The Administration of the East India Company; a history of indian progress

Front matter

Kaye, John W.,

‘The Administration of the East India Company; a history of indian progress

London 1853 ee Oe ee FF

Preface

I orrer this volume to the public as a contribution to the general stock of information relating to India and her affairs—information which, in the present juncture, it is very desirable to possess. It contains much that is scattered over a great number of printed books, and much besides that is not to be found in any printed books. It will be seen that it is written almost entirely in a narrative form—that there is little of the disquisitional and controversial in it—and that I have not attempted to elucidate the great question of the future government of India, except by throwing on it such light as is derived from illustrations of the past.

Perhaps, indeed, the volume may best be described as a series of historical illustrations of Indian government, arranged with some regard to completeness and uniformity of design, but not at all pretending to the dignity either of a perfect history of the internal administration of India, or a finished picture of Indian Institutions. The exigencies of time and space have compelled me to pass hastily over the consideration of many matters, of the interest and importance of which I am fully sensible, and in one or two instances I have been necessitated to throw into an Appendix papers illustrative of certain topics of inquiry of which I had intended to treat in the body of the work. The subject of Indian Administration, indeed, is so vast; it branches out into

_ so many different channels; and the materials at my disposal for its illustration have been so ample, that the vi PREFACE.

more I have drawn upon them the further off I have seemed from their exhaustion.

In dealing with a subject of such magnitude, the writer has the choice of two courses which lie before him. He may either so compress his materials into a narrow compass as to divest his fasciculus of facts of all living interest and external grace. Or he may select certain prominent topics of discourse, and illustrate them with that copiousness of detail which, by limiting its range of inquiry, necessarily subtracts from the encyclopedic value of the work, but imparts a vitality to it which I cannot help thinking extends its utility by increasing its attractions. I have followed the latter course. I believe that the reading public is less instructed than it should be on Indian subjects, because it has been less interested than it might have been, if writers had taken more pains to appeal to the common sympathies of mankind. I am not insensible of the value of statistics, and, indeed, I have dealt somewhat largely in them; but it is principally by representing men in action that the writer on Indian affairs must hope to fix the attention of the public.

It is mainly to anticipate any objections which may be raised on the score of omissions, that I make these remarks regarding what may be called the machinery of my work. Of the purpose and tendency of the work itself I have spoken elsewhere; and shall now only add the expression of a hope that, in consideration of what I have done, I shall be forgiven for what I have necessarily left undone in such a volume as this.

London, April, 1853.

“43

Contents

PATS CHAPTER I,

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, PAGE

The Claims of the Governed on the Governing—How they have been discharged—England’s Opportunities in India—Impediments to Domestic t—Administrative Difficulties in England and India—Crime

Chapter II. India Under The Moguls

India under the Moguls—The Arab and Tartar Conquests—The House of Toghlak—Feroz Shah—The First Indian Canal—The House of Timour —The Emperor Akbar—His Internal Administration—Shah Jehan— Public Works—Decline of the Mogul Empire—Comparison of Mogul and British Rule—Their General Effects on the Happiness of the People

CHAPTER Il.

PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION.

Our European Predecessors—The Portuguese in India—The Dutch—Discouragements at the Outset—Progress of Empire—Our First Administrative Efforts—The Conquest of Bengal—Efforts of Clive and Hastings— The Regulating Act—Cornwallis and the ar ae amy Administrative Advances . - Pilar ta pe

Chapter IV. The Home Government

Establishment of the East India Company—Early Management of its Affairs—Becomes a Joint-Stock Company—Its successive Charters— Progress of the Interlopers—The English Company—Union of the Two Companies—Territorial Rights—The Regulating Act—Pitt’s India Bill —The Charter Acts of 1793, pos: and 1833—Present State of the viii CONTENTS.

Part II. Chapter Il

THE REVENUES OF INDIA. PAGE The Revenue System of the East India Company—English and Indian Systems of Taxation—The Land Revenue—The Salt Tax—The Opium Revenue—The Customs —The Abkarree—State of the East India Company’s Finances—Evils of War-making . ; : . 189

CHAPTER Il.

THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL.

First Possession of the Dewanee—Primal Efforts at Revenue Collection— Instructions to the Supervisors—Quinquennial Settlements—Hastings, Francis, and Shore—Arrival of Lord Cornwallis—The Decennial Settlement—The Permanent Zemindaree Settlement—Its Results . - . 162

CHAPTER III.

THE LAND REVENUES OF MADRAS.

