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tinguishing characteristics of their respective governments. Under the former, the general features of the History of the Maharashtra' are so perfectly similar in all respects to those presented by that of any of the other great divisions of Hindoostan, that a very little change of circumstances, and a trifling variation of names, would alone be requisite to render them identical. Ambition, here, as elsewhere, the ruling passion, accompanied by all those horrible concomitants which attend upon it when uncontrolled in its wild career, stalks forth in all its naked ferocity. The finest countries on the earth, in which "all but the spirit of man is divine," have been by that spirit alone rendered little better then desolate wastes ; and wars, usurpations, massacres, assassinations, pillage, and every species of cruelty and oppression, crowding upon each other in one long unbroken series, attest at once the power and the malignity of the passion which gave them birth. From the contemplation of such a tedious catalogue of the atrocities perpetrated by man upon his fellow, the mind recoils with instinctive horror, and turns from the disgusting inquiry,

How tyrant blood, o'er many a region wide,
Rolls to a thousand thrones its execrable tide,'

to examine what have been the effects produced by the influx of Europeans, of their policy, and of their arts upon the condition of the miserable people whom they have invaded, conquered, broken, and at length subdued.

And here we find another passion, certainly not new to India, but never before constituting, under any of its masters, whether Brahmin, Rajpoot, Mahommedan, or Mahratta, the very essence and soul of its government, or perhaps of any other government on the face of the earth. Ambition now gives way to avarice, and the thirst of power is replaced by the thirst of gold. To the restless and turbulent Mahratta, sweeping and devastating entire provinces in his rapid and indiscriminate career of plunder and of conquest, succeeds the wily speculator, intent solely on pecuniary gains, careless of the nature of the means by which those gains are to be secured, and esteeming the very life-blood of the wretched Native as unworthy of a moment's thought, when put in competition with the weightier and more important considerations deduced from his day-book and his ledger. In him, the love of conquest is no longer motived by ambition and the hope of plunder alone; a more permanent and powerful interest is superadded to these, in the prospect of wresting, daily and yearly, until the impoverished wretch can yield no more, from the hard hands of the labourer, nearly the entire produce of his industry, in the shape of land-rent and monopolies, carefully graduated to the highest pitch which it is judged possible for him to hear, to be afterwards remitted to Europe under the name of surplus revenue, an abomination utterly unheard of and unknown under any civilized government in the world. A government thus

systematized on the principles of trade, every act of which is swayed by the simple question of profit and loss, solely occupied with devising the means of squeezing from the unnerved hands of its subjects and of its tributaries the uttermost anna which they possess, and of extending to every neighbouring state a participation in these blessings of its dominion; a government which, fully aware of the uncertainty of its tenure, never wastes a thought or spends a rupee with the intent to farther any improvement in the condition of the people over whom it rules-nay more, which absolutely prohibits others from attempting to promote their advancement in knowledge and in morals, from a well-grounded dread that such an amelioration in their circumstances would accelerate the moment when its own ill-gotten and abused power must finally give way before the outraged feelings of mankind; a government so characterized presents such an anomaly in the history of man as could not be credited without the overwhelming testimony furnished by themselves in almost every document that issues from their pens.

"The records of the Company's government in India are” truly, as Captain Duff remarks, "the best historical materials in the world: there we find the reasons for every undertaking, the steady rules intended for conduct; the hurried letter from the scene of action; the deliberations of the Council, the separate opinions of the members composing it, and their final judgment. The scrutiny, censure, or approval of the Court of Directors, from a remote situation, and after a long interval, bring to recollection all that was done, and all that was speculated; what has occurred in India in the meantime, and what opinions have stood the test of events." In these documents, it may be added, the naked truth is distinctly visible, in all its deformity, through the flimsy covering which is occasionally thrown over it, but which is also frequently neglected, from a conviction at once of its needlessness and inutility. This being the case, we cannot help lamenting that in a work professedly founded upon such excellent materials, the author having, as he states in his preface, read the whole of the Records of the Bombay Government, both public and secret, up to 1795, and extracted from them many large volumes of matter relative to this subject; having been furnished with a compilation made by Mr. Warden from these records for the remaining period; having also obtained a transcript of the records of the old Surat factory, and been allowed partial access to the Bengal correspondence in the East India House-under these circumstances, we repeat, we cannot but lament that he has not given us, in the whole course of his work, one of these documents in its entire state, or even any extract from them of more than a few lines in length. Surely in a history characterized like the present, by the number of new facts which it makes known, derived chiefly from unpublished manuscripts, (which manuscripts also contain the opinions and reasonings of the chief

actors in the events to which they refer, and of those by whom they were controlled,) the reader has a right to look for those pièces justificatives, as the French justly term them, which can alone enable him to judge if the facts are correctly stated, and if the inferences are fairly drawn. The author has, it is true, been most laudably particular in giving reference to his authorities on almost every occasion; but when it is considered that those authorities are for the most part completely beyond the reach of his readers, it cannot be doubted that a judicious selection from the documents themselves would have rendered his work more entirely deserving of confidence in regard to facts. It would also have materially assisted in developing the motives of action (in which point consists nearly the whole of the boasted superiority of the Company's records ;) and would thus have tended to place in a clearer light many measures, the causes and objects of which are either left in obscurity, or are shown by Captain Duff in a point of view so different from that in which they have been exhibited by previous writers, that it is impossible, without an examination of the original authorities, to come to a just conclusion with respect to them.

