676 British India, and [JtrNB, 



is unsuppressed to this day, and it obtains to the greatest extent in 

 those districts which are nearest to the seat of government, and where 

 its power of suppressing violence ought to be most easily exercised. 

 In the same quarter, the manufactory of salt, which is carried on by 

 forced labour,* and in the pestilential climate of the Sunderbuns, is 

 productive of the most intense misery. Alligators, tigers, and dysen- 

 tery, contend for the privilege of destroying those whom the Company 

 sacrifice to the Moloch of monopoly. The Upper Provinces, on the other 

 hand, manifest equally infallible symptoms of anarchy, misgovernment, 

 find disaffection. The mob shouted in the streets of Dehli that the rule 

 of the Company was at an end f. There exists a class of hereditary high- 

 way murderers. The people showed great anxiety pending the siege of 

 Bhurtpore, and expressed themselves mortified at its capture. In short, 

 enough may be gathered from the admissions of the government itself, 

 and the reports of its subordinate functionaries, to prove, beyond ques- 

 tion, the existence of vice, and misery, and discontent, to a degree quite 

 inconsistent with the notions entertained by these philanthropists of " the 

 eternal fitness of things," and the possible perfectability of human laws 

 and institutions, 



We are unable to lay before our readers more than brief and partial 

 abridgments of the charges that have been brought against an admi- 

 nistration, which has been compelled to contend for the last twenty 

 years, that is, since its relief from external pressure threatening its 

 very being, with moral obstacles, greater, perhaps, and more perplexing 

 than the rulers of any nation have ever been called upon to face and 

 overcome. That they have never quailed at the difficulties of their 

 situation, that they have manfully set their shoulders to the wheel, with- 

 out calling upon Hercules for assistance, we shall prove to the satisfac- 

 tion of the most sceptical, if they be open to conviction, before we bring 

 the subject to a close. But our object at this moment is to expose the 

 ungenerous sophistry of the writers, who have endeavoured to betray 

 the public into forming an estimate of the merits of those who have been 

 deputed to govern our magnificent empire in the East, not only without 

 taking into account all that they have actually effected towards the 

 establishment of good government, in the widest sense of the term, but 

 also without reference to the circumstances inherent in the nature of the 

 task, and the quality of the subject matter, which have arrayed them- 

 selves to prevent more rapid progress, or to qualify success. Both the 

 one and the other have been sedulously kept out of sight, whilst 

 their failures, their slow and painful, and, it may be, sometimes im- 

 perceptible advance, and their occasional errors and oversights, have been 

 dwelt upon, as if they were entirely without counterpoise, as if the ser- 



* This allegation (which may be found in Mr. Rickards' work, pages 644 and 647) hap- 

 pens to te absolutely untrue, but the use of all weapons is permitted " ad delcndam Cartha- 

 ginem." The statement regarding climate is also relatively unfounded ; for the salt ma- 

 nufacturers are the natives of those parts of the country in which their operations are carried 

 on, and are surely no more to be pitied on that score than the fen-men of Ely or Lincoln- 

 shire, or the inhabitants of the oozy shores of Holland and Flanders. However deadly the 

 climate of the Sunderbuns may be, the present Governor-General is now parcelling out its 

 swamps and wilds to English and half-caste capitalists, who must clear the forest by native 

 labour. The island of Sangur, which is situated at one of the most remote and desolate ex- 

 tremities of the tract in question, has been already brought into cultivation by the same 

 agency. We hope that Mr. Rickards will no't fail to inform the public what/era? was used 

 to gather and keep together ihe gangs of workmen by whom those operations were conducted. 



f Quarterly Review, vol. xxxvi. Article on Russian Missions to Bokhara, &c. 