Our First Territory in Madras—The Northern Circars—Old Revenue System—The Committee of Circuit—Permanent Assessment—The Baramahl—Read and Munro—The Ceded Districts—The Ryotwar System— Village Settlements—Their Discontinuance—Return to the £ povnarng System—Its Results . . . . oFiPt OR

CHAPTER IV.

SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES.

The Settlement of the North-West. Provinces—First Acquisition of the Country—Primal Measures of our Revenue Officers—Their Insufficiency —Injustice to the Old Proprietors—Frauds of Native Officials—Government Measures—Commissioners Appointed—Partial Remedies—Further Enactments—Mr. R. Bird—The New Settlement—Its pain Its Character—Its Results . . . . 234

Chapter V. Public Works

Famines in Upper India—Importance of Irrigation—Early Mahomedan Works—Onur first Canal Efforts—The Western Jumna Canal—The Eastern Jumna Canal—The Great Ganges Canal—The Baree Doab Canal—The Great Trunk Road—Other Public Works—Their Cost— General Financial Results . . : » 275

Chapter I. Judicial Systems

The first Judicial Tribunals—The Mayor’s Courts—Efforts of Warren Hastings—The Supreme Court of Calcutta—Cornwallis and the Regulations—The ial Courts—Reforms of Lord William Bentinck— Increase of ive Agency—Present State of the Company’s Courts . 318

CONTENTS. ix

CHAPTER II. ei: THUGGEE. PAGE Knowledge of the Habits of the People—Its Results—

Thuggee Sleeman and his Associates—Complicity of the Zemindars—Success of our Efforts—Decrease of the Crime . . 354 ais . , : ' CHAPTER IIL. n DAKOITEE,

Dakoitee—Its Antiquity—Measures of Warren Hastings—Hereditary Robber Castes—Their Customs—Local Dakoitee—Complicity of the Zemindars and Moostajirs—Efforts for the Suppression of Dakoitee—Appointment of a Special Commissioner for Lower Bengal—New Act—General

CHAPTER IV.

JUDICIAL AGENCIES.

The Company’s Civil Service—Its Rise and Progress—The Cornwallis System—Causes of its exclusiveness—Native Agency—Present State of the I eS SS 1 /

Part IV. Chapter I

‘ THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES.

The Non-Regulation Provinces—Civil and Military Administrators—Evils of Exclusiveness—Sindh—Defects of the purely Military System—Sir Charles Napier’s Government—Arracan—Improvement of the Province —The Punjab—The Board of Administration—The Lawrences—Mr. Mansell—The Subordinate Administrative atpign Maen of the Reyenue—Financial and General Results aoe ika . - 483

Chapter II. ' The Civilisation Of Savage Tribes

Progress of Civilisation—Humanising Efforts of British Officers—Mairwarra—Dixon and the Mairs—Candeish—The Bkeels—Outram and the Bheel Corps—Ovans and the Bheel Colonies—Reclamation of oe Tribes—Augustus Cleveland—General Results eS . 463

CHAPTER II.

HUMAN SACRIFICE,

Operations in Goomsur—The Hill Tribes of Orissa—Religion of the Khonds —Prevalence of Human Sacrifice—Efforts for its Suppression—Captain Macpherson—His Measures and ee ee Efforts—General Results . ° ° . . » ° + 493

b

2 CONTENTS.

Chapter IV

SUTTEE. PAGE

Suttee—Its Antiquity—Its Origin—General Features of the Practice—Its outward Manifestations—Suttee under the Moguls—Its frequency under British Rule—First Idea of its Suppression—Lord Amherst—Lord William Bentinck—Opinions and Instructions of the Court of Directors— Views of the Company’s Servants—Suppression of Suttee in the British Provinces—Our Effortsin the NativeStates . . . . «. «+

Chapter V. . Infanticide

Infanticide—Varieties of the Crime—Love of Offspring among the Hindoos —Rajpoot Honor—Its Excesses—Causes of the prevalence of the Evil— Our First Remedial Efforts—Jonathan Duncan—Colonel Walker —Failure of our First Endeavours—Disparity of the Sexes—Renewed Attempts —Mr. Willoughby—Major Ludlow—Increased Success—Present State of Infanticide in India . . ‘ Sigh vee Beth ad

