would raise a pitying smile on the face of a Lothian farmer, they often perform wonders in the way of preparing their land. But those Englishmen who want cotton will find their account in leaving the Indian cultivator, who is very often a tenant-proprietor, to his own peculiar mode of raising and cutting his crop, and in purchasing the same, when grown, for ready money. The Manchester merchant or Chamber of Commerce has been told to depute agents to make purchases, to establish warehouses, to set up machinery to clean the cotton, to press and pack it carefully, and then to despatch it to the sea-coast. It is in this way that European capital, energy, and supervision will find the best field of action, and not in the establishment of so-called farms, which, in populous districts, lead to complicated questions as to rights of land, and tend to embroil the farmer in a contest with the Indian cultivator, whose position is either misunderstood or misrepresented by designing writers in India and in England. The Indian Government is doing its part in the construction of roads. The Indian cultivator will do his part in growing any of the expensive kinds of produce for which there may be a regular demand. Lancashire has only to do its part in the transaction, and guarantee to the producer a constant purchaser and a remunerative price. We shall then have no more foolish speeches which attribute the distress in the cotton districts to the dreadful misgovernment of India, or to the inveterate dislike of officials to independent Englishmen; and the cotton question, as it is termed, will then be understood to be governed by the invariable laws which in all countries govern demand and supply.

We turn from this subject, by which India has of late been made familiar to untravelled Englishmen, to others not so well known. The efforts to raise the native character, which have more or less actuated every governor, since the days of Lord William Bentinck, have been crowned with some success. A purer and a more highly-educated

race of native judges now fill the subordinate civil courts. The older, untrained, and not impeccable race of these functionaries is gradually dying out. In the Council of the Viceroy for making Laws and Regulations, and in the separate Local Councils of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, seats are reserved for natives of learning, influence, and position, who engage there in free discussion with English officials of rank, with English barristers of eminence, and with English merchants of wealth and intelligence, on the various subjects in which legislative interference is desirable. The effect of the admission of orientals to a council which legislates for the rights, or prescribes the duties, of the native population, on the native mind generally, has been satisfactory and invigorating. It is a principle, and a sound principle, with men who really wish for the gradual elevation of the natives, that a Hindu or Mahommedan is better suited to the administration of justice, or to the discussion of laws and reforms, in a mixed assembly, than to the free exercise of executive power in some high and responsible situation. The wisdom of this no one should now question. The day may come when a native shall discharge the functions of collector and magistrate, shall represent the government as the highest authority in a district or division, remote from immediate supervision, and shall exhibit those qualities of self-reliance, activity, and fertility of resource in difficulties, by which Englishmen have signalized themselves in every period of Indian history. But this time is not yet; and experience has shown that the native may be just, pure, and conscientious on the bench, or that he may advantageously take part in the deliberations of a council or committee, that he may even carry out complicated details of executive management under the immediate eye of his European superior, but that he has not yet exhibited those qualities of vigour, of fortitude, and of resolution which could lead the Govern

ment to place him in charge of a line of customs on the frontier, or of a district where zemindars and ryots are at issue for their rents, or of a tract of country bordering on the hills, and subjected periodically to a raid of wild tribes. A native, at the commencement of this year, was elevated to a seat in the High Court of Calcutta, and now sits there on the same footing, as regards pay and position, with barrister judges from Lincoln's. Inn, and civilians trained in the language and the customs of the country. The choice of her Majesty's Government has been fortunate in this instance. The first native who sits in the Court which now administers the whole civil and criminal law of Bengal, within and without Calcutta, is a Brahmin whose ancestors came, some generations ago, from the Province of Cashmere, and settled on the plains of the Lower Ganges. Long known to the judges of the old and abolished Sudder Court as an acute pleader, versed in the laws, the literature, and the customs of the Lower Provinces, and of unimpeachable character, he is likely to justify the selection of the Government, and to exhibit, as a judge, qualities equal to those which had distinguished him as an advocate. If the effect of the appointment of native gentlemen to seats in the Legislative Councils was excellent on native society, that of the elevation of a native advocate to the highest judicial office cannot easily be overruled as regards the subordinate native judges and the whole native bar. It has communicated an electrical shock to all gradations of the profession; and every native who now selects the courts as a profession for his children, feels exactly like Paterfamilias, who, when sending one son to the Church, and the other to the Law, sees a mitre or a seat in the Pleas or the Queen's Bench comfortably secured for one and the other.

