points that might justify observation and remark, they are advantageous and honorable to the English name, and calculated to place the pacification of India on a solid and permanent foundation. In endeavouring to perform the duty I have undertaken, I am aware that the task is ungracious, and the prospect I have been under the necessity of exhibiting is by no means of a brilliant or animating appearance. My object has been, to give a correct statement of the affairs of the Company; and though I should be one of the last persons to endeavour to embody forms of visionary wealth and ideal prosperity, yet, on the other hand, I should be unwilling to give way to unmanly and unavailing despondency. The resources of India, as far as I have been able to examine the subject, appear to me great, powerful, and extensive. Much, I trust, may be affected by economy. I do not, however, mean that species, which would merely restrict and retrench the hard-earned provision of laborious merit, the wages of honest and honorable service, nor even that species which would materially affect and impair the dignity and representation of executive power: such reform, and such economy, might only have the effect of diminishing the respect that is due to government, and might enfeeble the administration of authority which it was intended to confirm and invigorate. Much, I trust, may be effected by a prudent and judicious system of economy, acting upon more enlarged and enlightened principles, which must be applied to the collection as well as the disbursement of revenues, and which in its equal, impartial, and unerring operation, must pervade all branches of the administration. But it is not economy alone that will have the desired effect; it must be combined with the mild and moderate, at the same time the firm, steady, and unrelaxed exercise of legitimate authority: it must be combined with the anxious and unremitting endeavour to consult the wants and conciliate the affections of that extended population, which as it owns the influence, as it acknowledges the ascendancy of this country, so it ought to experience the advantages of our alliance, and the benefit of our protection:-it must, in short, be combined with those principles of moderation and justice, which as the surest line of policy, and the most stable foundation of greatness, ought ever to be interwoven in the practice, and ever inherent in the name and character of Britain. Our readers will have observed with concern the calamitous effect of the droughts on the East Indian Presidencies.-We are extremely sorry to report, that our last advices from India are not more favourable; as appears by the following extracts from the Calcutta Gazettes. Calcutta, Tuesday, 13th May, 1806. We understand that the want of rain, since the end of March, has been very detrimental to indigo planters in the southern districts of Bengal, viz. Jessore, Kilhengar, &c. How the season has turned out in Behar and Benares, we are not informed. The cultivation there being mostly by rattoon crops, the want of rain may not prove so injurious as in the southern districts, where the crop is raised from spring sowing. The fall of rain has been so long protracted, that it is problematical whether the late sowing will produce a crop to cover charges; unless indeed, the remainder of the season is uncommonly propitious. The drought has occasioned much failure in lands sown in March, and the consequent demand for seed to re-sow, has enhanced the price greatly, as far we understand as 160 rupees per maund. We are inclined to conclude from present appearances, that the ge neral supply of the present season, will be scanty, and consequently, that indigo will support high prices. It is probable also, that indigo of the last crop, if any remains in hand, may shortly experience an advance, unless the prospects of the ensuing crop improve. Tuesday, 20th May. In confirmation of what we advanced in our last Tuesday's paper, we publish the following extract of a letter from Tirhoot. "I believe we shall never get another shower of rain, and all indigo is much stinted in its growth, in consequence of the drought." Our information, as stated before, only extended to the district of Jessore and Bisnagar, and the country to the south of the great river. We are sorry to observe from the above, that the drought has extended to Tirhoot. Since the rain, near the time of the equinox, scarcely any had fallen for a period of forty days. Such an interval of drought, we know must be very detrimental to indigo crops, and considerably diminish the returns. It must cause a great part of the spring sowing to perish, and consequently make a re-sowing necessary, at this advanced period of the season. It is, we believe, a general rule with the planters, to prognosticate an indifferent season, if the generality of the crop is not sufficiently rooted by the end of April. The proper business after the 15th of April, is weeding, and not sowing, and if there is much land to sow after that date, sanguine expectations of a good crop, by those at all acquainted with the cultivation, cannot be entertained; and therefore in the first week in May, a general agricultural estimate of returns may be formed. ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE AT BOMBAY. thoughts, these gentlemen conceived it quite as proper to reinain at home. Whether they were informed of this defection from their number or not, did not appear; certain it was, that they themselves (accompanied by one, whose youth and inexperience seemed to have placed him under the complete controul of persons anxious to reduce him to the degraded level of their own depravity) proceeded most gallantly to the woods, not only armed with sticks and bludgeons, but with The sentiments expressed in the following address are so proper and suitable to the occasion, and, besides, contain such general principles of honour, that we take a pleasure in publishing it at length. The issue is extremely creditable to the justice of the British nation in India, and especially to SIR JAMES MACINTOSH, the dig-fire-arms likewise; and that the King's and nified minister of that justice at the Presidency of Bombay. (Bombay Courier, 3d May, 1806.) Recorder's Court. April, 22. This day came on the trial of lieutenants Cautey and Macguire, for a conspiracy to waylav and ill-treat two Dutch gentlemen, named Vandersloot, on the night of the 21st of February last. A jury having been chosen, the Honourable Company's counsel addressed them, at some length, on the part of the crown. He observed, that it could not fail to be an extremely painful discharge of his duty to the public, to be obliged to call their attention to the conduct of persons, whose profession placed them in the rank of gentlemen, while their actions degraded that character, and were a disgrace to the cloth which they had the honor to wear. Honourable Company's uniform might not, for the first time, be worn by midnight assassins, they had the grace, or, more properly speaking, the precaution, to sally forth disguised in coloured clothes. To the last hour of their lives they, probably, would have reason to be thankful to Providence, that, by some means or other, the Dutchmen passed to their own home, without being perceived; for if a rencontre had taken place, nothing seemed more probable than that blood would have been spilt. But though such a fate had been averted, it would be the duty of the jury, and their satisfaction also, to shew their sense of what had actually happened, by finding a verdict for the conspiracy to assault, if the case on that head was made out against them. It would then be for the Court to assert its insulted dignity, by its sentence on such offenders. The evidence fully confirmed every part of Mr. Threipland's opening. It particularly appeared that the defendants carried loaded fire-arms to the woods: and an expression of Mr. Macguire's was positively sworn to, that "if the Dutchmen proved ol stropulous, he "had a pair of poppers at their service," The persons mentioned in the indictment as the objects of brutal attack and violence, were also gentlemen, sons of an aged and respectable inhabitant of Cochin, who formerly held the rank of surgeon-major in the Dutch service. Their object in coming to Bombay, was to obtain redress, by legal means, for The defence attempted to shew, that wrongs which they and their family conceived though a purpose of the kind had been enterthemselves to have sustained, when the regi- tained in the early part of the evening, it had ment to which Lieutenant Cautey belongs been abandoned before the party set out for was quartered at Cochin-wrongs of a most the woods, where their only attraction was a outrageous nature, and in which they ac- punch-house, at which uncommon good ham counted that gentleman a principal actor. could be procured for supper, while the exThey had accordingly commenced a suit pected attacks of Pariar dogs, in their proagainst him, which was still pending; and it gress thither, afforded an excuse for proceedgreatly aggravated the guilt of the conducting armed. This defence altogether failed. charged in the indictment, that the defendants made no secret of its being in revenge of these proceedings that they had formed the resolution of assaulting the Messrs. Vander-fendants. sloots in the dead of night, on the King's Mr. Threipland then moved that they highway, and, for that purpose, to watch might stand committed, which was ordered their return to their own house, which is si- accordingly, and that they be brought up to tuated in the woods, about a mile from the receive sentence on Wednesday the 30th.fort. To obtain an additional levy, they re- On which day, the Court being moved for paired to a tent, where some brother-officers judgment on the part of the crown, and nowere at dinner, and having dismissed the na- thing having been alleged to arrest the same, tive attendants, proceeded to unfold their base or in mitigation of punishment, except the and nefarious design, and to solicit aid in car- sentence of a court-martial, published the rying it into execution. They at first obtain-day before, by which it appeared, that both ed an assent to their