men deputed to sit in judgment upon it, as the Board of Control is supposed to do. The rulers of India must be on the spot; they must be men not interested in the country for purposes of mere lucre, but of good government alone. They must not be traders. They must be as responsible to parliament as the rulers of any other of the British possessions, and all must be concentrated directly in the ruling power at home, or the ministry for the time being. The acts of such a government must not pass from India to any interested joint-stock company, and thence to the minister, or from England to India, and that way back to a joint-stock company, and thence to any board, to be controlled. The word control is here a nonentity. There must be direct confidence in the deputed government from that at home, disinterested in sordid pecuniary emolument, the controlling power being in the minister and the parliament, as the bill of Burke and Fox intended it should be. Herein lies the fault. No minister can be responsible for that over which he has not a direct power. We imagine Lord Palmerston would decline, for example, any responsibility for a state of things which he could neither supervise nor direct. He is noway responsible for the existing state of things. He ought to be, and would have been, but for George III. and an intrigue

for power. The government of nations by commercial companies is a

conspiracy against the peace and happiness of mankind, since no government can contribute to its proper and lawful object that looks to its own private pecuniary emolument as the end of its existence, in place of the welfare of the governed. We have at this moment another specimen of the truth of this in the immense territory, fortunately but thinly inhabited, of the Hudson's Bay Company. Age cannot consecrate the blunders of our ancestors. We are bound, knowing better than they did, to remedy the evils which have grown with the lapse of years; and in regard to India, we must set our shoulders to the wheel instanter.

Our readers will recollect that we are speaking upon the supposition that the present revolt will soon be suppressed, as a thing of which we have little doubt. It is under this supposition that we turn to the future consideration of how India is to be ruled. It is not too early to begin to think upon this important subject, to hint, and to suggest. One thing is certain, that the principles of such a government cannot be too simple; another, that they must be coincident in a great degree with the feelings of the people governed. They must be energetic, and calculated to win, rather than coerce, in managing the machinery of rule, and collecting the imposts. The laws must be just and rigidly enforced, after the determined mode of Asiatic dealing. We must not, as we have done, judge Asia by Europe-a torrid by a temperate clime, an Asiatic by a European. We must learn to spare their prejudices, which we too much fear we have not done; and while merciful in rule, we must be stern in the execution of the governing will. It is the besetting sin of Englishmen to measure others by their own peck, to declare their own superior excellence in habit and mode of thinking, and to contemn all who exhibit the slightest difference with them. None talk so much of religion, for instance, and declare how much more excellent their own creed is than any other, and therefore they treat lightly the prejudices of the Mohammedan and Hindoo; yet while they vituperate the Pope at home, they will in Rome attend St. Peter's, go with the Sunday amusements of the

Romans, and declare a band in the park at home a desecration. Thus they show by their bearing that their attachment to their faith is not the strongest tie they have in the world, but one depending upon the soil they tread, or the pleasure they can receive. That the rigid, severe, overwhelming attachment of the Asiatic native to his forms and idolatries should not be better appreciated by Englishmen, is not wonderful. Yet it might be thought that policy would make that vision clear which some mote in the eyes of the predominant power in the matter of religion prevented his observing. There is no motive so powerful as religion, and nothing in which men should be left more their own masters, because it concerns only the sense of the individual.

We confess our impatience at the non-consideration of this vital question long ago by the public. The cry is for vengeance, for the extermination of races who have their rights as well as ourselves, and the present rule of whom is justified alone by the red law of the sword, the same by which it may be justifiably flung off. The atrocities perpetrated were, no doubt, for the larger part, perpetrated by the native canaille. The revolters know their lives are justly forfeited by military law, and life for life is naturally the order of the day as regards revolted military. At Vellore we put to death eleven hundred out of thirteen hundred that revolted and had killed their officers. At Barrackpore, in 1824, the punishment was still greater in proportion, as the mutineers did not fire until they were fired upon, and did not commit a single murder. We hope the atrocities reported are exaggerated, for the sake of human nature; but in regard to these, the predatory hordes of the towns and villages were more atrocious perhaps than the Sepoys.

