de sœur à ceux de la ligne féminine, et vice versâ; mais se désignant entre eux par leur noms personnels, on peut, et même on doit, épouser la fille de sa sœur, mais jamais celle de son frère. Un cousin-germain épouse sa cousine-germaine; fille de sa tante maternelle; mais, dans aucun cas, il ne peut épouser la fille de son oncle paternel.

"Cette règle est universellement et invariablement observée par toutes les castes, depuis le brahme jusqu'au pariah: la ligne masculine doit toujours se croiser avec la ligne féminine.

"C'est à cette distinction que se rapporte une coutume qui, à ce que je crois, ne s'observe que parmi les brahmes. Comme ils connaissent tous le gotram, ou la souche, de laquelle ils dérivent, c'est-à-dire, quel est l'ancien mouny ou pénitent dont ils tirent leur origine, ils ont l'attention, afin de n'être pas exposés à épouser la descendante de ce très-antique grand-prêtre, de se marier toujours dans un gotram différent du leur.

"Les Indiens qui ne trouvent pas dans leur famille à contracter un mariage convenable, sont au moins indispensablement obligés de se marier dans leur caste, et dans la subdivision ou branche de la caste à laquelle ils appartiennent; il leur est interdit de jamais contracter d'alliances étrangères. Les tribus d'un pays ne peuvent pas non plus s'allier par des mariages avec celles d'un autre pays, quoiqu'elles soient exactement les mêmes sous différens noms. Les yédéyers-tamuls et les ouppareroucanaras ne consentiraient jamais à prendre des femmes chez les gollavahrou-tilingas et les pally-tamuls, quoique les deux premières castes soient exactement les mêmes que les deux secondes, à la dénomination près, dont la différence est due à celle des idiomes."

V.

ORDERS IN COUNCIL.

PERMANENT LAWS OF THE COLONIES. THE TRADE OF FOREIGNERS WITH THE BRITISH POSSESSIONS.

IN the Gazette of the 18th of September, there are three orders of the Queen in Council of the 7th of September, which relatively and prospectively are of considerable importance.

The first is a law of marriage for British Guiana, Trinidad, Sainte Lucia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Mauritius.

The second is a law for establishing the relative rights of masters and servants in British Guiana, Trinidad, Sainte Lucia, and Mauritius.

The third is a law for the suppression of vagrancy, and for the punishment of disorderly persons, in British Guiana.

All will be glad to see that the Colonial Office is at work upon the task of legislation which it is incumbent on the parent country to accomplish, for the purpose of fixing the relations of the dependent states with the empire, and of declaring those comprehensive and transcendent laws, in harmony with which, if they be such as

they ought to be, the subordinate legislatures will unreluctantly evolve the adaptations required for their particular spheres.

The intention is excellent in every part of the Orders in Council of the 7th of September, and no exceptions to the details, nor any criticism is about to be offered here. But this may be taken as an occasion for calling attention to the chaotic state of what is called our colonial system, and to the urgent necessity which exists (and each succeeding and eventful hour augments the force of it) for bringing the primary and guiding laws of the dependent possessions of the empire into a visible and intelligible form. The numbers of people in those states, if India be included, far exceed those of the United Kingdom. The army of India is larger than that of the United Kingdom. The surplus of Indian revenue, beyond that which is pledged for the payment of public debt, exceeds that of the United Kingdom. Not half a century will elapse before the aggregate of the British possessions in America and the West Indies may also, in each of these particulars, rival the present state of the parent country. One of three things must take place: these possessions must be separated from us, or they must be ruled by the imperial parliament; or they must be our ruin. A colonial and Indian chaos, out of which, every ministry of the day may draw the materials of misrule, and by the agitations and disorders of which all schemes of good government may be at any time disturbed and broken up, is incompatible with the welfare, with the safety, with the existence, of the United Kingdom.

The imperial parliament hitherto is utterly unprovided with the means of controlling these vast and distracted forces of calming the wide and spreading confusion. It is often urged as a reproach, that the House of Commons is indifferent and careless as to any Indian or colonial

question. But the fact is not so. To the extent to which they can be understood, the interest which is felt in such questions is strong enough, and it is evidently susceptible of being further awakened. But the leaders of parties, in each sessional campaign, are cautious of offending Indian and colonial companies and associations, which are not assimilated with the organisation by which they are supported, and the mass of the House of Commons has no means of informing itself upon any point of Indian or colonial legislation. Will it be credited, that whilst the three powers of the British legislature during the last session of Parliament were spinning the destiny of the Canadas, there were not within the British islands the means by which the members of the legislature could inform themselves with any minuteness as to the institutions or laws of those provinces-that whilst they were sitting in judgment on the French Canadian people, not even the libraries of the two Houses of Parliament contained any statements, any documents, any volumes, in which the proceedings of the long and last session of the Lower Canadian Assembly in 1835 and 1836 could be read?

And now that a beginning seems to be made in the work of imperial legislation, for some of those colonies at least, which, relieved from the nightmare of negro slavery, are rising to a new and brighter day of existence, how are these laws presented to the imperial legislature, how published and recorded, for its use? How can they be viewed as a whole, how judged of, how approved, or condemned?

The orders of the Queen in Council are published in the Gazette; but the Gazette publishes so many things, that they might almost as well be published in the newspapers. They are blended with an incongruous and undigested mass; they sink into obscurity and oblivion; and if not

irretrievable, are never retrieved. Who knows where to lay his hand upon any digested collection of the existing Orders in Council upon any given subject whatever ?

There are appearances, however, of the country being about to be persuaded to give some consideration to these subjects. A well informed, an able, and a resolved treatise, intituled "The Permanent Laws of the Emancipated Colonies,"* if it has not expedited the publication of the Orders in Council of the 7th of September, will be a useful support to them in public opinion, and prepares the way for further progress. But the Society which puts forth this tract, and all other societies and parties who are awakened to a sense of the vast importance of the dependent states of the empire, will do well to consider that the first point to be gained and secured is, that the public should be enabled to know what the laws are which are made for these States, and to examine any one of those laws in connexion with the others, and to look at all of them as one whole. Before the mind of the British people can be made to bear upon the subject, treaties with foreign powers, acts of colonial legislatures, and orders of the Crown in Council, must be brought together and produced; they must be made comprehensible and capable of being handled, and be placed within reach.

It is marvellous that in London, the focus of the commerce of the whole world, these matters should have remained so long in such a condition. Let us look to it as it affects the course of trade: suppose that a merchant, surveying the vast field of colonial enterprise, desires to combine with his calculations the disturbances to which they may be liable, from the interventions of foreign capi

*"The Permanent Laws of the Emancipated Colonies." London: Published at the Office of the London Anti-Slavery Society, 18 Aldermanbury; by John Hatchard and Son, 187 Piccadilly; Darton and Harvey, 55 Gracechurch Street; and by W. Ball, Aldine Chambers, Paternoster Row. 1838.