sive religion of the state, the religion | knowledge to the Scotch rather by of the minority. Such a preference means of that imperfect Church, as he could hardly be given without exciting may think it, from which they will most serious discontent, and endan- learn much, than by means of that gering those interests, the protection perfect Church from which they will of which is the first object of govern- learn nothing. The only end of teachment. But we never can admit that a ing is, that men may learn; and it is ruler can be justified in helping to idle to talk of the duty of teaching spread a system of opinions solely be- truth in ways which only cause men cause that system is pleasing to the to cling more firmly to falsehood. majority. On the other hand, we can- On these principles we conceive that not agree with Mr. Gladstone, who a statesman, who might be far indeed would of course answer that the only from regarding the Church of England religion which a ruler ought to propa- with the reverence which Mr. Gladgate is the religion of his own con- stone feels for her, might yet firmly science. In truth, this is an impossi- oppose all attempts to destroy her. bility. And as we have shown, Mr. Such a statesman may be too well acGladstone himself, whenever he sup- quainted with her origin to look upon ports a grant of money to the Church her with superstitious awe. He may of England, is really assisting to pro- know that she sprang from a compropagate, not the precise religion of his mise huddled up between the eager own conscience, but some one or more, zeal of reformers and the selfishness he knows not how many or which, of of greedy, ambitious, and time-serving the innumerable religions which lie politicians. He may find in every page between the confines of Pelagianism of her annals ample cause for censure. and those of Antinomianism, and be- He may feel that he could not, with tween the confines of Popery and those ease to his conscience, subscribe all her of Presbyterianism. In our opinion, articles. He may regret that all the that religious instruction which the attempts which have been made to ruler ought, in his public capacity, to open her gates to large classes of nonpatronise, is the instruction from which conformists should have failed. Her he, in his conscience, believes that the episcopal polity he may consider as of people will learn most good with the purely human institution. He cannot smallest mixture of evil. And thus defend her on the ground that she posit is not necessarily his own religion sesses the apostolical succession; for that he will select. He will, of course, he does not know whether that succesbelieve that his own religion is un- sion may not be altogether a fable. He mixedly good. But the question which cannot defend her on the ground of he has to consider is, not how much her unity; for he knows that her frongood his religion contains, but how tier sects are much more remote from much good the people will learn, if each other, than one frontier is from instruction is given them in that reli- the Church of Rome, or the other from gion. He may prefer the doctrines the Church of Geneva. But he may and government of the Church of think that she teaches more truth with England to those of the Church of less alloy of error than would be taught Scotland. But if he knows that a by those who, if she were swept away, Scotch congregation will listen with would occupy the vacant space. He deep attention and respect while an may think that the effect produced by Erskine or a Chalmers sets before them her beautiful services and by her pulthe fundamental doctrines of Chris-pits on the national mind, is, on the tianity, and that a glimpse of a sur- whole, highly beneficial. He may think plice or a single line of a liturgy would that her civilising influence is usefully be the signal for hooting and riot, and felt in remote districts. He may think would probably bring stools and brick-that, if she were destroyed, a large bats about the ears of the minister, he portion of those who now compose her acts wisely if he conveys religious congregations would neglect all reli gious duties, and that a still larger | world, a national church regarded as portion would fall under the influence heretical by four-fifths of the nation of spiritual mountebanks, hungry for committed to its care, a church estagain, or drunk with fanaticism. While blished and maintained by the sword, he would with pleasure admit that all a church producing twice as many riots the qualities of Christian pastors are as conversions, a church which, though to be found in large measure within possessing great wealth and power, the existing body of Dissenting minis- and though long backed by persecuting ters, he would perhaps be inclined to laws, had, in the course of many gethink that the standard of intellectual nerations, been found unable to propaand moral character among that ex-gate its doctrines, and barely able to emplary class of men may have been raised to its present high point and maintained there by the indirect influence of the Establishment. And he may be by no means satisfied that, if the Church were at once swept away, the place of our Sumners and Whateleys would be supplied by Doddridges and Halls. He may think that the advantages which we have described are obtained, or might, if the existing system were slightly modified, be obtained, without any sacrifice of the paramount objects which all governments ought to have chiefly in view. Nay, he may be of opinion that an institution, so deeply fixed in the hearts and minds of millions, could not be subverted without loosening and shaking all the foundations of civil society. With at least equal ease he would find reasons for supporting the Church of Scotland. Nor would he be under the necessity of resorting to any contract to justify the connection of two religious establishments with one governHe would think scruples on that head frivolous in any person who is zealous for a Church, of which both Dr. Herbert Marsh and Dr. Daniel Wilson have been bishops. Indeed he would gladly follow out his principles much further. He would have been willing to vote in 1825 for Lord Francis Egerton's resolution, that it is expedient to give a public maintenance to the Catholic clergy of Ireland: and he would deeply regret that no such measure was adopted in 1829. ment. In this way, we conceive, a statesman might on our principles satisfy himself that it would be in the highest degree inexpedient to abolish the