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for the lapse of minor States and Principality 

 say in round numbers 25,000,000. The latest 

 returns to Parliament give the population of British 

 India as 135,369,598. Yet in every speech in the 

 House of Commons, in every newspaper article, in 

 every review on the subject, 200,000,000 of Indian 

 subjects are regularly paraded before the public, with 

 the same confidence as if they had been actually regis- 

 tered, mustered, and returned. Were the public, at 

 the same time, favored with even an approximate esti- 

 mate of the area of this great peninsula were it 

 always added, for instance, that, Russia excluded, 

 India is larger than half Europe, there would not be 

 so much harm in the multiplication of these hundreds 

 of millions of people. But, generally, no allusion 

 whatever is made to this simple fact. The public, 

 consequently, never very discriminating in statistical 

 matters, and having no standard of comparison pre- 

 sented to their minds other than that of their own 

 little island, at onco run a\vay with the idea, that 

 India has a teeming population, with which it is sadly 

 oppressed and over-burthened. That the contrary is 

 the case that India is extremely under-populated, 

 and that the crying want of the Country is a popula- 

 tion in some degree proportionate to its immense 

 area, the vast tracts the thousands of square miles of 

 rich, highly productive, and culturable land, which is 

 now lying waste, for the simple reason that there are 

 no people to till it, are a sufficient proof. 





