The Press. — London, England, 1854-02-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS. FEBRUARY 4, 1854• Jab )ur, and are left to starve when deprived of their sole resource,—an accuser, after a long absence, returns to his ruined home more like a convict than a plaintiff, and the result is that very few resort to the Company's courts, except for vengeance. If a man has had his house robbed, he carefully conceals the feet—the robbery was bad, but the inquiry is still worse. If a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is a calamity under which the whole neighbourhood suffers— to suppress or conceal the fact is dangerous—to report it is to be mulcted. Only those men whose real quarrel is kept in the background resort to and play with Indian criminal courts, as men play chess, the object being to dis grace and ruin each other, and the strongest purse is the stronger: , party. The young magistrate is at first necessarily ignorant—he can learn only by practice—he experiments on the living subject—to depend ou his native assistants is a necessity ; thus the habit is formed, and it generally sticks to him for life. Mr. Wilson tells a good story of a superintendent of police who, encamping on a tour of inspection with a vast retinue, was plundered of his clothes ; the sergeant in whose jurisdiction this took place was of course called in, and in a few days recovered the stolen property, besides detecting the offenders. Great was his praise—rapid his promotion — substantial his reward ; the magistrate re joiced, the people laughed ; for the sergeant had himself been the instigator of the theft, and the actual thieves shared in their em ployer's good luck. Mr. Wilson, not unreasonably, finds great fault with the system of laud tenure in Bengal, as impracticable and revolutionary. Lord Cornwallis's plan of establishing a feudal nobility he thinks absurd, the more so as for its successful carrying out a change in the Hindoo law of inheritance would be required. By that law all sous share equally, and the largest estate is in a few generations split up into cottier holdings. The rigid collection of the land tax, also, interposes anlifsuperable bar to the permanence of lauded property in any hands: — The payment of the land revenue is made in four instalments, annually. After the sun-setting of a certain specified date the instalment cannot be received. If a sixpence is short in the amount, the whole of the defaulter's property is put up to auction, and by the chances of an oversight, the neglect or wilfbiness of an employe, or, what is more frequent, the intrigues of the functionaries in office ; a family living in the highest opulence is suddenly crushed into the dust; and in its fall are swept away all rights, titles, securities, and pecuniary claims of any kind whatsoever: for the sale of an estate for Government revenue revokes all liabilities upon the whole or any part . of it. The farmer's lease and the usurer's bond are hence forward waste paper. I will illustrate this by mentioning the ruin brought upon a noble Mahometlan family a few years ago, the - members of which held in joint possession a large landed property. It appears that, having money due by the court at the time, one of the occupiers had neglected to pay up a small portion of his share of the instalme nt due. His other partners were only made aware of the omission when too late ;in vain they tendered the amount—in vain they urged that their partner had been lulled into a false security by the native head official, who promised that the set-off in court would be debited to the tax. The property was put up to auction and sold for one-fifth of its value, and a highly opulent family beggared in an instant. After deducting the amount of instalment due, fees, and other charges, the remainder of the purchase-money should, by law, be given to its owner, the late proprietor ; but it is no easy matter to get money out of an Indian court, nor is it sufficient to conquer all the valid objections started by the State. Seven years have elapsed since the sale above related, and the head native functionary of the office I allude to has only lately been driving a bargain for twenty per cent. of the amount, in consideration of the re mainder being paid over. The judicial administration fares no better. Mr. Wilson believes that there lie in Anglo- Indian gaols " hundreds of innocent men '— that prosecutions are continually set ou foot to gratify spite, and often successfully—and that European judges, habitually ignorant, are not always impartial. In his conclusions on this head we see marks of exaggeration and over statement; yet the system cannot be in a satisfactory condition which has left such an impression on the mind of an acute ob server. Mr. Wilson is undoubtedly right in saying that the European habitually undervalues native qualities, from being brought into con tact only with the worst portion of the commu nity : Little or no true unison exists between the conquered and the conquerors ; the Englishman is usually haughty, imperious, and repulsive—the native timid, fawning, and unsociable ; strangers to each other