the leading papers, not excepting the Friend of India. But the question of English, vernacular, and moral education, of itself demands an article. The incontestible merits of the deceased Company may perhaps be summed up as follows. It has, in the space of one hundred years, acquired an empire which is the dread or the marvel of foreign politicians, and which no other agency, though less anomalous and more correct theoretically, could have possibly acquired in the first instance or retained in the second. It has governed this Empire by its own servants till 1857, without ever exciting in the thronged cities, or the rich and cultivated districts, anything beyond a local and passing disturbance. It has removed all positive obstructions to internal commerce, if it has not actually supplied it with adequate means of transit. It has taxed its subjects, though unequally, by a standard to which all native Governments are strangers, and on many classes it has laid the very lightest burden, or even no burden at all. Whatever the errors that proceeded from haste or ignorance, or undue partiality for local objects, or from mere physical and moral disqualifications for comprehending Asiatics, the governing agents have been distinguished for striking integrity as well as for real talent, and the administration of justice, whatever its short-comings, in their hands has been untainted and pure. The Company has besides been the patron of science and of learning, and huge sums have been almost squandered on every work that had for its object the exploring of the languages, the laws, and the past history of India. These are facts which History will not let perish. And it is on this basis of past successes, as well as of patent errors, that, as we have already shown, the Crown has now to build. When men are driven into a corner by some argument on the side of the late Government against which it is vain to contend, a common resource is, to admit the good that the Government has effected, but to ascribe it to the mere force of the system or to the weight and practical earnestness of the middle classes the Tom Browns-by whom the Government has been carried on. The principles and policy, with these candid gentlemen, are all wrong, but the result, somehow, is good. The hands are the hand of Esau, the active, vigorous, and hottempered huntsman, the voice is the voice of the wily and deceitful Jacob. The unquestionable achievements of the administration are like rare plants miraculously appearing in a common kitchen garden, or as the wheat of Robinson Crusoe, which took root and grew without forethought on his part. In this admirable logic, all the praise is due to the instrument: none to those who set a-going the machine. The Company, not entitled to one tittle of eulogy, may fairly take to itself every particle of blame. We submit that this sort of reasoning is as unfair to the past, as it will be to the future Government of India. Whatever is well done by the humblest official in India reflects credit on the Government which he serves. The reflection goes through every grade of the public service. It is the Government, obviously, which selects its workmen, which prescribes to them their line of action, which animates, directs, disposes of, and superintends the whole. No one has a right to rob the Company of any praise due to past progress. No reasonable man will grudge the Crown any credit which it may claim when its administration, in all essentials, shall have left its predecessor far behind in the race. But what, we think, will be the bright spot in the Company's annals is its treatment of the civil and military servants whom it has reared. It is all very well to talk of nepotism, undue preferences, unjust exclusions, and the like. To be well served, a governing body should treat its officers well. Not then, to speak of the liberal salaries, the secure pensions, the attractive privileges, the boons gracefully conceded, and the grosser rewards of past services, the Court gave to all its subordinates that moral support which, to high and ambitious minds, was worth all the rest. The Carthaginians crucified an unsuccessful admiral. The Spanish Government put Columbus in chains. But the Court, with a true appreciation of difficulties which a Roman senate might have admired, sustained, applauded, and even honoured, the man who, in trying circumstances, had borne himself well in their despite. It stood by the first Hastings, with substantial pecuniary assistance, when the world still believed him a tyrant and a robber; and it relieved the thoughtless magnificence of the second Hastings, which after a career of victory had left him in penury. It disputed with Wellesley, but handsomely recognised his striking abilities. It hurled no foul scorn at the disasters entailed by the policy of an Auckland; it was the first to show a due appreciation of the vigour and statesmanship of a Dalhousie; it never, even in recalling Lord Ellenborough, struck the back-handed blow which that nobleman, in the vanity which has twice marred his grand opportunities, gratuitously aimed at the present Head of this Empire. The consequence of this generous support was that the Company's servants, great and small, over and above their allegiance to their masters, worked at their posts with an entire and hearty devotion to the business which they undertook. Putting aside sundry drones and incapables, they have been men of talent, energy, and assiduity in the drudgery of quiet times. And when the crash came, the system under which they had been educated showed its choicest fruits. Of no achievements will the