The great question now is, whether our government here is at last convinced of the necessity of a radical change of system in India. The indifference with which the public have regarded that country is not wonderful, because, as we have shown, though its trade after a long delay has been thrown open, it is rather a traffic by the sufferance of a body of traders than one to a British colony; and the force of this consciousness is easily understood. We have shown that the India Bill, the origin of which was a miserable intrigue for place, and a sacrifice to the regal love of power, by keeping the rule from parliamentary supervision, was never of any benefit to England or India, except that it prevented the national name from further dishonour in the ruler, who, being a publie character, and having a reputation at home, would no longer suffer the place to be dishonoured by peculation and murder, under legal forms, for public or private purposes. In this respect it was impossible the India Bill should not have made that better which could not be made

worse.

But with the best intentions the governor of India is a novice in all relating to the country when he proceeds thither, however upright and high-minded in intention. He has all to learn; and who are his teachers but the instruments of the Leadenhall-street directory, who compose the local council. These must be the eyes and ears of the governor of India for no inconsiderable time. The best intellect cannot be employed for good upon a subject of which it is ignorant. The necessity, therefore, that the council of the Indian government should be most carefully selected, and of all things, free of partiality towards the Company, is evident to the most obtuse understanding. This has never been the

case, nor was it probable it would be, and the result is not marvellous. We only wonder how India has been retained so long in peace. We cannot imagine a government existing, or deserving to exist, which makes its second consideration that of the people it rules, and we can only attribute our quiet sway there to the security from a state of warfare, and from plunder in that part of the British possessions which had been longest subject to its power. For though the taxation of the people was not lighter under the Company, it was more equitably levied than under the native chiefs, and if the laws were exacting they were noway capricious. As to the native population, when we ask what has been done to improve it, what encouragements have been held out to enlighten it in respect to its agriculture, to conveyances, to the growth of articles of value to ourselves, which might promote exchanges in traffic mutually useful, as cotton for example, we discover nothing of moment until recently, when speculators began railways and set down electric wires, the latter of which, by rapidly communicating the news of the revolt at Delhi, are said to have saved the country. Opium and indigo enough are grown for a certain traffic, but we look in vain for those generous exchanges from our rule which might have advanced the native mind in the arts of life among more civilised nations. Those existent establishments which tend to enlighten the natives were the work of the later governors, such as the College of Fort William by Lord Wellesley.

We shall soon have a force of Europeans in India amounting to nearly ninety thousand men. We are in a position here at present to consider of amending the state of its ruling power, or we may conclude we shall soon be so. Some of the Chinese expedition landed at Calcutta at the commencement of July, others in August. A part might have been at Agra about the end of August, or have reinforced the army before Delhi. Four or five thousand men actively pushed forwards might enact wonders. Were the bridge over the Jumna destroyed, and Delhi closely invested, it must speedily surrender from famine, for its supplies must then utterly cease. We fear for the great loss of Europeans we should sustain in streetfighting with the numerous heavy artillery our own impolicy has left to the natives directed against us. We find that the arrival of part of the intended force for China at Calcutta was known before the end of June at Agra, and might be up by September, and have cheered the desponding Europeans in that quarter. Eight thousand men more, despatched in June and July, would all be in Calcutta by the end of October, a considerable part before that, and thirteen or fourteen thousand more by the end of November. Those troops, successively arriving, would be pushed forward in bodies of three or four thousand as they arrived. These would keep the route open, turning the scale. At Benares, a few hundreds had been enough to subdue all resistance. By the end of November we may expect, from the force landed and up, that the revolt will be subdued everywhere, though predatory bands may still roam the country. In the open field there is little to fear. At Delhi, events afford a just lesson to expose not merely false confidence, but our inexcusable inattention and impolicy. Much was necessary to shake the stiff-neckedness which was their origin, and which has so marked the ruling directory of India-that magpie-coloured species of government of which the world most assuredly never saw before any resemblance -a government over a hundred millions of people, the acts of which

always showed that gain, and not the benefit of the governed, was the rule of action.

