try, can at all occur. It is absurd enough to judge one class of his Majesty's subjects by Spanish laws, as at Gibraltar and Trinidad; another by the institutions of the Knights of St. John, as at Malta; a third by the Dutch laws, as at the Cape and Demerara; and a fourth by the French, as at the Mauritius and other conquered or ceded islands. But as the subjects to whom these laws apply were once under their dominion, and may have become attached even to bad laws, it is not half so absurd as the making the British-born subjects, who quit England to inhabit such settlements, abandon the laws of their own country, which their rulers pretend to be "the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world," to adopt the laws of the less civilized people whom they have subdued, however revolting to their own notions of justice such laws may be. In the first case, if the original laws of the conquered colony afford more liberty to the people than the laws of the conquering nations, there will be good grounds for the inhabitants preferring to retain them, and asking, as a condition of surrender, that they should be guaranteed in their enjoyment. But for the native inhabitants of the mother country themselves to be subjected to one code of laws in one portion of their own empire, and to a dozen other different codes in other portions of the same dominion, is both unwise, unnecessary, and unjust, and must be a source of continual dissatisfaction, without being attended with one redeeming benefit that we have ever yet been able to perceive or imagine.

It would seem, therefore, most especially the interest and duty of all Colonies, not only for the aboriginal inhabitants of them to preserve inviolate every portion of their own laws which afford them security and protection, and prevent, by every means in their power, the undue interference of the distant legislature with their local government; but also for the settled or colonizing inhabitants to insist, as strenuously and unitedly as the importance of the case enjoins, on the full enjoyment of all the privileges belonging to them as birth-rights, and to direct their continual vigilance to the repression of every attempt to deprive them of their exercise.

In entering on an examination of the third class of dependencies, which, being wrested from their original possessors by fraud or force, are laid, as it were, at the feet of the usurpers and subject to their entire will and pleasure, India, the most extensive as well as the most important of all our distant possessions, immediately strikes us as being precisely in this condition. In all other colonies there is a mixture of those who originally took possession of the territory planted, and those who subsequently, of their own free will and accord, without the leave of others being necessary to such a measure, emigrated from the mother country to settle in the colony, purchase estates, and pursue their own views there, after their own manner and by their own unassisted means. To such colonies most of the remarks we have hitherto offered

will best apply. But India occupies a totally different position from all other dependencies ever yet possessed by any parent nation. Though it is more than 200 years since our first commerce with and settlement of factories in Asia, which was even then highly civilized, and fit for the immediate reception of every description of improvement, it is not yet colonized by Englishmen, nor have either the English laws, language, arts, manners, or religion, made the least visible progress there in the course of two centuries; while in exactly the same space of time (for it is little more than 200 years since Sir Walter Raleigh made his first settlement in Virginia) the United States of America have, from a barbarous, wild, uncultivated, and uncivilized country of savages, become one at least of the most intellectual and powerful nations on the face of the globe. Here is a fact, which contains within itself sufficient food for long and deep reflection-a fact which might form a text for many valuable and important lectures—a fact which, if followed up to its source, and developed in all its consequences, ought to rouse the attention of the whole nation to the awful lesson which it teaches. But the lessons of history and experience, though the most unerring in the truths they teach, are, unfortunately, of all others, the most commonly disregarded, except by minds of the very highest order. The fact, however, is undeniable-that about 200 years ago (in 1601) the first fleet was fitted out by the East India Company and the first factory settled in Sumatra; and that about the same period (1606) the first company of adventurers obtained a patent from James the 1st, and laid the foundation of James Town in North America. The condition of the Eastern world has not improved since then, in any one particular. The people are neither so wealthy, so enterprising, or so intelligent, as they then were:-in all these respects they have retrogradedwhile in general civilization, in knowledge of the arts and sciences, and in religion, they remain just as barbarous, as ignorant, and as superstitious, as at the first hour in which the British standard was planted on their shores! Of the Western world, whose beginnings were so much more unpromising, whose aboriginal inhabitants were mere savage hunters, and many of whose earliest settlers were the criminal outcasts of the mother country, we need only say that the world has never seen so rapid an advancement in all that is good and great, whether this be considered to centre in virtue, knowledge, wealth, power, freedom, or purity of religion, as that which has been made by North America-a country the very existence of which was unknown to Europe when India was in the zenith of her greatness!

To what then must this difference be ascribed? Not surely to any peculiarities in the physical conditions of the two countries in question; for, previous to the settlement of the English in either, the American Indian had never advanced beyond the savage state, whereas the Asiatic Indian had attained an eminence scarcely in

ferior to that of the most civilized countries of the earth after the decline of the Greeks and Romans. The difference is solely to be ascribed to this-that America was, from the first, freely open to the gradual introduction of all the skill, enterprize, capital, intelligence, and freedom of the mother country;—while India has been, from the first, rendered inaccessible to all these blessings by the curse of a trading monopoly, whose ignorant and selfish policy has always made the exclusion of their countrymen the chief feature of their own administration, and the invariable condition of all their treaties with every power in Asia with whom they have ever come in contact.* An " interloper," as every man not in the Company's service, or not licensed by them to reside in India, was originally called, was viewed by them as an enemy to whom they owed no quarter, and every unhappy individual so found, was seized, imprisoned, and in some cases sent in irons on board the first ship that happened to be ready, to remove him from any share in their ill-gotten spoils. And even to the present hour an "unlicensed" Englishman found in India is considered to be in the hourly commission of a misdemeanor at law; and may be transported without further inquiry or hearing, though no offence of any other description can be imputed to him by any living being!

