criminals for surrendering Englishmen to death finds it impossible to convict the head of the Government who killed them, of murder. We have now exhausted our subject and our space, and must conclude. We have endeavoured to set before our readers briefly the main principles which guide the present administration of Oudh. We do not fear that those who are best acquainted with the facts should accuse the Government of any unworthy truckling to class prejudices or a powerful aristocracy. The policy of allying the upper classes passively and actively with the executive is professedly that of an aristocratic complexion, and long may it continue so to be, if future years only shall continue to exhibit the present successful results. The Government now possesses in a marked degree the good will of its subjects in Oudh, and this has been won by a ready acknowledgment of the station and rank of those who give the tone to the mass of the population. No undue concessions and indiscriminate conciliations have been practised, but the condition on which our favors have been granted has been that of prior unhesitating obedience on their part, not to the orders only, but the wishes of the Government. Instances have occurred where Talookdars have not understood this, and have shewn a spirit of recusancy and fractiousness to what they deemed a mild and perhaps weak Government. But they have met with a stern justice which has effectually cured themselves and opened the eyes of their neighbours to the fact that, willing as we are to meet our subjects half way in all questions of their personal rights and comforts, anxious as we are to see well conducted aristocracy take its proper position in the country, yet, no latitude is allowed in obedience to the orders of Government, and that they will best increase their own influence by promoting the objects which their rulers have at heart. We do not hesitate to express our belief that the majority of the landbolders in Oudh would eagerly seize any occasion which would enable them to exemplify their loyalty and good feeling towards us. The late circulation of Hindee letters which was pretty general in this province and the North West Provinces, though it is not considered to have borne any political significance but a precaution against the spread of cholera, was first brought to light by Maharaja Maun Sing, one of the most powerful of the Oudh Chiefs-and we do not look on this man, who is foremost in his devotion to the Government, as owing to it so entirely as others do the high position which he enjoys. His voluntary information is merely cited as an evidence of the existence of a feeling which is widely shared by the mem SEPTEMBER, 1860. U bers of his class, and we venture to predict that under a continuance of the present liberal policy, the feelings of good will and kindness which exist between the officers of Government and the people of Oudh will be surely and rapidly developed to the mutual advantage of both parties. We now take leave of our subject, and bid farewell to Oudh and to her Government. Circumstances have lately caused it to occupy a position in the eye of the public beyond the proportion. of the interest which it can fairly claim from its area or political importance. When scarcely freed from the effects of the Mutiny of 1857, it was selected as the arena on which the most liberal policy which has yet emanated from the Government of India, was to be introduced. The abolition of all former landmarks afforded peculiar facilities for inaugurating a new regime, which we suspect will ultimately extend far beyond the limits of the province itself. Naturally the experiment has attracted great interest, among all classes of society. In truth, it marks a most important period in the annals of India, and one pregnant with great results-whether for good or for evil time alone can show, but for ourselves we have no doubt of the issue. Hitherto, the tendency of British rule in India, as in all other places, has been to level all distinctions of races, creeds and classes-to perfect the system, at the sacrifice of the individual. The result has been everywhere to give great weight to what in England are known as the middle classes. Under our free institutions the growth of such is a matter of course, and where this section of the body politic represents, as it does in England, a great amount of intelligence, a vast amount of industry, and an ineradicable love of fair play, law and order, the encouragement which gives weight to such a class can hardly be too freely given. But, to venture a truism, Asia is not Europe. The want of education, and the absence of cohesion among the middle classes in India, the diversity of their interests, and their inherited. instinct to follow rather than to lead, places them on a far lower level than the masses in England and America. They are not yet of sufficient substance to form a party, and no Government can yet rule India, by attaching itself to the interests of those, who in the hour of trial have no one principle of action to guide them, and no steadiness of character on which their rulers can confidently rely for support. The true ally of the British Government in India is, not the independent, or quasi-independent prince, or the representatives of the old dynasties, nor is it those lower classes of society whose welfare and comfort our policy has so eagerly sought and secured; but it is the hereditary class of nobility, the aristocracies of birth and land. These form the class which it is the interest of England to encourage, that she may in her turn look to them for support and assistance. Such men represent real, strong, well-defined and tangible interests-they have a stake to lose, and a status to maintain— and a sound healthy appreciation of their position, while it gives them a clear and determinate principle of action, renders them a reliable support against such convulsions as have lately shaken British rule in India to the very centre. It is idle to speak of patriotism and loyalty in a country which has never known either. Despotism, the only