Will the government-will the ministry here, seeing that British blood must be shed profusely for that in which the people of this country have felt too little interest very naturally-will our government delay setting the axe to the root of the mischief? It cannot be too soon to take this important subject into consideration. We have men of sufficient experience for governors, intimate with the principles of right rule. We have a large body of Englishmen in India well acquainted with the country from a long residence there, and a free intercourse with the native people. A council of nine, or eleven, or thirteen, two of whom might as a rule be taken from the other presidencies, one from each, qualified by a residence of seven or ten years in that presidency from which he was selected, might easily be obtained; even a Bombay Parsee merchant would be no bad member of such a council. The communications should be direct with the colonial minister-though it may be a question whether a hundred millions of people might not well demand a minister for India alone. Something of this kind is necessary to be done without delay; we do not presume to say what, except that it must bring India, from the nabob to the faquir, under one sovereignty directly, and render it as amenable to parliament as any other territory under the crown of Victoria.

We trust this important business will not long be delayed. If Lord Palmerston succeeded in terminating the Russian war so highly to the advantage of his country, he has before him a greater triumph to achieve before he terminates his career. He has an opportunity of winning nobler laurels by placing India in that connexion with his country which so fine an empire merits upon its own as well as our account. A system of government for such a vast territory must be simple, powerful, and just. That complexity with which a small extent of intellectual vision always clogs important measures must not exist in framing a new ruling body for India, or rather in altering the old, and this will most assuredly be the consequence of those who, possessing narrow views, take such a task in hand. The present premier has been long accustomed to play on the chessboard of nations, and is, we are certain, the best individual, in or out of any of our public departments, for undertaking such a task. Let him, as he can only retain place from the high motive of doing good, while he gratifies an honourable ambition, set about this task, and leave behind him, for his successors to profit by, a simple and effective Indian government which may bind England and India in a close relation of common benefit. The reflexion of the act, and the glory it will confer, will be no mean reward, even to a mind that appreciates such things not too highly, much less to one who, if we may judge from circumstances, does not look upon the "infirmity of noble minds" as the calamity of life most to be avoided.

The later accounts from India seem to bear out our previous conjectures in regard to the origin of the sudden outbreak from the motive we stated. But we have not space for further details.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

OUDE.*

THE grievous rebellion in India has brought countries into notice whose history was previously little known to the general public. Only a few months back, an apologist of a miscreant and puppet king prefaced his so-called inquiry into "the Oude Question" by asking, "Where is Oude ?" and "What is the Oude Question ?" Even in the present day, when the existing representative of an exploded royalty is in durance vile; when several members of Muhammad Wajid Ali Shah's family are in this country, urging their suit with the authorities, and largely abusing of the power of the press and of publicity to misrepresent their traitorous cause; when our brave and suffering countrymen are beleaguered within the fortress of Lucknow, the chief city of the vizirate, and the energetic Havelock and his gallant little band are making untold efforts for their rescue efforts that have won the admiration of all the world-it is still a fact that Oude is by no means a well-known region, nor are its antecedents or existing relations familiar to but very few.

If we trace the course of the Ganges upwards from the sea, we shall find that the river, after quitting the lowlands of the delta formed by its numerous mouths, bends considerably, indeed almost directly, to the north-west. Still ascending the river, we pass the sacred city of Benares, and at Allahabad, distant about 400 miles direct from Calcutta, we reach the junction of the two great streams, the Jumna and the Ganges. The course of the former lies towards the west, while the Ganges has its sources in a more northerly direction.

Between Allahabad and the sea, the downward course of the Ganges lies through the once so-called provinces of Behar and Bengal, but about thirty miles north of Allahabad the northern bank of the river Ganges strikes the southern boundary of the kingdom of Oude. The course of the river forms, for about 200 miles, the south-western boundary of the Oudean territory. The north-eastern limit of Oude is marked by an off

* The Spoliation of Oudh. By Major R. W. Bird.

"The Oude Question" stated and considered; with References to published Official Documents. By William P. Hale, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barristerat-Law.

Appendix to "The Oude Question" stated and considered; with References to published Official Documents.

Oudh; or, How to Make and How to Break a Treaty. (Calcutta.)

Has Oude been worse Governed by its Native Princes than our Indian Territories by Leadenhall-street? By Malcolm Lewin, Esq., late Second Judge of the Suddr Court of Madras.

Nov.-VOL. CXI. NO. CCCCXLIII.

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