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part of India. It is that of the Minister of State. His dwelling is little better than a shed: the walls are naked, and the mud floor, for the sake of coolness, is every morning sprinkled with a mixture of water and cow-dung. He has no furniture in it. He distributes food to whoever wants it, but he gives no grand dinners to his friends. He throws aside his upper garment, and, with nothing but a cloth round his loins, he sits down half-naked, and eats his meal alone, upon the bare earth, and under the open sky.

In regard to imports from India, Munro remarked that India was capable of supplying to any extent most of the articles at that time imported, and that every measure by which the demand could be enlarged, and the supply facilitated, of those commodities which do not interfere with our own manufacture, would promote the national prosperity. The demand for Indian cotton goods in the English market had already begun to fall off, owing to the improvement of the manufacture in England, and Munro foresaw that it would fall still lower, though apparently he did not anticipate the great extent to which the native manufacture would be superseded, at no very distant date, by the produce of the Lancashire mills. His views on the trade question, and his opposition to the complete abolition of the monopoly, if judged by the light which subsequent experience has thrown upon the subject, may perhaps appear to have been deficient in that sagacious foresight which usually characterized his opinions; but there is enough in the foregoing extracts to show that he was by no means ignorant of the true principles of economic science, and that he was only deterred from assenting to their immediate application to the case under discussion by a consideration of the peculiar and anomalous circumstances under which the British Empire in India, at that time still in a condition of growth, had been formed, and by the conservative tendency which disinclined him to alter any existing institutions that notwith

standing occasional defects, were on the whole working well, for the sake of theoretical advantages, the certainty of which had not been established.

Munro was also opposed to the unrestricted admission of Europeans into India, but his objections on this point do not seem to have been very strong. Owing to the commercial habits of the natives, and the superior economy of their mode of life, he saw no prospect of any considerable number of Europeans being able to make a livelihood in the country. He said in his evidence before the House of Commons:

The people of India are as much a nation of shopkeepers as we are ourselves. They never lose sight of the shop: they carry it into all their concerns, religious and civil. All their holy places and resorts for pilgrims are so many fairs for the sale of goods of all kinds. Religion and trade are in India sister arts: the one is seldom found in any large assembly without the society of the other. It is this trading disposition of the natives which induces me to think it impossible that any European traders can long remain in the interior of India, and that they must all sooner or later be driven to the coast. What the European trader eats and drinks in one month, would make a very decent mercantile profit for the Hindu for twelve. They do not, therefore, meet upon equal terms: it is like two persons purchasing in the same market, the one paying a high duty, the other none. The extra duty paid by the European is all the difference between his own mode of living and that of the Hindu.

But the subjects upon which Munro's opinions deservedly carried most weight, were those connected with the organization of the army and the great departments of the civil administration, viz. the revenue, the judicial system, and the police. On the first of these questions Munro was a high authority. He had served in all the campaigns against Hyder Ali and Tippoo after 1780, and had been a close observer of the recent campaign against the

Mahrattas. Although so much employed on civil duties, he was a soldier at heart, and the satisfaction which he could not help feeling at his success as a civil administrator, was often mingled with regrets at being debarred from opportunities of advancement in his own profession. While deeply impressed with the necessity of maintaining an adequate British force in India, and conscious of the risk to which that empire must always be exposed from defection on the part of the native troops, he had a good opinion of those troops, and believed that their fidelity might be insured by considerate and judicious treatment. The best way, he considered, of insuring the fidelity of our native troops was to show no distrust, but confidence at all times, to treat them well and keep them occupied, to bring all the corps at certain fixed periods back to their respective native districts, and to take care that none of them were permitted to remain too long in any place where they were likely to be tampered with by any native chief. His views as to the number of European officers required for a native regiment were very similar to those which have been acted on since the mutiny of 1857. He regarded the establishment of European officers provided by the organization of 1796 to be excessive, and he disapproved of the plan of appointing young officers on first obtaining their commissions to native regiments. His opinion was that every officer on first going out to India should be employed one or two years with a European regiment, until he had learnt his duty, and that 'he 'ought not to be transferred to a sepoy corps until, by 'previously serving with a European one, he had made 'himself master of all his duties, and likewise, by being ' in some degree acquainted with the character of the 'natives, qualified to command and to act with sepoys.' He greatly deprecated a proposal which about that time had been made to abolish the Company's European regi

ments, and, on the contrary, was in favour of adding to their number both in infantry and in cavalry.

Enough has been already said of Munro's views on revenue matters. The judicial and police arrangements which had been carried out in Bengal under regulations passed by Lord Cornwallis in 1793, and had been introduced in the Madras Presidency in the earlier years of the present century, were regarded by Munro as involving too great a departure from native institutions to work with success. In both Presidencies there were great complaints of inordinate delay in the disposal of civil suits, and of inefficiency in the repression of crime. The Judge of a district was also Magistrate, and although a stationary officer, was invested with the superintendence of the police. In both Presidencies there were native Judges who disposed of suits of small value, but their salaries were too small to command either efficiency or integrity, and their numbers too limited to enable them to render material aid in disposing of the vast amount of litigation, which was one of the earliest results of settled government. Munro strongly advocated the revival of the native institution called 'pancháyat'—a court of arbitration composed of five or more persons-and the transfer of the duty of superintending the police from the Judge to the Collector, who, moving frequently about his district, and mixing with the people, had better means of effectively supervising the police than were available to a stationary judicial officer. The union, for similar reasons, of the offices of Collector and Magistrate, and the utilization of the village officials to deal with petty offences and with petty suits, were also included in his proposals. Instructions in the sense of Munro's recommendations were sent to the two Presidencies, and in the summer of 1814 he sailed for Madras to carry out the special Commission to which he had been appointed.

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CHAPTER VI.

SPECIAL COMMISSION AND MILITARY COMMAND.

PUBLIC affairs, much as they occupied Munro's time, were not the only matters which engaged his attention during his stay in England. A few weeks before he sailed for India, he married Miss Jane Campbell, one of the daughters of Mr. Richard Campbell, of Craigie House, Ayrshirea beautiful and accomplished woman, whose picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence hangs opposite that of the late Marchioness of Tweeddale in the drawing-room of the Government House at Madras. The marriage appears to have been a very happy one. In Mrs. Munro, or to use the name by which she is best remembered, Lady Munro, he found a wife eminently qualified not only to insure his domestic happiness, but to adorn the high position which a few years later he was destined to fill.

Munro's feelings on proceeding a second time to India were very much those which so many Anglo-Indians have experienced under similar circumstances. Writing to his sister from Portsmouth on the eve of embarkation, he says, 'I was in this place thirty-five years ago, and much more impatient than now to reach my destination; for 'my head was full of bright visions, which have now passed away. I now, I am sorry to say, go out, not to 'hopes, but to certainties, knowing exactly the situation ‘in which I am to be employed, what I am to have, and 'when I am to return. This, to many people, would be very

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