graceful writer. He has just put forth ¢A Plan for the Home Government of India,’ which gives, in the space of twenty pages, a complete account of all the machinery of administration and its manner of working, neces- sary to ensure not only the efficiency of the proposed system, but its entire inde- pendence of all party influences. olvin d, We would recommend every one to read Mr. PARKER'S pamphlet. He takes up the right ground at starting, and, although we differ from him regarding some of the details of his scheme, we feel that we have the same object in view—the appointment of a thoroughly independent and experienced Indian Council.”— 7% Overland Mail. BOLE PONJIS: a MISCELLANY oF PROSE AND VERSE. 2 vols. feap. 8vo., 12s. THE MARCY CONVENTION (Privateering) ; “Capture or No Cap- ture? That is the Question. 8vo. 1s. HONOURABLE THE COURT OF DIRECTORS EAST INDIA COMPANY. THE most humane, the most equitable, liberal, and beneficent Rulers who ever governed a conquered empire; the nobles and most confiding superiors, who ever employed a pavlie service ; under whose just and discriminating administration the men who won, the men who ruled, and the men who have saved India, were formed: this trifle is very respectfully in- scribed, by Their obedient, humble servant, H. M. PARKER, Bengal Civil Service (Retired List). London, December, 1857. THE EMPIRE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. Ar last, then !—The Empire of the Middle Classes, that noble and gorgeous Empire won by their valour, ruled by their firm and moderate policy, tranquillized by their wisdom, governed with only that small leaven of the oligarchic element, which it was impossible to free it from under a constitution like that of Great Britain—that resplendent Empire, long gloriously and admirably administered, the envy of nations, is about to pass away. It will no longer exist as the Empire of the Middle Classes —as the Empire of Clive, Coote, Flint, Hastings, William Jones, Shore, Barlow, Dance, who beat a fleet of men-of-war with a fleet of merchantmen ; Ochterlony, Munro, Metcalfe, Edmonstone, Malcolm, Pollock, Nott, Barry Close, Henry Pottinger, Eldred Pottinger, that wonderful boy, whose marvellous exploit, unknown or forgotten here, would have made him a lieutenant-general in Russia, and in France raised monuments to his glorious memory—James Prinsep, Trevelyan, Horace Wilson, Kaye, Vincent Eyre, Abbot, Raw- linson, Outram, Lambert, Everest, Wilson, Nicholson, Neill, the Lawrences, Willoughby, and a hundred others, states- men and warriors, men of literature, and men of science, who have sprung from the bosom of the ruling class. Here- after it may very probably be the Empire of Lord Charles A, the Honourable Mr. B, the Honourable Mr. C; but more, much more than all, of the sons, and nephews, and sons-in- law, and grandsons, of the honourable members for D, E, F, G, &e, to the end of the alphabet. And why, it may be 6 asked, may not that class produce statesmen as accomplished and soldiers as gallant, as their predecessors in the East? Far be it from me to say that it will not; they will be English, Scotch, and Irish gentlemen, that is saying enough. It is not India that is altogether to be thought of in the matter, but quite another country, which may some fine morning become awake to the fact, that it is inextricably governed by such majorities in Parliament, as have not made their appearance since the days when Walpole is said to have said, that “every man had his price.” Be that as it may, we have to all appearance arrived at the closing act of a magnificent drama ; and in that very act, full of tragic, mournful, glorious interest, manifesting to the whole world the wonderful solidity with which the foundations of the Empire of the Middle Classes have been laid ; a firmness a cohesion, which nothing but a rule of unrivalled sagacity and real wisdom could have created in so short a period, and in a con- quered country—a firmness and cohesion, which have resisted and baffled the terrible strength of a mighty conspiracy and military outbreak, under which half the governments and nations of the globe would have succumbed. Yes, the Rule and Empire of the Middle Classes has done this marvellous deed. Massacre, mutiny, insurrection, rebellion, false friends, and treacherous foes, have alike failed to move the steadfast foundations of our power, or relax our iron grasp. We never quailed, we never doubted, we never wavered. “ Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, As fearlessly and well.” And now that we are, perhaps, about to resign our great prize, so hardly won, so indomitably kept, we may proudly say to our Successors, and the world, what Coriolanus thundered in the ears of the Volscians— “ Alone we did it.” Our successors !—and to whom will the management of this magnificent succession be transferred? that is the question paramount now to all others. To the Crown —a mere form of 7 words. To the House of Peers ?—that is not very probable. The nation is already sufficiently jealous of an aristocracy, in which, nevertheless, there is much, very much, to honour, to admire, and to be proud of. The nation would never permit any transfer which should make the Peers of Great Britain its rulers and managers, either directly or indirectly, for the vast dependency—though they may possibly do worse. To the House of Commons? Yes! The House of Commons! will, if we do not prevent so pregnant an evil, be the actual, whoever may be the nominal, rulers of India, when the present system of Government is extinguished. It will be supposed to be managed as other things are, by a pleasant fiction, supposed to be managed by the Three Estates of the Realm ; but we all know what that means in the present day, and the real, true rulers of India will be the House of Commons. The members of that Honourable House will govern their Empire, no longer the Empire of the Middle Classes, but the “EMPIRE OF THE | House or ComMmoNs,” through the minister, by an agree- able kind of circulating process such as that by which the Abbe Sieyes created and absorbed his “Grand Elector.” The minister, who, as the responsible executive, must necessarily have, either directly or indirectly, great control over the nomination of his subordinates or assistants, will govern his governors, the House of Commons, by a judicious distribution of the patronage amongst them, not only amongst those who uphold his Indian measures, but amongst those who support his measures in the abstract, and everything will be "made pleasant. It will be something, only on a more sublime scale, resembling the process which the Court of Directors have been accused of following with the proprietors of India Stock ; only that where a minister and a House of Commons are concerned, it may be rather a more serious affair for the nation. The good, easy public is simple enough to imagine, that so long as the original appointments to India, civil and military, are only made under a system of competition, that then job- bery, nepotism, patronage, and the like, are at once cut up, root and branch. 