There are

infantry into the cavalry, for instance, and vice versa. several periods of our career, at which such a power of exchanging might be attended with beneficial effects. We all know the origin of Cadets: if a gentleman in England has ten or twelve children, he looks to India as a sort of safety-valve, to take off the superfluous number; more especially, if some unfortunate son should love apples and mischief more than Latin and Greek, the old gentleman immediately shakes his head, and pronounces him unfit for anything but a cadetship. Away, therefore, he posts to Leadenhallstreet, and secures such a cadetship as his patron may have left at his disposal, or, as the stars at the end of his name may make him entitled to. Nothing is thought of the natural or acquired propensities of the youth; nor, indeed, is it known what qualifications would best fit him for the different branches of the service. I remember a young officer, who came out at the same time as myself as a cadet of cavalry, and who, though likely to be a credit to his profession in every other respect, could never attain any proficiency in horsemanship. So sensible was he of this defect, that he applied to the Adjutant-General to be removed into the infantry, where he might easily have found some one willing to change places with him. But Government, if I recollect right, replied, that they had no power to make such an alteration, nor could anything be done for him, unless he wrote home for a new commission; that is, another favour was to be asked in Leadenhall-street, and my friend was to lose the benefit of about two years' service in this country. Instead of being permitted, therefore, to distinguish himself on foot, he was compelled to remain a good-for-nothing dragoon. Nor is the argument applicable only to cadets: suppose a captain of cavalry should lose his arm, he cannot well manage his horse and use his broad-sword with one hand, but he might still lead a company to glory; or suppose an infantry subaltern to receive an injury in his leg, that might disqualify him from marching on foot, but not from sitting on horseback, why should you prevent him from entering another branch of the army, in which his services may be still available. In case of a removal into the artillery or engineers, some examination might be necessary in the scientific parts of those professions. Then let such examination be insisted on, and the candidates will take care to qualify themselves for it. We may pre-suppose that officers would generally choose the line to which they are best adapted; for it is, prima facie, natural that a man should seek such duties as he can discharge with credit to himself. It is a man's interest to do so, and that is sufficient to prove that he will do so, in nineteen cases out of twenty. My proposal, Sir, has one advantage, at least, which will recommend it to our mercantile sovereigns-it will not cost them a farthing; or, to speak more correctly, it will be equi valent to a considerable saving, by giving them a more efficient body of officers; nor can I see any difficulties in the way of its adoption, which might not by a few subordinate rules be easily disposed of. PELEGRINE DRYSTICK,

EFFORTS MAKING IN BENGAL TO RESIST THE ARBITRARY TAXATION OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

ALTHOUGH Our first Article in the present Number is devoted to the subject of the Stamp Tax in India, we cannot refrain from giving here the substance of a very able paper, which has reached us from Bengal, signed by one of the most honoured and venerated names that can be sounded in an Indian ear-John Palmer-well and truly designated, the prince of merchants,' and, happily, as liberal in matters of public right and duty as he is munificent in private generosity. It is a document which embraces all the leading arguments, legal as well as political, of the case, and is very properly made to precede the petition sent home by Mr. Crawfurd, as mentioned in the article already referred to, to be presented to Parliament on its opening. It appears to have been drawn up for the purpose of being sent, with the petition itself, to such individuals as might be able to promote the main object in view and we, therefore, cannot do better than give it the publicity desired, by inserting it here. It is as follows:

:

Calcutta, July 5, 1827.

The Committee of the Inhabitants of Calcutta, European, AngloIndian, and Native, Petitioners to Parliament against the right assumed by the Honourable East India Company, to impose taxes without limit and without their consent or knowledge, respectfully solicit your attention to the subject-matter of their petitions. If, on a perusal of their case, you shall deem it deserving of your countenance, they entreat the boon of your public support in an affair which, though primarily affecting a small body of your fellowsubjects in a remote corner of the great British empire, involves important principles of constitutional law and taxation, that cannot, as they humbly contend, be violated in their persons, without establishing a precedent which reason shows, and experience has proved, to be ultimately unprofitable and hazardous to England.

The Committee beg to be allowed the freedom of briefly calling your attention to the leading facts of their case; for the rest, they refer to the copy of their petition which follows.

The government of the British territories in India has been delegated by successive acts of the Legislature to the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies,' from time to time for a term of years. That Company was created in the year 1708: the last renewal of this lease took place in 1813, for a period of twenty years, to expire, therefore, in 1833; but on that occasion, the Legislature (in the 53 Geo. III.) distinctly asserted the undivided sovereignty of the Crown over all the British Indian territories and inhabitants.

By sections 98 and 99 of the same statute, certain powers of raising duties and taxes within Calcutta, were conferred on the servants of the Company abroad, subject to the sanction of the Court of Directors, and approval of his Majesty's Commissioners for the affairs of India. In virtue of the powers supposed to be conferred by those sections, the local Government, in the month of December 1826, passed a regulation for raising a revenue within the city of Calcutta from the 1st of May, 1827, by means of stamps on transfers of property and various other proceedings of a judicial and personal character.

T

"The claim of the local authorities to impose taxes within the settlement of Calcutta, has never been asserted until the present occasion; and the inhabitants had always understood that power to be limited to duties of customs and a tax on house-rent, (for purposes of police,) both of which are specifically and severally authorised by the 33 and 53 Geo. III. If such claims had been put forth in 1813, the inhabitants would then have petitioned Parliament against them, as they now do.

