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either to hold out to the last at Cabul, or to march to Jellalabad. His own high courage and undaunted spirit met with no sympathy in that gloomy depressed council, which overruled his opinion, and instructed him to negociate at all cost alike of money and of honour.

The deplorable weakness, which could adopt a resolution unexampled in British Military History, was productive of the results which might have been anticipated. We draw a veil over the transactions, which occupied the Political and Military Leaders from the 26th December to the 13th January. Macnaghten might well prefer death to such protracted humiliation and ignominy. Would that oblivion could swallow up all record, all memory of that dire destruction of a well equipped army, sufficient in the hands of a Nott, or a Napier, to have swept its discomfited foes in haughty triumph before the colours of England; but these, alas, were doomed to droop beneath the withering spell of fatuous imbecility; to see their host delivered into the hands of the enemy, confounded and utterly destroyed; to witness the fiat of supreme vengeance which had given over 20,000 souls as a prey to famine, cold, and the edge of the sword.

On the 13th January, Dr. Brydon, sorely wounded and barely able from exhaustion to sit upon the emaciated beast that bore him, reached Jellalabad, and told that Elphinstone's army-guns, standards, honour, all being lost-was itself completely annihilated.

Such was the consummation of a line of policy, which, from first to last, trod right under foot, and, acting on a remote scene, was enabled for a time unscrupulously to mislead the public mind. But Time brings Truth to light; and gradually, the collection of facts from indubitable sources, and the perusal of private and public memoranda have enabled us to form a more correct idea of the Envoy's policy and conduct. Its victims were many for insulted truth amply avenged herself, recording a terrible lesson for the contemplation of man's ignorant, short-sighted ambition. Amongst those victims many a man fell, whose heart burned with a soldier's indignation at the ignominy brought upon his country's arms. Foremost in this feeling, in justice to his memory be it said, was the ill-fated Macnaghten. His high courage, if anything could do so, would almost atone for his moral and political errors. The victim of his own truthless and unscrupulous policy, he shrunk from no personal risk, and fell in the vain hope and endeavour of accomplishing by subtlety a blow, which might prove, if successful, the saving of

the force, and (in his opinion) of its honour. On this he daringly staked his own life and fame.

Mere courage, however, cannot palliate moral delinquency: nor should the melancholy end of a talented and erudite gentleman's career blind us to the lesson and example it affords of the falsity of Macchiavelli's advice-" Non può pertanto un signore prudente, nè debbe, osservare la fede, quando tale osservanza gli torni contro, e che sono spente le cagioni che la fecero promettere. E si gli uomini fussero tutti buoni, questo precetto non sarrebbe buono; ma perchè sono tristi, e non l' osserverebbero a te, tu ancora non l' hai da osservare a loro." (A prudent lord cannot, however, neither ought he to, keep faith, when such keeping turns against himself, and the reasons, which induced him to promise, exist no longer. And if men were all good, this precept would not be good; but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you also need not keep it with them).

Upon the character of the general policy of the Government, which could engage our armies on so distant a scene of operations as Affghanistan, whilst Scinde and the Punjab were unconquered, it is, in the present day, almost needless to animadvert. It must needs bear Lord Auckland's name, because he permitted its adoption: yet, we cannot close this article without regretting, that one, who was at heart so much opposed to it, must bear the reproach, and even ignominy, of having his name connected with a policy, as essentially unjust, as it proved to be unfortunate.

A l

ART. III.-Statistical Report of the district of Cawnpore, by Robert Montgomery, Esq., C. S. Published by order of the Honorable the Lieutenant Governor, N. W. P. 1849.

Ab uno disce omnes. Let one district be understood thoroughly, and a clue is obtained for understanding the whole country. With this view we propose to obtrude on the notice of the general reader the Statistical Report of Cawnpore. "Report" is too modest a title for the present publication. In bulk it fairly rivals those massive quartos of blessed memory, yclept in England-" County Histories." Every Englishman brought up in the county must entertain a reverential remembrance of the tome, in which the local features of his county, the family histories and genealogies, the legends and associations of the past, were all embodied. But the work before us, though it equals the English "County Histories "in size, greatly surpasses them in quality. Independent of information peculiar to the locality, it teems with facts, that illustrate the opposing principles of Native and British rule, the past errors of both, the gradual progress of order, and the general mode in which the districts of the N. W. Provinces are administered. The author evidently had at his command the very best sources from which to draw his facts and figures, and had all the channels of official information open to him. Moreover, the work was written "in compliance with the wishes of Government," and its title-page bears the stamp of the highest authority. It may therefore be hoped that, at no distant period, as opportunity shall offer, similar treatises for other districts may issue from the press. A vast body of facts must lie hid in every public office-facts, which only want an arranging and vivifying hand to make them convey the soundest lessons of experience, and point the moral of political wisdom. Without further apology, we proceed to analyze the valuable contents of the volume in hand.

