and Elphinstone, Wellesley, Wellington,
Malcolm and Munro, are a few among a host of
great men bred in our Indian school. Thus,
from the day of the battle of Plassey, in
spite of foreign intrigue and native jealousy,
internal insurrections and external wars,
often by means most unscrupulous and
unjustifiable, oftener by the irresistible force of
circumstances, almost always against the will
of the Merchant Directory sitting at home,
anxious for peace and profit, British power,
in constantly widening circles, has extended
from the more ancient settlements of Bombay,
Calcutta, and Madras, until it has enclosed
the whole Indian Peninsula, with the exception
of a few kingdoms and principalities,
nominally independent, but, in reality, existing
only by sufferance; and certain, at no distant
time, to be absorbed in British India.

At this moment less than ten thousand
European military and civil officers rule and
tax seventy millions of Mahomedans and
Hindoos; fifty millions more are surrounded
by our dominions, open to our commerce, and
ready to submit to our rule, whenever we
choose to accept their homage.

India is at peace: no longer removed from
us by the uncertain length of a sailing voyage,
thanks to the enterprise of Waghorn, the
steam-engine of Watt, and the locomotive of
George Stephenson, we have recovered—
shortened to thirty days—the ancient overland
route between Europe and Hindostan;
at no distant date we may expect to see the
Isthmus of Suez give way before the pressure
of advancing commerce, capital, and science,
and to have cargoes forwarded from the
Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde, by the
direct route of the Red Sea without
transshipment.

In the midst of the feelings of national pride
and self-gratulation, which such a retrospect
cannot fail to inspire, conscience, or common
sense, or both, ask a plain, practical question,
which we shall have some difficulty in
answering satisfactorily:—Have we done all
we could for the welfare of the native
population under our charge?—have we used the
best means in our power to discover the
wealth, develop the resources, and profitably
occupy the industry of the inhabitants of
these vast and fertile dominions? It is true
that the Indian husbandman can now pursue
his occupations without fear of seeing his
fields laid waste, his children carried into
captivity, by the invasion of hordes of
Mahrattas or Pindarries, or by accidents of
foreign or domestic warfare. Organised robber
bands, which, under the dominion of the most
powerful Indian princes, levied black mail,
have been put down; and even the secret
association of Thugs has been unable to resist
our intelligence and power. Life and property
are secure; and, in spite of occasional
mistakes of the Local Government, there is
every reason to believe, from the comparison
of the taxes levied, and the prices of corn and
of wages, in the reign of the Emperor Akbar,
in the sixteenth century, (the Emperor whose
wisdom, justice, and charity are to this day
the theme of Hindoo and Arab minstrels,)
with those obtaining under the British rule,
the condition of the Indian peasant has in no
case deteriorated, and in many instances
improved.

But this is not enough. We still find large
populations, in the midst of vast parts of
fertile, uncultivated land, naked and all but
starving; we find famine decimating the
inhabitants of one district, while in another,
distant but two or three hundred miles, grain
rots in the field for want of a market. We
find the consumption of British manufactures,
compared with the population open to us,
insignificant and scarcely increasing; the supply
of those articles of raw material most needed,
and for the growth of which the soil, and the
climate, and the habits of the people are well
fitted—such as wheat, sugar, hemp, and cotton
—so far stationary, and with respect to cotton
actually receding. To amend this deplorable
state of affairs is not less our interest than
our duty.

The great mass of the Indian population
are poor; but intelligent, willing to labour,
and anxious to purchase British manufactures,
if they had the means. Our only hope of
extending our exports to India rests upon
being able to increase our purchase of their
agricultural produce.

When the once great Indian merchant
house of Palmer and Co. entered into
commercial operations among the Goands, wild
tribes on the banks of the Pranheeta, a branch
of the Godavery (in longitude eighty degrees
East), their speculations threw a circulation
of about ten thousand pounds a year into the
country. "The effect upon the condition of
the people was seen within the first year, and
continued to improve; those that had scarcely
a covering for their nakedness were hardly to
be recognised in their gay attire. Chintz,
handkerchiefs, penknives, and scissors, found
a ready sale; the men led the way, but the
women soon acquired a taste for dress."

Changes for the purposes of improving the
Government and lightening the taxation of
the native inhabitants of British India must
be slow in their operation and uncertain in
their effect. We, in England, in discussing
such questions, reason in the dark; for we
are not dealing with the destinies of an Anglo-
Saxon race, but with one which, as Sir Thomas
Munro observed, had scarcely changed in
character since India was first visited by
Vasco de Gama. But. if we can afford them
profitable employment, in cultivating cotton,
hemp, sugar, and wheat, we increase the
comforts of the peasantry, and the consumption
of our manufactures, and add to the gross
amount, while diminishing the individual
pressure of taxation. This, then, would be a
certain good; and our zeal to effect it cannot
fail to be quickened when we remember the