8 I must take leave to doubt whether, even as respects the original appointment, the system of competition will secure us from the chronic jobbery which appears to be a part and parcel of our glorious constitution. I should not die of astonishment if we found, under the competition system, that a very extraor- dinary proportion of the successful candidates were sons, or nephews, or cousins, of ministers of the Crown, of peers, bishops, members of Parliament, court ladies, and great bankers; of gen- tlemen with handsome livings in their gift, proprietors of in- fluential newspapers, &e., &e. Gentlemen of Oxford and Cambridge, have you always been perfectly and profoundly satisfied when Lord Fitzmorion, or the son of the Archbishop of Swaffham, or the nephew of the Lord Chancellor, figured in the first class, and yourselves in the second, that the more elevated position was entirely due to superior merit and acquirements ? But be that as it may, admit that the best candidate will always be the successful one, it is of no vital importance ; for the Asmodeus who presides over patronage, jobbing, and nepotism, will, I feel satisfied, under the Empire of the House of Commons, have his head quarters in India. The “programme,” to use a recent coinage, is one of sufficient simplicity. There is a sharp session of Parliament; the ministry is tottering : the dark limbo of unofficial existence, dreaded by statesmen, “looms in the distance.” Questions of extreme moment are barely carried by half satisfied supporters. One of vital importance is on the eve of discussion.— If Duberly,” says the Premier, addressing the Secretary of State for India, “If Duberly carries his amendment, we must, of course, go out. Her Majesty’s service and the country will equally suffer. I speak in no spirit of self laudation, but our resignation, at this critical juncture, would be most disastrous for the Empire. The defeat must be prevented at any cost. You, my dear Mount Vernon, are, of course, acquainted with those in Her Majesty’s Indian service who are related to or connected with members of the Lower House. Let the members in question be apprised, confidentially of course, the thing requires delicacy, but Kater 9 will manage it, that if we remain in office, there are certain gentlemen in the Indian services of whose talents and conduct you receive such favourable reports, that you are prepared to recommend them for immediate promotion. Those gentlemen, it fortunately happens, are connected with members who will, we trust, feel it their duty to the country to support us against Duberley’s amendment. The Governor-General, our friend Quaning, who must come home, of course, if we go out, will understand the thing, and act accordingly.” But, it might be urged, the same process may be followed at present. The minister is as potent for jobs in India under the “Empire of the Middle Classes” as he would be under the “ Empire of the House of Commons.” Not so. In the first place, the Governor-General, through whom the job must be perpetrated, has as frequently been of the party of the outs as the party of the ins, and would scarcly incur obloquy or commit injustice to serve a ministry with which he had no political sympathy. Again, the Court of Directors have had too many connections, or, at all events, persons for whom they were interested in the services, to permit such jobs; besides, a Governor-General, frequently not on the best terms with the Honourable Court, who might find it difficult to avoid assisting a powerful minister the chief of his own party, would be very little influenced by a request “not to forget Jones,” made by one of twenty-four elderly, uninfluential gentlemen in Leaden- hall Street. Indeed, under the Empire of the Middle Classes, any assumed unjust supercession by the local Governments of India, or of promotion to the prejudice of stronger claims, would, in nine cases out of ten, have been the subject of an appeal to the Court of Directors themselves ; who, having no interest in stifling such an appeal, and no motive to slur over a job which would carry with it little profit or pleasure to their honourable body, would be fully disposed to give redress if it was justly due. But, in the case I have supposed, undeserved promotions and unearned appointments in India for the pur- pose of bolstering up a tottering Cabinet in England, where will an appeal lie? Why, from a minister to a ministry with * 10 which he must stand or fall (for it is too Utopian to imagine that Governor-Generalships will be given under the pending system without reference to party), and to serve which the job has been jobbed. Picture to yourselves, oh, most thinking people, an attaché to the embassy at Ecbatana appealing to my Lord Palmerston against his supercession by my Lord Clarendon —especially if the parent of the more fortunate youth, the superceder, happened to be the son or nephew of a wavering member of the Upper or Lower House whom the ministry desired to conciliate. The idea is too jocose, And here let me declare, what I can assert with a safe con- science, my unqualified and sincere conviction, founded on nearly twenty-five years of local experience and observation, that there can have been no Government in the world more entirely free, for very many years past, from favouritism or jobbery than the local Government of Bengal. TI doubt not but that the other Governments in India have been equally free from those peculiarly English institutions ; and if I do not ex- press my conviction with equal strength on that point, it is be- cause I cannot speak from personal experience and familiar knowledge,—neither can I pledge myself for the home Govern- ment, since I have not had the honour to be of the twenty-four registers of the orders issued by the President of the Board of Control. But, as relates to my own Presidency, I KNow (and I had perfect opportunties of obtaining such knowledge) that I vouch for no more than the rigid truth when I declare that during the five-and-twenty years, while I had an opportunity of judging, no Government could have been more free from Jobkery and misapplied patronage than the Government of Bengal. That there may have been occasionally, very, very rarely, a civil or military appointment given through interest or nepo- tism, it would be affectation to deny ; the purest of Governors- General is but a man with human affections, and a kindly desire to benefit those whom he loves ; We never complained of such small deviations (very few and very far between) from the strict requirements of Justice ; because it was felt that, on the 11 whole, the vast civil and military patronage had been, and was, distributed with wonderful integrity, purely, honourably, wisely, and with no other objects in view than a sincere and conscien- tious desire to reward merit, to promote emulation in the services, and to secure the general welfare and good government of the re. jo of mine, who had returned to England, after having deservedly held some of the highest appointments in India, was told by a noble Earl, then about to proceed to that country as Governor-General, that he (the Earl) knew there was nothing but jobbery and favouritism going on in his future Viceroyalty. “My Lord,” replied Mr. B, “I have seen how things are managed in India ; and I see how things are managed in England ; I have been behind the scenes in both countries, and I frankly tell your Lordship, that I have known of more jobbing in this country in six months, than I witnessed in India during a service of thirty years.” : My friend most assuredly spoke the truth ; the very fear of Jobs (a sort of job- panic or jobophobia), from which the public mind in England is never free, shows the prevalence of the malady. We have no fear here of cobra capellas, or