Chapter I. Native Education

Native Education—Parliamentary Enactments—Encouragement of Oriental Literature—Rise and Progress of the Hindoo College—Substitution of the English System—Lord William Bentinck’s Measures—Native Agency— Education in the North-Western Provinces—In Bombay — The Jubbulpore School of Industry—The Roorkhee ae eee Efforts—Statisticsof Education . . . - . ° eG ee

Chapter II. Christianity In India

The Past and the Present—The First Indian Chaplains—Rise and Progress of the Church Establishment—Charles Grant—The Charter of 1813—The First Indian Bishop—Increase of the Church ee Efforts—Progress of Christianity—Concluding Remarks... ‘

The Salt Duties—The Opium Monopoly—Cotton Cultivation—The Reyenue Survey—The Baree Doab Canal—The proposed Sate Canal— The Jubbulpore Schools of Industry. . ae ee

Staatsbidfion, ek -_ Monchen

THE ADMINISTRATION

° OF THE

EAST INDIA COMPANY.

Part I. Chapter I

The claims of the Governed on the Governing—How they have been discharged nes Soe eres two Countries—Encouragements to Exertion.

Wuew Mr. Barlow, then Secretary to the Indian Go-

vernment, drew up the elaborate minute, on which

the Bengal Regulations of 1793 were based, Sir William Jones, to whom this important document was submitted, struck his pen across the three first words.

The correction which he made was a significant one.

Barlow had written: “The two principal objects

which the Government ought to have in view in all

- its arrangements, are to insure its political safety, and to render the possession of the country as advantageous as possible to the East India Company and the

British Nation.” Sir William Jones, I have said,

erased the three first words. Instead of “the two

principal objects,” he wrote: “two of the primary objects ;” and then he appended this marginal note:

*T have presumed to alter the first words. Surely

the principal object of every Government is the hap-

B

‘piness of the governed.”* Sixty years have passed away since that significant correction was made, and it is now a moot question, whether the practice of the British Government in India, throughout that time, has been in accordance with the words of Mr. Barlow, or those of Sir William Jones.

Not, however, that Barlow, who may be supposed, in this case, to represent the general body of the Company’s servants in India, had overlooked the “ happiness of the governed.” In the next paragraph he | wrote: “ It is a source of pleasing reflection to know, that in proportion as we contribute to the happiness of the people and the prosperity of the country, the nearer we approach to the attainment of these objects. If the people are satisfied with our government, we shall be certain that they wish for its continuance ; and as the country increases in wealth, the greater will be the advantages which we shall derive from the possession of it.” The “happiness of the governed” was to be considered as a means to an end—anot as the end itself. But in those early days of Anglo-Indian rule, it was something to think of the people at all. It was no small matter, indeed, to recognise the great truth, that the prosperity of the governing and the governed are mutually dependent upon each other ; that, to secure the former, we must, at all events, promote the latter. The servants of the Company had been for nearly two centuries regarding the natives of India only as so many dark-faced and dark-souled Gentiles, whom it was their mission to over-reach in

* MS. Records.—I have copied this was drawn up by me, and contained sor mae = gga iar ont aaah $4 Jones’s By, scgereiore to Lord Cornwallis. handwriting. The draft, which con- in the margin are by Sir tains the corrections of Lord W. Jones, for whose opinion it was Cornwallis, as well as the marginal submitted. The corrections in the notes of Sir W. Jones, is thus endorsed are those made by Lord Cornwallis.” by Sir George Barlow: “This is the I need not say that the mtn ya is minute which led to the formation of an extremely interesting on 4 ge the constitution of the government of poss to make larger references to in our possessions in India, in 1793. It another work.

THE CLAIMS OF THE GOVERNED. 3 and to overcome in war. But out of these and spoliators had now arisen a race of embryo statesmen with dawning perceptions of the duties and responsibilities i os governments and the rightful claims of the people. Barlow, who sate at the feet of Cornwallis, was far in advance of his predecessors—far in advance of the great mass of his cotemporaries. There may be expressions in his suggestive minute to jar upon the sensitive chords of modern

_ philanthropy; but we must read it, not with the eyes of meridian enlightenment, but with the hazy vision of men just awakening, as it were, from dreams of conquest, and only then ceasing to look upon the inhabitants of India as a race of men to be defrauded and subdued.

