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three gates stood. In these remains the eye, perhaps influenced by imagination, detects something more than usually dreary. A curse seems to have fallen upon it; not a shrub springs between the fragments of stone, which, broken and blackened with decay, are left to encumber the soil, as unworthy of being removed.

"Whilst we were sitting there, an old priest, who was preparing to perform mass in the cathedral, came up and asked what we were doing.

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Looking at the Casa Santa," we answered. He inquired if we were Christian, meaning, of course, Roman Catholic. We replied in the affirmative, intending, however, to use the designation in its ampler sense.

"Ah, very well,' replied our interrogator. I put the question, because the heretics from Bombay and other places always go to see the Casa Santa first in order to insult its present state.'

"And the Señor asked us whether we would attend mass at the cathedral; we declined, however, with a promise to admire its beauties the next day, and departed once more on our wanderings.

"For an hour or two we walked about without meeting a single human being. Occasionally we could detect a distant form disappearing from the road, and rapidly threading its way through the thick trees as we drew near. Such precaution is still deemed necessary at Goa, though the inducements to robbery or violence, judging from the appearance of the miserable inhabitants, must be very small."

We say not that there were no other causes for the decadence of Portuguese power and influence in India; but we must assert our conviction that God has visited the people nationally for this national iniquity. We are not superstitious, but neither are we atheistic. Individual men may set their faces against high heaven, and the thunder-bolt may not be launched forth to strike, nor the load of affliction press more heavily upon them than upon those of opposite character. This is a phenomenon of no rare occurrence, and one that has always been a stumbling-block to thoughtful men. "I was

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"envious at the foolish," said one of old," when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death; but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble like other men; neither are they plagued like other men. There'fore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. ***When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end." In the sanctuary of God he doubtless learned that this world is but the first act of the great life-drama. Man's life here bears so small a proportion to the whole duration of his being, that the pros

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perity of the bad, and the adversity of the good, are of no estimable amount in judging of God's principles of dealing with his creatures. Each individual man is taken away from our cognizance, while yet the account between him and his creator is but newly opened. There is an unadjusted balance which we are too apt to think has been "written off;" and it is perhaps not till faith comes to the aid of observation that we are able fully "to justify (in this respect) the ways of God to man.' But with nations it is otherwise. They have a substantive existence, apart from that of the individual men whe compose them; they perform responsible acts, and are capable of being dealt with providentially in their national capacity. Then the duration of a nation upon earth is necessarily longer, and may be much longer, than that of a single generation of men; and thus there is more time allowed for the reaping on earth of the harvest that they sow, for the evolution of that Providence which is the acting of Him, of whom it is sublimely said, that a thousand years are as one day." And then we have no reason to believe otherwise than that the earthly duration of a nation is the whole of its national duration. If then a nation be capable of responsibility, it seems that the account must be settled upon earth, that national sins must, sooner or later, induce national judgments. It is not to be expected that we should be able to trace very minutely the connexion between them, yet we can see enough to give foundation to the belief that the connexion may be very close, and the sequence very much of the nature of cause and effect. It may be, for example, that there was more than a merely poetic combination in those solemn lines in which the poet brings the destruction of the Roman Empire. into immediate contact with the brutalities of the Roman Circus ;

His eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother; - he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday!

All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,

And unavenged ? Arise! Ye Goths, and glut your ire.

It may be that, as we have said, the poet in this grand passage was not the maker of a connexion that did not exist, but rather the seer of a sequence, the links of which were not apparent to men gifted with less insight.

And it may be too, that there is a closer connexion than might at first sight appear, between the Inquisition of Goa, and the

setting of the star of Portugal in the east. It was said of the Portuguese, in the days of their Indian glory, that they were "a little body with a mighty soul." But how could the might of their soul be upheld, when so base a system as we have sketched, of espionage, and mutual distrust, and suspicion, was established in the midst of them? Is it not of necessity that this must have cowed the soldier's heart and weakened his arm? Is it not of necessity that it must have chilled all generous enthusiasm in the breast of the merchant? Must it not in hundreds of ways have introduced, and fostered, and perpetuated, that self-abasement which is so often the prelude of national degradation? That other causes conspired to effect the decay of Portuguese interests in the east, we by no means intend to deny. But we think that any one enquiring into the causes of this effect, would very materially err, if he omitted, or did not give a prominent place to, the Inquisition, the injury it must have done to man, and the vengeance that it must have called down from God.

