to terms of unqualified submission; a punishment, judged not inadequate to his reiterated perfidies, and to the promises of decisive assistance, which he had made to the Pindarries. By a stroke of state policy, the necessity of a war with the Birman monarch, commonly called the king of Ava, was avoided. A letter had been received from him, which was, in fact, a declaration of hostility, written in concert with the Mahrattas, and on a presumption of their success and support. To prevent the necessity of a rupture, the letter was returned by a British envoy, through another route, as a forgery; with a request that he would punish the authors; and as the information of the defeat of his allies arrived at the same time, the former amicable intercourse remained uninterrupted..

The Rajpoot states, from whose intercourse the British government had been interdicted by a treaty with Scindiah, were now received under its protection, on condition of co-operating against the Pindarries. Thus also their own troops, which had formerly lived in a state of continued aggression against their own cultivators, were brought under controul, and the chieftains consented to refer all their differences to the British government, and to keep a well equipped contingent in readiness for their new allies. Hence peace and order were introduced into a part of India, which had formerly been most disturbed and miserable; and a strong report to this effect is given from Sir D. Ochterlony. It is thus that government, and even conquest, become benefits and blessings. "Every tongue," says General Ochterlony, "from the prince to the peasant, was eloquent in the expression of gratitude to the British government for the blessings they enjoyed."

We cannot help interrupting the narrative to allow the reader to remark the mixture of prudence, humanity, and honour, with firmness and decision, by which the whole of the Governorgeneral's proceedings were distinguished. With the characteristic modesty of the man himself, not the slightest insinuation to this effect is made; and it would be almost an insult to the good sense and feelings of the reader, to dwell an instant longer on it ourselves.

"This campaign closed with our having acquired an undisputed sway over every portion of India.". Though Gwalior and Bhurtpore had not subscribed to our sovereignty," they had become under the British control. All this had been purchased at a very slender expense, both of lives and money: yet it was but a small portion of what was effected. A deep laid and general conspiracy had been defeated: the Rajpoot states, amounting to some millions, had been released from long con

tinued misery; and the whole of the Nizam's subjects, and of the northern Circars, had also been rescued from the cruel inroads of the Pindarries, who had formed a banditti of thirty thousand cavalry; their inroads being always marked by such devastations and such atrocity, that whole territories had been abandoned.

We must pass briefly over much of what follows of this nature. The Peishwa, Bajee Rao, was forfeited; "the profligacy of his conduct," to the British government, "having merited that punishment." But his deposition was rendered as little oppres sive as possible, by his liberty, and an allowance of £100,000 yearly, with permission to retain his private treasures and four hundred of his own guards. An independent territory was assigned out of the Peishwa's dominions, to the Sattara Rajah, who had formerly been kept under strict custody by Bajee Rao; and Holkar, a fugitive, was recalled, and established as sovereign of a richer territory than he had before possessed. The Gwyckar, another of the Mahratta chiefs, profited as a friend, by receiving some of the spoils of Bajee Rao. The Rajah of Nagpore, Appah Saheb, was deposed, and rendered a kind of free prisoner; his lands being divided between a suc cessor of the same family, Booshla, and the British government, which found them necessary for "the continuity of its territory."

A most remarkable second part follows. "In the attainment of points every way so important, the honourable company has not been put to the expense of a single shilling!" The evidence is financially official and precise. The Marquess commences his own financial year, with the 1st of May 1814, on which day "the registered Indian debt was £26,649,052, 15s. On the 30th of April 1821, there was an augmentation of £5,664,255, 17s. 6d. On the same day, the accumulations of cash exceeded the debt by more than £560,000; so that, upon that day, I could have wiped off the whole of the additional debt incurred during my administration, and have left the public coffers richer, by above half a million, than I found them!" Perhaps there are few men, who could have resisted the temptation of so novel a triumph as the extinction of a national debt.

His policy however, was to maintain the tie, which secured the monied class to the government, and to hold in check the native princes, who had "fallen into the habit of vesting their money in those securities." We consider the policy to be as solid, as it was self-denying; and were we proprietors, should, like him, hope that "all these circumstances will be fully weighed, before any part of the accumulation shall be worse than wasted, by applying it according to theoretic rules totally unsuitable to

the present state of our Indian affairs." We wish that the Horners and the Ricardos, and the whole of that intermeddling and impudent race of shallow speculators, who have made us sick of the very name of political economy, and who often conceal their private interests under the projects by which they delude the public, would attend to this short sentence. But we trust to have some conversation with these gentlemen before long.

