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Umritsur, with its golden temple and fine country, was our first halt on leaving Lahore. Here again were complaints of the waterlogging of the land, consequent on the embankments from the Baree Doab Canal.

The European officers have much influence, and would gladly use it in protecting the people, but they are too generally moved about so much from one station to another, or so closely confined to office work, that they have not time to become thoroughly acquainted with their stations. Their representatives, the tahsildars, or native collectors, if they cannot get the revenue otherwise, will in extreme cases sell up every head of stock and every bushel of corn, and even the very beams of the man's house, and put him into confinement for two or three days. Such powers, they say, are in many cases indispensable to obtain payment.

On the 25th of November we left Umritsur and proceeded to Kappoortulla, a native State in the hands of a little Rajah of six, who is under the superintendence of a British resident. The child Rajah lives in a house apart, going to his mother, the Ranee, every night. The resident lives at the Rajah's palace, a very handsome house, with busts in the hall, of the Queen and Prince Consort and Lord Canning, and pictures in the drawing-room, of the Prince and Princess of Wales by Sant, and of Sir Robert Montgomery. A force of 500 infantry, with cavalry and artillery, was being sent by this State to the front, and we were invited to inspect them. The resident here, who has been a settlement officer and is familiar with our system, finds the rate of Government assessment on the land half as much again as ours, while sales of property under mortgage are very few. The Government keep the bunyias more in order than we do. The higher revenue officers, having smaller districts, know the headmen of all their villages better. It is only in this respect that he would change anything in our management for theirs; but this better knowledge of the headmen, if possessed by our European officers, would give them a clearer insight into the actual condition of the people.

Crossing the plain some miles beyond the camp, I found much of it rendered barren by the rhé, or salt efflorescence, generally ascribed to canal irrigation; but, as there are no canals in this State, it cannot arise from that cause here. The mud houses in the first village we came to had been to a large extent melted by the late heavy floods of this season, many inches of rain having fallen in twenty-four hours. The people were busy rebuilding their dwellings, which are neither better nor worse than those in British territory. The people looked exactly the same their average holdings, six to seven acres. The only crop which received no injury from the flood was the sugar-cane, which, so long as it can keep its head above water, remains uninjured by it. Near the city the land is richly cultivated, and lets as high as 41.

an acre.

The principal minister, a native, who accompanied us in

our ride, was minutely acquainted with the condition of the people and their modes of cultivation.

In the evening we left for Jallundar, and thence proceeded to Roorkee, where we were very kindly received by Major Brandreth, who is in charge of the college for engineers here, which, with the Government workshops, we visited in the afternoon. I here got

my first view of the Himalayas, with a grand snow-clad peak 22,000 feet high topping the rest of the vast wall that shuts in the great Indian plain. There is between us and the high range a lower range of hills, but they scarcely seem to intercept the view of the mighty ridge beyond. The great plain seems a dead level, shut in by the mountains, from which it has in long course of ages gradually crumbled down. As the sun set the nearer hills had a rosy hue, and the distant snowy mountain-peaks shone out sharp against the sky.

We had a most interesting trip to Hurdwar, which is the first point where the Ganges leaves the hills and enters the plains. The river is here embanked along its various streams and all collected to one point, where, according to its fulness, the necessary volume is passed into the canal and the rest left to run away in its natural course. At this time (November) and for the next five months ninetenths of its waters are taken into the canal. When the rains set in, and the snow begins to melt on the high mountains, one-tenth will be sufficient. The canal is a stupendous work, worthy of a great nation desiring to protect its passive subjects from famine. The principle of it is to lift part of the water of the Ganges from its natural bed and run it by an artificial channel along the watershed of the country, whence it can be allowed to flow through the adjacent country by irrigation channels, to secure the crops from drought. The canal is a great deep river, flowing at the rate of one to two miles an hour, and in the course of its first twenty miles from Hurdwar it is passed below two wide beds of torrents, through one, and over a fourth, all with extraordinary engineering skill. It was designed by Sir Proby Cautley, an artillery officer with a great genius for engineering, and is a monument of his talent. It carries the water for 260 miles through the rich Doab, or flat country between the Ganges and Jumna. The snow-melted water is 60° in summer when the air is 110°, and this coldness of the water is at that season sometimes injurious to the crops.

Near Hurdwar, which is the holy place to which all Hindus endeavour to make a pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime by themselves or proxies, we met many of them returning, carrying a bottle of the water of the holy river. We rode on elephants through the town. When we reached the top of the high, broad flight of stone steps down which the pilgrims go to bathe, the huge animals stood still for a little, while we looked down upon the scene.

To my

astonishment they then in single file slowly descended the steps, and walked into the river among the bathers, and the sacred fish which swim in swarms at this point. No one seemed surprised. We crossed a little arm of the stream, or rather a bay, and ascended some steep and broken ground, which the sagacious creatures managed without difficulty. As we looked down from the height to which we had then reached, a dead man was seen floating past on the broad stream. On reaching the higher dam we returned by boat, and were rowed swiftly down the stream, passing the temples on the river-front, from which they looked much finer than from behind. But the reality is not to be compared with the pictures one sees; for really the temples are mean-looking and all out of repair. The grandeur is in the great river and the gap in the mountains through which it passes out, and in the profound distance towards the great Himalayan chain whence it comes.