The advancement of the native is not likely to be discouraged by the nomination of Sir Charles Trevelyan to the post of Member of the

Council of India, or, as it is generally termed, to the post of Minister of Finance. Trained under the auspices and in the school of Lord William Bentinck, he comes, after the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century, to renew his labours in the scene of his early official distinction, speaking the language and understanding the temperament of the natives, and yet bringing with him a large stock of fresh English ideas, which, if applied with discretion, are a sure guarantee for Indian progress and reform. But the chief duty of the follower of Bentinck, and the brother-in-law of Macaulay, will be, for the present, to regulate the expenditure of the empire. In three years' time we have had three English financiers in succession placed at the head of this important department. We are not going here to balance the respective merits as chancellors of the Indian Exchequer, of the late Mr. Wilson and of Mr. Laing, or to re-open the controversy which raged last year between the latter and the Secretary of State. Whatever diversity of opinion there may have been as to the New Currency Bill, or however partial and ineffective, or even unjust, may have been the Income-tax, there is no doubt that the labours of Mr. Wilson were of signal service to the whole Indian Exchequer, and that by him and his successor the finances have been placed on a solid and satisfactory footing. A system of annual budgets has been introduced, and each government and each department now regularly furnishes, not a hasty sketch, but a careful and detailed estimate of its expected income and outgoing for the ensuing year. The Budget is now yearly propounded in an elaborate speech by the Finance minister, who explains the principles on which taxation will be either increased or lightened for the next twelvemonth, balances receipts with expenditure, unrolls figures and statements, and allots definite sums to the various departments of the State to the administration of justice, to education, to political service, to revenue, and to public

works. The publicity and the minute and careful calculations which distinguish these proceedings have materially enhanced the credit of the Government, while they have given confidence to the merchant and the trader. And though it is now no longer disputed that Mr. Laing's mode of calculation was wrong, and that of Sir Charles Wood right, in the quarrel of 1862, yet the present aspect of Indian Finances, thanks to Mr. Wilson and Mr. Laing, is certainly such as to warrant confidence for the future, and to dispel every idea as to Indian insolvency, or as to the inability of that great empire to show a surplus. The amounts of the cash-balances in the Indian treasuries have been steadily increasing in spite of heavy disbursements in India and in England. The public securities now stand at a higher premium than has been known for years. Something of this rise is due to the abundance of money diverted from its ordinary channels in America, and spread over the market at home and abroad. The other sources of Indian income, if not all endowed with the elasticity peculiar to English objects of taxation, have yet shown themselves steadily expansive. The price of opium has not fallen. The revenue from stamps has surpassed even official expectation; and this is, moreover, realized by a cheap, certain, and almost imperceptible process, which generates no discontent, excites no suspicions, presses heavily on no one class of men, and really taxes one form of luxury, in the shape of protracted litigation, which is to the rich native what hunting and yachting are to millionaires in England, or gambling at a German wateringplace is to a Russian nobleman. The returns from salt imported by sea, and the quantity of the article so imported, are such as to have decided the Bengal Government in abolishing the monopoly for the production and sale of salt hitherto enjoyed by it within the tidal limits of the Bay of Bengal. The incometax was last year stripped by Mr.

Laing of some of its most objectionable features; and it is now collected from the returns of the previous year without pertinacious and harassing inquiries into the gains and losses of individuals and firms. Revenue is certainly thus sacrificed to peace and quiet; but he would be a bold financier who, in India, for the sake of an additional half million, would run the risk of exasperating the wealthy or the respectable classes. There is, no doubt, considerable injustice in the income-tax at this moment. It catches, in a mesh from which no one can escape, the savings and the salaries of every servant of Government. It presses on the landholder, native or European, whose rent-rolĺ may be often estimated with some accuracy from the revenue which the estates pay to Government, and which is known to a penny. But it is evaded by the general lender, and often laughed at by a native banker, who, with no lands and no money vested for the securities, owns an enormous amount of floating capital employed in different ventures, and who compounds for an annual payment not one-twentieth of the sum which he ought to contribute. In fact, if we consider calmly the object with which this tax was introduced, we must admit that Mr. Wilson's policy in this respect has had but a partial and moderate success. It has left some classes almost as untaxed as they were before. Its returns have been moderate for a large empire. And it has certainly led to some extortion, and has produced in some quarters a discontent, which is only not fanned into a flame because the hope is cherished that no financier will extend it beyond the period of five years, for which it was originally announced, or may even abolish it before that period expires.

On the whole, however, we may fairly congratulate the government of India on the state of its finances, and on its rapid transition from chronic insolvency to restored public credit. The treasury is overflowing. The public securities are at a premium, which three years

ago no enthusiast would have ventured to predict. The budget for 1863-64 is now expected by the public with quiet confidence, with hopes in this quarter, and fears in that, perhaps, but with nothing of anxiety, distrust, or alarm. One monopoly a word always conveying a hateful sound to English ears -is now sinking into its grave. The condition of the finances justifies a generous and even lavish expenditure on remunerative public works; and the extent and character of those works, as we have already shown, will be more likely in aid of railways to revolutionize India than all the laws that were ever framed, or than any scores of measures, save, perhaps, the education of the masses. Moreover, a good financial system is dependent on the prospect of continued peace. And we have neither a foreign enemy with whom we can wish to quarrel, nor an internal foe, unless one should be provoked by downright mal-administration. No independent native army exists in India anywhere which would twice dare to encounter our troops in the open field. No native potentate now dreams that he can emulate the fame of Hyder, or the successful marches of Holkar, or that he can call into existence a powerful native army animated with the spirit of the Guru, and drilled and disciplined by the veteran captains of France. With the exception of the Nizam's territories, to which we shall advert presently, it is not easy to see in what quarter the elements of fury or disturbance could be compounded into one black mass. Even those uneasy rumours which last year disturbed the peace of anxious brigadiers and alert civilians have entirely died away. Nobody seems to care whether the Nana Sahib is yet lurking in the jungles of Nepaul, or whether he has visited the holy city of Benares in a clever disguise. Every now and then we are favoured with an announcement in the newspapers that punishment, which had been halting with a lame foot after some of the actors in the tragedies of