Church, either of England or of Scotland. But if there were, in any part of the maintain its ground, a church so odious, A statesman, judging on our principles, would pronounce without hesitation that a church, such as we have last described, never ought to have been set up. Further than this we will not venture to speak for him. He thunder and lightning of the skies. would doubtless remember that the The people of India, when we subdued world is full of institutions which, them, were ten times as numerous as though they never ought to have been set up, yet, having been set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down; and that it is often wise in practice to be content with the mitigation of an abuse which, looking at it in the abstract, we might feel impatient to destroy. We have done; and nothing remains but that we part from Mr. Gladstone with the courtesy of antagonists who bear no malice. We dissent from his opinions, but we admire his talents; we respect his integrity and benevolence; and we hope that he will not suffer political avocations so entirely to engross him, as to leave him no leisure for literature and philosophy. LORD CLIVE. (JANUARY, 1840.) The Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the Family Papers, communicated by the Earl of Powis. By MAJORGENERAL SIR JOHN MALCOLM, K.C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1836. WE have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster, half man and half beast, who took a harquebusier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were at the same time quite as highly civilised as the victorious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected, that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful. Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read. We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked up. It would, however, be unjust to criticize with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrange K K ment. We are more disposed to per-sustained by a constitutional intre- had begun to cause great uneasiness to Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned in the child. There remain letters written by his relations when he was in his seventh year; and from these letters it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will and his fiery passions, such a headstrong temper. It is not which rent was paid to the native go- rope, than the Anglo-Indian of the present day. trained in the discipline of Europe, and were armed, some with swords and shields, some with bows and arrows. Within the fort and its precinct, the The business of the servant of the Com- English exercised, by permission of the pany was not, as now, to conduct the native government, an extensive aujudicial, financial, and diplomatic busi-thority, such as every great Indian ness of a great country, but to take landowner exercised within his own stock, to make advances to weavers, to domain. But they had never dreamed ship cargoes, and above all to keep an of claiming independent power. The eye on private traders who dared to in- surrounding country was ruled by the fringe the monopoly. The younger Nabob of the Carnatic, a deputy of clerks were so miserably paid that they the Viceroy of the Deccan, commonly could scarcely subsist without incurring called the Nizam, who was himself only debt; the elder enriched themselves by a deputy of the mighty prince desigtrading on their own account; and those nated by our ancestors as the Great who lived to rise to the top of the ser- Mogul. Those names, once so august vice often accumulated considerable and formidable, still remain. There is fortunes. still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives Madras, to which Clive had been ap-on a pension allowed to him by the pointed, was, at this time, perhaps, the English out of the revenues of the profirst in importance of the Company's vince which his ancestors ruled. There settlements. In the preceding century is still a Nizam, whose capital is overFort St. George had arisen on a barren awed by a British cantonment, and to spot beaten by a raging surf; and in whom a British resident gives, under the neighbourhood a town, inhabited the name of advice, commands which by many thousands of natives, had are not to be disputed. There is still a sprung up, as towns spring up in the Mogul, who is permitted to play at East, with the rapidity of the pro-holding courts and receiving petitions, phet's gourd. There were already in the but who has less power to help or hurt suburbs many white villas, each sur-than the youngest civil servant of the rounded by its garden, whither the Company. wealthy agents of the Company retired, after the labours of the desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the cool breeze which springs up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The habits of these Inercantile grandees appear to have been more profuse, luxurious, and ostentatious, than those of the high judicial and political functionaries who have succeeded them. But comfort was far less understood. Many devices which now mitigate the heat of the climate, preserve health, and prolong life, were unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe than at present. The voyage by the Cape, which in our time has often been performed within three months, was then very seldom accomplished in six, and was sometimes protracted to more than a year. Consequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much more estranged from his country, much more addicted to Oriental usages, and much less fitted to mix in society after his return to Eu Clive's voyage was unusually tedious even for that age. The ship remained some months at the Brazils, where the young adventurer picked up some knowledge of Portuguese, and spent all his pocket-money. He did not arrive in India till more than a year after he had left England. His situation at Madras was most painful. His funds were exhausted. His pay was small. He had contracted debts. Ho was wretchedly lodged, no small calamity in a climate which can be made tolerable to an European only by spacious and well placed apartments. He had been furnished with letters of recommendation to a gentleman who might have assisted him; but when he landed at Fort St. George he found that this gentleman had sailed for England. The lad's shy and haughty disposition withheld him from introducing himself to strangers. He was several months in India before he became acquainted with a single family. The climate |