nizes also the office of the Purohit or family Priest, and the Guardian of the Mosque, or Shrine of a Mahomedan Saint. These gentry are always talking of feeding the poor, as did the monks of the medieval period, but in fact they are lazy drones, and, if report is true, lead loose lives. Some marry, some practice celibacy; if wealthy they are quarrelsome, proud, and grasping. We found the Punjaub eaten up with the devotees of the Sikh persuasion, and we have secured their ample Revenues. No doubt, when the Sikh power rose, all the ruined Mosques and Tombs of the Mahomedans were flourishing and richly endowed: the Sikhs were wise enough in their generation to sweep them all away, and when the long steps of Benares and the gorgeous tank of Amritsur are falling to ruin, when people no longer visit shrines on account of the bad repute of the manager, when the priesthood lose their hold on their people, there will be the dawn of a new religion; but not while, as is provided by the Code, a man entering a religious order forfeits his property, while Christian Judges are called upon to decide upon points of ceremonial of entering Hindoo Monastic institutions, and while the corporate existence of those bodies is recognized.

It must not be supposed that the practice of the courts in which this code is enforced, has approached in any degree to perfection: they are confessedly rough institutions, have as yet scarcely taken root, are lax, irregular, and just what may be expected of the conglomerate of which the judicial body has been formed-young civilians, gallant Captains of Infantry, country-born and half caste Britons, Persians, Armenians, Sikhs, Mahomedans, Cashmeerees, Bengalee Baboos, Punjabees, Hindustanees, a motley crew, who, according to the exigencies of the local Government, are always changing. Still progress is being made, and progress makes perfect.

Rapid are the decisions-sometimes too rapid, but the good easy man, who has got his decree, must not suppose that he has got to the end of his journey: wilds immeasurable spread, and mountains upon mountains appear to start up: the bane of the Punjaub system is the license of appeal, which is unlimited, and the extraordinary fact, that many of the Appellate Courts are in the hills far removed from the cities and villages where dwell the unhappy litigants. However, spurred by pique, and a spirit of rivalry and a passion for the fight, the defeated litigant hopes to catch his antagonist in a net of appeals, remands, and modifications: he knows that by a voyage to the cold regions at certain seasons he runs a chance of fever, ague, or cholera, but the spirit of litigation is like a taste for gambling, and, when it has once seized its victim, it does not leave him until exhausted and ruined. Should however the decree-holder turn the corner JUNE, 1859.

2 I

of appeal, a new arena is entered, for the defeated party tries by claims and counter-claims to defeat the execution: cases of objection spring up hydra-headed, and nothing but a keen sense of the spirit of the game, like a fox hunter, would carry him through the toil, the weary delay, the daily disappointment; and sometimes when he has his enemy fairly in his power, and is preparing to devour him, the vermin dodges, and wrings from a soft-hearted Judge an order to pay by instalments.

The contemplation of a machine formed for the express purpose of ruling men, controling their bad passions, and defining their rights, such a machine as a civil code, is always interesting, more especially among such a people as the people of India. It is dangerous to legislate beyond the requirements or against the public feeling of a people, for, if you do so, your laws will either be oppressive or a nullity. And it is a striking reflection, that so many can live together, and yet differ so widely. In your village wanderings you are conducted to their boundaries by the head-men and notables, with whom you have been discoursing, and you are welcomed by another set who use different phrases of salutation, call ordinary things by different names, beÎieve different dogmas, name their children on a different principle, have different notions of right and wrong, and invoke different Deities: but all are equally devoid of the Spirit, and utterly without God in the world.

Some burn their dead, others bury; the Hindoo will go out of his way to burn a dead Hindu stranger, the great horror of a Mahomedan is to be burnt. The Hindoo would not marry a member of the same tribe as himself, considering it incest: the Mahomedans habitually marry first cousins; their law of inheritance proceeds on entirely different principles, yet there is no sting, no recrimination, but friendly intercourse, and a courteous avoidance of certain subjects, and neither can cry back to the abstract rights of man, for both religions appeal to a Code, one made many thousand years ago for another state of society, the other made thousands of miles off for a very different kind of people.

Still in the Punjaub in outward matters the process of assimilation was going on. The Hindus might be taunted as being halfMahomedans, as the Affghans taunt the Mahomedans with being half-Hindus; their dress, and trimming of the beard are so similar, that all distinction of outward appearance has perished. The Hindus entrusted all their children to Mahomedan teachers, and their infants habitually to Mahomedan wet-nurses, which, considering their extreme particularity about cooking and eating among adults, is a singular phenomenon of the Mahomedan character, and forms of writing had been adopted, and phrases used

in correspondence, which sound ridiculous from a party who did not believe in Mahomet. The offspring of Mahomedan concubines were sometimes Hindooized by their parents, and some of the Punjaub nobles are so situated. In fact the grand idea of the founder of the Sikh religion was being gradually worked out, a progress was being made towards the destruction. of caste certainly, and the probable blending of religions, when the passage of the Christians across the Sutlej rolled the tide back. We have given a new life to Hindooism in its most ultra development: the Sikhs are gradually falling back into. orthodox Hindooism, and all the irregularities, sanctioned by: Royal lust, or the license of powerful Chiefs, and the general independence of Sectarians, are now checked. It has been our unhappy privilege to give a new lease to customs which werewearing out, and by the presence of our army of pure Hindoos,. and our numerous followers, to recrystallize into a compact form. the fabric of ceremonial rites, and spiritual dogmas, which had、 been gradually melting away.

