movement by the fraena and contractions in burns, is the last subject to notice. Mr. Travers has lately seen wonderful cures by ingenious mechanical extension in preference to the old practice of excision. We cannot see why a quicker cure might not be effected by combining the two methods, as we have our. selves done,-excision first and then extension.

Is

Having thus concluded our remarks upon Mr. Travers's valuable and practical treatise, we cannot but feel that their natural place would be in the pages of a Medical Journal—but where is it? This Presidency is full of professional talent, and the field for observing disease is absolutely without_limit—all varieties of climate-Civil and Military hospitals without number-yet no place to record results, save the shelves of the Medical Board Office, where the white ants feed on them. it true that medicine is with us passing from a profession to a trade? Or is the cause of our Literary apathy to be found in the fact, that even the members of a scientific body now only reap reward for the performance of military services? These services in the field, be it observed, are seldom voluntary. With him who engages in the difficult campaigns of professional study, the case is different. But if there be no reward, there is a victory; for as one of the greatest of conquerors said, the greatest of all victories, and those which leave no regret, are those which we obtain over ignorance.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, ETC. 439

ART. VIII.-Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to enquire into the operation of the Act III. and IV. William 4, chapter 85, for the better Government of Her Majesty's Indian Territories, and to report their observations thereon to the House; and to whom were referred the petitions of G. J. Gordon, respecting education in India, and of C. H. Cameron, respecting the establishment of universities in India; and to whom were also referred several papers and documents relative to the subject-matter of the enquiry; together with the Minutes of Evidence, and an Appendix and Index thereto. Ordered to be printed on the 29th of June, 1852.

THE Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons not having reached India, at this time of writing, we need hardly say, that the volume now before us, is the most important that has come within the scope of our criticism, since the first establishment of this Review. We have read it with the strongest feelings of interest, and not without some emotions of pride. When some nine years ago we, who now write, drew up the prefatory "advertisement" contained in the first number of the Review, we said: "We desire to apply this work to the purposes of a vast commission, in the records of which will be found a greater mass of information-of informa tion, which at such an epoch as this, it is desirable, above all things, widely to disseminate among Englishmen-than in any single work extant." And now, in looking back upon what we have done, and comparing the result of our labors, not only with the performances, but the promises of the Committee of the House of Lords (and, doubtless, we shall, in due course, be enabled to express a like measure of self-congratulation with reference to the Report of the other House), we cannot but perceive that we have played the part of Commissioners with good effect, and have left no important subject of enquiry uninvestigated in these pages.

The Committee of the House of Lords, in this initial Report, state, that they have resolved to divide the important subject referred to them under the following heads:

1st. The authorities and agencies for administering the Government of India at Home and in India, respectively.

2nd. The income and expenditure of the British Indian empire, showing the produce of the territorial revenues, and of all other sources of income, and the modes of assessing and levying each, in the respective Presidencies and districts; also the progress of trade and navigation in India.

3rd. The military and naval establishments of India-character, extent, and cost.

4th. The judicial establishments of British India, European and native; the modes of administering justice, civil and criminal, and the working of the system, as exhibited by tables of trials, appeals, and decisions.

5th. The measures adopted, and the institutions established and endowed for the promotion of education in India.

6th. Works of local improvement executed, in progress, and now under consideration.

7th. Ecclesiastical provision for the diffusion of Christian spiritual instruction.

8th. Miscellaneous topics of enquiry.

We

We do not think that we have failed to make repeated investigations into any one of the topics here specifically enumerated; and it will be admitted that, in the "miscellaneous " department, we have pushed our enquiries without stint. may add, too, that in many cases the opinions expressed, if the names of the respective writers had been appended to them, would have carried scarcely less weight than those openly and authoritatively enunciated by the able and distinguished men examined in the Committee Rooms of the two houses.