“ A spirit of industry,” continued Barlow, “ has been implanted in man, that in seeking his own good he may contribute to the public prosperity. The husbandman and manufacturer will toil incessantly, if they are permitted to reap the profit of their labours.” But a question arose in practice, and one which has not yet received any very satisfactory solution, as to the extent to which, regard being had to the prosperity of the State, the people might be suffered to “reap the profit of their labours.” If the question had been satisfactorily solved, that would have been achieved by Indian administrators, which, as far as the range of my own knowledge extends, has yet been achieved by no administrators under Heaven. This, humanly , indeed, is the greatest problem in the world. It is nothing, therefore, to say, that in India the rights of labour have not been determined— that its claims have not been acknowledged—in a manner to give entire satisfaction to every benevolent mind. Under the most favourable circumstances, we can only arrive at something of an approximation.

B2

And what ought now properly to be considered is, not whether India has been governed by its European conquerors after any imagined model of abstract perfection, but whether, all circumstances duly considered, all obstacles and hindrances fairly weighed, as much has been done, within a certain time, and with certain appliances and means at our disposal, as reasonable men might rightfully expect.

All government is, more or less, an experiment. In India, it is, especially, an experiment; and it is one on a gigantic scale. We have been compelled to experimentalise upon a foreign people not easy to understand—upon a people whose character and institutions are not only extremely dissimilar to our own, but so fenced in with exclusiveness, so bristling with all kinds of discouragements and denials, that it is difficult, above all things, to acquire that comprehensive knowledge of their feelings and opinions which alone can enable us to adapt our legislation to their moral and physical requirements. It is the great evil of English legislation, that it is based upon an imperfect knowledge of the wants and wishes of the people. But an English legislator may converse with whomsoever he will, on any subject, in his own language. He may walk into the poor man’s cottage, and ascertain for himself what are the poor man’s wants. He has something in common with the poorest. He was born on the same soil—he speaks the same tongue—he prays to the same God. The two classes, to a certain extent, may be severed by imperfect sympathies; but there is some bond of sympathy to unite them. They are not utterly strangers and aliens to each other. They do not regard each other as infidels and blasphemers. They cross the threshold of the same temple together, and they may eat, without contamination, from the same dish. There is a vast difference, I repeat, between St.

IMPEDIMENTS TO BENEFICENCE. 5

James’ and St. Giles’. The aristocrat of Belgravia but imperfectly comprehends the feelings of the inhabitants of the clanging rookeries. The great territorial lord has little in common with the wretched labourer who poaches by night on his overgrown estate. And hence the blunders of English legislation. But these privileged classes cannot help knowing more about the natural history of their own countrymen, however wide the distinction of rank, than the privileged classes of British India—the English conquerors—know about the dark-faced inhabitants of the country which they have subdued.

It is little more than sixty years since we began to govern India at all. Lord Cornwallis is the first Indian ruler who can be properly regarded as an administrator. Up to the time of his arrival, the English in India had been engaged in a great struggle for existence. Clive conquered the richest province of Hindostan. Hastings reduced it to something like order. But it was not until Cornwallis carried to India the large-minded liberality of a benevolent English statesman, that our administrative efforts took shape and consistency, and the entire internal management of the country under our rule was regulated by a code of written laws,* intended to confer upon the natives of India the benefits of as much European wisdom and benevolence as was compatible with a due regard for the character of native institutions. During those sixty years, India has never enjoyed any protracted season of rest. We have continually been engaged in wars and contentions, which have resulted in the extension of our empire, until it has reached the confines of the Afghan dominions; and many who

* Barlow, in the minute of which I bly erased it, and substituted the word have spoken above, always used the “regulations.” word laws ;” ” but Cornwallis invariawould fain have been peaceful administrators, have been conquerors in spite of themselves. During the sixty years of which I speak, we have been building up our present enormous empire. When, therefore, we come to consider the time at our disposal, and the opportunities at our command, with reference to the ameliorative measures which have emanated from the British Government, we must not take account of the result, as though we had been for sixty years in possession of our present territory, and those sixty years had been years of settled tranquillity; but as though we had all that time to do with an empire inchoate and imperfect, calling for measures—in the first instance, of defence, then of aggression—which have left neither leisure to consider, nor money to provide the means of domestic improvement.

