invaluable adjuncts, relieving the European from all those duties which are unsuited to him in an Indian climate, while in time of peace they would amply suffice for the discharge of police duties, such as treasure and jail guards, and in short for all those services which the Sepoys have hitherto performed, but which from their organization they perform both clumsily and badly.

It can scarcely be doubted but that some such scheme will be eventually adopted, but a more pressing question is, what we are to do with the revolted Sepoys, who are or have been in arms against us? As long as every mail brought news of fresh horrors, the cry was naturally for vengeance, and it is hardly surprising that men should be found to advocate the slaughter of the whole Sepoy race. Now that the danger has passed, it is hoped that calmer counsels will prevail. If we were going to abandon India in disgust we might adopt the savage policy of destroying the buildings (as we did, little to our credit, at Cabul), and inflict such a punishment as would make us remembered but execrated, for centuries. But such a policy would find few advocates at present, and at any time would have been worse than unworthy of us. It would have been as humane and as just to have murdered the Bomarsund prisoners during the Russian war; for after they lay down their arms the Sepoys are our prisoners, and are quite as much at our mercy as if shut up in our jails. There is no doubt the distinction that they are rebels against the power whose pay they took, and to whom they professed an allegiance; but we must not forget that, whatever may be our ideas on the subject, the natives do not consider this a mutiny, but a fair and even a patriotic war. Those acquainted with the native character will admit that they are neither demoralized nor degraded by the part they have taken in the struggle, but will be as good citizens and would be as good soldiers after it as before.

Although it is dangerous to advance such an argument among Europeans, it is nevertheless true, that the murder of their officers was considered by them as one of the conditions of the fight, and was, alas! a too melancholy compliment to our prowess. The rebels well knew that if warned they would escape, and no less that, from their courage, their power of combination, and their resources, they would render impossible the success of the revolt. The Sepoys took in consequence the sanguinary precaution which is not altogether revolting to the natural ferocity, when roused, of the Asiatic mind, and which was the only one which promised them a chance of victory. They did not dare to meet even their officers in fair fight, and they felt that, while an European remained alive in the land, the empire of India could not be theirs. To this we must add, that where the atrocities which

which have been perpetrated can be brought home to Sepoys, no appeal for mercy can be heard. But ful evidence on this point is still wanting. The whole jail population of the country has been let loose; all the scum of the population that congregates about large cities and military cantonments is now at the surface; and there are no doubt fanatic and brutal men among the Mahometan Sowars, and other branches of the service. To what extent the regular Sepoy has been involved in the massacres and outrages remains to be seen. Let us at least hope that the bulk of them will be entitled to an acquittal; for after the embers of the mutiny are stamped out, and the revolters have laid down their arms, every man that is executed will be a martyr, and every measure of severity will only tend to embitter the quarrel, without effecting any good. If we intend to live in peace with them, and to do our best to advance their material and social prosperity, it would be well, when the stern and imperative demands of justice have been satisfied, to show ourselves for the rest as generous as we are strong, and by daring to despise their opinions on our conduct, they will eventually ascribe it to the right motive, whatever that may be.

With the overwhelming European force which is now at their command, the authorities in India will be powerful enough to choose whatever course they think best; and as the task of reconstruction will fall principally to the lot of the officers of our army, it is not probable that too great leniency for the past, or any excess of affection for the natives, will be allowed to have weight in their decision. The Sepoy will be reduced to his proper position as an auxiliary; and if this is accompanied by a general disarmament of the people, to the extent at least of taking from them their artillery and destroying their forts, not only will our empire be stronger than before, but it may be preserved without the unwieldy native armies which have hitherto exhausted its resources. With the experience we have gained, it is to be hoped that no great mistakes will be made in this direction; but a far more difficult and delicate task remains in the reorganization of the civil government, and placing it on such a basis as shall enable it to develop the resources of the country, and raise the revenue so as to meet the current expenses of the state.

Of late years every annual statement has shown a great and increasing deficiency, and successive loans are heaping up a debt that may shortly become a serious burthen on the finances of the country. A great part of this is no doubt owing to recent wars, which have been forced on the Government by unforeseen aggressions, and a great deal also is due to the expenditure on public works which may be profitable; but the revenues show

no

no elasticity compared with the drain. We are placed in the anomalous position of being absolute rulers of the richest country in the world, without being able to make it pay its expenses; and, although essentially a commercial nation, we can carry on its trade only by such an afflux of bullion as must disorder the financial arrangements of even the wealthiest nation of the world.

