C6 Affairs of British India. JuLY, 



its servants, and the apotheosis of Messrs. Buckingham and Arnot, as 

 martyred patriots. 



Goddess of common sense ! what would Mr. Hoby say if he were 

 advised to make all his boots upon one last, because human feet were 

 universally the same, and all his customers had heels and insteps ? Could 

 the most ingenious breeches-maker in this metropolis cut out a pair of 

 leathern " continuations" upon such undeniable " general principles/' 

 with regard to the human form in the abstract, as that they should sit, 

 with equal elegance and satisfaction to the party, upon Mr. Buckle, of 

 Newmarket, and his Grace the Duke of Buckingham ? We are rather 

 inclined to think not. Is it an easier task to fit the mind, without indi- 

 vidual or national measurement ? 



Our illustrations may be thought irreverent by those whose opinions 

 we impugn ; and, therefore, we will ask them a question of a more intel- 

 lectual character. How would they estimate the understanding of a 

 schoolmaster who should apply stimulants, whether of severity and en- 

 couragement, the same both in kind and degree, to one hundred pupils, 

 on the ground that all possessed extremities formed by nature for the 

 rod, and that all were alike under the influence of the fear of punish- 

 ment and the hope of reward ? 



The fact is, that the human mind is universal, as the human face is 

 universal in its generic form and features. It may be that minds, as well 

 as faces, had at one time much more affinity than at present : we know, 

 indeed, that the Tartar, the Negro, and the Caucasian family, had one com- 

 mon ancestor. But, at present, the mind of the Asiatic bears no nearer 

 resemblance to that of the European, than the features of Lady Jersey to 

 those of the reigning Empress of Timbuctoo. Upon the face, climate 

 alone, and, it may be, the personal peculiarities that distinguished the 

 founders of the several races, have operated, yet we see how marked the 

 distinctive differences have become; whilst the mind, under its full 

 share of those causes of disagreement, has been subjected for centuries 

 to the influence of hereditary national habits. Such habits of opinion 

 and feeling time has woven into the very texture of men's minds ; they 

 are imbibed in youth, and, in a vast majority of cases, accompany him 

 that has formed them to the grave ; and as successive generations are 

 dovetailed into each other, many must pass away before new habits are 

 formed with regard to matters of importance. Not one man in ten thou- 

 sand steps so much out of the roadway as to get rid entirely of national 

 characteristics ; and they are very few who ever doubt whether the in- 

 stitutions, manners, and customs, which they have obeyed and observed 

 all their lives, be not the best that human wisdom could possibly devise. 



But as it is a mere play upon words to speak of the human mind as 

 something different from the opinions and feelings of men, it is an idle 

 sophism to maintain the identity of universal mind, to back such argu- 

 ments as those which our Indian reformers make use of, when it is noto- 



to tell us, that what is fundamentally true of human nature, under one complexion, is 

 equally so under another. Every infant knows that ; but who is to tell us what are the 

 fundamental principles of human nature, and what arc factitious habits? A deeper 

 philosopher than Mr. Crawfurd, we imagine. He tells us at page 49, that "the people of 

 the East are, and have been in all ages, more passive ami pusillanimous than the people of 

 the West. The dark-coloured races are more passive than any of the fairer races of men." 

 Now, whether is courage or pusillanimity to be predicated as the fundamental constituent 

 of human nature? 



