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of them in the volumes before us, to those who feel for the welfare of the millions of Hindoos for whose happiness we are accountable, and to those who by their station or talents have the means of promoting it.

A good administration of Justice, and the establishment of the rights of Property, on a judicious and permanent plan, are perhaps the only political blessings which the Hindoos are, in their present state, capable of receiving;-and they are blessings, which, if secured to the whole of our dominions in the East, would entitle us to be ranked among the greatest benefactors of the human kind. But it is not, as we have seen, enough to have the best intentions. The establishment of a good administration of justice, in particular, is attended with appalling difficulties, even in addition to those which have been created by the prejudices of the rulers. Two of them only we shall advert to;-the want of a higher and middle class in the society, on whose probity and intelligence the Government might rely for cooperation,-and the want of that knowledge among the English Magistrates which might enable them to discover truth or falsehood in the statements of the natives. Both these circumstances are adverted to, and deplored by many of the most intelligent of the Magistrates whom we have already quoted; and they speak with a kind of hopelessness of the difficulty of detecting perjury in its ever-varying forms, or of finding any class to whom the powers of police can be entrusted. With the moral language of the natives, if we may so express it, the Judges confess that they have never been able to make themselves acquainted; and they declare, that the common rules of evidence would, in India, be inapplicable. The honest men, says one of them, as well as the rogues, are perjured. Witnesses on the part of a prosecution swear to facts in themselves utterly incredible, for the purpose of fully convicting the accused, when the simple truth would have been sufficient. Every day's experience and reflection on the minds and manners of the natives serve,' says he, to increase my doubts about our capacity to discover truth among them.'* Lord Teignmouth, too, has observed, that the civil servants of the Company, enclosed in their offices from the time of their arrival in India, have neither leisure nor opportunity to become. acquainted with a people so widely differing from ourselves. What Judge,' says Sir Henry Strachey, can distinguish the exact truth, among the numerous inconsistencies of the natives he examines? How often do those inconsistencies proceed

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*The Judge of Circuit, Rajeshakye Division, 1808. 5th Report,

p. 589.

from causes very different from those suspected by us? How often from simplicity, fear, embarrassment, in the witness? How often from our own ignorance and impatience?-We cannot study the genius of the people in its own sphere of action. We know little of their domestic life; their knowledge, conversation, amusements; their trades and castes; or any of those national and individual characteristics which are essential to a complete knowledge of them. Every day affords us examples of something new and surprising; and we have no principle to guide us in the investigation of facts, except an extreme diffidence of our opinion,-a consciousness of inability to judge of what is probable or improbable.' Their declarations as to the want of any class to whom the business of police can be entrusted, are equally strong and explicit. After quoting some of their opinions, Mr Mill observes-

Such is the extreme difficulty of distributing justice to a people, without the aid of the people themselves! Such, at the same time, is the utter impracticability, under the present education, circumstances and character of the people of India, of deriving from them the aid which is required! Without a tolerable administration of justice, however, which the people of India are so far from enjoying, every man will acknowledge, that all attempts to improve either their circumstances or their character, must be attended with disappointment. What, then, is the inference? Are the government and the people to go on for ever in their present deplorable situation; the people suffering all the evils of a state of anarchy-the government struggling with eagerness to help them, but in vain ?

If it were possible for the English government to learn wisdom by experience, which governments rarely do, it might at last see, with regret, some of the effects of that illiberal, cowardly, and shortsighted policy, under which it has taken the most solicitous precautions to prevent the settlement of Englishmen; trembling, forsooth, lest Englishmen, if allowed to settle in India, should detest and cast off its yoke! The most experienced persons in the government of India describe, what to them appears the difficulty, almost or altogether insuperable, of affording protection either to person or property in that country, without the assistance of persons of the requisite moral and intellectual qualifications, rooted in the country, and distributed over it in every part. They unite in declaring, that there is no class in India who possess these quaufications; that the powers necesssary for an efficient police cannot be entrusted to the Zemindars, without ensuring all the evils of a gross and barbarous despotism: And they speak with admiration of the assistance rendered to Government by the gentlemen distributed in every part of England. Is it possible, then, to avoid seeing the inestimable services which might have been derived, in this great exigency, from a body of English gentlemen, who, if they had been encouraged to settle as owners of land, and as manufacturers and merchants, would at this time havę

been distributed in great numbers in India? Not only would they have possessed the requisite moral and intellectual qualifications-a thing of inestimable value-they would have possessed other advantages of the highest importance.

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It is impossible to reflect upon the situation of English gentlemen, settled in the country as proprietors of land and as manufacturers, without perceiving how advantageously they would be situated for acquiring that knowledge of the natives, in which the Company's servants are proved to be so defective; and for giving that aid in the administration of justice, without which a good administration is not to be attained. Such men would be forced into an intimate intercourse with the natives, whence, under the necessity of employing them, and of transacting and conversing with them in almost all the relations of life, an intimate knowledge would arise. They would have a local influence of great efficacy. They would be useful, beyond all calculation, in maintaining order in a wide circle around them, among a people in such a state of society as that at present found in Bengal. III. p. 336.

