for ten rupees; gold being, at the same time, made the only legal tender for sums exceeding twenty rupees. If this arrangement were effected, it would only require a change in the "image and superscription" to transform the half rupees into shillings, and the gold mohurs into sovereigns.

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CHAPTER II.

ON THE PERMANENCE OF OUR DOMINION IN

INDIA.

THERE is no material difference of opinion as to the nature and the magnitude of the dangers which threaten the subversion of our power in India. All agree that it has no root in the affection of the people, that it subsists by their distrust of each other, and dread of our superiority in the field, while the progress of our system, in producing universality of depression is continually supplying motives of union against the common enemy; but there is a wide difference between the modes of treatment recommended under these alarming and critical circumstances, the advocates of colonization contending that the observance of that policy would gradually afford all the elements of national greatness, industry, knowledge, assimilation, and a combination of efforts towards the promotion of the public

welfare; the opponents of that policy avowing, more or less directly, that they consider it preferable to forego its benefits, and to incur the daily risk of rebellion, rather than to enter on a course of measures which might ultimately lead to a discontinuance of the political connexion between India and England.

A handful of foreigners sweep into the Exchequer, and divide among themselves, nearly the entire net produce of the land and labour of a country containing six times the population of Great Britain. The natives are considered incapable and unworthy to hold any but the lowest offices, civil and military, and by exclusion are rendered more incapable and untrustworthy; while every precaution is used to prevent the springing up of a community of interest and feeling between them and the foreigners, for which purpose the latter are prohibited from employing their skill or investing their capital as farmers or proprietors of land, and encouraged or constrained to transfer their accumulated savings to their own country. In this manner is India debarred from the acquisition of wealth, and subjected to a continual drain of its scanty store, in the payment of an annual public and private tribute of about three millions. With respect to public tribute, it has for

F

some years consisted of the expense of political establishments in England, and of interest and pensions to absentee-creditors and officers, to the amount of a million. At an earlier period it consisted of whatever surplus revenue could be abstracted: there may, therefore, be a diminutution of injury, but there is none of loss.

The profits of the cultivator out of his half of the produce are barely sufficient for his subsistence, the other half of the produce being paid directly, or through the hands of a Zemindar to Government. The share of Government, therefore, coincides with the landlord's rent, as was acknowledged by the Madras Board of Revenue, in their letter of the 28th January, 1813 :*-— What, however, we mean to observe is, that "under the rules and rates of assessment ge

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nerally prevalent in India, at the present day, "the Sovereign may be regarded as the general "landlord; that the Sovereign alone derives "from the land that which can be compared "with the landlord's rent in other countries, "with the exception of the lands, which are "held on free or favourable terms." Where this rent has been fixed in perpetuity, the So

* Rev. Selections, p. 561.

vereign may be said to have relinquished the character of proprietor, and, without lessening his own receipts, to have conferred on the perpetual leaseholder the means of improving his lands and augmenting his profits; but under a Ryotwar settlement the Sovereign is, in the strictest sense, the landlord. Yet, it is when combating the argument of the Madras Board of Revenue, in favour of a perpetual settlement, and urging adherence to the Ryotwar plan, that the Court of Directors speak of that fact as of one that belonged to the dark and troubled period which passed before the meteor flag of England" was seen upon the shores of India. "We certainly "do not wish," say the Directors, “to revive the "doctrine of the Sovereign of India being

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proprietor of the soil, either de facto or de "jure."*

Such being the proportion in which the produce is divided between the cultivator and the government, we may judge of the generosity which has assigned to the natives the exclusive privilege of ploughing, irrigating, harrowing, sowing, and

* Letter to Bengal, 6th Jan. 1815, Rev. Selec. 283. It is scarcely necessary to notice, once for all, that all the passages quoted from letters of the Court of Directors have been sanctioned, if not dictated, by the Board of Control.