For let us only just glance at the history of India during the last century—at the reigns of our different chief Governors, from Clive to Dalhousie, and see how they have been consecutively engaged, with but two exceptions, in great and engulphing wars. Think of the wars in Madras and Bengal—the Rohilla wars —the Mysore wars—the Mahratta wars—the Java war — —the Pindarree war—the Burmese war—the Afghan war—the Sindh war—the Sikh war—with all kinds of minor wars occupying smaller space in the great history of Indian conquest. Of all our Governors-General, either reared in India, or despatched thither from our English bureaux, Shore and Bentinck alone contrived to surround themselves with an atmosphere of peace during the entire period of their administration. And yet all these warriors and statesmen, who were continually pouring their battalions into the field, were not all of them men, “out of measure addicted to fighting”—men of large ambition, greedy of conquest,

OUR CAREER OF CONQUEST. 7 unmindful of the blessings of peace and the claim of an industrial people. Cornwallis—Minto—Ambherst—.__ Auckland—Hardinge—Dalhousie—were all by nature peace-Goyernors. Neither Hastings—commoner nor peer—can be justly accused of unscrupulous aggressiveness. And yet, somehow or other, all these rulers have been arrested in their career of internal improvement, or utterly prevented from giving a thought to it, by the necessity of concentrating their efforts on great schemes of military organisation, for the subjection of enemies who have threatened the security of our frontier, and compelled us to possess ourselves of new territory to enable us to retain possession of the old.

It is not for me now to consider in detail, whether this or that war “ might have been avoided.” The more thoughtful reader of Indian history will, perhaps, arrive at the general conclusion, that although some of our wars with our immediate neighbours might have been: delayed, few, if any, could have been avoided.* It is enough for my present purpose, that the English in India, though not fairly chargeable with that lust of conquest which is often said to have marked our whole career in the East, have been, for a century, engaged in an almost continued struggle, which has paralysed the humane efforts of men, the desire of whose hearts has ever turned towards the domestic improvement of the country. If it had been possible for us to have held possession of a single province—say the rich province of Bengal—never to have gone beyond its limits—never to have been disturbed by fears of invasion—never to have been engaged in warlike operations, offensive or defensive—we might, peradnal? | say “with our immediate neigh- arated from us by an extensive tract bours,” for where we have crossed the of intervening ge this necessity frontier to attack another country, se- is not to be pleaded.

venture, have established a model empire on the banks of the Hooghly. An overflowing treasury, at the command of an enlightened statesman, never arrested by any threatenings from without, in his quiet career of beneficence, never, indeed, looking beyond the limits of his own narrow territory, might, in the course of a century, have enabled us to build up an Eastern principality, so compact in itself, and complete in all its internal arrangements, as to leave little or nothing for the philanthropist to desire. But Pro- . vidence has not willed that such should be our Eastern Empire. If one of the little handful of European officers, who, a century ago, in gaiters and perukes, followed the fortunes of Lawrence in the Carnatic, were now to stand again on Indian soil, and in one of our North-Western cantonments, to spread out before him a map of our Eastern Empire as now established, he would be overwhelmed with astonishment and incredulity. He would declare, that not one of his cotemporaries, in the wildest flight of imagination, ever contemplated the possibility of the erection of such an empire as we have now built up in the East. But, in these times, it is equally difficult to imagine the existence of such an empire—limited, unexpansive, compact—as the Anglo-Indian of 1750, regarded as the extreme result of our conquests in the East. Grown wise by experience, we now declare that it is in accordance with a law of nature, universal and immutable, that our empire should have so expanded. Be this as it may, the history of India has been hitherto a history of expansion—of acquisition; and it is only by so considering the fact, that we can rightly estimate the much or the little which the British conquerors of the Indian world have done to promote the happiness of the people who inhabit it.

ee mas La 4 ra ee _ ha ee >

PROGRESSIVE IMPROVEMENT. 9

» Many great political problems are yet unsolved— many great social evils are yet unremedied. Much, doubtless, has yet to be done before the voice of com-

_ plaint can be authoritatively called upon, in the name of reason, to be still. Unqualified commendation in such a case would be as unreasonable as unqualified censure—not because it is unqualified commendation of the Indian Government, but because it is unqualified commendation of a terrestrial government, and, therefore, of one prone to all sorts of short-comings, and

' liable to all kinds of error. If there were nothing more to be complained of there would be nothing more to be done. Now, in India, it must be acknowledged that there is much to be done. But in England, also, there is much to be done. The Government of

_ England has been, and is, a Government of Progress.

We are astonished at the evils which our fathers permitted, and our sons will be astonished at those which we in our turn are permitting. And yet generations of Englishmen have boasted, and will boast, of the blessings of the British Constitution. We have not to consider whether this or that Government has attained perfection, but whether it is making reasonable efforts to approximate to it ; we have not to consider whether the mass of the people are positively happy under any particular Government, but whether they are happier than they were fifty or twenty years ago under that Government. Progressive improvement is all that we haye a right to expect, or a vocation to consider.