Directors be more proud than of those which their military and civil servants displayed during the mutiny. They may, it is true, be proud of the victories of the sword and of the pen gained in past years; of the determination which broke the Mahratta lines at Lasswari, and of the rapid forays which hunted down the Pindarries; of the gallantry which held the ruined rampart of Herat; and of the tact and skill which bound the lion of Lahore to our interests; of an unbroken series of political triumphs; of diplomacy not wholly divorced from equity and fairness; of the exertions which, in one generation, reclaimed one set of savages in the Rajmahal forests, and in our own time has brought another set to reverence a name, recalling the days of chivalry, throughout the wilds of Khandeish; of victories attained against great odds, of civil triumphs completed in spite of a host of prejudices; and of an administration generally, which partly living down or overawing the superstition of one sect and the fanaticism of another, has been the school of practical administrators as well as the "nursery of captains." But this retrospect is almost eclipsed by the deeds of the Company's servants on which, crowded into the space of a twelve-month, even the virulence of its opponents has not thought fit to cast a shade. The rapid discernment which saw our strength and our weakness, the fertility of resource, the undaunted front presented against increasing difficulties, the firmness which kept hosts at bay, the heroic patience that quailed not before heat, hunger, and martyrdom, have extorted admiration from those who would annihilate or supersede the system which, thus tried, had not been found wanting. The most merciless suppressor of the East India Company must, we think, feel like those banished cavaliers "who gave way to an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, (Puritans) out-numbered by foes and abandoned by allies, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counter-scarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the Marshals of France." We leave the character of the Company, after this short sketch of its merits and defects, to History, which will have abundant means of forming an impartial opinion, and to Time, which in this case, will hardly surrender the rise and progress of our eastern dominion to that Wallet at his back, Perhaps the rule of a century, after all, was in one point of view not unfittingly terminated by a death-struggle where the Company kept an army in check, and a population in subjection, until the hosts of England were sent to the rescue by the Crown. Such another hundred years so ended, the most diligent student of history will probably fail to exhume. The funeral oration of the deceased power is best entrusted to the mute eloquence of those who wielded so well the swords of their profession, or laid aside the toga to take up a maiden sword; and if striking deeds were performed by those who sat near the cradle, not less noble have been displayed by those who will follow the hearse. What more fitting tribute could be offered to dying greatness, or in what could the Company find a more glowing eulogy, a more pointed epitaph, or a more solemn dirge? ART. VII.-1. "The Times." London. 1857-1858. 2. 3. British India, its Races and History. By JOHN M. How We Tax India. A Lecture delivered before the Such ET India provide facts, England will find theories. is the division of labor which appears to have commended itself to our friends at home. And, truth to say, we have each labored in our several vocation. The most eager searcher for news could not complain that we Indians were chary of catastrophes and situations in 1857, and we may return the compliment, and say that the good folks at home have not been idle in fitting each event or rumour of event with an elaborate preface of cause and motive; and in situations where we could see nothing but blood and tears, finding "lessons," "warnings," "natural consequences," and whatever else is magnificent and philosophical. Poli English critics have differed largely with one another, but they have been all pretty well agreed in telling us Anglo-Indians that we have ourselves to thank for the mutinies. ticians in parliament assure us that the Bengal army mutinied, because ensigns have begun to call natives "niggers ;" writers in the Times say more cautiously that the growing estrangement between conquerors and conquered was the main cause of the revolt; sceptics declare that we brought the storm on our heads by subscribing to missionary societies; the armies of Exeter Hall shout aloud to us in the midst of our anguish that we are being plagued for our sins. Christian socialists, like Mr. Ludlow, read up Indian history in order to find facts to support a " Young India" brief; even wise, calm, and critical enquirers, like Mr. Forster, do not altogether escape the contagion of righteous indignation; they commence their enquiries by assuming that India has been misgoverned, and then proceed to ask-in what respect ?-the difficulty which they find in answering the question never leading them, it would appear, to suspect the justice of their assumption. We have placed at the head of our present article the names of three publications which represent, so to speak, three schools of English criticism on Indian affairs. The Times represents, as it so audaciously yet so justly claims to do," all England." Mr. Forster's pamphlet represents thinking, intellectual, radical, and slightly philanthropically tinged England. Mr. Ludlow's book does not, we are glad to think, represent England at all. |