The engineering college at Roorkee has three classes-the first for the higher branch of engineering, the second for secondary work, and the third for mechanical operations. The numbers now admitted are restricted, as there is not employment for the men who could be turned out both here and at Cooper's Hill. The workshops, under Mr. Campbell, make all kinds of articles for Government use-military and engineering tools, agricultural implements, hand-pumps, sugar-mills, machinery of various kinds. He finds native labour, at any work except farm work, as dear as European. The people have no liking for piece-work, at which they might earn higher pay. They say that hard work makes them ill; and what advantage is it to earn more than suffices for the day? When they quarrel, which they often do, they don't fight, but they damage each other's work and make charges against each other, the truth being difficult to elicit. I was informed by the magistrate of the cantonment, a military officer who has been many years in the country, that nine-tenths of the cases are mere squabbles, that might be much better settled at home than by dragging people for miles, and detaining them for days at a court of justice. The people are like children, constantly squabbling, and they go to law, get up false evidence, and do all sorts of tricks for mutual annoyance, which our courts facilitate and the pleaders encourage. A punchayet, or native court, he thinks, composed of a headman from each adjoining five villages, meeting once a week at each village in succession, could settle all petty cases and put a stop to the chief part of the present litigation.

JAMES CAIRD.

(To be continued.)

THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES.1

THOSE Who call themselves by the most honourable name of Radicals, may fairly be challenged to show that they have the will and the courage to go to the roots of things. No labour ought to daunt them in the search of truth; no prejudice should be allowed to hinder its reception; no alarm at the convictions to which they are drawn should make them recoil from their conclusions. Now those who inquire in this spirit must occasionally have asked themselves this question-what is the end to which they are straining in promoting the reform of any electoral system? What is the object of government? What are the things they desire the Government to do? As we are going to talk about the modes of electing the governing body of the kingdom, we must know the use this governing body should serve. It is clear that if we are to have precise ideas as to the proper mode of reconstructing the forms of electing any governing authority, we must have some precise idea as to what that authority should do. Of course, if you make a tool, you must have respect to the end for which that tool is designed. This is the workmanlike method of procedure, but in order to be workmanlike we must not only have respect to the ends we are striving after, but also to the conditions subject to which we work. We have inherited much from the past, and we have a present to sustain as well as a future to bring about. We must try to measure as accurately as we can the forces with which we have to deal, and we must live now in order to live hereafter. To be long-sighted but patient, sober and yet persistent, is what we should desire to be if we would do wise, fruitful, and enduring work.

What then is the purpose of governmental machinery? I sometimes put it to myself in this way. In this nation of ours there are born day by day a great number of children. Those children, as soon as they are born, have certain interests and rights. The law protects them. The law punishes any neglect of them. The law insists upon proper provision being made for their sustenance-in the first place, by their parents, and, if these are unable to render it, then the

1 Report of a lecture delivered at the Radical Club, Southwark.

law provides the means by which sustenance will be supplied. As these children grow up they have to be educated, and the law takes no little interest in their education. In a greater or less degree there are provided the means of education-primary education, intermediate education, higher education. So far as the law takes note. of these things, it would seem to be part of the aim and purpose of government to take care that the intellectual and moral faculties born in these children should be developed, so that, when they come to maturity, they shall be active and useful parts of the nationthat their best faculties should be drawn out in the best way, so that the best services may be given to the nation. Then after a time some will enter into trades, others into professions, and thus we come to deal with questions of technical education and professional education, which no government wholly neglects. Most of the children that come to maturity get married, and the Legislature has to deal with the principles of the marriage laws, principles of the utmost importance in regulating the relations between men and women, and in governing the way in which the children, the offspring of the marriage, shall be educated and reared. Finally, the nation at large, being an assembly of human beings of certain powers and degrees of intelligence, has relations to other nations, to the whole family of mankind; and the supreme authority of the nation is the embodiment of its will, the representative and master of its forces in dealing with other nations. Therefore, if I were to ask myself what is the end and purpose of government, I should say it is to do thisto enable those faculties, which hour by hour come into existence, to be developed in the best possible way, so as to be of the greatest possible use, so that each member may do his part, and that the nation as a whole may do its best, first by itself and again in relation with the other nations and races in the world. Government exists to promote the free and noble development of the industrial, the intellectual, and the moral forces of the nation. This is partially recognised in the expression of the first Napoleon, but the open career for talent is properly demanded in the interest of the race rather than of the individual. Association in the community is indeed part of the development of the individual, who leads an imperfect life unless he is thus built into the frame of the whole.

In this picture of the scope of government you have no distinction put before you of classes, nor indeed of sexes. Each person is interested in the result. Each person is affected by the form of government you may choose to establish; and it is eminently desirable and even just that each person shall have some influence in deciding the form of government. The first conclusion which is forced upon us by this analysis is that, whatever else is done, the ultimate form of government should be determined by the resultant. will of the inhabitants of the country. It should be the outcome of

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