For the Punjaub and its dependencies, the Code, which we have now reviewed, is a great fact, pregnant of promise, enlightment, and order. Whoever wrote the Code, be he old or young, deserves the thanks of the Government and the people, for already fifteen millions of men submit to it, and it combines a wise tenderness for the common law of the people with a resolute op-. position to antiquated, unjust, and time-dishonoured prejudices. When the Governor General in Council declined to give this. Code the sanction of law, there were fortunately found men in the Punjaub ready to give it a trial, and the names of Sir John Lawrence and Mr. Montgomery must be inseperably connected with it, for we know from the bitter experience of the Criminal. Code drawn up by Mr. Macaulay, that the best of Codes areuseless, if there is a deficiency of nerve and force of characterin the rulers, to take the responsibility of promulgating them... In the Punjaub a Justinian and Napoleon were not found wanting. Since then we understand that the Code has been introduced into the Kingdom of Oudh.

This is a warning to the Rulers of those great provinces that lie on either side of the stream of the Northern Ganges, who still, in spite of experience and failure, cling to the yoke of the Regulations. A year has elapsed since they were urged and implored to cut boldly and be free: to this they were unequal,. and they still plunge on in the Slough of Despond. Many an action of our European officers, many a proceeding of our Civil Courts, have in times past come under our observation, which were calculated to rouse a people, who had any spark of spirit, into righteous indignation: but they bore it in silence; their

cup was not full, and they bided their time, till at length a Mutiny of our Prætorians gave room for an expression of the feelings of the mass, which had been pent up too long. It was then that the deep-rooted national dissatisfaction of half a century, the sullen rancour of a crushed Aristocracy, mindful of the state of their ancestors but conscious of their own degeneracy,the furious hate of despoiled priesthoods-the imprescriptible rights of dethroned and dishonoured dynasties,-the honourable importunities of wounded self-respect and hopeless ambition— the plaintive lamentations of ousted landlords and the ceaseless recriminations of ruined families-the scoundrelism of large cities and the scum of military bazaars-all these collected in one black cloud, and overshadowed the North West Provinces. On us, and our children, fell the accumulated vengeance for the misdeeds of our forefathers: the people hated us with a hate exceeding the hate which they bore to each other, they abominated our religion as evidenced by our outward customs, and they writhed under our pride.

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But it is past. Every nerve has been strained, and every pulse agitated the storm is blown over, and left us materially more powerful than before:-the strong man is himself again, and cries Ha Ha!, for he has seen the struggle, tried his strength, and knows that his countrymen, if true to themselves, can still conquer and rule millions. But, in the hour of victory let us think of justice, and if we wish to govern the country, we must learn much and forget much, and bear in mind that no slavery is sa wretched, as that where the law is capricious and uncertain.

ART. II.-1. Correspondence relating to the Establishment of an Oriental College, London. Reprinted from the " Times" with Notes. London: Williams and Norgate. 1858.

2. Statement on the formation of a Christian Vernacular Education Society for India. 1858.

THE Court of Directors, with all its defects-a bulwark against hasty measures, has been abolished after a long and not inglorious career, and the Crown is now supreme in India, but the Court may leave as a legacy to their successors those memorable words of Macaulay delivered in the House of Commons. "I believe most firmly, and I believe that no person who is acquainted with India will dispute what I am about to say, that at least there are ten gentlemen in this Court (of Directors) the least inform'ed of whom is better acquainted with and is better informed on 'India, than the whole of the Treasury Bench opposite.

That

this House can be any efficient check on the royal prorogative ' in India, I altogether deny, what we want is a body independent of the Crown and no more than independent, which shall be neither the tool of the Ministry nor the tool of the opposition."

The danger of India therefore is this-that after a few years with an apathetic House of Commons, important Indian questions may be decided really by Anglo-Indian and London Journalists, ignorant of the real condition of the Indian people, or they may be carried by popular agitators who get up a cry for party or personal purposes. We should remember the history of the first French revolution when it was very easy to pull down, but to build up was never done, when Editors and theorists like the Abbè Siéyes made paper constitutions ad libitum. Some both in India and England, forgetful of the maxim "the more haste the worse speed"-that long rooted associations are not easily eradicated, that whatever is to be permanent must be the growth of time, would have India managed at the mere dictum of a Secretary of State in England.

It is therefore is a question of supreme importance nowhow is India to be permanently pacified, and its people lcd to co-operate with England in the great work of civilising and Christianising the Hindu race. How are Englishmen to fulfil their high mission in Southern Asia, ever bearing in mind the words of Sir C. Wood manfully stated before the House of Commons "the desire to throw off a foreign yoke is implanted in 'the human brcast." The problem is, as Lord John Russell put it, "how to reconcile our duties as Christians in India with the most entire religious liberty, and a benevolent rule with the