"History of the Peninsular War" cannot cover its sandy deserts with verdure, or clothe its inhospitable rocks with the garments of plenteousness and repose.

There is, indeed, no more cutting commentary on the conquest of Scinde than that which Sir William Napier, in his recent work on its Administration, has supplied in the shape of some rude lithographs which illustrate the achievements of his brother Charles. It must be an "Unhappy Valley," indeed, to abound in such spots as these. It is, as Lieutenant Burton emphatically describes it, "a glaring waste, with visible as well as palpable heat playing over its dirty yellow surface."+ The natives themselves speak of it in still less flattering terms. It is said that they wonder why the Almighty, having made Scinde, should have committed such a work of supererogation as the creation of another place not mentionable to ears polite.

In such a Tartarus as this, it was only fitting that the Shaitan-kabhai, or Satan's brother, should rule supreme. The Scindians seem to have recognised the fitness of the association; and to have submitted to their new chief. "All Scinde," he said to them, "now belongs to my Queen, and we are henceforth fellow-subjects; but I am here to do justice, and if, after this voluntary submission, any of you rob or plunder, I will march into your country and destroy the offender and his tribe. Chiefs! you all know I won the battles when I had only 5,000 men; I have now 15,000; and 100,000 more will come at my call; you will believe, therefore, that this is not an empty threat; but let peace be between us. I give back to all their jagheers; and what they possessed under the Ameers." "Then," says Sir William Napier, "they all cried out, You are our King! What you say is true-let it be so! We are your slaves!"" This mode of treatment suited the new subjects, which Lord Ellenborough had bestowed upon Queen Victoria. And when the conqueror gave a party of the chiefs a specimen of British military discipline and skill, in the shape of a review of infantry and artillery, they were amazed at the steadiness and solidity of the one, and the admirable practice of the other; and cried out, "Oh, Padshah (great King), you are master of the world!" "Then," says Sir William Napier, "the General was satisfied that fear and content as to their future condition would keep them true, unless events very unfavourable to the British supremacy should arise to awaken other thoughts." This union of fear and content may sound ominously in English ears. But no one, who has lived in Eastern countries will see anything strange in the combination. In a newly conquered country, fear must always be the great element of quiescence. At first the terror which the conqueror inspires is of an active and absolute kind; but in time it comes rather to assume the character of a passive recognition of superior power, physical and moral; and content, sometimes not altogether unlike sullen indifference, comes to mingle largely with it.

That the personal character of Sir Charles Napier went some way to rivet the respect and awe of the fierce tribes of Scinde and Beloochistan is not to be denied. He was a man of unshaken nerves and unshrinking

History of General Sir Charles Napier's Administration of Seinde, and Campaign in the Cutchee Hills, by Lieut.-Gen. Sir W. Napier, K.C.B. Chapman and Hall, 1851.

+ Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley, by Richard F. Burton, Lieut. Bombay Army, Bentley, 1851.

courage; and there was something real in his personality in war and peace, which his enemies well understood. He was not a mere name, an unseen director of the springs and wires; but a personal presence familiar to their eyes. There is something in such an anecdote as the following, told by Sir William Napier, which, although it might be matched in the personal history of many a lesser man, is not to be read without an admiring interest. "An Indian sword-player," says the historian, " declared at a great public festival that he could cleave a small lime laid on a man's palm without injury to the member, and the general extended his right hand for the trial. The sword-player awed by his rank was reluctant and cut the fruit horizontally. Being urged to fulfil his boast he examined the palm, and said it was not one to be experimented upon with safety, and refused to proceed. The General then extended his left hand, which was admitted to be suitable in form, yet the Indian still declined the trial, and when pressed twice waved his thin keen-edged blade as if to strike, and twice withheld the blow, declaring he was uncertain of success. Finally, he was forced to make trial, and the lime fell open clearly divided. The edge of the sword had just marked its passage over the skin without drawing a drop of blood." Many a private soldier, doubtless, would have willingly stood this test; but such an act of personal courage in a great general exalts him vastly in the eyes of the rude warriors of a barbarous country, and makes them regard him with superstitious awe and reverence. It is readily appreciable even by the meanest understandings; whilst acts of the highest moral courage are often feebly comprehended if not wholly misunderstood.

On the whole, therefore, we are not unwilling to admit that Sir Charles Napier was very much the sort of man to govern with good effect this newly conquered tract of country. The measures which he adopted for the regeneration of Scinde were, in themselves, such as would probably have occurred to and been brought into operation by any civil administrator; but the modus operandi was peculiar to himself. It was peremptory and decisive. He would take no denial. Clearly and forcibly he made his determinations known, and it was of no use to resist his decrees. It was a word and a blow with him. His orders were disobeyed and the recusant chief was at once a prisoner. "In Scinde still," says Lieutenant Burton, " as in England whilome, if you do not occasionally shake the bit in the animal's mouth, and administer a severe twitch or two to remind him that he has a master, he is sorely apt to forget the fact, or to remember it with the intention of changing places with that master the first opportunity that presents itself."