in language, they are strangers to each other in manners. The on e onl y sees a rude, and hasty barbarian, whose coarse honesty tolerates his demeanour, and is only to be taken advantage of. A native gentleman, unless actuated by some private policy, shuns at all times contact with his Christian masters. His sensitive pride and studied decorum may be rudely assaulted by a question or speech at utter variance with Indian etiquette, nor can the Englishman at all times restrain his contempt from showing itself under the most guarded exterior. This is literally true, and the subject merits • more ample detail as well as more energetic censure. The insolent vulgarity of the British " snob"—and this animal abounds in India — goes far to destroy the prestige of intellectual and physical superiority. The natives, treated like dogs, are actually sinking instead of rising in general character. They are catching the vices of the servile state to which we have re duced them. By no Asiatic conqueror at any time have they been held so systematically aloof as an inferior and dependent race. Our rule elicits none of their virtues—for virtues they have—and those not few. May England learn to repair the wrong she has wrought them—a consummation of which, for the pre sent, we see little hope. RECENT NOVELS. 1. Mabel. A Novel. By Emma Warburton. London: Newby. 2. Ailieford. A Family History. By the Au thor of "John Drayton." London: Hurst and Blaekett. 3. Lismore. By Mrs. A. Crawford, Author of "The Lady of the Bedchamber." London : Newby. 4. Ruth Earnley. By Mrs. Mackenzie Daniels, Author of "My Sister Minnie," &e. &c. London : Newby. 5. Charles Stanly. A Novel. By the Author of " Ninftt." London : Chapman and Hall. As we have intimated on previous occasions, the unsettled state of " the novel market " has been the cause of the very mediocre character of the fictions of the last two years. The manufacture of novels in three volumes has fallen into a class of authors from whom, with few exceptions, very little that is excel lent can be expected. Writers of merit will not spend time upon works when their pecu niary remuneration is a matter of speculation, and publishers will not embark in enterprise when the fiction stock is jumping up and down, in rises and falls of fifty per cent. within three months. In the middle of autumn Mr. Bent ley issued his announcement that he would sell his new novels at five shillings per volume, and he has since, after trying the experiment, given it up. While such fluctuation of prices lasts it is impossible that there can be a steady supply of works of average merit. But, turn ing from this point, we must proceed to notice some of the fictions that have recently ap peared. 1. " Mabel" has the advantage of interest in being the production of a new and promising writer. Deficient in invention of character, Miss Warburton (which we understand to be a feigned name) excels in graceful portraiture of types of human nature that have already been described. Some of her passages ex hibit considerable power, and there is a sweet ness in her pathetic parts that is touching. Her style is easy and spirited ; but ladies are apt in their fictions to rely too much upon their fluency of description. In her next novel Miss Warburton ought to treat us to some more original characters ; and the intro duction of some comic passages will give the force of contrast to her sentimental moralising. Thinking highly of her literary talents, we will give our readers a specimen of her style : Mr. Ware was a fine-looking old gentleman, with silver hair curling over a wide and expansive forehead. Though a little under the middle height, there was a gentle dignity in his manner that could scarcely fail to be noticed, or, if not noticed, it was sure to be felt. He was neither very witty nor very learned, yet none knew him very long with out liking him. His face, not originally striking, bad be come more handsome as he had grown older; for the struggle between good and evil, which must be, in every well•principled mind, a perpetual struggle, had been car• ried on by him for many years, and so successfully that each year brought heaven nearer to the good man's thoughts; and now, as the race was so nearly finished, his zeal became more earnest, and his conscience more ten fearing lest, after a life spent in his Master's service, 113 e he might be found lingering at the last, and lose the prize for which he had been so long striving. In his eye was that look of serenity and peace which seemed to say, " he feared no evil tidings;" for he walked continually under the protection which only can give that feeling of security which those who have it not would bestow great riches to possess. We have lingered longer than we at first intended in description, but perhaps not too long. When we look back to the innocence of childhood, we sigh to think that we can never be children again ; we recal that happy time when the world had not written its own characters of sin and falsehood in our hearts; we sigh to think that childhood is gone, but no sigh will recal it. lint when we see an old man who has passed the waves of this troublesome world true to the faith with which he en tered life, we feel that here is an example which we may follow. Childhood we have left behind, but old age is be fore us, and, if we live on, must come ; and, as the body decays, do we not feel that the spirit should increase in holiness and strength, preparing itself for that beautiful world of light which it must enter, or die? " Mabel" is very well printed, and brought out in a more finished style than is customary in these days of empirical novels. 