XXXIX. 1806. it had been for a quarter of a century under British pro- CHAP. tection. The rich alluvial plains of the Doab, once fertilised by the canals of the Mogul emperors, have in great part become a wilderness. Clumps of mango-trees, planted around the former deserted abodes, alone indicate, at distant intervals, as the solitary ash-trees around what was once a garden in the Highland valley, where the abode of happy and industrious man had been. The magnificent fabric of irrigation formerly established, and which rendered the country a perfect garden, went to ruin in the days of the last Mogul princes, and has not as yet been restored by the Company: the banks are dried up, the mounds broken down or destroyed; and a few hollows filled with brushwood, and tenanted by wild beasts or serpents, alone indicate where the fertilising streams had formerly flowed. At the distance of a few miles from Delhi the country is entirely deserted; you meet only ruined temples, fallen pillars, and the mounds which tell where habitations had been; and if you ask the Mussulman whence this devastation has come, and whither the power of his fathers has fled, he replies with a sigh, that all efforts are vain against the decree of 1854. fate.1 1 Warren, Parl. Deb. iii. 247; March 18, of the Brit ment as re In justice to the British Government, it must be 14. added that this neglect of the public works, upon which Difficulties the prosperity of Asiatic communities is entirely depend- ish Governent, has been owing to the most potent of all causes- gards pubnamely, necessity. It is well known in the East that lic works. public assistance is indispensable to general prosperity, and that money expended on useful undertakings yields sixty, and even a hundred fold. A policy purely selfish would have made such outlay for its own sake. The real reason was, that, in consequence of the peculiar position of the British power in India, every farthing that could be spared or saved required to be reserved for warlike operations. Conquest to it was not the result of ambition, it is the price of existence. VOL. VI. 2 G In a XXXIX. 1806. CHAP Country peopled by 150,000,000 souls, and which is to be really kept in subjection by less than 50,000 British soldiers, 8000 miles from their own country, it may readily be understood that the power of Government must rest upon opinion. It is by the prestige of irresistible force that not only is additional strength to be gained, but that already acquired is to be preserved. Towards the maintenance of this moral influence one thing is indispensably necessary, and that is unbroken success. Situated as the Company is, it can never be for its interest to engage in foreign wars, for that is to incur certain expense and probable risk for remote and contingent advantage. But from the obviously precarious nature of its position, and the great distance of the centre of its resources, it is constantly exposed to attack; and when assailed, it has no chance of salvation but in immediate and decisive victory. Protracted warfare is perilous, early defeat would be fatal to it. The misfortunes of Colonel Monson's division in 1804 exposed it to danger; the Affghanistan disaster in 1842 brought it to the verge of ruin. Thus it is indispensable that it should be at all times in a state of full military preparation, not only to repel aggression, but quickly to destroy the assailant; and intermission for a single year in this state of costly watchfulness might at any time expose it to destruction. It is a clear proof of what was the real cause of the long-continued indifference of the Company's government to public improvements, that from the time that the British power was thoroughly established in India, and its authority was paramount from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, the former niggardly system in regard to public grants was abandoned, and in the latter years of Lord Dalhousie's administration, from £1,500,000 to £2,000,000 annually has been devoted to the construction of great public works, which will surpass, when completed, the fabled days of Mogul magnificence." One serious and widespread cause of injury, in a XXXIX. 1806. 15. the Zemin part of British India, has been the Zemindar system; CHAP. and its partial failure affords a signal instance of the danger of attempting to extend the institutions which have proved most successful in one part of the world to Results of another differently situated, and inhabited by a different dar system. race of men. When Lord Cornwallis first introduced this system into these conquered provinces, nothing, according to European ideas, could afford a fairer prospect of success, for it proposed to fix at a moderate rate the perpetual settlement of the ryots' quit-rent; and in the collectors of districts, styled the zemindars, it was hoped, would be laid the foundation of a feudal aristocracy which, without oppressing the people, the usual source of Asiatic grandeur, might be bound to the Government by the strong bond of mutual interest. But the result has in some measure disappointed these expectations; and