·

In such lights viewed, the history of "Portugal in India" is fraught with lessons of grave import to us; and doubly so now, when some even think that the commotions, that but a little while ago were regarded as trifling outbreaks of partial mutiny, are to be converted into an actual struggle for the empire of India. It is not for us to extenuate our misdoings or our shortcomings in this land. They have all along been stated and set forth, fearlessly and without disguise, in the pages of this Review. Yet our confidence is mainly this; that with all its faults and all its failings, the British rule is so immeasurably superior to any that could be substituted for it here, that we cannot believe that it is destined to pass away. In reference to those faults and those short-comings, we may surely hope that, in all the bloodshed and the brutality of these three months,* in the loss of a Scully and a MacMahon, of a Willoughby, a Lawrence, and a Wheeler, and so many more, high in rank, or high in that which is immeasurably above rank, of whom we had so good cause to be proud, in the massacre of our children and the foul dishonor done to our women by base ruffians, we have received double for all our sins. We think not therefore that Britain's rule is destined yet to pass away; but rather that she has a new career to enter on, in which, correcting the errors, and reversing the faults, and increasing the virtues of the past, she shall yet stand forth as a signal example to all the nations and to all governors, that righteousness is the safeguard and the exaltation of a people.

* This is written early in August.

But this we think we may without boasting say, that Britain's crimes in India have been of a different complexion from those of Portugal. She may have failed to introduce a good system of law and police, because she was so fettered by routine that she would practically maintain that her own home institutions must necessarily be best for a people so differently situated; but she has never attempted or desired to introduce a system like that of the Inquisition. And therefore if now,-which we cannot bring ourselves to believe,—or at any time in the distant future, it should be England's doom to be supplanted in India by a native or a foreign power, we think that we can predict for her that she shall receive at least this grace, that she shall not stand forth, like Portugal, an object for the finger of scorn to point at, that she shall be saved from the extreme humiliation of gradual but sure decay, but that, like one of her own sea-castles, she shall sink grandly into the abyss, or be shivered into irrecoverable fragments by an instantaneous explosion. This is the death that,if die he must, the old lion should die. But may God deliver him from that life-in-death, that soulless existence, that incapacity for good or harm, which has befallen the first European power that effected a settlement in this land?

ART. V.-The Friend of India; The Hurkaru; The Englishman; The Phonix. May to September, 1857.

THE extensive and deeply laid scheme of revolt, at present being developed throughout the length and breadth of the land, naturally engages universal attention. It is pre-eminently the subject of the day, and must give rise to the most marked and extensive changes. Above all, the army must be thoroughly re-organized on a new and different system. It is to the discussion of such a system that we propose to devote the following pages. It matters little how the mutinies arose, whether they were the offspring of mistrustful dislike to recent innovations, improved by the Mussulman princes, as the feeling presented itself; or whether it was a carefully prepared scheme hatched by these princes long ago. For our own part, we are inclined to the former hypothesis; but it is of small consequence. The glaring fact is before our eyes. It has written its foul existence in the best of British blood, and the means by which a recurrence is to be prevented, is a problem of first rate importance. It of course strikes every one that the first thing needful is a great increase of British troops. The national element of the governing race has been neglected. We have trusted to a broken reed. We did not even try to pit race against race, or religion against religion, but drew our soldiers almost entirely from one locality. We have digested a bitter lesson, and one. that will never be forgotten, as long as the British nation has a name. What are now the massacres of Vellore, Amboyna, Patna, or the black hole of Calcutta? Did the far-famed cruelty with which Tippoo treated his prisoners, produce aught like this? It is reserved for the nineteenth century, for the times when men prate of peace-congresses, and fancy that a few honest philanthropists can control all the bad passions in this world, to develope a revolt which, in horrible cruelty and coldblooded treachery, displays features in the Asiatic character, which should never be forgotten in Europe. Black and white are not equal. They are not to be governed by the same laws. The immutable decrees of providence have ordained it otherwise, and the conduct of the Asiatics themselves forms the clearest proof of it. It is not however with the civil government of the people of these lands that we have now to do, but with the military defence of the country, with the protection of the highest British rights and interests here, and with the constitution of an army, which shall be at once formidable to the enemy, and obedient to the state. A large European force is a sine SEPT., 1857.

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