proposal; but, on second defendants were dismiss the service for a dif« The jury, after an eloquent and most impressive charge from the Honourable the Recorder, returned a verdict of Guilty against both de ferent offence, the Honourable the Recorder addressed them to the following effect: holds armpies together. It is a violation of that prompt, eager, active obedience to autho rity, far more necessary in annies than any other bodies of men, and without which they must speedily degenerate into a ferocious rabble. One of the greatest and wisest of men has, in one comprehensive sentence, concentrated every thing that can be said on the relation of an army to the internal order of the state. "An armed disciplined body is dangerous to liberty: an armed undisciplin Bryan Macguire and George Cautey, you have been convicted of the offence of conspiring to way-lay and assault by night, two unarmed foreigners, John and Jacob Vandersloot; and it appears that you lay in wait for them, to execute your design, with the assistance of two other persons, all of you armed with bludgeons, pistols, or muskets. Your avowed motive for this project of barbarous revenge was, that one of these foreigned body is dangerous to society itself." Much gentlemen had brought an action against one of you in this Court. The observations which you have now made on the evidence in support of this charge would have been too late, even if they had been new or important. I am not the judge of evidence-that is the province of the jury, and after their verdict, I can see only with their eyes, and hear only with their ears. But, in fact, you have only now repeated the observations which you made on your trial, which I then stated to the jury, and which, in my opinion, they did well to disregard. more is this turbulent disposition inconsisteut with the peculiar character of a British soldier. That which distinguishes him, not only from a mere ruilian, but from a mercenary slave, is, that he has taken up arms to protect the rights of his fellow-citizens, and to preserve the public quiet. He is an armed minister of the laws, and we expect from him a peculiar affection and veneration for those unarmed laws and magistrates whom he has girt on his sword to protect. Every true soldier must have too great a reverence for the noble virtue of courage, to sully and degrade it in the wretched frays of sottish ruffians. It is reserved for nobler objects; he will not prostitute it on such vile and ignoble occa sions. True fortitude is too serious, too gradation. Such vices are most unofficer-like, because they are most ungentleman-like. As long as courage continues to be one of the distinctive qualities of a gentleman, so long must the profession of arms be regarded as the depository and guardian of all the feelings and principles which constitute that charac ter. It is now, therefore, my duty, to pronounce the judgment of this Court upon you, and I should content myself with the above short statement of the nature and circumstances of your offence, if I were not in-grave, too proud quality to endure such deduced to make some observations, by some faint hope of being useful to you, and by a strong sense of the duty which any man of experience owes to the numerous inexperienced young men, such as I see around ine, who are deprived so early of parental guidance, and who may see, in your deplorable, but most instructive example, how easily conviviality may degenerate into excess, and how infallibly habitual excess, with its constant attendant, bad society, leads to such unhappy situations, as those in which you now stand. I know that the brutish vice of drunkenness, with all the noisy and turbulent vices which follow in her train, has a false exterior of spirit and manliness, which sometimes seduces weak and ignorant boys.-Not that this can be said in this case. A plan for overpowering two defenceless men, under cover of darkness, with more than double their numbers, armed with deadly weapons, can have nothing attractive to any but such as are the stain of manhood and of arms." But I know that the mischievous character from which such acts spring, sometimes dazzles and allures inexperienced eyes. Let me rub off a little of the varnish which hides from them its deformity. A disposition to engage in quarrels and broils, is not, as they may suppose, a mere excess of the martial spirit which is to actuate them on greater occasions: it is the very reverse of it. It is as unmilitary as it is unsocial and immoral. It is an offence against the first principle which A gentleman is a man of more refined feelings and manners than his fellow-men.