In inquiring which of these systems is the best, one need only look to the different effects they have produced. The best answer is to be found in the fact, that in the country cursed by the East India Company's monopoly, the condition of the people has become worse, the system of government has remained stationary, and ignorance, superstition, and crime, are the only things that have advanced; while in the country freely opened to all against which India is so carefully shut, the wealth, intelligence, power, and happiness of the people have increased in a ratio never before witnessed in any age or country under the sun! Let the ministers of England reflect on this: and feel how awful a responsibility lies on their heads as long as they countenance and protect a system producing all the evils that afflict the country and retarding all the good which, but for this system, would be sure to bless the millions of human beings intrusted to their care. Let the people of England also reflect that inasmuch as they encourage, by their silence and indifference, the continuance of this policy towards a land which they call their own, they are participators in the guilt of their rulers,

We have before us at this present moment a copy of one the late Treaties of the East India Company with the Rajah of Bhurtpoor, dated April 17, 1805, in which is the following article:

"Art. VIII. The Maharajah shall not, in future, entertain in his service nor give admission to any English or French subjects: or any other person from among the inhabitants of Europe, without the sanction of the Honourable Company's Government: and the Honourable Company also engages not to give admission to any of the Maharajah's relations or servants without his consent."

and deserve their full share of all the odium which it so justly entails on the very name of England.

But what, it will be said, is it the duty and the interest of the people of India to do, in order to relieve the country they inhabit from this incubus, that hangs, like the deadly night-mare, on all its dreams of prosperity? It is this: Ist. To unite all their means and efforts to obtain from the legislature of this country, by petition, argument, remonstrance, and even purchase, if that can be made practicable, the admission that India is an integral part of the British empire; and entitled, as such, to a full enjoyment of all the privileges to which such an admission would lead. 2dly. To urge, through the Press and Parliament of this country, their unhappy case upon the attention of the great body of the English people, among whom there is still a sufficient number of humane, high-principled, and influential men, to espouse a good cause, if brought home to their bosoms and feelings; and sufficient talent to impress the leaders of the cabinet with the importance, and even necessity, of some amelioration in the condition of the vast country committed to their care. This, however, is not to be done by merely muttering dissatisfaction over a glass of claret or a hookah, and whispering aspirations after relief in the ears of confidential friends. Neither is it to be accomplished by the puerile and abortive attempts which are from time to time made to excite a fellow feeling of sympathy or mutual condolence in the newspapers of India, whose murmurings drop, stillborn, as it were, from the press; make no impression on the minds of the rulers there, as far as inspiring a disposition to alter the existing state of things is the object; and are either unknown or divested of all interest or power by the time they reach this country, where they are seldom or never seen, or, if seen, not in the slightest degree heeded by those in whose hands the power of applying remedies to admitted evils is reposed.

Is there then no hope, it will be asked, for degraded and deserted India? Yes! there is a hope, but the means of realizing it are such as the people of India do not appear to have the penetration to perceive, or, if they have, they want the virtue or the courage to carry it into effect. If the sums that have been voted for statues, pictures, balls, and entertainments to tyrants and their satellites, had been appropriated to the purchase of their emancipation from the slavery in which they exist, it would long since have been accomplished. The houseless Highlanders, the starving Irish, the struggling Greeks, and the wounded at Waterloo, have justly and deservedly excited their sympathy, and shared a portion of their wealth. Against this there can be no complaint. Even their subscription of 10,000l. to encourage the navigation from England to India by steam, was an object not unworthy their patronage, although, if ever likely to be profitable, private enterprize would have attempted it without such rewards. But, one would

think, that civil and political liberty was a blessing equally entitled to their regard; that an improved system of government for themselves, a free colonization, an unfettered press, an unrestrained exercise of industry, and a full enjoyment by every man of the produce of his skill or labour, free from the despotic intrusion of a power that may blight all his prospects at a breath, were as fit to be purchased by a sacrifice of wealth, as independence for the Greeks, who would have been better off had they relied more on their own resources; as food for the Irish, which is only sparing the great Irish absentees, whose lands should have furnished the supply; as quick voyages for the servants of the East India Company, the expense of which should be borne by their masters, who benefit by this increased speed; and, above all, still more fit to be bought by general contributions from every individual's purse, than honours to tyrants, who deserved only execration; than statues, never sculptured; than pictures never painted; or than a thousand other senseless and mischievous purposes for which subscriptions have been raised in India, and no where more profusely or munificently filled.

If, for instance, the amount of a crore of rupees (which is less we believe than the sum intended to be invested in Mr. Trotter's Joint Stock Agency Company in India) were to be raised in shares among the people of that country, and placed at common interest, either in India or here, the principal need never be touched, but held sacred and inviolate till the great object for which it was raised should be accomplished, when it should revert undiminished in amount to the original subscribers; while the mere annual interest of such a sum would purchase the services of fifty advocates of firstrate talent, for whom seats might be obtained in Parliament, at an annual rate of payment to patrons of boroughs, which is as practicable a mode of purchasing seats as by the payment of the full sum at once; and the united efforts of such a phalanx would accomplish what no single, divided, and unsupported efforts of individuals, however zealous or intelligent, will ever be able to achieve. But if the means for fifty such advocates were not available, ten, or even five, would be worth retaining; for these, exclusively devoted to co-operation in one great labour, would produce an effect not hitherto witnessed in the senate or on the country. When it is considered that a hundred petty villages and fishing towns in England each send their two members into Parliamentthat the West India islands, on any question affecting their interests, can produce a body of more than a hundred advocates, deeply interested, by property in the country, in the result of any measure proposed-while for India, and its hundred millions of people, not one exclusive representative is to be found, it is no wonder that the very name of the country should drive the members from their benches, for who would remain to hear details which it is no one's particular duty thoroughly to understand, or