Thugs, or hippopotami. “Oh, peuple vertueux "—as the much maligned Deputy for Arras used to say, “peuple sublime—peuple respectable, you are probably about to make your ministers the greatest job- masters in creation. You force the means of infinite job upon them, and yet you will be the very first to vituperate and howl at them for employing the power you have compelled them to accept—and that power, if a certain proposition, now loom- ing in the future, should ever receive coherence and form, will be multiplied a hundred fold. It has been urged, chiefly, I believe, by the barristers of the Supreme Courts of Calcutta and Madras (with what object, it is, of course, quite impossible to conjecture), that English shall be the law language, the language of all Courts in India, and that English lawyers in be appointed judges therein. “Fore Heaven 1” as that untuck y Michael Cassio says, “Fore Heaven ! this is a more exquisite song than the other.” A competent knowlege of the languages * 9 id of the country subject to our rule, has always been something of a stumbling-block to the aspiring sons of Themis. I have scarcely known a single instance of a Calcutta barrister, who could string together ten sentences in Hindostanee or Bengally, with the slightest chance of being understood. I say nothing m . 4 3 ) 1 of Tamool, Canarese, Malabars, Ooreah, Teligoo, &ec., &e. Well, 1t 13 now proposed to smooth the difficulty quite away. We had an impression that, in matters of justice, there should be some mode of communication between the parties to a suit and the judge, in a language understood by both ; and that it would be rather unkind to inform a man, in an “unknown ” : tongue, that he was going to be hanged, after a trial, not one word of which had he understood from beginning to end. Hence the examinations, in the native languages, at the East India College, Haileybury ; the second examination, before entering the service in India ; the third after a certain period of service ; and now, I believe, a fourth, before an officer can fill the higher grades. But all this, it appears, has been a fool- ish waste of time and intellect ;—ordain that the English lan- guage shall be the language, and English jurisconsults the Judges of native Courts and Cutcherries. Boldly cut the knot by declaring, that instead of plaintiffs, and defendants, and judges, understanding more or less of each others’ speech, they shall not understand each other at all, and then why, then . ? : the goddess of jobbery (and no doubt there is such a divinity in the Hindoo Pantheon, which provides a deity for every rascality), would dance such a dance of joy, as has not been seen since Kali executed a fandango on the body of her hus- band. For then there would not in all merry England, Scotland . -. or Ireland, be an electioneering attorney, or a well-connected briefless barrister, or a genteel solicitor, with more address th business, or any gentleman who had eaten his term ah Hd might not aspire to be, per saltum, judge of uttepoore Si "magi inci p cri, or magistrate of Budge Budge, or principal collector of Rajahmundry—especially if he had a friendly M . ae ct . . . : ai of Tr liament to whisper a word to the Indian minis- er ¢ ‘ ~ 3 3 13 « xe : * . I his favour. As for an Indian civil service (af it be an S in the 13 allowed to exist as a service) standing in the way of such appointments, let us remember what was done at Ceylon, where there was also a civil service the members of which, had entered it under an assurance that they should not be superseded by gentlemen sent from England ! But there are other dangers which one may as well advert to, though they will not, of course, be allowed the weight of a canary-bird’s feather against platform and newspaper declama- tion, working upon popular ignorance and prejudice. India has escaped that last, great, unavoidable curse of con- stitutional governments—party administration. It has been spared the enormous evil of one Viceroy landing with an orange ribbon in his hat, and another with a bunch of sham- rocks in his button-hole, to be succeeded by a third, with the orange ribbon again. But something of that pleasant descrip- tion will not fail to occur, when India is governed by the House of Commons ; that is to say, if its magnificent patronage does not enable the party in power, at the time of the transfer, to re- tain its ascendency (much to the benefit of constitutional government in England), until that time when all things shall, even to London drinking water, be purified by the inevitable democracy promised us by M. de Tocqueville. But if that unfortunate India, hitherto so happily spared from such a calamity, should become a battle ground for parties, and it most certainly will if it becomes the Empire of the House of Commons, imagine the utter confusion worse confounded that must ensue.—One day the “parti prétre,” which appears to have a personal quarrel with Vishnoo, will be in power, and drive our unhappy dusky fellow-subjects to despair by pushing proselytism to the verge of persecution. The next, the “parti philosophe,” successors of the foregoing iconoclasts, will stand up for the extremest liberty of conscience, and proclaim aloud that a man may, as far as they are concerned, worship an old shoe, if it affords him any comfort to do so. Then comes a set into power —haughty, imperial, all for absorbtion, annexation, conquest, if necessary, and complete subjugation,—succeeded, possibly within three years, by another set, who will breathe nothing but peace 14 and love,—utterly repudiate the stern views of their predeces- sors, and hasten, perhaps, to restore pensioned sultans, and un- employed rajahs in “a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy,” never equalled since the days of the “needy knife-grinder. Imagine this kind of process, which Great Britain itself only survives owing to the toughness and sturdy good sense of the people ; imagine, I say, this kind of process at work among the ignorant but sensitive and impulsive races of India—a country in which you are lucky if you effect any change after twenty years of preparation, and where you approach a reform as you would touch Rob Roy’s sporran, out of which, unless you handle it with preternatural caution, pops the muzzle of a loaded pistol. I feel persuaded that a few years of English party government would be very likely to drive not only an Indian army, but a much more formidable power, the whole Indian people, into a resistance to your authority, which might take a form calculated to baffle all the might even of mighty Britain. They would politely decline to pay any more revenue to a Government which kept them in such an incomprehensible state of eternal fidget and bewilderment. Very few of you are aware that the entire, complete, whole Hindoo population of one of the greatest cities in India once walked forth, bag and baggage (it was not some nonsensical quarrel about a cow and a pig which always affords legitimate cause for a row between Hindoos and Mahommedans, but the imposition of a Police rate), and remained in the fields for more than a fortnight ; and this happened, not in the times of Ram Raja and the “ Mrich- chicatra,” but while Wellington gained Salamanca, and the first gent in Europe wore the best made coat in the world. The Government of the Empire of the Middle Classes may not have been a perfect Government, but it so far suited the people to be ruled