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amnesty, and oblivion of all offences against ourselves, our crown, and dignity, on their return to their homes and peaceful pursuits.

"It is our Royal pleasure that these terms of grace and amnesty should be extended to all those who comply with their conditions before the first day of January next.

"When, by the blessing of Providence, internal tranquillity shall be restored, it is our earnest desire to stimulate the peaceful ministry of India, to promote works of public utility and improvement, and to administer its government for the benefit of all our subjects resident therein. In their prosperity will be our strength, in their contentment our security, and in their gratitude our best reward. And may the God of all power grant unto us, and to those in authority under us, strength to carry out these our wishes for the good of our people."

LETTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE QUEEN'S PROCLAMATION AND ITS PROMISES.

THE Queen's proclamation has gone forth throughout the length and breadth of India, telling its princes and its people that a new era has begun, that the age of middlemen has passed away, that the Sovereign has entered at last upon her inheritance. It is quite impossible to overrate the momentous nature of such a document. It is not only the first (if I mistake not) which has ever been directly addressed by the wearer of the English crown to the natives of India: It claims for itself a character of permanency, definitiveness, which no Governor-General's proclamation can lay claim to. So long as we have any national dignity at all, it must determine to all time the fundamental character of English dominion in India. It is, in truth, British India's Magna Charta; but one, not extorted from a cowardly tyrant, but freely granted by a gracious lady, ruler over willing subjects, lawful sovereign of free-born men.*

So deeply do I feel that the policy marked out by the proclamation, whatever minister's hand may have worded it, must be the abiding policy of England

* I am not overlooking the paramount authority of Parliament over India, asserted ere this by numberless statutes. But no Act of Parliament ever came home to the natives of India as the proclamation will have done.

towards India, that, had it gone against my own views, I should have bowed before it, convinced that fixity of purpose-not excluding, indeed, development and adaptation-is absolutely essential to the stability of empire. As it is, however, I place it gladly in the forefront of a work written in great measure before its promulgation, which it enables me to weed of many a train of reasoning useless henceforth, when, instead of having to establish my own footing, I have but to take up the standing-ground which is afforded to me.

The scrupulous observance of treaties-abstinence from extension of territory-the open avowal of Christianity, but respect to the native creeds-admission of natives to office-maintenance of native rights of property in land-form now the bases of England's Anglo-Indian policy. To show as a whole what should be built upon these foundations far transcends my powers, or, I take it, those of any single man. I wish only to sketch out some of the consequences which appear to me to be involved in that policy, dwelling upon one or two points which I deem of especial importance now. The work will be better done, I suspect, if the promises of the proclamation are taken up one or two at a time by single men, so as to show why it became necessary to put them forth,-how they can best be carried out,-what interferes with their fulfilment.

For let us be assured that something does interfere and will interfere with the fulfilment of every single gracious pledge which the proclamation contains. There never was a right thing done in the world (and never will be) but some wrong one has fought with it,

and sought to strangle it from the first. In the present case, it is impossible to mistake the evil influences at work. At home, a Council containing some of the worst representatives of the old India House,-an East India Company still struggling to maintain a ghastly sort of existence after its political death,-a gloomy Leadenhall Street dungeon-palace (haunted, to the native's eye at least, with many a memory of injustice, and callousness, and despair), still shrouding the Government of India within its recesses, and cutting it asunder from the great shrines of our national greatness at Westminster, the Hall, and the Abbey, and the Palace, -in India, a whole generation of officials and their dependents, bred and trained up under another system, wedded to other traditions ;-above all, perhaps, the feelings of imperious hatred to their darker fellowsubjects, which the rebellion seems to have called forth in the Anglo-Indian population at large,-offer of themselves obstacles the most serious to the loyal and thorough carrying out of the principles of the proclamation, even if there were no warfare going on, no armies on foot, no Tantia Topee to reduce, no native hatreds, treacheries, and discontents. Very ominous was it to notice, in the Times' Bombay Correspondent's account of the Proclamation festivities at that Presidency, that the quarter of the European residents was dark amidst native illuminations,-the Parsee residences in particular being all a-blaze with light. Very dissonant with the Queen's proclamation

*

* At Madras—both governor and commander-in-chief being absent -there were no fireworks, no illuminations, no street pageants, so dear to the natives, no public entertainments, as there were even at minor stations throughout the country.

is that of the Governor-General which accompanies it, dated 1st November, 1858, which "summons" the faithful to co-operation, which will "exact a loyal obedience" from India's millions,-as if loyalty were capable of being exacted! I cannot wonder that earnest men, even now, dare hardly hope in the reality of the new policy. "There was not a single promise in the proclamation," writes one of such, "that has not been made in the most solemn way before, and as regularly broken; and after about six months' of the Queen's Government, I do not see a symptom in any department of measures to carry out the promises of the Proclamation; indeed, as far as symptoms go, I see indications of an adherence to the old Company's system." Such forebodings may be amply justified, yet for years to come, by events; in spite of amnesties and gracious promises, we may yet have other rebellions to subdue. And still, I believe that it would be most unwise not to accept the proclamation, in the very length and breadth of it, as true; as expressing that which ought to be, that which is, England's policy towards India; as supplying a definite standard by which to measure the future acts of Governors-General and of ministers. For though men's words often transcend their acts,-though the humiliating contrast between large promise and small performance meets us on all sides at every step,-yet it is no less true that words of grace and justice, once put forth, have a power as it were to draw up men's acts towards their own level. And it is characteristic of English history, that our national liberties have always developed themselves by taking men's words in earnest, at their full weight, from whatever lips they might proceed; by forcing those lips, however false, to