But, although we hope that, in such a juncture as this-at the threshold of our examination of the great parliamentary enquiry into the present condition of India-this brief selfgratulating retrospect may be deemed natural and excusable, we do not intend that it should detain us any longer at the gate. We would transport ourselves at once, from the little room on the banks of the Hooghly, in which the idea of this Journal first took shape and consistency, to the spacious chamber on the banks of the Thames, in which certain members of the House of Peers assembled last spring, for the purpose of examining certain gentlemen supposed to be experienced in Indian affairs. And in doing so, with the reader for our companion, we would first direct his attention to the classification of subjects given above; and remind him, that it is only in relation to the first head of enquiry that the Committee profess to have examined the witnesses summoned before them. It is only in the nature of such investigations-investigations, in the course of which any member of a numerous Committee is competent to put any question to a witness-that more or less discursiveness should obtain. The latter half of the examination, for instance, of Sir George Clerk, in the present volume, interesting and important though it be, is, in relation to the subject immediately under consideration, a specimen of

discursiveness easily to be accounted for by the natural desire of one of the members of the Committee, to make out that the annexation of Scinde has not been the grievous failure which it is generally supposed to be. But with due allowance for these almost inevitable deviations, the first Report of the House of Lords exhibits little more than an enquiry into "the authorities and agencies for administering the Government of • India, at home and in India respectively.

The Committee seems to have assembled on fourteen different days, ranging between the 3rd of May and the 26th of June inclusive. The witnesses examined were Mr. J. C. Melvill, Secretary to the East India Company; Sir Herbert Maddock, late Member of the Supreme Council, and Deputy Governor of Bengal; Mr. Wilberforce Bird, ditto ditto; Mr. Frederick Millett, late Member of the Indian Law Commission, and of the Supreme Council of India; Sir George Russel Clerk, late Governor of Bombay; Mr C. H. Cameron, late Member of the Indian Law Commission, and Legislative Member of the Supreme Council; Mr. T. C. Robertson, late Lieutenant-Governor of the N. W. Provinces; Mr. L. R. Reid, late Member of Council at Bombay; Mr. J. M. Macleod, late Member of the Indian Law Commission; Mr. R. K. Pringle, late of the Bombay Secretariat; Mr. J. S. Mill, Assistant Examiner in the India House (Political Department,) and Mr. D. Hill, in the Judicial Department of the same office.

Looking at it as a whole, the evidence is extremely creditable both to the India House Officials, and the retired Civilians, whose names we have above transcribed. Indeed, the amount of intelligence here exhibited is, in itself, no insignificant testimony to the efficiency, if not of the administrative system, at least of the administrative body; and we should be wanting in candour, if we were to refuse to admit, that the latter, in this, as in all similar cases, is a close reflexion of the former. No system, inherently vicious, could have produced such a growth of able Administrators as have graced the Company's service. Nor, if the system had been vicious, and all this intelligence and integrity had been developed in spite of it, would such men have been among the most earnest of its upholders.

We do not propose to examine seriatim, the evidence of the different witnesses contained in this Report; but rather to select one or two especial topics for illustration, and to cite such passages as immediately bear upon them. We must remark,

*It would seem, however, that the idea of this methodical investigation did not occur to the Committee at starting, for on the first day they addressed themselves wholly to the subject of finance.

however, in limine, that it is pleasant to find that we start from the same common point as the witnesses now before us, and are working towards the same end. When Mr. Melvill, the very able Chief-secretary of the Company, says, "I think the great object of any constituent body for the election of Directors is to provide as good an instrument as possible for the Government of India, and for the promotion of the happiness of the people of that country," we feel at once that we understand each other, and that though we may differ on some minor points, there is little chance of our falling out by the way. Mr. Mill, too, is equally clear upon this point. Indeed, he is one of the last men living to put forward any thing but the maxima felicitas of the people of India, as the great end of our Government of the country. He admits, that it is in the very nature of things that our Government should fall short of this great end; but he thinks that we have attained an approximation to it, which could not be reached under any other system.

"It is next to impossible," he says, "to form in one country an organ of Government for another, which shall have a strong interest in good government; but if that cannot be done, the next best thing is to form a body with the least possible interest in bad government; and, I conceive, that the present governing bodies in this country, for the affairs of India, have as little sinister interest of any kind as any Government in the world."

In this we readily concur; but when Mr. Mill proceeds to state more in detail what he conceives to be the chief causes of our success, we cannot quite endorse all his premises.

"The present constitution of the Government of India," he says, "has been very much the growth of accident, and ' has worked well in consequence of things which were not foreseen, and were not in the contemplation of those who established it; in a great measure, from causes not provided for in the received theories of Government. So much of the good working of the present Government, being the result of accident,-accident would, probably, have a great share in determining the operation of any new system which might be substituted for it; but it would be necessary to keep in view, ' in any alteration, the circumstances, so far as they can be assigned, which have been the causes of the beneficial working hitherto. Among the first of those seems to me to be, that those who are sent to administer the affairs of India, are not sent to any particular appointment; they go out merely as candidates; they go out when young, and go through the