that on all settled portions of our dominions /it was a steady, methodical, quiet Government—slow, perhaps | you might call it, but sure, and regular. It was not a rule of fits fand starts and contradictions. We did not one day express our | bitter abhorrence of negro slavery and the next clothe ourselves in nightcaps of cotton from Georgia, and eat Brazilian sugar ; 15 neither did we at one time ally ourselves with our fellow sub- jects the Orangemen, against our fellow subjects the Catholics, and at another with our fellow subjects the Catholics, against our fellow subjects the Orangemen. We fettered ourselves with many self-imposed chains; but we have worn them honestly and conscientiously. There is now a sort of idea that | the Parliamentary Empire would not hesitate to break one of \ the heaviest,—namely, the perpetual settlement in Bengal. If | the Parliament should do this thing, and if it is to be a sasnple of the new system intended to replace our “tradition and “routine,” I wish their honors joy of their task. Lord Metcalfe 3 prophecies touching the Sepoy revolt, not the vague, go prognostics of a clever guesser, but distinct and explicit as if} the native troops had sent him a plan of operations, specifying: time, place, and circumstance before hand ; Lord Metcalfe’s! sad, but most true, predictions, I say, have been largely quoted, as emanating from a man of the clearest sagacity and wonderful prescience. Well, if he is to be honoured as a prophet in one thing, let due reverence be paid to his prophecy with Tospech to another. I knew Lord Metcalfe well, and I reverenced and honoured him ; for a braver heart or more clear spirit never cuided the present or scanned the future. I have heard him tos Si v say, with that mild equanimity which no danger ever shook, o \ - pain ever vanquished, “ WHENEVER INDIA IS LOST, IT WILL BE | cas LOST IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. Sl Men of England, think of this prophecy when you are a ou to change the system of Indian Government ; remember it is the conviction of no.ordinary man, and no ordinary statesman, but came from one whose other prophecy men jeered at, until it | was miserably and awfully fulfilled. 4 “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR INDIA?” The Court of Directors of the East India Company, that true type and organ of the Middle Classes, and those their officers who have so honourably represented the Middle Classes in the East, have continually to endure the repetition of one cuckoo note, trilled forth in the monotonous and rather dull manner of cuckoo, less, perhaps. with any malevolent design, than in ignorance and prejudice, those besetting sins of the Foglith mind wherever Indian and most other foreign affairs are soacerniod | We are asked, with a triumphant and Jaunty air, as if the question was wholly unanswerable, “Pray, what have you done for India? What traces would you leave behind oy i India, if you were deprived of your Empire to-morrow » : I don’t know what traces we might leav : e behind us, if Indi: Do ia ceased to be ours “ to-morrow,” : ’ and if we were deprived of the country by force, amidst mutiny and rebellion. and battle violence, because the good we have ; itself in marble ) and accomplished, not showino and brass, in mighty edifices, or works like tho Mahomoodee canal, which is said to have cost the lives of some fifty or sixty thousand forced labourers—the good, I say. Sim we have accomplished, not being immediately tonaitle 4 sight and touch, would, probably, perish with our rule But if : the year 1841, we had tranquilly handed over Lo the Crown of Great Britain and Irel benevolence and good will, then have said, and h our dominion to and, or relinquished it in to the people of India, I should ave said with pride, “We leave traces of our rule more marvellous, more beautiful, than al J mids or Taj Mehals in the world—mor glories of Akb more unsullied than they are.” We found war, murder, mis ~ 3 3 ; > 2 confusion and desolation, rampant in every part of adi / e ] TE > 1 J : oe e 3 eave peace, security, justice, order, and abundance, e found the villager at his plough, armed to the teeth. 1 the pyra- e glorious than the ar or Shahjehan, were those a thousand times 17 uncertain, despite of his warlike gear, whether he should ever be able to garner the fruits of his labour. His village was near, he dared not go far a-field—walled, moated, and prepared for defence. From its ramparts, if the foe (or friend) had no leisure or disposition to storm them, he might see “fire, famine, and slaughter,” skurry over the smoking fields and amongst the felled fruit-trees, in the shape of hordes of furious horsemen, who spared no man or thing that crossed their merciless path, except for « chout.” In 1841, the peasant could guide his plough as securely in the British Indian dominions, as he could in Dorsetshire. The walls of hundreds of villages had fallen into decay, or remained unrepaired, the moats were filled up, and there was no more necessity for maintaining such defences at Nya Gong or Indra- putan than there is for maintaining them at Ivy Bridge or Roehampton. In 1841—mind, I cling to this date—first, because I had no personal knowledge of India after that period, and, secondly, because the government of the Court of Directors seemed to wane, and that of the Board of Control appeared to become more in the ascendant, about the time that an English ministry drove on the Affghan war against the feelings of the Court, and in opposition to the opinions of some of the ablest and wisest statesmen who upheld in India the Empire of the middle classes. In 1841 then, if, in peaceably relinquishing our rule, or handing it over to the House of Commons, we had been asked, “What traces will you leave in India?’ I should have con- tinued my reply in this wise :— When we went to lay the foundations of our Sovereignty with those hardy workmen—Clive, and Lawrence, and Popham, and Coote—we found that a Mogul noble, with his suite, might arrive at a village about nightfall, and no forage being ready for his numerous horses, he would shout, with many most objectionable and untranslatable objurgations, “Where is the dog of a Zemindar, to whom this miserable rat-hole belongs?” The wealthy, but trembling Hindoo, having first hidden his six 18 yards of pearl necklaces, lumpy with emeralds at short in- tervals, is brought before the Nawaub Sahib. “No words, Kaffir, I ordered forage, where is it? Give him a piece of cow ; give cow to his family and dependents ; give cow to everybody. Ah, messenger of Allah! who are we, that this dog, and son of a dog, should laugh at our beards?” The cow was duly administered, and those beef-fed unfortunates were no longer Brahmins, the equals of the gods, as they had been six hours earlier ; they were the impure of impures ; doomed to a privation of all social and brotherly communion in this life, and, hereafter, to countless ages of transmigration, through the bodies of dogs, rats, pigs, vultures, scorpions, and other unclean and abhorrent creatures. Such was the fate, shortly prior to Plassy, of the not very remote ancestor of an amiable and accomplished friend of mine, a native of Bengal—a gentleman, in every sense of the word, and a man of commanding talents—but that fierce Mogul had deprived his family of their caste. My friend was a man of noble benevolence in his own country, and courted by the very best society in this ; but, in despite of his wealth, his charity, his influence, and accomplishments, the lowest and most beggarly Brahmin in his heart spat upon him, and scorned him with a scorn not to be described. In 1841, the highest civil or military functionary in India would no more have dared to commit such an outrage as that to which the Mogul chief subjected the Zemindar, than a colonel of Her Majesty’s guards dares to tie up the Right Honourable The Lord Mayor to the triangles, and give him a hundred lashes at the bottom of Ludgate Hill Nor am I quoting a mere solitary instance of insolent oppres- sion. The Hindoo women went about unveiled, as I have myself seen them in a pure Hindoo state, until the licentious tyranny of the Moguls forced all, but the very poorest, to conceal their faces when abroad, and at home to retire to the very recesses of their dwellings, taking advantage of the Mahommedans’ scruples respecting the Zenaneh. The atroci- ties of Sooraj ool Dowlah, who had pregnant women dragged 19 into his infernal shambles, and there sought, at the expense of his victims’ lives, to trace the progress of gestation, are Pion. bered in Bengal even to this day, but are too horrible for more a sing allusion. gi pr— of the present century, when we found time to breathe after years of trying but glorious con- flict, a fearful pest pervaded the great Indian peninsuly on Cape Comorin to the banks of the Sutlej. The power on energy of the noble Akbar, the wealth of his splendid ir . astute and merciless policy of the terrible Aurungzib, & proved equally powerless to effect its diminution. Tgnion 8 of travellers departed annually from, or started to return io, their homes, and then were heard of no more. Their bones whitened no highway ; no charitable Brahmin had received them sick into his village, only to die. The waters of the Indian streams flowed not over their bodies, nor had the wild beasts borne them to their jungle lairs. Where are the dead t Ie did they perish? Ask that singularly RE gentleman, with a pleasant smile and grey beard, who is fr - ing a pocket-handkerchief in the easiest and most on manner imaginable in front of yonder temple of Kali— e oe Thug. It is he who defied the Great Mogul and his lieutenan bs in all the pride of their strength, and full power of their vg nion. It is that worthy gentleman who will show you t 3 very spot where, a few feet beneath the carefully-restored, well- smoothed turf, lie not only the bones of his human eT fices to the terrible goddess with the necklace of skulls—but the bones of their very dogs and horses, that not one living evidence of the fearful holocaust should remain on the earth. But a oe mighty goddess than Kali took up the task, which 5 Rajahs had abandoned in despair. Britannia stretched fort 1 her strong and resolute hand ; she grasped the work after her fashion, determined that it should be done ; and the once awful, omni- present, omnimurdering Thug lies bound at her feet, like a tamed wolf ; his claws drawn, his heart cowed, and his spirit role, In 1741—nay, in 1801, the Thug had, for centuries, been a power in India—bloody, appalling, terrible. In 1841 he was, and now, 20 he is in reality—what, he once only pretended to he—the peacefiil dweller in quiet villages, thinking of the once fearful “romaul as a history of bygone days, and, in all probability, as in- offensive and industrious a « Ryut” as any in the British domi- nions. Ghosts of the thousands who perished on lonely roads, in dusky topes of thick-leaved trees, by the banks of solitary rivers, in the shadow of deep ravines !—in avenging your murders, in fettering your murderer's body and spirit, so that their “occupation’s gone,”—have we, indeed, left no traces of our rule ? Did you, kind reader, if T h a “WULSA?” When we, the that there was appen to have one, ever hear of Middle Classes, first discovered an Empire to be won in far-off Hindostan, a “Wulsa” was a proceeding and a word in as common use in that happy country, especially to the south of the Chumbul, as the word “removal” is in England, or the word « deme- nagement ” in France ; and what g removal ! what a deme- hagement ! It was the flight of a whole population of an en- tire village or small town—man, Woman, and child, young and old, with their cattle, with all the goods they could save from their abandoned habitations—an exodus, having for its goal the inaccessible Jungle, or the caves of the mountains ; and for its cause, the approach of an armed force : so common was this blessed state of things, that a word signifying its recurrence, became familiar and naturalized in the language through the south, central, and great part of North Western India ; and as the Nuqru of the Mahrattah, the Rohillah horn, or the “Allah Akbar” of the fierce Arab and Persian mercenaries, no matter in whose pay, was hear threatened with their feroci leaving their homes, and all that they were unable to trans- port, as a prey to the Durrahs of Hurry Punt the Mahrattah, or to the matchlockmen of Gholaum Mahommed the Affghann, What, as Col. Wilks truly observes, must have been the state of a country when such an addition as the word « Wulsa,” with all its terrible significance, was permanently made to its language ? d from afar, the miserable people, ous advent, made a « Wursa ;” 21 The word is now merely a philological curiosity, for I pes carcely assure the most ignorant or most prejudiced % uy py that the “ Wulsa” and the British rule have long Cl f 3 a sen incompatible. , : : po 1741 Ann in India was in the agonies of dissolution. So | 1 3 oO appalling was the condition of the country, that if Sy. ka Srudetible power, had not been Phase) mL ; at and rich peninsula wou ¢ downward progress, that grea ] “i i p ed from barbarism, a at this day have been as little remov In, arn anarchy, as Abyssinia. In the whole WE oid there was no country where life and epee wer en 1 here was one law, if one could cz tenures so precarious. T Hoe 2 law, for the rich and powerful, and another for the Pee Ey wily: The law for the wealthy or potent was, that iy ae do what seemed right in their own ir i : lunder, if such seemed to promi torture, murder, abduct, p ; 4 A § tage, and if they had the \g them pleasure or advantage, Ae ispositi those pleasantries as well as the disposition to carry 08s eh There was another law for the poor man, ny i if he could not circumvent, or cheat, the great or pe t on: who chose to grind him to the earth, he must om: be round with the best grace, and all the patience he cou » Oo nmand. : ; fo om tolerably comfortable man, or man Daas a ) a share of this world’s goods, was squeeze ng [As as i 11 landholder by the large pro- to his squeezability. The small la he : i wi large proprietor by the court Pe ony lt: by the prime minister ; and the prime Ba er, Se the sovereign, if he had energy, or by t 1 sa favourite, if he had not. There was a high maxim Sh Vengal that the Zemindar was a pe to Nae ny ho rom the Ryut, an as uch as he could draw from 2 fit state to be squeezed and wrung out he was 2 a out accordingly for the benefit of the Py “ Ht Ryut, he was plundered by all and sundry, BN : e re of Thugs strangling him on the road, Dacoits a ih hi his ayes with red pepper, Mahrattas collecting c , 22 Arab mercenaries carrying off his daughter. He was a sort of human midge,—a, prey alike to birds, fishes, and spiders. If he escaped from the ever craving maws of the more violent, he was sure to fall a prey into the nets of the more cunning. In place of this frightful Meelstrom,—this chaos of utter con- fusion and disorganisation, we have introduced system, regu- larity, open courts, upright judges, and written laws, Those laws may be well or ill framed, wise or foolish ; they may not always be ably, however honestly, administered ; but by them, and they are printed in the vernacular as well as English, every man may determine for himself what are his rights, and find how to secure redress if he is wronged. Above all, we have enforced equality in the eye of the law. By our code, and in our courts, no distinction is made between the highest noble and the poorest peasant,—between the fierce soldier and the trembling bunnea, — between the wealthy banker and his squalid debtor. “Hine illae lachrymee.”