dooee language fignifies grain, and the meaning of Koot is conjecture or estimate: the way is this, the land is fred with the crops standing, and which are estimated by inspectio; thofe who are converfant in the business fay, that the calculation can be made with the greatest exactness: if any doubt arife, they weigh the produce of any given quantity of land, confifting of equal proportions of good, middling, and bad, and form a comparative estimate therefrom *. "The Neffuck is the estimate of affets of revenue +"

"It is not

The custom of Bahar. customary in Bahar to divide the crops; the Hufbandman brings the rents himself, and when he makes his firft payment he comes,dreffed in his best attire ‡.

This book being made up of extracts at length, as far as poffible to enable every one to draw his own conclufions, it will

* Ayeen Akberry, Vol. I. p. 379.

+ Ibid. p. 381.

Ibid. Vol. II. p. 31.

be neceffary to make fome very fhort obfervations to refcue this period from hafty criticisms of the fuperficial reader.

Prior to the acquifition of the Dewannee, the Company, in the management of their landed territory, did not feel a common. intereft in the rights of the natives, nor of the Moghul, nor in the confequences of their trade on the general profperity of the country. Governor Holwell and the Company only confidered how much they could get in the fcramble.

Lord Clive, with an ability and decifion which marked his character, and a judicious ufe of the technical term Dewan, acquired an empire, and combined a complex government, capable of being thus kept together by power as abfolute as that of the Moghul, and by ability eminent as his own, until an avowed fovereign could be held forth to rescue the country from the inevitable abuses of nominal fovereignty. The minute above recited fhews Lord Clive to be fenfible of the difficulty and peril to which his fyftem was exposed,

but he did wonders in grafping for Great Britain an empire which his abilities had brought within his reach.

Before we take leave of this period, to which, for the purposes of good and permanent fyftem for British India, we fhall often recur, more for inftruction than imitation, we must remember the concurrent plans of France, and the ability of Bully

"The French appear to have been the first European power that trained the natives of India to regular difcipline, as well as the first who fet the example of acquiring territorial poffeffions, of any great extent, in India*, in which they have been fo fuccessfully followed by the English." In another part of his Memoir, with a liberality of fentiment, and a love of truth which guides the pen of that invaluable geographer, Major Rennell informs us that, had it not been for the marches of M. Buffy (the only monument remain

* Rennell's Memoir, Introd. p. xci.

ing to the French nation of their former fhort-lived influence and power in the Decan) the geography of those parts would have been extremely imperfect; but they extend through more than four degrees of latitude, and more than five of longitude." Mr. Grant examined in detail the financial plans of Mr. Bully in the Decan, interrupted by his being recalled fuddenly into the Carnatic by Lally, juftly accufed of being jealous of Buffy's fame. It will always be an honour to the British name, that the character of that great man, M. Buffy, has been rescued from the nibblers at his fame, by Mr. Orme's investigation of his military and political career-by Mr. Rennell in his geographical-and by Mr. Grant in his financial plans and it will be gratifying to every Englishman, that an English Clive, in ability, decifion, and fuccefs, fhould live preeminent in the page of hiftory; and it is no fmall confirmation of Mr. Grant's opinions, that, on a plan fimilar to his own, Buffy intended to establish the power of France in India.

CHAP. II.

HAVING ftated the principle of

governa ment and revenue at the period of the acquifition of the Dewannes, we must enumerate the financial experiments of the Dewan, under the orders of very refpectable and able fervants of the Company, to whofe lot it fell to endeavour to combine all the

profits of the Moghul, the peculations of the Soubah, to a rack-rent of the territory, by a revenue-adminiftration fuppofed to correfpond with the Moghul fyftem, fupported by the force of the British arms. The veil of a nominal government naturally threw the whole of the detail into the hands of native managers; and the above extracts from Governor Holwell fhew how little the natives had to expect from the moderation in the demands of British management, and how difficult it was to investigate the native forms or inftitutions.