mastership which an Asiatic recognises, promotes the growth of neither, and depends on neither for its stability. We are indisputably supreme in India, we fear no outward rival there, all our dangers must ever be from the people of the soil itself. Our empire stands assured to us from day to day by the presence and support of a large British army; but England feels the drain. With the enormous calls upon her strength in every quarter of the globe she cannot give but a portion of her strength to her Eastern Empire. To hold that with the least strain on her population and her finances, is the problem of Indian Government; and to solve that, it should be the object of our rulers to ally themselves with that class of the community which can best ease our burden and best give the assistance we want. We have absorbed rivals; we must seek for the required support from our own subjects, and we believe that in the hour of need this will be best found in the ranks of a judiciously fostered and liberally governed native Indian aristocracy. ART. VI.-A Collection of 510 Pamphlets on the East Indies and China, in 95 Volumes. Ir is 10 years since we wrote the article, "Calcutta in the Olden Time-its Localities," in which we endeavoured to take up what was interesting connected with sites in Calcutta, the genius loci. We now resume the second part, "Calcutta in the Olden Time-its People," which will refer in a cursory way to the various classes of inhabitants last century, their social state, dress, food, recreations, manners, and diseases. Late years have witnessed the annihilation of that mighty East India Company, "the Empire of the middle classes," which so long ruled with absolute sway over the East, and whose name was every thing in Calcutta last century, which survived all the shocks to trade under which the Dutch, French and German East India Companies sank. It is a question whether it has yet been succeeded by a better form of Government, one that will guard Indian interests and finances so faithfully and which will not allow the rights of natives to be sacrificed, in order to swell the coffers of Mammon. The Company invariably resisted, as far as they could, the spirit of political and military aggression, they might have been reformed, but destruction was not the remedy: and now we fear in spite of themselves and their better principles, the Queen's Government is imperceptibly drifting into a policy like that of Austria in Italy, whose main points were unity, and centralization to the sacrifice of local Government, a foreign agency to administer as conquerors, and an entirely foreign army to back their views out. We know the result now in Italy, in spite of Austrian cannons and soldiers,-nationalities will have their sway and so it will be in India. The East India Company won India, the problem is will the Queen's Government keep it. Without the Company's influence at one time it could not have been secured, as Cromwell found when in 1654 he abolished the Company, but discerned that the Dutch made such way in India and Ceylon that he was obliged to restore the Charter. The following lines were often quoted in old books in reply to people who argued that the best remedy for Indian evils was to transfer the Government to the Crown I was well, I would be better, .The remedy was worse than the disease and the victim of empiricism died. St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great at the same time that Calcutta was by Job Charnock, both were erected in swamps, amid an unhealthy climate, both became the capitals of mighty empires. How little could either of the founders have anticipated that by the year 1860 both the Anglo-Indian and Russian Empires would nearly meet in Asia, separated only by a few hundred miles and that Kossacs would have done for one what Sepoys have effected for the other. We want in this antiquarian article to avoid all reference as much as possible to questions of the day, which now unhappily divide Europeans from natives. Looking at the past we have great reason to thank God and take courage. The Europeans have greatly improved in morals and socially, the natives also have better houses and are higher in the social scale: the millionaires of Calcutta among the natives are men who have realised their property by trading, like Mutty Loll Sil who rose from being a seller of bottles at 8 rupees monthly to be the Rothschild of Calcutta ; last century had such men as Kanta Baboo, Hastings' Dewan, who made such enormous sums by bribes. In contrasting Calcutta now with the Calcutta of last century we must take into account the progress of things every where; when we find so low a state of things among the Europeans in Calcutta last century, should we have found them much higher in London. Talk of Barwell's and Francis' profligacy, what was it to the Court of George the Fourth or that of Versailles ; debasing pleasures were common to England and Calcutta-each had its Ranelagh. The reader of this article will, we trust, see in comparing the present with the past, that in various points we have improved, not merely the nous changeons tout cela: the hand of God ought to be seen in social changes as well as in his Revelation or his Book of Nature; our own spirits have been often cheered when discouraged by existing evils, in reviewing the past. One of the difficulties of dealing with Old Calcutta is the danger of taking single instances as examples instead of exceptions. Thus any one having known Calcutta would have been surprised at the statement of Sir J. Royd to the Grand Jury of Calcutta in 1812 that" not a single instance of depredation on private 'property has occurred during the last six months of magnitude 'sufficient to be brought before you and this Court." As exculpatory on one side as Sir M. Wells on a recent occasion was condemnatory on the other. We profess to give only a very brief sketch here of Old Calcutta, to enter into the subject fully would fill the whole of this Review. We shall as far as possible avoid repeating things which are generally known, or drawing from the ordinary books |