him in the inner-most recesses of home, affecting all his domestic relations and clinging to him, whithersoever he goes, with all the torturing tenacity of the poisoned robe of the Centaur. Now, in India, a sweep of Mahommedan horse desolating with fearful suddenness an entire village, was doubtless a terrible thing when it happened, and families may have been cut off in a single day; but these were not events of daily-hourly occurrence; the curse was not ever present to wither up the sap of life and turn the garden into a drear desert. It may, we think, be fairly questioned whether the doubtful evil of a possible Mahommedan invasion was ever capable of filling men's minds with such intense apprehension of coming ruin, as that which every day the presence of a corrupt and rapacious Police force strikes into the hearts of the abject dwellers in our native villages. It would be difficult to conceive any condition of things more surely calculated to keep the people in a constant state of tremulous uneasiness, than the settlement among them of a gang of petty officers of police, exercising, with all the authority of law, their lawless propensities, and using the insignia of office as instruments wherewith to practise the grossest oppression without danger of resistance from the oppressed. In estimating the happiness of a people we must consider well what it is that affects their domestic happiness-what are the evils which reach them in the recesses of their homes-and are in daily and hourly operation, to terrify and depress.

We wish that we could regard, with complacency equal to Mr. Alison's, the alleged diminution in the extent of crime within the provinces of India. That a blow has been struck at certain understood forms of criminality, and that the knowledge we have gained, after long years, of the nature of some one or two great criminal leagues has been turned to good account in the suppression of the discovered evil, in its old original aspect, we readily admit; and in doing so we gladly seize the opportunity thus afforded us, to bestow most hearty commendations on those earnest and intelligent officers of the Company, to whom India is so much indebted for the suppression of Thuggee, the partial suppression of Female infanticide, human sacrifices, and other huge abominations, which the soul sickens to contemplate. They have done well; they have directed all their energies to the good work of keeping down great understood evils-they have moved forward, and with manifest success, in a specific course of duty; what they have attempted to do they have done, and they are not without their reward. But to cut down one form of criminality is not to destroy crime. The disease has eaten into the whole consti

tution of Indian society-the subtle poison permeates the entire system-and it is not by attacking this or that symptom, that we can hope to overcome the disease. We direct our remedies towards the suppression of certain outward and visible aspects of the internal disorder-we apply our lotions or our cerates to the symptomatic ulcers, which present themselves on the surface of the diseased flesh and betray the impurity of the lifeblood which flows through its every vein-but, in doing this, we do little more than throw back the disease itself on the vitals, to appear again under a new aspect and perhaps with renewed virulence. Sublatâ causa tollitur effectus. We must not content ourselves with the application of external remedies, which at best can do nothing more than mitigate urgent symptoms-we must employ such agents, such subtle searching as will creep from the inmost core to the outermost tegument and purify the gross blood, of which the ulcerous blots on the surface of the body are merely visible indications. To suppress is not to eradicate. In many instances we fear, that in destroying an understood form of crime, we give birth to one not understood -we exchange an intelligible symptom which we are competent to reach for an unintelligible symptom which is beyond our reach; and leave the disease itself in all its pristine malignity. Thus, Thuggee has been suppressed by the vigorous efforts of the British Government; and men are rarely, in these days, strangled by the way-side-but they are poisoned by hundreds and thousands, and the murders, thus committed by professional gangs, as remorseless and cold-blooded as the Thugs, are rarely detected and punished. Hear, upon this subject Colonel Sleeman-the man to whom above all others India is indebted for the suppression of Thuggee:—

The impunity with which this crime (poisoning) is everywhere perpetrated and its consequent increase in every part of India, are among the greatest evils with which the country is at this time afflicted. These poisoners are spread all over India, and are as numerous over the Bombay and Madras Presidencies as over those of Bengal. There is no road free from them, and throughout India there must be many hundreds who gain their subsistence by this trade alone. They put on all manner of disguises to suit their purpose; and as they prey chiefly on the poorer sort of travellers they require to destroy the greater number of lives to make up their incomes.

... People of all castes and callings take to this trade, some casually, others for life, and others derive it from their parents and teachers. They assume all manner of disguises to suit their purposes; and the habit of cooking, eating and sleeping on the side of the road, and smoking with strangers of seemingly the same caste, greatly facilitate their designs upon travellers. The small parties are unconnected with each other, and two parties never unite in the same cruise. The members of one party may be sometimes convicted and punished, but their conviction is accidental, for the

system which has enabled us to put down the Thug associations cannot be applied, with any fair prospect of success, to the suppression of these pests of society.-Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, Vol. I. p. p.

114-115.

Here Mr. Alison may see that in India there is some difference between the amount of crime committed and the amount of crime detected. It is necessary that we should be sparing of our illustrations, else we might teach the historian how much crime we have driven from the land to the water—how mightily dakoity-ay, and Thuggee too-under a sense of insecurity in the fields and on the roads-have now betaken themselves to the teeming thoroughfares of our rivers.

