1830.] [ 499 ] 



BRITISH INDIA, AND THE RENEWAL OF THE COMPANY S CHARTER. 



THE destinies of our empire in the East are at this moment depending 

 upon the fiat of the legislature; and we are most anxious to impress 

 upon our readers the great importance of the questions upon which 

 the parliament are about to decide, whilst the scales are still trem- 

 bling in equilibrium, and whilst the public mind is in that state of 

 excitement, which, when it is natural and healthy, fits it best both to 

 receive and digest information. We shall endeavour not only to awaken 

 still more thoroughly the national interest, and to furnish genuine and 

 wholesome materials for it to work upon ; but shall also exert ourselves 

 to meet and combat some of those fallacies and misstatements on the 

 subjects now under discussion, which would seem to be most prevalent 

 and mischievous. 



The periodical curiosity and attention which the affairs of British 

 India excite in this country, as contrasted, in their warmth and brevity 

 of duration, with the long cycles of apathy and indifference which pre- 

 cede and follow them, remind us, very forcibly of the accounts which 

 we read in old wonder-loving authors of the temporary resuscitations of 

 comatose patients. After lying in perfect lethargy for days, or even 

 weeks, scarcely even exhaling enough breath to bedim a looking-glass, they 

 suddenly began to yawn and stretch themselves, and anon sat bolt up- 

 right in their beds, calling lustily, according to their previous habits, 

 for bread and cheese and beer, or wine and a sandwich ; whilst the 

 astonished attendants could scarcely suppress their wonder at the acute- 

 ness of their recovered perceptions, and the eagerness with which they 

 proceeded to enter upon the domestic concerns of the family. But the 

 marvel was always short-lived, for before the beer could be drawn, or 

 the bread sliced, irresistible drowsiness once more weighed down the 

 eyelids and senses, and the sufferers were consigned, unrefreshed, to a 

 second trance of a fortnight. 



We are guilty of no exaggeration in thus comparing the occasional 

 starts of animation, which particular circumstances have, from time to 

 time, excited, with regard to our Indian possessions, with the brief con- 

 sciousness of a person awaking from an unnatural state of torpor, and 

 almost instantly relapsing into it. Indeed, the analogy would be com- 

 plete, if the trances from which we have drawn our illustration, had not 

 frequently been mere trickery and imposture, whilst the moral lethargy 

 in question is undeniably genuine. With very partial exceptions, not 

 only those classes of the community who are, generally speaking, the 

 best informed, but even our Senators and Statesmen are ignorant upon 

 subjects connected with India, its history, geography, and statistics, 

 and the manners and character of the people, to a degree which would 

 be absolutely ludicrous, if it were not humiliating to our national pride 

 to reflect how little we are superior in these respects to our Spanish co- 

 temporaries, who only awoke from their protracted stupor of indifference 

 with regard to their magnificent trans- Atlantic colonies, to find that they 

 had lost them. St. Stephen's might produce its hundreds quite upon a 

 par with any Hidalgo of Castile or Andalusian bull-fighter whatever ; 

 and if we be more fortunate than our neighbours in retaining our hold 

 upon a distant empire, we may thank the energies and talent of those 



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