—An officer is, or ought to be, peculiarly and eminently a gentleman. But there is nothing so low and vulgar as the fame of a bully, and the renown of midnight brawls. They imply every quality of a highwayman but his courage, and they very often lead to his fate. In considering the punishment to be inflicted on you, I observe that you build some hopes of mercy on your dismissal from the service, by the sentence of a court-martial, for other offences. As these offences have proceeded from the same wretched vice of disposition which has placed you at this bar, I am not unwilling to consider them as part of the visitation which your mischievous turbu lence has already brought upon you, and therefore as some justification for mild punishment, to a Court which eagerly looks out for such justifications. It has been my fate, in this place, to be obliged to justify the lenity, rather than the severity of the penalties inflicted here. I think it is likely to continue So, I have more confidence in the certainty than in the severity of punishment. I conceive it to be the first duty of a criminal judge, to exert and to strain every faculty of the mind, to discover, in every case, the smallest possible quantity of punishment that may be effectual for the ends of amendment and example; I consider every pang of the criminal, not necessary for these objects, as a crime in the judge. And, in conformity with these principles, I was employed in considering the mildest judgment which public duty would suffer me to pronounce on you, when I learned, from undoubted authority, that your thoughts towards me were not quite of the same nature. I was credibly, or rather certainly, informed, that you had admitted into your minds the desperate project of destroying your own lives at the bar, where you stand, and of signalizing your suicide by the previous destruction of, at least, one of your judges. If that murderous project had been executed, I should have been the first British magistrate who ever stained with his blood the bench on which he sat to administer justice. But I can never die better than in the discharge of my duty. When I accepted the oflice of a minister of justice, I knew that I must be unpopular among the enemies of justice-I knew that I ought to despise unpopu larity and slander, and even death itself.Thank God! I do despise them; and solemnly assure you, that I feel more compassion for the gloomy and desperate state of minds, which could harbour such projects, than resentment for that part of them which was directed against myself. It is my duty to remind you, that your despair is premature and groundless. At your age, in a new society, where you may not be followed by the memory of your faults, you may yet atone for them, and regain that station in society, to which the fond hopes of your unfortunate relations had, probably, at parting, destined you. The road which leads back to character and honour is, and ought to be, steep, but ought not to be, and is not, inaccessible. On the other hand, if any of the comrades of your excesses be of those present, any who have been arrested, on the brink of destruction, by their penitence, or by their timely fears, or by fortunate accidents, or by *The Recorder's private information of this atrocious, and almost incredible project, must, of course, have been confidential, and therefore can never be disclosed. Many genilemen, saw in the hands of the Sheriff the arms which had been seized on B. Macguire. -They consisted of four pistols, of various dimensions, three of them double-barrelled, in a case made to resemble a writing-desk; which he had with him in Court on the day of this trial, under pretence of carrying his papers. The pistols were loaded with slugs, in a inanner for which, in this island, it is not asy to assign an innocent motive. the mercy of others, I most earnestly conjure them never to forget the situation in which they this day see you.-Let those who stand take heed lest they fall. The declivity is slippery from the place where they stand to that where you lie prostrate. I should consider myself as indelibly disgraced, if a thought of your projects against me were to influence my judgment. That, however, I believe you yourselves will scarcely suppose. The judgment of this Court is that you, the said Bryan Macguire and George Cautey, be, for this your offence, imprisoned in the Gaol of Bombay, for twelve calendar months. PROPOSITA PHILANTHROPICA. Humani nihil a me alienum puto. SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN The Annual Report of this Society, which has recently been published, states the number of children taught in the charity-schools in and about London and Westminster, to be 7108, viz. 4180 boys, and 2928 girls, and the number of books which have been distributed by them during the preceding year to be as follows, viz. 8,490 bibles, 11,466 new testaments and psalters, 16,096 common prayers, 20,460 other bound books, and 112,440 sinall tracts. REV. MR. BASIL WOOD'S EXERTIONS IN FAVOUR OF THE EDINBURGH MISSION TO TARTARY. The Rev. B. Wood writes to the Christian Observer, that, after reading the last report of the Edinburgh mission to Karass, he could not forbear mentioning it to some friends in the congregation at Bentinck Chapel, who suggested the idea of his reading that passage from the pulpit. "This I accordingly did on the 12th instant, and mentioned, that, if any present were disposed to join to add a trifle to the relief of these poor children, I should be very happy to be their almoner in so good a cause. I have the pleasure to state that donations were made in the course of the week, far beyond my expectation, and a solicitation was received that the plates might be held at the chapel doors on Sunday, the 19th instant. I therefore felt very happy in meeting this charitable request, and preached from Deut. i. 39. Your little ones which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it." I have, by the blessing of God, the plea sure to make the following return: L. S. d. dents recommend, that all the children should pay a small sum; which would cause the school to be better attended than if it were entirely or in part free.