"peculiar institution," which he could not help
accepting, and could only modify by his use of it.
In doing this, however, he established a glaring
contrast between the native planter and himself:
a contrast which Eastern jealousy could
little brook, and which Eastern subtlety would
soon seek to avenge. These men, Zemindars,
are landed native gentry. It has been the
latter-day policy of our rulers in India to conciliate
them, fully as much as to discourage and
discountenance the English settler. With all an
Oriental's cunning, they studied to make the
position of the planter untenable; insubordination
was excited amongst the ryots, the spirit of
litigation was fostered, agents were sent amongst
them with pretended stories of rights of which
they were defrauded and gross hardships to
which they were subjected. Poverty has sharp
ears for its imputed wrongs, and it was not a
difficult task to make these poor peasants imagine
themselves injured and aggrieved. They
were told, among other things, that indigo was
only remunerative to the capitalist, and was
ruinous to the peasant; and that rice, the food of
the people, was the only crop that repaid labour.
Former tales of cruelties, stories of oppression
in days long past, were raked up against men
not born when the acts occurred.

To make these atrocities matter of accusation
against men in our day would be about as fair
as to arraign the present landlords of Ireland for
the barbarous illegalities practised in the middle
of the last century. The English settler in
India was, however, to be discouraged. The
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal proceeded in the
year just elapsed, to institute a commission of
inquiry into the cultivation and manufacture of
indigo in Bengal. A brief acquaintance with
such commissions enables any one, from the
name and character of the individuals composing
it, to anticipate the report. Let us quote two
of the recommendations, and leave them to the
appreciation of our readers. By one, they advise
that no indigo planter should ever be an honorary
magistrate—pretty much like declaring
that the only squire in the parish shall not be
a justice of the peace. By another, they decide
that no summary legislative enactment is required
for the planter's protection. And this
where twenty-four hours may jeopardise a crop
worth tens of thousands of pounds. A cheap
and easy redress, however, would facilitate
British settlement in India.

The schism which now threatens the disruption
of the North American Union is pregnant
with the gravest consequences to our own
manufacturers. There is no limit to the disastrous
results to ourselves, that would ensue from a
failure in the supply of cotton. The soil and
climate and labour of India would furnish not
alone all the cotton that we need, but enough
for the consumption of the whole of Europe.
English intelligence, capital, and enterprise,
would not long delay to develop the new field.
The railroads now planned or in progress offer
further facilities for the project. Everything in
the material condition of India is highly favourable
to it. But if the English settler in India
can be surrounded with embarrassments by the
civil servants of the administration, if his property
can be jeopardised, and the operations of
his industry interfered with, is it likely or
unlikely that British capitalists will subject
themselves and their fortunes to the capricious
wisdom of a lieutenant-governor of Bengal?

EPISCOPACY IN THE ROUGH.

IT is only quite of late that the attention of the
English people has been turned to the Pacific
side of America. There was a kind of vague feeling
of Indians, sands, big rocks, buffaloes, pine
forests, bears, and the Hudson's Bay Company
out there, but nothing more. English pluck was
equal to Toronto and Quebec; but the Far West
— Vancouver's Island, Columbia, and all that
wide region of the Hudson's Bay— remained in
illimitable shadow, and appalled even the hardy.
The Company did their best to keep up the
delusion. According to them, the place was
sterile, full of wolves and desert plains and
wicked Indians; an inhospitable shore, on a par
with Labrador, worth no one's visiting; certainly
worth no one's attempt to colonise.
This might have gone on for generations
yet to come—as long, indeed, as the monopoly
could be renewed, or the tide of emigration
kept out—but for the lucky chance which
one day discovered certain round, bright,
shining particles, called by men gold. This
discovery brought crowds of worshippers to
the shrine, and broke down the hedges of the
Company's garden of the Hesperides. The quiet
valleys were invaded by crowds from all parts of
the world; Chinamen jostled Indians round the
cradles of the gold-washers; South Americans
bandied oaths and pistol-shots with New
Yorkers and Londoners; the restless said that
there was no elbow-room left in California, and
a man could not mark out a "claim" in the
Australian diggings without running into his
neighbour's hole; and the scum of the floating
populations drafted off on the top of the tide:
Vancouver's Island was made to go through the
same social phase as the valley of the Sacramento
and the gold region of the Southern Land
had gone through before.

And what did these adventurers find? How
far true were the reports and superstitions which
the Company had spread about, that it might
preserve the monopoly of furs, and keep out all
other men from a trade in beaver skins and
mink? A climate very nearly equal to that
of England, only a little more moderate, having
a Gulf stream of its own to make it so; a soil
thick, loamy, fertile, producing most of our
English fruits and flowers, perhaps a trifle bettered;
apple-trees yielding enormous crops, and
hops and hemp growing wild; turnips as large
as hassocks, radishes as large as beets, and great
clusters of potatoes to a single stalk; abundance
of coal to the very surface; a fine land
for all sorts of grain; furry creatures with
costly skins;  fisheries inexhaustible, and game