—Tt is therefore that we are hated by the princes and nobles, by the powerful land- holders, the wealthy usurers, and the military classes of India, with the bitterness which beasts of prey must feel when the morsel they are mangling is snatched from their ravenous jaws. While you, my brethren, have been wrangling here about education, and, to speak without, flattery, made yourselves, with respect to that important matter the laughing stock of all Europe, the East India Company have erected colleges, and spread innumerable schools (they will become few enough soon) throughout the length and breadth of their rule. Nay, I once saw accomplished in Bengal a thing so strange, so wonderful, that I scarcely dare to narrate it, lest in this land of sectarian and party hate, of religious and political rancour, it should seem fabulous. A vast sum of money had been left for the purpose of found- ing a great seminary in Calcutta for the gratuitous education of poor children, Circumstances, needless to relate, caused it to be ruled that the testator intended to provide for the education of poor children whose parents were of every denomi- 23 ation of Christians. Three men, neither Tories, or a or ints but honest, God-fearing men, were A rly to da oy he t of the school. Ome wa y regulations for the managemen Chiro of England Protestant, one was a Roman Catholic, > the third a Presbyterian. Two of the three were high ecc be alle and of much esteem in their respective churches, and Y ey all belonged to a sect very much talked of, oy 1 se Con C > > : i lands,— the sect of prac mcountered in these happy is ds, Clieistions Well, those three christian pa a ? : ) - . . 0 o ivi icht in the administration ot a scho striving after the rig : ey i isti id succeed in selecting a mixed christian creeds, di : i p framing some brief sentences of relig re ’ hendi those glorious pro- ehending, g tion, founded upon, and compr din, A ito f our faith in which a ians, ises, those facts and rules o , whatever denomination, concur. That form and counsel were for the use and benefit of the school i hy i cer f doctrine and discipline, which dis- leaving the nicer shades o Jy Ty 1 risti ties, to be inculca inouish the various christian communities, ¢ clergymen of that communion in which the children J 8 ad been born. ’ : Ne onary a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic, ractical Christians, IT have offended any member of the ie of England, justly incensed against Calvin and the Pope, 12 ay him “0 oxCate me ; or if, by calling a follower of John i ad a follower of Martin Luther, Christians, I have offende ioy entloran of the Church of Rome, I also of Ta i 5 Jon i : tated it above, an really but the fact was, as I have s an i that with your astonishing Government of Great Britain, her I hold to be next to that of China in all the excellencies 0 “ port not to do it,” and “circumlocution,” you would contrive to take a hint from the way we have managed such ae 3 the Empire of the Middle Classes, and accomplish something o he s kind at home. : pn ie East India Company’s ay were ion broadcast over their vast terri- d and profitable education ef : oy and re English Government and people were ey finding out the way “how not to do it,” there was established in SD 24 the Empire of the Middle Classes another thing which ought to excite the present admiration of all free-born men, as it will excite the admiration and the wonder of future generations, when they shall read the marvellous career of the East India Company, and judge their history with minds free from bias or prejudice. The men of the Middle Classes in India, the servants of Go- vernment being amongst the most active promoters of the movement, won the freedom of the Indian Press, The Home Government of the Middle Classes acquiesced (with their tre- mendous responsibilities, and, considering the nature of their rule, they could do no more)—The Home Government acquiesced in its liberation, and the press, throughout the vast empire in the Fast, was free, and, when a passing cloud shall have vanished, will be free again. We have, I repeat, been reproached with having done nothing, the memory whereof would survive the extinction of our rule in India. Why, what are Taj Mehals, and Jumma Musjeeds, the palaces and tombs of marble and Pietro Duro, to the proudest monument of the highest civilization—an unfettered press ? For the first time since the day when the ark rested on Ararat,—for the first time in the vast regions of Asia, man has dared to discuss the acts of his rulers without being driven to clothe his thoughts in apologues, wherein the elephant stands for the sovereign, the lion is his commander-in-chief, the jackall his prime minister, the fox his treasurer, and all other brutes the people at large. While Demosthenes harangued the Athe- nians, while the senate of awful Rome defied Hannibal, or crushed Catiline ; while the free towns of Italy glowed with all the glories of art, and the splendours of commerce ; while the “Ricos hombres” of Spain said to their sovereign,— Senor Don Alphonso, we took thee for our king to rule us, if you rule ac- cording to the law ; if not, not!” while the Barons and the Franklins of England won libert y from the Crown :—for all those . long, long ages the people of Asia grovelled, and still grovelled in the dust before their satraps and sultauns ; or if they dared to 25 remonstrate against unbearable tyranny, the remonstrance was entirely of an abstract nature, and pushed no further than making birds and brutes the exponents of their griefs and wrongs, as in the fables of Pilpay, and that most tiresome of all apologues, the “ Anwaree Soheili,”—for the first time, I repeat, in the history of Asia, “men having to advise the public might speak out.” i : If it was an error, it was a noble one ; if it was a mistake, it was a glorious mistake ; and I claim that error, if it has been one, I claim that mistake for the Government of the Middle (lasses with more pride than I should claim to weave fifty new victories into the imperishable wreath of warlike glory which they have won. When I went to Bengal not longer ago than the days when the first gentleman in Europe, of whom Mr. Thackeray could discover a beautifully cut coat, waistcoat and pantaloons, but not the man ; when that gracious gentleman was, I say, Regent of these realms, the Pindarrys carried fire and sword through- out nearly the whole of India, not under direct British rule. “Chout,” that is to say, the fourth part of your worldly goods, or death was the agreeable alternative offered, generally every cold season, by those ubiquitous marauders. Before that ter- rible cavalry went panic and horror; behind them they left massacre and famine, not for a few short leagues, but over vast tracts of country. The wail of millions, the voice of humanity, alike called upon the Government of the East India Company to sweep those monsters of rapine and cruelty from the face of the earth. A great statesman, a great soldier, a truly great man, the tithe of whose worth was never recognized by any of the miserable, self-seeking factions who are allowed to govern Great Britain—the Marquis of Hastings, vigorously, gloriously, and with consummate soldiership, guided the storm which burst on the heads of those detestable brigands, their aiders and abettors ; and from the Sutlej to the Anemalee mountains, from the India Ocean to the mouths of the Berhampooter, the very name of Pindarry is only remembered as we remember the great plague or the fire of London. 