1857, has at length claimed its victims, and that by a just, impartial, and public trial retribution has fallen on some one whose deeds of blood and prolonged resistance had excluded him from the pale of mercy. Such official and deliberate acts only stamp more deeply on the face of Indian society the impress of our resistless power. In the memorial churches which have lately been erected at Cawnpore and Arrah we were solemnly reminded that henceforth we must be merciful; and we may well hold that such edifices are erected more out of piety to the dead than from a desire to perpetuate a triumph over the living. When we turn further from painful to pleasing reminiscences we have so many examples of devotedness rewarded, so many dresses of honour worn on public occasions by faithful chiefs, so many lands bestowed on the deserving, so many substantial tokens of the gratitude of a great government, that we are led to ask, like the bewildered traveller in the temple of Neptune, where the rebels and the traitors are to be found. We say, in short, that what with the peace that now reigns from the seaboard to the mountain barrier, with a foreign policy which has made the native feudatories comprehend clearly their relation to the British Government, with the sure gradual elevation of qualified natives within

our

own territories to posts of emolument or distinction, with a sound, healthy, and well-established system of finance, with a more uniform and improved administration of civil and criminal justice, with accelerated intercourse, and with numerous other solid and substantial improvements of less note, the territories of the Queen in India do now present something of that picture of peace, prosperity, and progress' which was the earnest and last prayer of one of our greatest rulers, and which his acts, misjudged and misrepresented at one time, have mainly contributed to render possible.

But it would be extremely unfair after the above picture, which is

drawn in sober seriousness, not to point out a few of the dangers which every wise and prudent ruler will do well to keep in view, and against which, to the measure and scope of his abilities and opportunities, he must endeavour to provide a remedy.

One of the most striking delusions engendered by the mutiny is a theory that, in legislating for India, absolute ignorance is better than partial, not to say full, knowledge. There had certainly been points in which the boasted familiarity of Indian officials with 'the habits and feelings of the people' had been found to fail. Magistrates in 1857 mistook the character of influential natives within their districts. Commissioners were incompetent to stop or to track to their source those mysterious rumours, or that circulation of messages by symbols, which heralded the outbreak. And colonels who had grown grey in the service, with a chivalrous confidence in the assurances of ten honest men left in their regiment, steadily believed in the fidelity of the corps, and paid their lives as forfeit for their belief. Therefore, because the officials failed in some instances to appre ciate the magnitude of the danger, or mistook loyal men for rebels, or adopted measures which forced wavering or disaffected men into open revolt, it was imagined that the whole administration of India had been one gigantic error, and that for the future any theories of the sciolist might be freely and safely brought into action. Little notice was taken of the numerous instances in which civilians and soldiers exhibited marvellous tact in temporizing with the disloyal, and in playing off one interest or prejudice against another, or of the skill with which small resources were made to achieve great objects, or of the administrative talent, habit of organization, and complete knowledge of the structure of native society, by which, after a due manifestation of the military power, the civil frame and polity of a province was by civil servants reconstituted

or repaired. Probably some of the extreme delusions as to the ease by which India may be governed in ignorance are passing away. Englishmen may admit that however admirable may be the presence of a viceroy experienced in different diplomatic conjunctures, or of judges with a thorough knowledge of law, or of legislators with a familiarity with jurisprudence, or of financiers with correct opinions on currency, capital, and the distribution of wealth, in high places in India, still the general administration of the country must, after all, rest on the shoulders of those who have given the best part of their lives to the country, who speak the languages, who know the meaning, origin, and effect of each of those strange terms which no untravelled Englishman, save Burke himself, has ever mastered, and who can be trusted to warn the government of a grievance or a harsh law before it is openly resented by the natives in some wild outburst of popular rage. Manchester, for instance, is clearly impressed with the notion that an Indian collector is a personage like Mr. Lillyvick, whose sole duty it is to collect the assessed taxes, with a pen behind his ear, and an ink-horn suspended to his button-hole. Probably it would not occur to the Chamber of Commerce to consult Indian collectors as to the value of landed property, or the increase in cotton cultivation, or the propriety of reducing the income-tax, or as to the making of new lines of road. Yet those statesmen who have studied India thoughtfully well know that a collector is a French prefect, and something more, that he unites in his person the functions of a land-agent collecting more than one hundred thousand pounds a year, of the Court of Chancery as guardian of minors, of a judge of suits between landlord and scores of tenants in which rents may be adjudged for the past year, and enhanced for the next, and that, as magistrate also, he has been, till lately, responsible for the repression, detection, and punishment of crime. To those who wish well to