We

We are well aware that the condition of India Question is one of difficult solution—and it is therefore the very last which it would become us to approach in a spirit of dogmatism. have recently been told that it is as possible to be too near, as too far from an object, for the formation of a correct estimate of its character and its dimensions*-an objection not unfrequently raised, by those who know nothing about a subject, to the writings of those whose circumstances and position have rendered it impossible but that they should know a great deal. And never is this assumption more frequently manifested than when the state of the colonies and dependencies of Great Britain is under consideration. It is this wonderful intuition into remote affairs which Judge Halliburton so adroitly ridicules in the last series of his "Sam Slick" papers. "Your long acquaintance with the provinces and familiar intercourse with the people, says he, (the colonial secretary to Mr. Slick) "must have made you quite at home on all colonial topics." "I thought so once," says I, "but I don't think so now no more. Why, how is he. says Why Sir," says I, "you can hold a book so near your eyes as not to be able to read a word of it; hold it further off and get the right focus and you can read beautiful. Now the right distance to see a colony and know all about it, is England-Three thousand miles is the right focus for a political spy-glass. A man born here, and who was never out of England knows twice as much about the ' provinces as I do." "Oh! you are joking," says he. "Not

• that ?"

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a bit," says, I, "I find folks here that not only knows everything about them countries, but have no doubts about the

' matter, and ask no questions; in fact they not only know no

*Foreign Quarterly Review (October 1844) a periodical conducted with very considerable ability, which has recently contained some valuable articles relative to Indian affairs- a little marred perhaps, in some instances, by the party-spirit infused into them.

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more than me, but more than the people themselves do, what they want; it's curious, but its a fact." It is a fact; and perhaps, even more palpable with reference to India than to what are called the "colonial" possessions of the crown.

If the question were one merely between those who know something about the matter and those who know nothing, it were one of easy adjustment. But the truth, as we have already stated, is, that there is as wide a difference of opinion between men, who have spent all their lives in India and who have enjoyed good opportunities of arriving at a correct opinion of its real condition, as between the knowing and the unknowing of the world-the seers and the blind. There are some who still contend that India was happier and more prosperous under the Mahommedan than it now is under the Christian yoke; whilst others, esteeming the propounders of such an opinion as little better than madmen, delightedly expatiate on the immense benefits which have accrued to the people from the dominion of so benevolent and enlightened a Government as that of Great Britain. Of these antagonist opinions we may perhaps, on a future occasion, present our readers, with some genuine specimens gleaned from our editorial Portfolio-the writers of them being, in all instances, we believe, men of sound ability, extensive experience, and unquestionable sincerity. We shall then have an opportunity of exhorting Mr. Alison, whilst reconciling these generally conflicting opinions, to observe that on one point these two very dissimilar writers manifest the supremacy of similar convictions-they all betray an equal measure of faith in the merits of our admirable Police. We can assure the historian that in this there is nothing remarkable, for although reasonable men in India, as elsewhere, differ from one another, on every other possible subject, there is no difference of opinion regarding the characteristics of the admirable Police. Men of the extremest shades of opinion here meet together on common ground. No sooner is the Indian Police brought upon the tapis than the voice of discord is stilled; and men, the pronest to controversy and disputation, say ditto to each other. There can be no conflict of sentiment, no jarring notes of dissonance, when every Christian servant of Government, from the highest to the lowest-every independent resident in the Mofussil-every journalist-every Englishman, indeed, with eyes to see, and ears to hear, and faculties to comprehend, points his slowly moving finger, and looks with face of deepest sorrow, at the same great festering sore, which eats into the sides of this unhappy country, and resists all efforts to allay the pain which it shoots into every nerve and fibre of the social body.

There is a remedy for this, as for all the other evils, under which the country has long been groaning; and this remedy is now, we hope, in incipient operation. The disease has existed too long-has taken too firm a hold of the constitution; the frame is too universally permeated by gross humors; there is so much impurity, so much corruption everywhere-so deep a taint, not only from the original disease, but from the destructive remedies, employed to reduce it; that no reasonable man would ever look to see a cure speedily effected by any other than miraculous agency. The healing process to be effective must be of slow operation. The curative influences must gradually—almost insensibly, extend themselves from the innermost parts, working their way, with subtle, penetrating force, through every minute artery, purifying the life-blood, invigorating the nerves, and at length making their slow way to the surface and plainly declaring the cure they have wrought in the altered aspect of the face of Indian society. To raise the tone of moral feeling throughout the country-to elevate the sentiments of the people to purify their hearts-to open their eyes to the true nature of the beautiful and the deformed—to train them to love what is fair and of good report; to hate what is unseemly and disgraceful; to respect themselves and to sympathise with their brethren; to know rightly the dignity of man; to duly regard his prerogatives; to worship the holiness of truth; and to feel, in their inmost hearts, the sublime happiness of doing and of being good;-these are the chief remedial efforts, which we must exert to change the diseased, deformed body into one instinct with health and beauty.

To educate the people is to do all this. Education, using the word in its most extensive acceptation, supplies the only remedy whereby all morbid influences can be overcome and the disorder thoroughly eradicated. Other remedies are but for a season, this is for all time. Other remedies touch but one symptom or another; this reaches and destroys the idiopathic disease of which all these symptoms are but secondary emanations. Still, as in a previous article we have emphatically declared, we desire to see every possible auxiliary set at workevery remedy, or even palliative employed, to mitigate this or that local ailment, or to suppress urgent symptoms as they arise. These secondary local applications need not interfere with the progress of the great remedial agent, which alone can effect the radical cure. They will wonderfully assist each other. By

Calcutta Review-No. IV.-Art. I.-Indigenous Education in Bengal and

Behar.