2. " Ailieford " sustains the reputation ac quired by the author of " John Drayton." It is less powerful, but more pleasing, than this writers first work, and exhibits versatility of talent. It has the defect of falling off in in terest in the last volume, and we observe in many passages an unconscious imitation of Miss Bronte s style in " Villette." As a fiction it belongs to a class of works that have much increased of late years—namely, the senti mental Scotch novels, whose writers give us stories of domestic interest, with the scenes laid north of the border. While preserving fidelity to general nature, they are enabled to give English readers something like freshness of costume. " Ailieford " is rich in contrasted pictures, such as that shown in the following passage : Dr. Burnet sat by the fire in an old arm-chair, wrapped in a long faded dressing-gown—himself a ruined Hercules, with gaunt, decayed limbs, stretched out across the little hearth. People said he had been a " gallant -looking man," when youth and health had made his great frame hand some and elastic, and his immense figure still carried re miniscences of a better time. Traces, too, of the habits and feelings of a gentleman, and of a heart warm and vi gorous, which might have been noble in its day, remained with the lost and degraded man ; and he had a strange universal popularity blended of pity and admiration, with which in his ordinary moods he was sufficiently well pleased, though now and then, in one of those dread awakenings which showed him the reality of his position, this only added an intolerable sting to the wound. Over his fine, abundant hair, just grizzled at the edge—for he was still in the strength of middle age—he wore a worn, black velvet cap; and his eyes, watery and bloodshot, wandered continually about the apartment with uninter rupted restlessness. The whole face was unsettled and varying, as if some great excitement was slowly subsiding, but had not et lost its power. The room was not large, and singularly furnished—fur nished with incomplete heterogeneous articles, each snatched a relic from some previous shipwreck. The table in the middle was a library table, the chairs solid maho gany ones, such as furnish ordinary plebeian parlours; but in a corner stood a small, inlaid chess-table, delicate and costly, and faded silk peered out from the edge of the homely cover in which Mary had habited her own pretty, low seat, with its carved back. The carpet, worn, and darned, and faded, had nevertheless been a Turkey carpet once, though the rug on which Dr. Burnet's feet rested was home made, manufactured after the fashion of my mother's, out of strips of black and red cloth. Of the books, which hung iu some shelves on each side of the fireplace, remains of a once considerable library, the doc tor's medical books, were here and there diversified with a showy volume in tarnishing gilding, finest edition of some poet or essayist, stained and spotted with the use of dozens of indiscriminate borrowers. But strangely inconsistent as their different elements were, they had a coherence and unity after all, which turned my eyes, swelling over, upon Mary—Mary, household light, household mistress—who made this room look like a home. She was standing before the fire, in the plain, blue, me rino gown—her best—which she had worn at Andrew's wedding, with one hand relieved against her little muslin apron, and the other rested upon the mantelpiece, look ing with anxious, deprecating looks into her father's lace, and following his wild, restless eyes as they travelled round and round. She herself, in habitual reverence for the day, wore, as scrupulously as if it were a religious ob servance, her sole Sabbath dress ; and the linen under her father's unshaven face was spotless and snow-white ; fur- ther, he was not to be ruled by Mary—and the wild, rest less face, and slovenly, unregarded appearance, which told how entirely his own respect had ceased to belong to him, remained a contrast to everything else within Mary Bur- net's reign. We had marked for extract some of the sketches of continental scenery, which are ex ecuted in a style at once quaint and fanciful ; but our crowded space will not permit us to do mere than record our verdict on " Ailieford " as being very :eadable and inter esting, and a work which we can recommend to our readers. strangers to each other in manners. 111 V trim tn.., ..--- - , 1., lying, flattering, chicaning knave; and the other a proud, I der ; fearing lest, after awe spent in Lue ~,....,. .......___, .. . , ... .. x „.., - . ; • _ _ .__._ . , 1 11 W " 111 .111 F ........ . • .... 7