The name Cawnpore has been anglicized from Kànhpur, the city of Kành, Kànhaya, or Krishna. Such is the violence, which a mythological name must endure, that "volitat virúm per ora." The country round Kànhpur was first held by comparatively aboriginal tribes of Kurmis, Ahirs, &c. These pastoral races tilled the soil, reclaimed the waste, and cleared the forests with simple, but untiring, industry; and established those proprietory rights, which ancient Hindu legislature assigned to the man, who first cultivated the ground.*

* Vide Manu, chap. ix. verse 44.

Traditions still survive, which tell of their energy and enterprize; and Kurmi labour is, to this day, a synonym for the most enduring industry. They little deserved the hard fate, which awaited them. The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" in the shape of Rajput bandits, marshalled under warrior chiefs, who issued forth from Oudh in the northeast, Bundlekhund in the south, Mainpuri in the west, and from the far off vallies and mountains of Rajasthan. Tribute or submission did not suffice. They coveted the smiling village and the fertile lands. These they possessed themselves of by the wholesale expulsion of the cultivators and inhabitants. Gradually these various branches of the great Rajput family became amalgamated under one head, and a central Government was formed at Kanouj under the right royal race of Rathores. This kingdom spread itself throughout the Central Doab of the Ganges and Jumna, and extended its frontier to Benares on the east and the Delhi territory on the west. Throughout this fine tract, the Rajput assumed to himself the exclusive lordship of the soilvictis dominatur in arvis.

Kànhpur was close to the capital city of Kanouj: and those Ahir or Kurmi proprietors, who might have outlived the devastating sweep of invasion, were soon extirpated by other means. The Kanouj Rajahs would grant a set of villages to some State favourite or victorious captain, or as a dowry to some relative by marriage. The grantee would proceed to his new domain, vested with full powers to plunder, slaughter, or burn, as expediency might require, and to assume full usufruct of the land. By the exercise of these and other rights, which, in primitive times, the strong generally enforced against the weak, the Rajput conquerors managed to thoroughly rid themselves of the original occupants. In recent times, scarcely a single estate was found in possession of the latter. Its vicinity to the magnificent capital appears to have given a peculiar value to the lands of Kànhpur. All culturable waste was reclaimed at a very early date; and the district has always been justly considered a well-cultivated tract.

The "Glory of Kanouj" has been vividly pictured by the great annalist, the Froissart of Rajputana.* Suffice it to remind the reader, that this was one of those five Hindu kingdoms, which distinguished the ante-Muhammadan period of Indian history, which were ruled by a line of illustrious monarchs, peopled with prosperous and contented inhabitants, whose happi

Vide Todd's Rajasthan, vol. 2; and also authorities collated by Heeren in his. Researches into the History of Asiatic Nations.

ness, in rougher times, became proverbial, and overflowing with a far-famed wealth, which at last attracted the covetous gaze of the warlike races of Central Asia. The avalanche-like incursions of those disciplined bands, which rose from the ruins of Muhammad's Empire, and the gallant resistance of the Hindu States in their death struggle with the invader, when first attacked by Mahmud of Ghizni in A. D. 1017, are wellknown matters of history. The Kanouj Rajah, however, was taken by surprise, and surrendered himself in a manner unworthy of a monarch, whose boasted lineage was derived from the Sun (Suryavansa). But, on the next invasion by Shahabud-din, in A. D. 1194, the states of Kanouj and Indraprastha or Delhi-the latter ruled by Tuar and Chouhan Rajputs, of a race nobler even than the Rathores-resolved to fight to the last for their independence. Each Rajah was in turn utterly defeated. The last king of Kanouj perished in the sacred stream, but his family escaped to Marwar, to found, in after ages, a kingdom there, which still survives, and is honoured with the alliance of the British Government. From this date the Muhammadan power was firmly planted in North Western India, and Kanouj passed under the yoke of the conqueror.* The magnificence of the city and empire, already celebrated in Rajput annals, was recorded in glowing terms by the Mussulman historians. But the temples and images were thrown down, and the jewels plundered and now a few scarcely distinguishable traces on the banks of the Ganges, still believed by the vulgar to be the repositories of hidden treasures, are all that remains to tell of the great city. Thus Kànhpur became incorporated with the Muhammadan Empire in India.

In later times, when Northern India was parcelled out by the Emperor Akbar (A. D. 1596) into Súbahs, Sirkars, and Dusturs, we find that a fair tract of the Central Doab was included in the Sirkar of Kanouj, which formed a portion of the Subah of Agra. The territory, which now constitutes the district of Kanhpur, at that time partly belonged to the Sirkar of Kanouj, and partly to the Sirkar of Korah, also appertaining to the Agra Súbah. When the Mahrattahs overran the tottering empire of the feeble Moguls, Kànhpur and its territory for a short time remained subject to them: and when at length Sufdar Jung, Nawab Wuzir of Oudh, threw off his allegiance to the Emperor of Delhi (in A. D. 1747), Kànhpur became a portion of the independent kingdom thus formed.

Todd, vol. 2.-Ferishta (Briggs's Translation.)

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