the only effect of the system has been, in many cases, to ruin the zemindars, and impoverish the people. The reason is, that the quitrent, though light in comparison of that which had been previously imposed and nominally required, was often much more than, under existing circumstances, could be actually and regularly paid. The Mogul princes required three-fifths of the produce, but the weakness of their government precluded them from levying it: the British ́required only two-fifths, but the collectors were compelled to pay it entire, and payment of all arrears was enforced with rigid exactitude. Many of these zemindars could not pay their rent to the treasury, or if they did so, it was only by extorting it with merciless rigour from the unhappy cultivators. Thus the result of this system, so well conceived in principle, so plausible in appearance, has often been, in practice, to ruin the permanent collectors, who, it was hoped, would form a middle class attached to the Government, and depress the cultivators, from whose labours not only the chief part of the national wealth, but two-thirds of the national revenue, was derived. Yet is there another side of the question; XXXIX. 1806. CHAP. and results on a great scale demonstrate that, in spite of the many evils to the zemindars which this system has introduced, it has, upon the whole, been beneficial to the ryots. Periodical famines, which, before the perpetual settlement, were the scourge of the province of Bengal, have been unknown since its introduction; and while the other provinces of India, in general, exhibit a deficit, that of Bengal, out of a land-rent of £14,000,000, exhibits a surplus of £2,800,000.* And sorely as the ill effects of the system have been experienced, it has never been deemed possible to alter it; for to do so would be to do away with what was justly iii. 62, 66; held out as its chief recommendation-namely, its permanent character-and expose Government to endless applications for remission, both from the zemindars and their impoverished subjects.1 1 Warren, Montgomery Mar tin's India, 540. 16. system. The zemindar system is not universally established in The Village India. In the northern provinces the old Village system is still preserved-a system so thoroughly adapted to the circumstances and wants of the country, and so associated with the habits of its inhabitants, that it has existed from the earliest times, survived all the changes of dynasty or conquest, and formed the nucleus round which society has perpetually been re-formed, when all but destroyed by the successive inroads of northern conquerors. According to it, each village forms a little community, governed Years. Revenue. Charges. Surplus. Revenue. Charges. Deficit. Revenue. Charges. Deficit. 32,857 1,918,607 2,496,173 577,566 1845 3,589,213 3,523,598 65,615 1843 11,523,933 10,122,149 1,401,784 1848 1849 2,047,380 2,569,910 522,530 12,174,38 10,170,220 2,004,118 Independent of the home charges at each presidency. XXXIX. 1806. by elders chosen on the most democratic principles, and CHAP. with its adjacent territory composes a little world within itself, independent, if left alone, of any external appliances. The land-tax which it pays to Government is received by its collectors from the elected rulers of the village, and they apportion out the burden with the most scrupulous care and perfect fairness among the different inhabitants. In this little community the professions are all hereditary. The tailors, the shoemakers, the bakers, the soldiers, succeed to their fathers' avocations: no one either thinks of leaving his, or can do so. So deeply rooted is this system over all India, as indeed generally in the East, that it survives all the convulsions of time. In vain does the storm of war roll over the little society; in vain does the torch of the Mogul or the Affghan consume their dwellings; in vain are they dispersed and driven into the abodes of the jackal or the tiger. When the tempest ceases, the little community again rises from its ashes, the scattered flock return to their former dwellings, "rebuild with haste their fallen walls, and exult to see the smoke ascend from their native village.' 17. increase 1 Col. It is not to be supposed, from this long catalogue of omissions, that the English government in India has General been a source of unmixed evil to the inhabitants of the produce country. It has been in many respects a decided bene- over India. fit, as is decisively proved by the fact, that the produce of the whole country is estimated by the most competent statisticians to be now 70 per cent more than it was a quarter of a century ago. This proves that, although Sykes. numerous and serious calamities have resulted from the country being subjected to the dominion of a power so far distant, and in many respects so different from that of India, yet, viewed in its entire effects, it has proved a benefit, and that the substitution of the steady administration of a Christian and civilised, instead of the fitful oppression of a Mogul or Mahommedan ruling power, has, upon the whole, been advantageous. And this |