26 Nor have we saved the peaceable millions of India from this great scourge alone. The cruel Bhirman in the East. the N i paulese further north, the Affghaun, and the Seikh, i all prepared to rush upon the prostrate and powerless giant and rend away what portion of spoil their respective strength pid enable them to conquer. All the neighbours of rich India, in her commatose condition, were manifestly of the opinion hid; Sir Evan Dhu, of Lochiel, entertained concerning the Saxon Lowlands, that it was a place “where all men took their prey,” and, generally speaking, both friends and foes considered i whole country as certain African tribes consider a caravan—a “dum fong long,” or thing to be devoured. Our shield wos spread over the prostrate land ; the Bhirman was humbled : the Seikh subdued ; the Nipaulese swept back into the depths of their mountains; the Affghauns taught to dreadafoe whom no dis- asters could intimidate. India was saved at once from domestic anarchy, no less than from the savage spoliation of ferocious and barbarous foreign conquerors. For the first time for more than a century there was through the length and breadth of that vast country, PEACE, security, safety for life and property—a blessed calm, such as the oldest man alive could not remember Well may the rebellious sepoy Havildar have said. in his me morial to the mock Emperor of Delhi, that they cold not im- prove upon the system of British rule—¢the best the countr had ever felt.” Well may the mutinous army and nd nobles in their recent proclamations have urged no word of re- proach against our Government, our courts of law, our justice our fiscal system, or our general administration. They dared not to bring charges of tyranny or mismanagement, or want of integrity in our functionaries, which every man could refute from his own experience ; they could only put forth that miserable trash about making them Christians by fraud or force, to give some colour to their nefarious proceedings I say nothing of the abolition of those exhilarating acts of faith by which hundreds of children were annually ooasianel to the sharks and alligators at Saugor, while hundreds of widows devoted themselves to the suttee fires all over Bengal, Behar, 27 and Orissa. Nevertheless, it was effected by the Government of the East India Company. The powerful princes of the House of Timoor no doubt viewed those infernal fruits of the idol worship which they hated with infinite abhorrence, but they did not dare to attempt their suppression ; to dare and to do was reserved for the Empire of the Middle Classes. Two blacks do not make one white ; wrong does not justify wrong ; but we are told by words, in which there can be no error, to take the beam out of our own eye before we seek the mote in the eye of our neighbour. Now, when the press and the platform of England ask us in a tone of virtuous indignation, « What have you done for India ?” we may, perhaps, be permitted meekly to ask in return, What have you done for Ireland ?—a country conquered and held by England under circumstances not altogether dissimilar. England, not through a government of the Middle Class, but through a government of the three estates of the realm, ruled conquered Ireland as it thought fit for six centuries ; but deduct four of confusion and unavoidable misrule, and say, that from about the restoration of the second Charles until the coronation of Queen Victoria the English Government of Ireland was more or less systematic and orderly ; carried on in a Christian, or, at all events, a Protestant spirit, and having the welfare of the people for its object. Now com- pare the state of Ireland, close to your own doors remember, after you had ruled it for about a hundred and fifty years, or from the time of Charles the Second up to the end of the last century, and the state of India after we had been paramount in that country not quite fifty years. The East India Company, mind, had been beset during that period by enormous difficulties, constantly engaged in wars, not of their own seeking, and not unfrequently hampered by the shifting factions, called Governments, at home. Still have the goodness to compare the state of Ireland in 1798 with that of India in 1848. Take the worst, by which I mean the’ most exaggerated account of our courts in India, and compare them with the Orange tribunals in Ireland with a party judge on the bench, and a party jury in the jury-box, things familiar enough 28 up to a date within the memory of elderly men. Take the condition of the Irish peasant, his hut, his attire, his means of subsistence, his ignorance, his beggary, up to the time in ques- tion—aye, and long after. Why, if T were to attempt to elevate him to the condition of the Hindoo Ryut, as soon as peace and a strong government secured to him the fruits of his labours, the gods of Swerga would burst into a laughter as loud as that of their brethren of Olympus. As for torture in India, of which I may have to say more, there was, in the year 1798 and there- abouts, a pleasant quantity and agreeable variety in Ireland, not practised clandestinely by misbelieving heathens, and sons of Mahoun, carefully concealing it from their European supe- riors, but inflicted under orders, and sometimes under the direct supervision of public functionaries calling themselves Christians and Englishmen, glittering with gorgets, and epaulettes, and plumes, and all manner of beautify] paraphernalia. There was a man about seven feet high, called the walking gibbet ; by an ingenious process a noose was slipped over the suspected Vinegar Hill man’s neck, and the end of the rope over the giant’s shoul- der; in an instant the supposed pikeman was hoisted with his feet off the ground, and let down again every twenty seconds or half a minute, to take breath, and be asked if he would make a clean breast. Then there was the Town Major and the “cat.” A friend of mine, an Irish artist of some eminence, was within half an hour of the triangle and cat-of-nine-tails af the Riding House Dublin, because he happened to bear the name of a croppy schoolmaster at, Cork, who wrote short-hand, in which Mr. C. was also an adept. The humane object was, to flog him until he confessed—what, he never had the good fortune to learn. Now, all this, and much more, in the shape of agrarian out- rage, privy conspiracy and rebellion, barbarism, want, and ignorance, was, after you had held Ireland for five or six centu- ries, and for one-and-a-half, or thereabouts, ruled it more or less constitutionally, after the King, Lords, and Commons method. It was an Island but little separated from your own, and, so to speak, under your very hoses; where a vast proportion of the peo- 29 ere amongst the most hardy and bravest of mankind : i a bandrells of thousands of A 1 ile Endh i 1 e work of go - pis oe a as ih those prodigious advan- hot a dockins business you made of ruling your ws in 2 You may urge the difficulties imposed by wns of hn between the rulers and the ruled ; A Ne et all Wore, or pretended to be, os . : ak the fervors of Catholicism, and the ve Po we Hae oe oy ons beset i what wer g T, Se ab East India Company ma J a India ? o fierce faith of the Mussulman—the : i t roachable bigotry of the Hindoo—all to be Sh H thin the Dowd of the public good, by the aid o i oy ower than a mere handful of despised Nazareens and uncles | ( C d pi ian may say, “nous avons changé tout Ws ay be it “admitted; you have done so i as po a another Well, give us, the government of the Sad 2 a Fy Ses EY (we don’t want the famine), an on i Bo as you please, if we shall not well and no s Ey -.