500 British India, and the Renewal of [[MAY, 



who are toiling to maintain it with so little encouragement or notice, and 

 who, indeed, may at all times esteem themselves fortunate, if they are 

 suffered to serve their country in security from sneer and sarcasm, 

 the misrepresentations of reviewers *, and the flippant impertinence of 

 fashionable novels. 



We have not time nor space to speculate very deeply upon the causes 

 of this ignorance, and, of what is worse, the disinclination to seek for 

 and acquire information. We presume, however, that the existence of 

 these feelings will not be disputed. They pervade almost every class of 

 society, although there be scarcely a family under the very highest and 

 above the lowest classes, which has not sent a scion to India in some 

 capacity, or on some errand ; and they have kept their ground in a 

 manner highly becoming a British prejudice, whilst astounded and 

 envious Europe has been watching the rapid and uninterrupted ex- 

 tension of our Oriental dominions, until, with the exception of a few ; 

 tributary or dependant states, our empire stretches from the banks of 

 the Btirrampooter to the mouth of the Indus, and from Cape Comorin 

 to the eternal snows of the Himalayas. It is wonderful that the natives 

 of a small island, at the other end of the globe, should have achieved 

 such gigantic conquests, and should be able to stretch their arm to main- 

 tain them over so many thousand leagues of intervening ocean; but it 

 is far more unaccountable, that a spectacle of so much grandeur should 

 be regarded by those, who, nationally speaking, have worked these 

 marvels, with mere cold and listless acquiescence. It was not thus, we 

 apprehend, that the Romans contemplated the flight of their eagles, 

 and the acknowledgment of their supremacy by distant nations ; it is 

 not thus that empire has been acquired and upheld by any people but 

 ourselves, whose sons have happily public virtue enough to stimulate 

 them to exertion, although their most successful efforts have been passed 

 over almost unnoticed, and although applause and honorary distinctions 

 have been dealt out to them with the most niggard hand, whilst ser- 

 vices of less intrinsic merit, if performed nearer home, are certain step- 

 ping-stones to title and consideration. 



There is nothing more certain than that credulity is the constant at- 

 tendant upon ignorance ; and that when particular conjunctions stimulate 

 the public appetite for information, the great body of inquirers ma- 



* It may not be amiss to instance a case in which there is a very happy amalgamation of 

 ignorance and slander. The Quarterly Review for June, 1827, contains an article upon 

 Russian Missions to Bokhara and Khiva, and the writer, after speculating upon the pro- 

 bability of an invasion of India by that power, cannot allow so fair an opportunity of vi- 

 lification to pass unimproved. He deprecates the folly of the military arrangements. "Our 

 great armies and our splendid establishments are mostly confined to the sea-coasts, where they 

 are the least necessary ; the lower extremities of th'e great Indian body are well clothed, 

 and fringed with costly garniture, while the head and trunk are left naked and exposed. 

 On the south-eastern frontier, where no danger can now be apprehended, -we keep up a large 

 army to sicken and die in the swamps and jungles of the Ganges, the Honghty) and the 

 Burrumpooter ; while on the north-western frontier, where every thing is to be apprehended, 

 and where the mountain air breathes health and vigour into the human frame, we have no 

 army at all." Vol. xxxvi. p. 136. 



It is scarcely credible, that whilst the reviewer was writing, the "large army" main- 

 tained on the south-eastern frontier " to sicken and die," consisted of five regiments of 

 Native Infantry, or .about 5000 bayonets, the line to be protected extending more than 

 ten degrees of latitude ; whilst in the quarter defended by *' no army at all," there were 

 forces amounting, in the aggregate, to 60,000 or 65,000 men. 