In making these observations we are far from imputing to our historian any wilful perversion of facts. A careful perusal of his work, together with a calm consideration of the circumstances under which it was compiled, have satisfied us that it has been his endeavour throughout to relate events with honesty and impartiality; and, making allowance for the natural bias towards the Company which an old and favoured servant may fairly be expected to evince, we are of opinion that he often has succeeded. Still, however, we dislike being compelled to pin our faith to the dicta of any man; and would earnestly recommend the author, if he have it in his power, and if no overruling circumstances forbid it, to publish, in a supplementary volume, the most important and illustrative of those state papers from which his statements have been derived. We say, if he have it in his power; for we cannot help suspecting that the authority to which he considered it necessary to apply for "permission to publish the information" which he had collected, may at the same time have placed limits to its permission which it would be impossible for him to overstep. Such a prohibition would be worthy of that honourable Company which is so anxious to prevent the diffusion of accurate information in regard to India. At all events, its feelings on this head are sufficiently notorious to have rendered any person, acting under its sanction and subject to its influence, cautious in infringing upon so important and recognized a maxim of its policy.

Connected with this indisposition to suffer the English public to become acquainted with the true state of affairs in India, we may notice another omission in these volumes which we feel most

strongly. Is it not a little extraordinary that while the author describes with minuteness the condition of the Mahratta race under their Native chiefs, and in particular dwells at length upon the institutions of Sivajee, the regenerator of their power, and upon the modifications which the system established by him underwent during the supremacy of the Peishwas, (thus fully recognizing the principle that these details fall within the province of history, of which, in fact, they form the most essential and instructive part,) he leaves us almost entirely in the dark with regard to the present state of this extensive territory, under the dominion of the British Presidency of Bombay. And what renders this omission the more remarkable, is the fact of Captain Duff's having been, at the period of the "settlement" of the Deccan, appointed Political Resident at Satara, in which capacity he was necessarily compelled, as exercising all the ministerial functions of the sovereignity, to make himself intimately acquainted with every circumstance of importance connected with that portion of Maharashtra which was placed under his control; so that it is highly improbable that any other individual can possess equal information on this particular branch of the subject with himself.

We should indeed have imagined that the closing chapter of a history, terminating with a revolution that absolutely overturned the whole frame of government previously established, and transferred the sovereignty into the hands of foreigners, would naturally have been occupied with an inquiry into the effect produced by this sudden change upon the condition of the people, together with an exposition of the system laid down for the future administration of their affairs. But unfortunately nothing like this exposition is to be found in the volumes before us; and nearly the entire sum of what we learn upon that all-important subject is, that the territory of the Peishwa was divided into four districts, three of which were permanently retained by the conquerors in their own immediate possession; while the fourth, that of Satara, was, after an interval of three years, during which the infant Rajah of seven-and-twenty had been trained in the art and mystery of good government under the tutelage of a Captain in the Bombay Native Infantry, delivered over to his own charge, he agreeing to hold it " in subordinate cooperation to the British Government." Add to this, that the people were to be impressed with the idea that no innovations were to be made upon ancient rights, and that no change was to be introduced except the better administration of the ancient laws; that the revenue was to be collected by government agents, instead of being farmed to the highest bidder; and that certain of the jagheerdars, who had evinced a disposition favourable to the British interests, were to be allowed to retain possession of their jagheers; and the reader will have (with the exception of one solitary, but valuable, paragraph on the judicial system,) nearly as complete an idea of

But

the amount of information to be derived from this chapter as though he had perused it with the most persevering attention. of the system on which the civil administration was to be conducted; of the manner in which, and the officers by whom, justice was to administered, and (what is an infinitely more important consideration with the Company's government) the revenue was to be collected; of the nature and extent of that revenue; and finally, of all those statistical details which are capable of giving an insight into the real condition and prospects of the people, we are either left in complete ignorance, or induced to found conjectures, in all probability erroneous, upon a few slight and imperfect hints. It may be that the author considers the information of this kind, acquired by means of his situation at Satara, in the light of official secrets, which it would be a sort of treason to disclose. In this case, we must respect his motives, while we regret that they have deprived us of the fruits of his investigations, and while we also express the contempt we feel for that pitiful policy on the part of his masters, which could impress him with such an idea.

On a review of what we have written, we are sorry to perceive that so much of it is couched in the language of complaint; but this language has been forced from us, not by the contents of the volumes themselves, but by those omissions in them from which we have experienced no small disappointment, and for which we are unwilling to hold the author responsible. Had we, indeed, been criticising a work, the hasty compilation of one who, having no very deep acquaintance with his subject, had contented himself with borrowing his statements from the most easily accessible authorities, however imperfect such a production might have been, we should hardly have taken the pains to particularize its deficiencies. But the present history is of an entirely different character. In it the author has evidently spared no pains to render his work as com plete and accurate a record of events as could be derived from the almost unbounded command which he possessed of original authorities, as well Native as British. The vast mass of the former, which his official situation and the kindness of his friends placed at his disposal, have contributed, in no small degree, not only to correct, in many instances, the statements of the latter, but also to supply much new and interesting information, which could not have been obtained from other sources. ployed in the examination and comparison of such a body of maThe labour and research emterials as those enumerated in the preface; and in the selection and arrangement of that portion of their contents which was judged of sufficient importance to be submitted to the public, must have been great indeed. And if, in the course of the minute detail into which the author has entered, he should appear occasionally to have dwelt upon matters of trivial interest, it should be remembered that this is a blemish almost inseparable from the treatment of a