The petitioners are moved to their present remonstrances against this Stamp Act, not because of the mere amount of the burdens now imposed; not by the consideration that these, though privately devised and sent home for sanction two years ago, come into play after one year of profound peace, following upon an expensive war by which they have suffered severely even the arbitrary and unconstitutional powers with which this obnoxious Act arms the various local revenue officers, do not form the primary objects of their remonstrances. All these evils they feel strongly; but their chief alarm is excited by the extent of the claim now for the first time broadly asserted by the Company's Government to tax the King's subjects of this ancient English settlement without their consent, or even previous knowledge, and without limitation as to description or amount of impost.

They feel also, that however improbable, it is not impossible this dangerous power might be pushed to the extent of oppressing, or even destroying, private trade and production, by ruinous imposts and financial contrivances of the servants of their mercantile rivals, the ruling power. The petitioners cannot be persuaded that their virtual representatives in Parliament ever intended to delegate such wide sweeping power to the Company or to any subordinate national authority. But if the letter of the statute does admit of that dangerous construction, they pray the Legislature, which cannot have contemplated abdication of its protecting functions in respect to their property, to resume its undivided authority, and to enact that no new taxes or revenues shall henceforward be levied in Calcutta, but by specific statutes, after due publication and notice to the parties who are to be affected by proposed taxation; and who claim a natural and constitutional right to be heard by some competent and impartial

authority in some stage of such measures, previously to their being passed into laws.

With every respectful deference to the local functionaries, the inhabitants cannot consider them in the light of such impartial and sufficient authority, in matters affecting rights of property and person'; because the Governments of India are the servants of the Honourable Company, and the inhabitants have no voice in the nomination of any functionary whatever, no influence on, nor knowledge as to their proceedings, and no recognized organs of communicating officially with those high authorities. The petitioners feel, therefore, that there is and can be no effectual community of interests between them and their local rulers, and that their only reliance is in the supreme and impartial tribunal of the Legislature, acting in the face of the whole nation, and open to the representations of every class and every individual.

The inhabitants are assured that the agents to whom they confide the important duty of bearing their petitions to England, and watching over their progress, will be allowed the privilege of being fully heard by counsel before both Houses on the great legal questions which arise out of this claim to tax them; that privilege is the more precious and the more necessary, because of the petitioners' remoteness from the seat of the Legislature, and their helpless and dependent condition; learned counsel will then have full opportunity of stating in detail the objections raised by their clients to the powers claimed by the local Governments; but it may be of use in this place to indicate some of the points on which the petitioners mainly rely, and to which they very earnestly entreat your patient consideration.

The Bengal Government, on occasion of refusing to comply with the humble petition of the inhabitants for the repeal of the Stamp Act, was pleased to rest its assumed right to unlimited powers of secretly devised taxation, chiefly on the following grounds: 1st, That the Act of the 53 Geo, III. does intentionally confer the whole power claimed, in as full and ample a manner over Calcutta as over any other part of India; and 2d, that it is "just and necessary that the immunities and distinctions which have heretofore subsisted between the city and the provinces, should be abolished; that as all equally enjoy the " inestimable benefits" of the Company's administration, so all should contribute alike to its financial wants, whereas the city inhabitants hitherto have contributed "little or nothing."

Against the first of these positions the inhabitants contend, that the subsisting distinctions between the inhabitants of the city and provinces are coeval with the first acquisitions of territory in Bengal, and conferred and confirmed by successive charters or acts of Parliament; being of the nature of FUNDAMENTAL and Essential rights anterior in date to the Company itself; these are not to be argued away by implication and inference, for in 1661, Charles II. conferred on all British settlements in India the benefit of English laws. Cal

cutta was settled in 1696 by permission of the Mogul dynasty. In 1708, the United East India Company was established under Lord Godolphin's award.

The 13 Geo. I., 1726, conferred a regular charter of justice, and English courts of civil and criminal jurisdiction in Calcutta, consisting of Mayors, Aldermen, and Justices. The 25 Geo. II., 1754, erected those courts into courts of record.

The first conquests of the Company took place only in 1757' before which they had no provincial possessions or revenues. From that period cessions and conquests have proceeded with little intermission to the present time, when the Company hold the greater part of India under direct rule, and the remainder under effectual influence.

In 1765, the Mogul conferred on the Company the Dewanee, or civil and revenue administration of the provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa.

In 1772, the Company assumed the functions of Dewan.

In 1769, by the 9 Geo. III., the Company were permitted temporarily to hold the revenues of India (as they then stood) for a large annual fine.

The 13 Geo. III., 1773, established a new Parliamentary Constitution for the Company and for the whole of British India, confirming the grant of the revenues and the fine. For the protection of the subject against the notorious abuses of the Company's Government (declared in the preamble) a new Supreme Court of Judicature was set up in lieu of the old courts. The statute confirmed the old privilege of English laws exclusively (with reservation of certain Native usages of inheritance, marriage, &c.,) within Calcutta ;. it extended the jurisdiction of the new Court without, to all Englishmen and all Natives in their service or that of the Company. It left to the local Government no legislative power within the city, except to make ordinances for good order and civil government, with the "consent and approbation" of the Supreme Court after twenty days' notice in Court, by publication to the inhabitants, of such intended rules against this sanction and registration an appeal was provided to the King in Council.

"The 21 Geo. III., 1781, curtailed the civil and revenue jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in the provinces, but confirmed its undivided powers and the sole authority and privileges of English law within the old bounds of Calcutta; it left the co-ordinate legislative functions of the Court untouched.

The 33 Geo. III., 1793, continued the then revenues (land-rent, salt, and opium) to the Company, on the usual and nominal composition. It levied, for police purposes through the King's Justices of Peace, a specific tax on houses; but it left the privileges of the English settlement and Supreme Court intact.