The history of Civilisation is the obituary of Error. We are continually burying defunct fallacies, and making Suttees of huge practical mistakes. I am not an oldman. I have seen little more than half of the years allotted to humanity, and yet I have lived in times which, compared with the present, were years of barbarism and darkness. I have witnessed the cremation of social and political evils, the existence of which, in such recent times, my children will scarcely credit. "When I was a boy, the green slopes of Old Sarum were my habitual play-ground. There was a little inn on the white chalk-road which sent two members to Parliament, whilst Manchester and Birmingham sent none. A Roman Catholic could not sit in our Legislative Assemblies, or in our Municipal Corporations, or lead a regiment or command a ship. Slaves were held as property by English gentlemen in the colonies, and bought and sold like sheep. A man might be transported for seven years for knocking down a partridge or a hare. Such was the general effects of the game-laws, that it was said of them that “for every ten pheasants fluttering in a wood, one English peasant was rotting in gaol.”* The Court of Chancery, with its agonising delays and its desolating voracity, made playthings of human life and human reason, and wrote its fearful annals on the walls of the lunatic’s cell and the grave of the suicide. The state of our prisons was so detestable, that a young and modest girl thrown into gaol for some trifling offence, or perhaps wrongfully accused, came out an abandoned criminal. The gibbet was in such repute, that a man might be hanged for stealing a yard of silk from a shop-counter, for destroying a tree, or breaking down the embankment of a river. And it was no uncommon thing for men to be lured on to the gallows by a detective police, who made it their business to associate in flash houses with thieves and prostitutes, and incite them to the commission of crimes which it should have been their duty to prevent. * Sydney Smith.

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_ POVERTY AND CRIME. 11 aS are a few of the social and political evils which I have lived to see abolished by the intervention of a humane legislature. Perhaps I may be spared to see many more great changes; for many ‘more great changes are needed, and this is an age of progressive amelioration. But although I see clearly around me many things which I know cannot be right, and I hope earnestly that some day they may be remedied, I know how difficult it is to devise a fit remedial application, and how the best efforts of beneyolent statesmen may be baffled by the magnitude and obstinacy of the disease. There are clamorous social evils crying out for redress almost under the walls of the Palace at Westminster. From the windows of the committee-rooms of that great costly senate-house, our legislators may look out upon hundreds of miserable dwellings, overcrowded with squalid and hungry tenants, whose sufferings far surpass any endured by the inhabitants of a village in Bengal. It is not long since it was stated in Parliament by a nobleman, who has made the misery and the crime of the London poor his peculiar study, that ‘there were 30,000 naked, filthy, deserted, roaming, lawless children, who formed the seed-plot of 19-20ths of the crime which desolates the metropolis ;” and again repeated at a public meeting, “ that ninety-nine cases of crime out of every hundred were the result of want of honest occupation.” I have no wish to dwell upon these things. I would only say that it becomes us, before we indignantly expatiate upon the sufferings of the people of India, to think of the suffering at our own doors; and to consider whether we have yet contrived, with all our Ministerial Cabinets, our Legislative Assemblies, our great corporate bodies, and our gigantic press, to furnish anything like a remedy for this the greatest of social evils—the physical necessity of crime. The most enthusiastic advocate of the Government of the East India Company would not claim for it the merit of abolishing poverty and wretchedness, and annihilating crime; but the people of India are not driven to crime by want of honest occupation. It is easy to conceive what would be said on the subject if they were.

I would say something, too, regarding material wants. A well-informed practical man, writing in 1822, says, ‘‘ The fertile plains of [ 1£ VF and [ ], are separated from each other by a deserted country, hitherto nearly an impassable barrier. This large district comprehends upwards of 900 square miles; in many places it is very populous. As might be expected under such circumstances, the people are turbulent, and their houses, being inaccessible for want of roads, it is not surprising that during the disturbances of 1821-22, this district was the asylum for smugglers and robbers, and that stolen cattle were drawn into it as to a safe and impenetrable retreat.” The blank spaces which I have left at the commencement of this extract the reader will, doubtless, feel disposed to fill with the names of some Indian cities or districts. But the fertile plains, separated from each other by a deserted country, the populous places rendered inaccessible, and the people turbulent and lawless by want of roads, are not in any part of the mighty Indian peninsula, but in a little island upon the other side of the Irish Channel. The places whose names I have omitted are Limerick, Cork, and Kerry.* ‘ Notwithstanding,” adds the writer, “its present desolate state,