-Vide Mr. Carr's opinion: Panorama, p. 698. 71 0 Donations for redeeming two Four annual subscriptions Glory to God in the earth, good will to man. Paddington, Oct. 25. 1806. 4 4 0 £176 14 6 highest, peace on I am, yours, &c. BASIL WOOD. HIBERNIAN SOCIETY. Extracts from the Report of the Committee of the Hibernian Society, for the Diffu sion of Religious Knowledge in Ireland. The province of Connaught, which comprehends several counties in the west of Ireland, seems to be the most destitute of religious instruction of any part of Ireland. The province of Munster, which comprises several counties in the south, appears, next to Connaught, the most destitute. In the counties of Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Wexford, and Carlow, there are very few Sunday Schools, and those badly attended. The proportion of Papists to Protestants in these counties is twenty to one. Scarcely any of the former, and but few of the latter, possess copies of the Scripture. The province of Leinster, though much more favourably circumstanced than the other provinces, is stated to be in some places destitute of all means of acquiring religious instruction. In the county of Kilkenny, in this province, there is a monthly meeting of clergymen of the Established Church, whose zeal has stirred up very many, and whose exertions have been attended with blessed effects. The province of Ulster, more generally called the North, is by far the most enlightened part of Ireland. Many difficulties stand in the way of the establishment of Sunday Schools, as most of the Roman Catholic priests are hostile to them; but, in many instances, these difficulties have been overcome. Much depends on the character and prudence of the teacher. Many of the Protestants would send their children, As children in the south have no employment, it is thought that week-day schools would meet with more encouragement there. It is thought that no persons qualified to teach these schools could be obtained in the south; that some might be had in the north of Ireland; but that teachers from England would be preferable to either. In many places the disposition of persons of property and influence is friendly to the improvement of the inferior class of inhabitants. It is thought that many of the Roman Catholics would thankfully receive and eagerly read the Scriptures, could they obtain them: at the same time, it is to be feared, that many of their priests would exert their influence to prevent them. Under the auspices of the Society, bibles and testaments, to the number of several hundreds, gratuitously sent by the public, have been forwarded to Ireland, to be distri buted by persons in whom the Committee can most implicitly confide. The Committee have also paid great attention in forming a plan for instituting schools in every parish in Ireland; in which, as it respects religious instruction, no tract or catechism of any religious sect or party is to be introduced,-but the Holy Scriptures only. Proposed Means of Support:-1, Land proprietors to furnish ground for houses and schoolmasters:-2, Houses to be built by the parishes:-3, Subscriptions by the inhabitants:-4, Money to be paid by scholars-5, Amount of subscriptions, donations, and bequests. It is to be lamented, that the state of Ireland has not made that impression on the minds of those who profess Christianity, which its wretched circumstances were calcu lated to produce. Subscriptions and donations will be thankfully received by the Treasurer, SAMUEL MILLS, Esq. No. 20, Finsbury Place. FREE SCHOOL FOR JEWISH CHILDREN IN LONDON. A Committee of the Directors of the Missionary Society, which superintends the attempts now made for the conversion of the Jews, design shortly to open a Free-School, for the instruction of the children of that people; and have circulated the following notice : The annual expense of supporting a free school for instructing fifty children on workIng-days, in reading, writing, and arithmetic, would, in some places, amount to £20, where part of the parents would pay for their children: in other places, between £30 and £40. In some places, a salary of £10 would induce gentlemen to contribute the remainder. Some judicious corresponday, the 5th of January, 1807. "The posterity of Abraham are respectfully informed, That a Free-School for the instruction of their children, both male and female, will be opened under the patronage of a Society of Christians, at No. 5, Raven Row, Artillery Lane, Spitalfields, on Mon |