The Scindians, indeed, according to this writer-one of the most agreeable of his class, whose volumes overflow with animal spirits, and are as fresh and racy as though they were devoted to the description of a Paradise, and not of an arid waste-want a deal of good government, not merely to keep them down in, but to keep them up to, their proper place. They have been miserably oppressed by their Beloochee masters; and it is the oft-repeated boast of Sir William Napier, that his brother strove incessantly to rescue the poorer classes of the population from the oppression of their feudal chiefs. He abolished slavery throughout Scinde; and he forcibly dispossessed them of the old-fashioned notion that men are privileged to kill their wives at discretion.

But whether he altogether fulfilled the magnificent boast of Sir William Napier's peroration, some historians perhaps may not be inclined to

admit without stint and qualification. "He had found Scinde," says the fraternal panegyrist, "groaning under tyranny; he left it a contented though subdued province of India, respected by surrounding nations and tribes, which he had taught to confide in English honour, and to tremble at English military prowess as the emanation of a deity. He found it poor and in slavery, he left it without a slave, relieved from wholesale robbery and wholesale murder, with an increasing population, an extended and extending agriculture, and abundance of food produced by the willing industry of independent labours. He left it also with an enlarged commerce, a reviving internal traffic, expanding towns, restored handicraftsmen, mitigated taxation, a great revenue, an economical administration, and a reformed social system; with an enlarged and improving public spirit, and a great road opened for future prosperity. He had, in fine, found a divided population, misery and servitude on the one hand, and on the other, a barbarous dominationcrime and cruelty, tears and distress, everywhere prevailing. He left a united, regenerated people rejoicing in a rising civilization, the work of his beneficent genius." Some allowance must necessarily be made for the friendly impulses of the fraternal historian. But, on the whole, we are willing to admit that Sir Charles Napier's "Administration" of Scinde forms a much more creditable chapter of recent Indian history, than his "Conquest" of that unhappy place.

The volume in which the administrative achievements of Sir Charles Napier are chronicled, like everything else that emanates from the pen of the historian of the "Peninsular War," contains some forcible and graphic writing. But it is, unfortunately, disfigured by much bad feeling and bad taste. It is hard to say whether the text of Brother William, or the illustrative letters of Brother Charles, which are copiously quoted, overflow with the greater amount of bitterness against the Court of Directors of the East India Company, the Board of Control, (Lord Ripon), the Bombay Government, Major Outram, the Bombay Press,-all, in fact, who had the misfortune to differ in opinion from the conqueror of Scinde.

The book purports to be a history, but it bristles with the controversial asperities of a party pamphlet. We could have forgiven an outburst of indignation, however groundless we might consider the complaint; but when an historian is continually breaking out into personal invective, the offence is anything but a venal one; it is intolerable, indeed, and not to be forgiven. It is late in the day now to rip open old sores. We hoped that they had been cicatrized over for ever. But, let us see in what manner the Napiers still carry on the old war. The following is from one of the letters of Brother Charles,—

"To the genius of some Governors-General, and some military commanders, and to the constant bravery of the troops, belongs all the greatness; to the Courts of Direction, designated by Lord Wellesley, as the Ignominious tyrants of the East,' all the meanness. Not that Directors have been personally less honourable than other gentlemen, but that they are always in a false position, as merchants ruling a vast and distant empire solely for their private advantage.

"No man ever seeks to be a Director from mere patriotism, or thirst for military glory, unaccompanied by pecuniary profit; and hence, when the Court does send out a Governor-General of great mind, which is not often or willingly done, it treats him as if he were unworthy to possess power

Their clients are nit alike.

a Bis natur His will be the welire, the agradament, the city of a hundred and twenty millions of people commed to his charge; their's the obtaining all possible prids from the labor of the people. If the safety of their empire dehands a war, the Directors object. it as it inflicts misery, but, having perkami's a brief tenure of præer, the dread loss of profit. This feeling has always led them to quarrel with their best Governors-General. The merchant able to distinguish wars from self-preservation and conquest, objects to both, as lessening immediate gain, and it must be admitted that in India, the former has always involved the latter. The mercantile spirit weakens, if it does not altogether exclude noble sentiments, and the Directors have always regarded their armies with a sinister look.”