- lished our mission ; but to expect us to do in AE hing Ein what you have been six hundred in accomplh g : od rd measure. 2 DEM po this, that T uphold the ona Fie me Sapte ine Al roaching to a pertec oi ll of Si Hr A with all its vk ie [ maintain that it is the most wonderful on er witnessed. ment of a conquered country the Wer oe oe irous of the Well-intentioned, humane, moderate, earnest Y, 8 se estab- e0 Aes good ;—with not one sinecure on its ie Ro is .— with Courts where the poorest lee Te the " leave, : but his own will, institute a wid ahr i" Sovereign, and generally gain it, as Governme 30 its cost; for, if the Judge has any apprehension it is, lest he should be biased, or, appear to be biased, in favour of the State —the true feelings of an English gentleman, but, rather un- favourable to the pleadings of the Government Vakeel. I maintain that our Empire, the settled portion, has for years past been better, been more liberally governed, than any country in Europe, excepting Great Britain, F rance, and Prussia. A native of the country might do what he pleased, go where he pleased, and say what he pleased, so that he injured not his neighbours, There was universal toleration and protection for all religions— there was no conscription—no press-gang. The taxes were fixed ; not heavy, nor inequitable. There was no privileged class exempted from impost ; there was no favoured class to profit by a Corn Law. There were no passports — mind, in a conquered country no passports! and, there was also, in that conquered country—a Free Press. This last, at least showed, that our intention was to rule well, whether we succeeded or not. There was no Court, no unemployed placemen ; no poor and idle aristocracy, living upon the toil of the people ; there was—but let another voice than mine speak in graver accents, words infinitely more worthy of attention. The present Bishop of Calcutta, Bishop Wilson, is known wherever piety, singleheartedness, and all the virtues of a true Christian divine are held in honour. He has resided more than twenty years in India. He has visited, more than once nearly every part of that immense territory, and been in communication with high and low of all creeds, He, a pilgrim of God, whose staff even I am unworthy to touch, is too sincere to colour, too honest to flatter ; — he values nothing that the greatest Government on earth can bestow ; for yet, a little time, and his, by the blessing of God, will be that glorious reward, beyond all price, such as this world cannot offer. In his sermon, preached at Calcutta on the recent day of hu- miliation, Bishop Wilson expresses himself thus: — Things were better with them than they were formerly —all had been moving on in the right direction for more than fifty years past. Never was there a more Just or beneficent Government than 31 that of the British power in India. Peace we fp a I rty have prevailed—commerce, and all the Wester i e Te edicine and the arts have been encouraged -every as ual before the laws—the administration of justice Hi as taxes were of moderate weight. Then, I Clistinrity, ministers of every name oe from all the different societies—were protecte : a ER churches had been raised, and native conver “i Phen in larce numbers. Charitable designs, to meet Se Si were liberally Si pn a i i issi and national edu ) el tt directly teaching it, ey throughout the country. His Lordship hy i ing bis hearers to cast themselves upon the Almighty nt necessity, to live better lives for the future, and to d tranquillity to pray earnestly for the restoration of peace an their country.” * ga i other hearers of other Bishops py the restoration of that rule under which all tha oe gos Bishop has so truly enunciated was he > — wo i f the East India any— —The Rule of the Directors o a Rulers for THE EMPIRE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES may pray for % Pxtract from a Calcutta J ournal. J & W. RIDER, Printers, 14, Bartholomew Close, London. The Cheapest and Best Newspaper Published in London, for Despatch to the East. THACKER’S OVERLAND NEWS FOR INDIA AND THE COLONIES. Published on the 2nd, 9th, 17th, and 25th of each Month, in time for despatch, vid Marseilles. Price 5d., with postage to India, 8d. Subscription, including In. dian postage, 32s. (Rs. 16) per Annum, in advance, his Newspaper presents a complete and comprehensive epitome of the British and Continental Intelligence of the week, with special reference to those subjects connected with India, &c. Its publication in a weekly instead of a fortnightly form, to meet the requirements of the new Mail Arrangements, now renders it as eligible a paper for Anglo-Indians resident at home, as abroad. LoxpoN: W. Tracker AND Co., 87, N ewgate Street, and BE. MARLBOROUGH AND Co., Ave Maria Lane, and all News Agents. THE CALCUTTA REVIEW, published Quarterly. Price 7s. 64. Contents of No. LVIL. for September, 1857.—1. Recent Anglo-Indian Poetry. 2. Indian Jail Industry. 3. Bayard Taylor's India, China, and Japan. 4. The Inquisition of Goa. 5. The Defence of the Country (India). 6. Life in the Rice Fields. 7. Sir John Malcolm, 8. The Principles of Historic Evidence, 9, Mis- cellaneous. The recent back N umbers are also obtainable, PRINCE GHOLAM MOHAMED’S HISTORY OF HYDER ALI AND TIPPOO SULTAUN, a valuable Narrative of Indian and Moham- medan Politics and Warfare, of especial Interest, at the present time, Royal 8vo. Cloth. 14s. THE ALIF LAILA ; or, THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS. The original Arabic Edition. Edited by Sir. W. H. MACNAGHTEN. 4 vols, Royal 8vo. 44. 4s. IRREGULAR CAVALRY. Major Trower’s Hints on the Conformation, Management, and Use, of the Irregular Cavalry of India. Post 8vo. 5s. A VOLUNTEER’S INDIAN SCRAMBLE ; comprising the War with Moolraj, Siege of Mooltan, &e. By Lieut. Hugo Jamzs (Bengal Army). 2 vols, Post 8vo. 18s. CALCUTTA FRUITS, a Lirrograrn from the large Oil Painting by Lieut.-Col. H. B. HENDERSON (Bengal Army), which attracted 80 much atten- tion when exhibited at the Crystal Palace. The copy has been most successfully executed by French Artists, and will form an interesting memento to all who are in any way connected with India. Price, plain, 20s, Coloured, 30s. London : W. Tuacker & Co., 87, Newgate Street. Calcutta : THACKER, SPINK, & Co. Bombay : TrAcKER & Co, OF TITLE END OF REEL PLEASE REWIND.