C8 Affairs of British India. [\JuLY, 



create that assimilation. If mind be universal, that is, (for we will not 

 be juggled by a quibble), if our Indian fellow- subjects think and feel as 

 we do, they cannot possibly require any infusion of English colonists 

 to change their habits, and raise them in the social scale. We shall 

 pause upon this dilemma, until we are favoured with a definition which 

 shall prove " mind" to be something distinct from habits of thought and 

 feeling. 



We shall close this branch of our subject with two anecdotes illus- 

 trative of the manners and character of the people of North-western 

 India. The actor in the tragedy was a Rajpoot, a Hindoo of the 

 military class. The hero of the second story was a Pitan or Affghan, 

 a Mahommedan, a descendant of one of the soldiers of fortune, to whom 

 the country on the left bank of the Ganges, between Oude and Hurdwar, 

 was granted as a fief. They are known as Rohillas, and their grant 

 was called, in consequence, Rohilcund. The first anecdote is extracted 

 from a very able and unpresuming pamphlet published last year by 

 Mr. Robertson of the Bengal Civil Service. 



" Some fifteen years ago, a village in the district of Cawnpore being 

 put up to sale for an arrear of revenue, was bought in by govern- 

 ment. The arrear amounted to about seven hundred rupees. This 

 arrear the villagers raised among themselves, by a general contri- 

 bution, and carrying to the collector, procured the reinsertion of their 

 managing partner's name in his books as proprietor. About a year 

 after his reinstatement, this individual sold the whole property to an 

 indigo planter, who, although a native in the eye of the law, on account 

 of his maternal connexion, was in every other respect an English gentle- 

 man. This transfer the villagers very naturally resisted, and in the 

 court of the district obtained a decree invalidating the sale. From this 

 decision an appeal was made by the indigo planter to the provincial court 

 of Bareilly . While the matter was pending in that quarter, a robbery oc- 

 curred in the vicinity of the disputed village, on which, one of the par- 

 ties benefited by the decision of the court of the district, mounted his 

 horse, and, spear in hand, pursued and caused the apprehension of the 

 robbers. Such unusual activity attracted attention, and the supreme 

 criminal tribunal at Calcutta, in confirming the sentence passed by the 

 judge of circuit on the gang, directed a handsome reward to be given to 

 the person who had caused their apprehension. Before this order reached 

 Cawnpore, the decision of the civil court of the district having been re- 

 versed in appeal by that of the province, the very individual who was to 

 have received the reward, went, at mid-clay, into the house of the man 

 who had sold the property to the indigo planter, dragged him out into the 

 street, cut his head off, and then fled across the Ganges into the territory 

 of the king of Oude." 



Mahommed Esuf Khan, a desperate fellow, who was deeply implicated 

 in the insurrection which took place at Bareilly in 1816, and was, indeed, 

 supposed to have killed Mr. Leycester with his own hand, fled to Oude, 

 and was taken into the service of the prime minister at Lucknow. Af- 

 ter he had remained in that employment for some years, he took deadly 

 offence at the elopement of a dancing-girl, who was his servant, or under 

 his protection, and her reception into the family of the vizier, one of 

 whose ladies she had probably found means to conciliate. Esuf Khan 

 felt himself dishonoured and wronged, and resolved to reclaim the girl 

 at whatever personal hazard. He armed himself and a few determined 