We confess that there is a great deal of this which we very imperfectly comprehend, and therefore, perhaps, we are hardly in a position fairly to criticise it. How the Directors of the East India Company govern India, "solely for their private advantage," we do not distinctly see, nor does it appear very clearly to us in what respect the position of a Governor-General, as distinguished from that of an East-India Director, is surrounded with such a halo of patriotism and disinterestedness. Apart from the patronage which both largely possess, the private profit of the East India Director amounts to the magnificent sum of £300 a year; that of the Governor-General to the wretched pittance of £25,000 per annum. Whether any man seeks to be a Governor-General “from mere patriotism," we do not know, but we never heard of one returning his salary to the public treasury; and we are certain that if any man should seek the high office from "thirst for military glory," he is the last person in the world who ought to be sent to India. Thirst for military glory is a very dangerous and reprehensible thing. We are glad to think it does not influence the Directors of the East India Company; and we earnestly hope it will never influence another Governor-General.

Again, we do not clearly perceive what Sir Charles Napier means, when he argues that the Director is more likely to be swayed by sordid motives, because he has "personally a brief tenure of power." We always thought that the Directors of the East India Company have anything but a brief tenure of power. Virtually they are elected for life. If there be one objection more frequently than any other raised against the personal constitution of the East India Company, it is that the Directors remain individually too long in power. Nothing removes them from office but death, or loss of pecuniary qualification. A brief tenure of power is a characteristic of the rule of a Governor-General, not of an East India Director. There are Directors of the East India Company who have sate out half a score of Governors-General.

It hardly appears, therefore, that either the desire of " pecuniary profit," or the knowledge of his "brief tenure of power," is likely to be much more operative for evil in a Director than in a Governor-General. There is, too, another very important consideration, of which we must not lose sight, when we measure the comparative independence of external influences in the Director and the Governor-General. The Governor-General has his party to serve; the Director is of no party. Indeed, it appears to us, that none of the ordinary inducements to sacrifice the welfare of the people for the sake of sordid personal motives, whether of avarice or ambition, exist in the case of the Directors of the East India Company. Whether the treasury of India be empty or full, the Directors draw their magnificent

salaries, and give away writerships and cadetships. Indeed, if the Directors were swayed by mere personal motives, they seldom would "object to a war," for war increases the patronage, which is the real emolument of office. The more officers that are killed in battle, the more new commissions must be issued; or, in other words, the more cadetships there are to be given away by the Directors. On the score, therefore, of "personal profit," the tendencies of the East India House would be rather towards war-making. A deficiency of revenue, occasioned by exhausting wars and unprofitable conquest, however much it may affect the natives of India, has no effect upon the "personal profits" of the Directors. That they have always set their faces against exhausting wars and unprofitable conquests is true. It is the glory of the East India Company, that the development of the resources of the country, and the amelioration of the condition of the people, have always been their objects rather than the subjugation of native states, and the acquisition of new principalities.

As for the statement that the East India Company have always regarded their armies with a sinister look, it is simply ridiculous when we come to consider that the Company's army is the best-paid and bestpensioned army in the world. We have no doubt that many officers of the Queen's Service wish that her Majesty would look at the Royal Army in the same sinister way.

There is an immense deal, all in this same style of vituperation, in all parts of the volume. Poor Lord Ripon, for example, comes in for more than his fair share of Napierian bitterness. Sir William Napier is very indignant because the Board of Control did not fairly appreciate Sir Charles Napier's Hill Campaign, and somehow or other forgot to publish the administrator's despatches. "A day, an hour of the dangers and fatigues of that campaign would have rendered his memory less treacherous, his luxurious existence more noble; it would have furnished at least one passage of his public life unmarked by public derision or public indignation." This is not pleasant reading in a work calling itself a history; and there is, unhappily, only too much more of the same kind. But one more sample will suffice :

"And now," writes Sir William Napier, "happened an event surprising to all parties but the man affected by it, an event which rendered Sir Charles Napier's after career one of incessant, thankless labour, without adequate freedom of action. Lord Ellenborough was suddenly recalled; not unexpectedly to himself, because he knew his government had aroused all the fears and hatred of the jobbing Indian multitude, and all the fierce nepotism of the Directors; but to reflecting men it did appear foul and strange, that he who repaired the terrible disaster of Caubul should be contemptuously recalled by those whose empire he had preserved; that England and India should be deprived of an able governor at a terrible crisis, which nearly proved fatal, to gratify the spleen of men incapable of patriotism, and senseless in their anger."

Controversy may take this view of the case; history never will. We do not find it set down in history that Lord Ellenborough repaired the terrible disaster of Caubul. The terrible disaster of Caubul was repaired by Generals Pollock and Nott, who took upon themselves the responsibility of advancing upon the capital of Afghanistan under a sort of implied permission from Lord Ellenborough, their construction of which, had the operations failed, would have recoiled terribly upon them. All