We cannot conceive anything more discreditable to a government, than to place itself in opposition to a measure conducive, and almost essential to the prosperity of a great empire, merely because it would be attended with a chance, at some distant period, of a curtailment of the extent of its dominions. That opposition becomes more absurd or criminal, when the dominions, of which we apprehend the loss, not only are not essential to our safety, but are of no other advantage to us than what may belong to the pleasure or patronage of ruling, and which, instead of affording us either money or men, have been a constant drain upon us both of one and the other. We do not in fact believe, that the obstructions which have been thrown in the way of colonization, have arisen mainly from the idea, that another nation of Englishmen would spring up in India, who might take upon them to govern themselves. Who would be base enough not to wish to see another America arise at a distance which might relieve us from the fear of its rivality?— Who is there who would not hai' it as an extension of our honour, that great and happy and independent communities might be created by our descendants in every quarter of the globe, retaining the happiest characteristics of our manners and institutions? The fear of colonization seems to us to have been, in part, a continuation of the Company's dread of interlopers, which, like other habits, has long outlived the circumstances which gave it birth. To this, no doubt, have been added apprehensions not very well defined, that private English adventurers engaged in trade or manufactures, or in the cultivation of the land, might be guilty of some of those acts of tyranny in which the servants of the Company indulged, when they em

barked in the private trade of the country. But a little reflection will suffice to show, that private colonists or merchants, entering into competition with the natives, with no other advantages than those which superior skill and civilization bestow, must stand in a very different situation from those who united the occupation of merchants, or rather of monopolists, with the possession of the whole judicial, administrative, and military power. Whether, under any encouragement, a sufficient number of Englishmen could be spread in a short time throughout the continent of India, is the question which admits of doubt.

But if there could be once established in that country, a considerable body of Englishmen,-not merely civil or military officers, but merchants, manufacturers, cultivators and proprietors, who, while they possessed something of the independence and knowledge of the nation from which they sprung, participated in the interests of the people among whom they resided, a security would be provided for the good government of India, which can never be afforded by a superintending power in another quarter of the globe. A public opinion would be formed which would check the vices of the rulers, while it aided the beneficial exercise of their powers. The judicial offices might be filled by men who knew the people among whom they had to administer justice,-who would not be raised from the counting house to the judgment-seat, and thence drawn, as they began to be useful, to the council-board;-and the number of Judges might be increased without impoverishing the finances, as the magistrate would not need such a salary as would send him with a fortune to Europe, but would receive some part of his reward in the respect of the people among whom he would have to pass his days.

We have now exceeded our ordinary limits, while we have left untouched many of the most valuable parts of the work before us. The estimate of the state and character of the Hindoos, and the attempt to fix their station in the scale of civilization, illustrated as it is by a prodigious store of appropriate learning, and by some profound views of the origin and progress of society and knowledge, would alone confer a lasting reputation on the author. The narratives and the examination of the administration of Hastings, and the judicial proceedings which followed it-of the government of the Marquis Wellesley, and his policy towards the native powers-are written with diligence, and without partiality or acrimony, and would, on that account alone, were none of the higher qualities of Mr Mill's mind infused into them, serve to interest the Indian reader. The account of Hastings, too, in particular, is a psychological curiosity.

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We cannot speak as favourably of Mr Mill's style as of his matter. It has many marks of carelessness, and some of bad taste; and the narration, in a few instances, is not free from that greatest of all defects-obscurity; which has arisen from an inattention to the use of the tenses of the verbs. In his disquisitions, it is vigorous, though not always pure or dignified; and violations of the usage of the language with respect to particular words, are not unfrequently to be met with. But of all these faults, our readers will be able to judge from the extracts, more severely than we can ourselves,-who rise from the reading of the work, grateful for the vast body of information which it conveys, and impressed with respect, not only for the intellec tual qualities of the author, but for his high and rare virtues as an historian.

ART. II. Mémoires et Correspondance de Madame D'Epinay. 3 vol. 8vo. Paris, 1818,

THE HERE used to be in Paris, under the ancient regime, a few women of brilliant talents, who violated all the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers. Among these supp'd and sinn'd Madame d'Epinay-the friend and companion of Rousseau, Diderot, Grimm, Holbach, and many other literary persons of distinction of that period. Her principal lover was Grimm; with whom was deposited, written in feigned names, the history of her life. Grimm died-his secretary sold the history-the feigned names have been exchang ed for the real ones-and her works now appear abridged in three volumes octavo.

Madame d'Epinay, though far from an immaculate character, has something to say in palliation of her irregularities. Her husband behaved abominably; and alienated, by a series of the most brutal injuries, an attachment which seems to have been very ardent and sincere, and which, with better treatment, would probably have been lasting. For, in all her aberrations, Mad. d'Epinay seems to have had a tendency to be constant. Though extremely young when separated from her husband, she indulged herself with but two lovers for the rest of her life; -to the first of whom she seems to have been perfectly faithful, till he left her at the end of ten or twelve years;-and to Grimm, by whom he was succeeded, she appears to have given no rival till the day of her death. The account of the life she led, both with her husband and her lovers, brings upon the scene a great

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