Unless these conditions can be altered, it will be impossible for us either to benefit the people of India, or to profit ourselves by our connexion with her. Whether or not the civil service is to blame, there is no question but that the whole responsibility of whatever is good or evil in the government of the country rests on their shoulders. Though under different titles, the whole rule of the country has practically been in their hands for the last hundred years. The governors have generally been strangers, and have seen only through their eyes, and even the Court of Directors have practically been always influenced by the suggestions emanating from this body. Though younger than most corporations in Europe, they have, from their exclusiveness and local character, acquired a batch of traditions and of privileges which would do honour to the oldest guilds of the west, and has enabled them till lately to resist every change. As they were in the good old days of the Company's monopoly, so are they now. Yet with all its defects the system has produced a body of men unsurpassed, either for talent or integrity, by any service in the world, and which might be admirably suited to the former status of India. But they have not changed with the times. Their training, in fact, is of a contracted and exclusive kind. Those destined for the service were taken before their school education was finished to undergo a special education in an exclusive class college. The first day they passed on board ship on their way to India they could not help being aware that they had assumed a rank that placed them above the rest of their fellow passengers. Arrived at the Presidency, the civilian passed at once into the house of one of the magnates of his own class, and became the welcome guest at Government House, and sought after in the best society of the Presidency; while the poor cadet was left to find his level among the subalterns in the fort, and the merchant disappeared in the counting-houses of his friends. After a short probation the civilian was sent up the country, and became at once a ruler in the land, with a salary that an officer in any other service could only hope to attain after many years of employment. Thenceforward he rose by seniority from one position of importance to another, and if his health lasted he succeeded to posts which in any other country are only given to

the

the selected few. No man was ever dismissed the service for incompetency, and very few indeed for misconduct. Whatever such a career may do for a man, it certainly is not calculated to stimulate him to any earnest study of his professional duties, and it raises him far too much above those he is to govern to allow of his acquiring any real knowledge of their wants and habits. On the other hand, in order to maintain the appointments of the civil servants at the high rate at which they now stand, their numbers are so few that three men, one as judge, another as magistrate, and a third as collector, are supposed to be sufficient to manage the whole judicial, criminal, and revenue affairs of a district containing 3000 or 4000 square miles, and from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 inhabitants; as many as are included in the whole lowlands of Scotland south of the Clyde and the Forth. This evil, and it is one of the first magnitude, might be greatly modified if there was any other class, native or European, to whom a portion of these duties might safely be delegated. Since Lord William Bentinck's time, a good deal has been done in advancing the natives to positions of trust, but with doubtful success, and the jealousy of the service has hitherto prevented the far more certain expedient of allowing additional Europeans to partake of the present monopoly of power; though it is tolerably certain that if any good is to be done by the English in India, it must be effected through a more liberal infusion of the European element into the government of the country.

When we consider the position of a civilian in his district, we can hardly wonder at his steady resistance to any proposition for bringing more of his countrymen into his district. Unfortunately those natives who most frequent the Company's Courts are neither of the best class, nor good specimens of any class, and generally come there not to seek justice, but to obtain their own ends by means that are too readily available. Whatever decision a judge may give, they are prepared to repeat the usual formula, 'I know only God in heaven and you on earth: what you decree is the will of God.' This, or some such words, is the sole criticism a civilian ever hears from the servile crew that surround him; but when it comes to be the case of some planter or European settler, if the decree is contrary to the facts of the case or to the principles of justice, he speaks out his mind, writes off at once to the papers of the presidency to complain of the wrong he has suffered, and appeals to the Supreme Court for redress. Such conduct must of necessity be extremely distasteful to a man in the civilian's position; and it is asking more than can be expected of human nature to suppose that he should do otherwise than dislike the dissentient who beards his hitherto unquestioned authority.

Yet

Yet it can scarcely be doubtful that a correction of this evil is the thing most wanted in India. If there were in every district a class of men who had the courage to stand up for their rights and insist on justice, none of those acts of oppression which are so loudly complained of could ever have taken place, and we should neither have to blame the arrogance of the service, nor to lament over the servility of its subjects. The feud, however, is one of long standing, and not likely to be easily appeased, inasmuch as it has already produced the very evils which it was intended to check. Till the year 1833 the uncovenanted Englishman had no existence in the eye of the law outside the limits of the three capitals of the presidencies. He could neither hold lands, nor sign deeds, nor possess property. The consequence was that no man of position or of character would jeopardise his property where the law would not protect him, and the first settlers were mere adventurers who had no status elsewhere, and who cared little what they risked, nor much by what means they gained their ends. Matters have improved since 1833; but the feeling still remains, and the civilians continue to charge on the planter the evils which were created by their own system of exclusion. In the attempt to get rid of public opinion altogether, they kept

out the better class and let in the worse.

Since the time that public opinion has penetrated to the remotest districts of the country, and it has been impossible for the civilian to put down the planter with a strong hand, the service has been clamouring for an Act of Council, most justly denominated the Black Act by the English inhabitants of India, the effect of which would be to place the liberty of every Englishman outside the Mahratta Ditch at the mercy of any civilian who chose to take umbrage at his conduct. If it were passed into a law every settler must either leave the country or imitate the servility and resort to the bribery and lying of his native compeers; and if this class of men would alone become planters, it would be better that they were eradicated altogether. The details of these squabbles have ordinarily little interest for English readers, but one notable instance has recently attracted the attention of the public. The whole of the unpopularity with which the administration of Lord Canning is viewed by the inhabitants of Calcutta is owing to his listening in an evil hour to the civilian theory that all Europeans not of the service are no better than natives. If the Governor-General had passed an act suppressing the wretched native press altogether, neither native nor European would have uttered one word in its defence; and if he had then passed a second act, appealing in the preamble to the patriotism of his fellow countrymen, and explaining the emer

gency