mournfully affecting in such a sight. I close
this little record of my visit with the statement
that the fact is so, because I am not sure
but that many people expect far too much. I
have known some, after visiting the noblest of
our Institutions for this terrible calamity,
express their disappointment at the many
deplorable cases they had observed with pain,
and hint that, after all, the better system
could do little. Something of what it can do,
and daily does, has been faintly shadowed forth,
even in this paper.  Wonderful things have
been done for the Blind, and for the Deaf and
Dumb; but, the utmost is necessarily far inferior
to the restoration of the senses of which
they are deprived. To lighten the affliction
of insanity by all human means, is not to
restore the greatest of the Divine gifts; and
those who devote themselves to the task do
not pretend that it is. They find their
sustainment and reward in the substitution of
humanity for brutality, kindness for
maltreatment, peace for raging fury; in the
acquisition of love instead of hatred; and in
the knowledge that, from such treatment,
improvement, and hope of final restoration
will come, if such hope be possible. It may
be little to have abolished from mad-houses
all that is abolished, and to have substituted
all that is sustituted.  Nevertheless, reader,
if you can do a little in any good direction
— do it. It will be much, some day.

THE PEASANTS OF BRITISH INDIA.

THE annals of our kingdom in the East
have been written in blood with a pen of
gold. They read very like stories from the
Arabian Nights Entertainments; and thus
many people indulge in the belief that, in
India, the population is exclusively composed
of caliphs, nabobs, jugglers, rajahs, bankers,
fakeers, nautch girls, Bramin priests, dacoits,
and magicians. The name of India is
intimately connected with all sorts of wealth and
luxury. There are very few, indeed, in this
country who do not link the name of Indian
merchant or banker with unlimited riches.
An old East Indian civil servant is usually
termed a "Nabob;" and as to "John Company"
of Leadenhall Street— that mysterious,
grey-headed old gentleman, who makes and
unmakes rajahs and sultans as coolly and rapidly
as children make dirt-pies in our streets—he
is looked upon as a sort of English Vishnu
— a concentration of the Prime Minister, the
Bank of England, the Horse Guards, and
the Admiralty. The streets and alleys in
that wonderful land are currently reported
to be paved with real philosophers' stones,
transmuting everything they touch into the
best guinea-gold. Perhaps, of late, the
auriferous reputation of India Proper has been
somewhat perilled by the diggings in
California and Australia; but then folks shake
their heads, and tell you, that in the "Oriental
East Indies " there are neither Yankees
nor convicts, neither Lynch law nor bush
law.

It is, perhaps, an ungracious task to dispel
this glorious vision. But the truth must be
told. Our Indian empire can only be likened
to the famed "apple of the desert;"—beauty
and promise to the eye; but bitterness and
ashes to the taste.

Travellers have found Sheffield knives
selling in Bokhara;  grey tweeds from
Scotand in the Cabool bazaars, and Birmingham
wares in Cashmere villages. I have stumbled
upon an empty blacking-bottle of Day and
Martin, in a miserable Indian mud hut.  I
have found, adorning the walls of a Buddhist
temple, printed cotton handkerchiefs covered
with political caricatures, from Manchester;
I have seen the reception hall of a Kandian
chief graced by one of Rowland's picturesque
Macassar labels, with a dark lady combing
uncommonly long black hair. But it by no
means follows that because all these knives,
and cottons and wares, are exchanged for rich
spices, costly silks, and precious gums, that
the country is prosperous, or that its trade is
progressively remunerative. Neither is it a
matter of course that "John Company" is a
solvent old gentleman, in spite of his armies,
his fleets, and his captive rajahs.

The fact is that the present yearly income
of the Honourable East India Company
falls far short of its annuual expenditure: *
that the trade between this country and
its Indian possessions is not greater than
it was ten years since: that the inhabitants
of those countries consume, per head, not
more than one-eighth of the quantity of
British goods taken by the population of
the South American states: and, moreover,
that for some years past, the trade between
Great Britain and India has not been a
profitable affair to shippers or to importers.
During no period of the history of the world
has commerce made such rapid strides
as it has within the past ten years. It is a
fact so well known as to require no proof.
Even the antiquated empire of the Celestials
has added vastly to its external traffic.
Nevertheless, the trade between Great Britain and
India has remained, as nearly as possible,
stationary. How is it that whilst British
India, with a population of one hundred and
twenty millions, takes our goods to the value
of no more than six millions, two hundred and
sixty-five thousand pounds, South America
(Mexico excepted) and the foreign West
India Islands, having but fifteen millions of
inhabitants, consume British merchandise to
the extent of six millions, three hundred and
eighty-one thousand pounds?

When I was sojourning in the land of
Indigo, and beheld the gorgeous Indian
metropolis—  the vast city of palaces—  the luxurious
style of living of its many merchant-princes
and its nabob-officials; — when I saw other

* The balance of expenditure over income in the year 1849 amounted to nearly a million and a half sterling.