276 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1891. 



1842, accepting his election to corresponding- membership in the National 

 Institution. After thanking the institution "for this lueineuto of their 

 friendship and recognition of past services in the cause that had been 

 so favorably revived at the seat of government," he continued thus: "I 

 most sincerely hope that all the objects which engaged the attention of 

 Thomas Law, es(i.,* ami myself in 1816 in establishing the Columbian 

 Institute will now meet the approbation and support of the Govern- 

 ment and of the scientific men of the District of Columbia." f 



* Thomas Law was a uieiiiber of an Englisli family of talent and influence. His 

 father, Eilmnnd Law, i>. i>., born in Cartmcl, Lancashire, in 1703, educated at St. 

 John's College, Cambridge, was anther of several theological and philosophical works, 

 and in 1769 became Bishop of Carlisle, holding this office till his death in 1787. Of 

 his younger brothers, one was Bishop of Elphin, another, George Henry Law, o. d., 

 (1761-1845) was Bishop of Chester, 1812, and later, 1824, of Bath and Wells. [Bio- 

 graphical Sketch in Gentleman's Magazine, 1845, Part ii, p. 529.] His elder brother, 

 Edward Law — Lord Ellenborough— (1750-1818) was an eminent lawyer, principal 

 counsel for Warren Hastings in the great impeachment trial before the House of 

 Lords, Attorney-General and Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and was father 

 of Edward Law, Earl of Ellenborough (1790-1871), Governor-General of India. 



Thomas Law was born in 1756, and in 1773, at the age of 17, entered the service of 

 the British East India Company in Bengal, and was rapidly promoted, becoming mem- 

 ber of the revenue; board of Hugli before he was 21, later judge of Poonah, and in 1783 

 collecter, judge, and magistrate of Behar, a ]>rovince with more than 2,000,000 in- 

 habitants, an office which he administered for six years with great success, after- 

 wards, at the request of Lord Cornwallis, the Governor-General, then engaged in his 

 campaign against Tippoo Saib, serving for two years on the revenue board at Cal- 

 cutta. In 1791, his health having failed, he sailed for England, where he remained 

 until 1793, the year of his removal to America. 



While in India he was the friend and associate of Lord Cornwallis, Lord Tei'gue- 

 uett, and Sir William Jones, and was the author of Avhat was known as the Mociir- 

 rn->i sji.stem and pcrnwnvnt settlement, a great legislative reform, the accomplishment 

 of which was the i)riucipal feature of Cornwallis's administration, which the board 

 of c(mtrol of the East India Conii)any described as "forming a new epoch in Hin- 

 dostau, from which, they predict, will be derived security and permanent prosperity, 

 and consider it as an important and most beneticial change to 50,000,000 of ])eoi)le, 

 and full of beneficial consequences." 



William Duane, the editor of the Philad(l|>liia Aurora, who had known Mr. Law 

 in India, wrote thus concerning him in 1815: 



"We have known Mr. Law now more than thirty years. We knew him when he 

 was inferior to no man in eminence and in power, the third or fourth in degree in a 

 gnsat empire; and this was at a time, too, when, by his own generous eti'orts, pursued 

 with zeal and talent that commanded general admiration aiul esteem, he brought 

 about a revolution, the influence of which now extends to one hundred and twenty 

 millions of jteople, as great in its moral and political influences as the extinction of 

 the feudal system. In Hindostan, under the Mogul government, the tenure of laud 

 was in the Empire and reverted upon the demise of the holder. The afflictions pro- 

 duced by such a system can not be conceived by those Avho have not been eye wit- 

 nesses of them. Upon the death of a zuinudar, or landh(d<ler, where p<dyganiy 

 prevails and the children and females are numerous, the death of the head of the 

 family, where no ]»rovision has been otherwise made, can not be well imagined. Mr. 

 Law, who held the government of a rich and populous province under the Bengal 

 administration, proi)osed what has been called the Mocurrery system, that is to 



t Proceedings of the National Institution, i, p. 156, 1842. 