It is remarkable also, that this accumulation was made during a period of singular exertion. And so far was it from arising in consequence of" narrowing the supplies to England," that while, for the twenty years preceding the Marquess's government, the annual average had been about £485,000 they amounted, during eight years of his office, to £1,323,000 and upwards. The dif ference in favour of his own period, would have been consider ably greater, had the accounts been limited to the first five years; but the whole averages were thus diminished, in consequence of an option left to the bond-holders, to receive their interests in England, and of a difference of exchange, of which they therefore took advantage.

We must give the general conclusion in his Lordship's own words.

1. "The overweening insolence and hostilities of Nepaul, a power dangerous from its position along an extensive and open frontier of ours, have been so completely chastened, as to make that people sensible they can retain their independence, as a state only, through the moderation of the British Government.

2. "The Pindarry association, a dreadful scourge to every neighbouring community, and peculiarly afflictive to the Hon. Company's subjects, has been annihilated; and the fruitless annual expence of protec tive measures against those depredators, together with frequent heavy loss of revenue, is henceforth precluded.

3. "A confederacy, aiming at no less than the total extirpation of the British from India, has been so thoroughly subverted, that not a germ is left for its reproduction,

4. "Throughout the term of an administration, during which such unprecedented demands for services on the spot were to be met, the Hon. Company has received, on an average, annual supplies from India (beyond the amount of supplies from England to India) nearly trebling the rate of supplies furnished to it on the average of twenty years preceding. For five years of my administration, which most demanded extraordinary effort in India, the supplies nearly quintupled the former example.

5. The yearly Indian revenue of the Hon. Company, from permanent sources, exhibited at the close of the last official year, an increase of five millions one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds sterling

by actual receipt. For reasons assigned, that increase is expected to amount, in the present year, 1822-23, to six millions. There is no probability that it should hereafter sink below that rate; but there is every just ground to reckon upon its progressive augmentation.

6. "The clear Indian surplus to be henceforth exhibited, is estimated by me at four millions sterling yearly. It will probably be more ample.

7. "The Hon. Company has been, with a material saving, delivered from an embarrassing perversion of the conditions of former loans; while the justice of the operation was so distinctly recognized, that the credit of the Hon. Company's Indian securities has risen to a pitch, which no speculation could ever have presumed.

8. "In the year 1813 and 1814, the independent powers of India were so numerous and strong, as to conceive themselves equal to expel the British. At present, every native State in that vast region, is in either acknowledged or essential subjugation to the British Government."

We must abridge the last conclusion, as it is somewhat long. There have been no additional burdens imposed; and, on the contrary, several teasing demands have been abolished. Roads have been made, bridges built, canals repaired, Calcutta improved in its health, its arrangements, and its harbours and piers, and other valuable expedients adopted to facilitate general intercourse and extend the conveniences of commerce.

The Indian armies now also add to the general strength of the empire; because, the prejudices of the Seapoys having been overcome, they may be transported for any purposes of European warfare, even by sea. Every suspicious chief is so hemmed in by British power, or by British allies, that they are incapable of combining with any European states against us. "The confederation of the feudatory states extends in an unbroken chain, quite to the Indus." Nor, in holding out this, his confidence, does the noble author rely on treaties, but upon "an identity of permanent interest for which no foreign power could hold forth an equivalent." But we cannot afford to follow him further in this sketch of the present political attitude of India. His Lordship's style, always involved, becomes here unusually obscure; so obscure in the language, and dense in the materials, that nothing but a new detail of our own could give to those unacquainted with Indian history and politics, any conception of the subject.

Nor is it necessary. This is a new and separate question which would in itself justify and require a distinct article. If we cannot agree in all his conclusions, we have no room here to dispute them; while we have done that which we undertook to

do, in presenting to such of our readers as are not likely to meet with the original work, a plain view of his Lordship's administration, as recorded by himself.

But we may now add, that not one of these statements has been disputed, and that the whole, therefore, must be received as faithful. We advocate no party, consequently, in giving it this additional publicity. It is not for us to suggest that it is a duty on the part of the East India Company to meet such valuable services by corresponding marks of gratitude. If Lord Clive made India, Lord Hastings has preserved it. He has remade. He has rescued it from imminent danger, consolidated its power, as far as human foresight can extend, for a long period, and, in converting danger into security, has also done that which commercial men at least rarely overlook, converted poverty into wealth. We know not that such services ought to be rewarded by money; we know not that they can. Were the Honourable Company to grant to their late Governor-general five millions of money, instead of the miserable annuity which has been proposed and refused, of five thousand pounds on a septuagenarian life, it would scarcely bear a sensible proportion to the benefits, the ledger profits, which they have already derived, and are still to derive, from his prudence, his activity, and his integrity. Gratitude is a term to which we never attached much meaning: most assuredly we never were induced to imagine that it could have any meaning at all, where a Government, or a public body, or even a private body, of any nature, was implicated. He who expects it from an individual is not very wise: he who looks to it from any association of men, is a fool.