The Press. — London, England, 1858-03-06 00:00:00

234 castes, and their municipal institution of hereditary village offices, which have survived every change of government, and which even now seem likely to prove the surest basis of a land settlement and revenue system. Thirdly come the Mahommedans, with a creed, unlike the Hindoo, essentially of conquest, but sus ceptible of reaction under the influence of that which it overcame. Thus the institution of caste has been half adopted by the Moslem rulers, partly from convenience, partly from the inevitable assimilation of coexistent practices. Lastly come the Christians, the inhabitants who have made the least lasting impression because they have never considered the country their home. Mr. Ludlow's bias will be partly indicated by the conclusion to which he is led by the transitory nature of British occupation:— When we thus review the infinitesimally small number of Englishmen in India, as compared with its vast population of 180 millions, the conviction must rise strong upon every one, that we cannot possibly hold it, otherwise than for a time, as a hostile, or even merely as a con- quered country, passively submitting to our rule, but incapable of actively supporting it. The English element in India must be largely increased; above all, the perma- nent element, the settler element. And let us remember that we have only ourselves to thank if it is so weak. It is only of late years that Englishmen have been allowed to settle at all in that country; only of late years that Englishmen have been freed from the liability to be ex• pelted at any time, simply because it pleased the local Government to expel them. We have laboured with our eyes open, as it were, to build upon the sand, to blast away every fragment of rock upon which the edifice of our power might have stood firm. As we have recently devoted considerable space, in reviewing Miss Martineau's work, to the historical aspect of British India, we need say no more than a word or two about Mr. Ludlow's second division. His method is to relate the external events, and then the internal policy, of each epoch, or of each governor generalship, and this he does in a lucid and comprehensive manner. The bias of his mind, though violent, is not insidious, and all who are in the habit of reading with their eyes open will be led to make use of their judgment on each occasion on which he draws attention to the misdemeanours of the Company or its servants. The book is in fact an indictment by a very clever lawyer of the East India Company and the British nation, for rapacity on the one side and hypocritical connivance on the other. She Company is charged with having made American slavery possible by its virtual prohibition of the cultivation of sugar and cotton in its territories. The two most brilliant servants, Clive and Hastings, of its earlier dominion, are stripped, the one of his military renown, the other of his political merits. The only governor-general to whom full justice is done is Lord George Bentinck. The worst is made of the Zemindaree system and the Permanent Settlement. The sub sidiary•alliance system of Lord Wellesley meets with an equal amount of disfavour. Lord Broughton's confession in reference to the Alfghan war, " I alone did it.," is insuffi cient in Mr. Ludlow's view to save Leadenhall street from guilty complicity in the disasters which followed. Without giving more in stances it will be enough to say that the person who reads this book, and no other, will be apt to rise from it with the notion that not only the time has come to cashier the Directors, but that they ought never to have existed at all. We do not accuse Mr. Ludlow of any thing but a very strong leaning on one side. His work is in some respects more correct in its details than other compendia which have lately appeared. As an instance of superior acc•iracy, we may notice the short account given in vol. ii., lect. 12, of the suppression of Palmer's House at Hyderabad by Mr. John Adam. Miss Mar tineau's narrative, as we should have men tioned in speaking of it on a former occasion, is in this point calculated to mislead. The true history of that dark transaction has yet to be written, but Mr. Ludlow's statement. allowing for a certain discreet reticence which he has apparently exercised, comes as near to the real story as is at present practicable. For this he is in some measure indebted to Mr. Kaye. On the other hand, a tendency to unfairness of judgment is visible in such passages as the following:— Even that invaluable ally of ours, the Eaja of Puttiala, has been far from well used by us. It is only two or THE PRESS, MARCH 6, 1858. three years bitice, fancjing that there was an appeal from a Governor-General's exercise of authority to the Queen's justice, he sought to come to England, and was stopped at Calcutta itself—so it was stated by one portion of the Indian press—by an intimation from Lord Dalhousie that, if he left the country, his State would be taken possess•on of and administered by the English. lam bound to say, however, tLat other newspapers gave a different version, leas creditable to himself, of his giving up the idea of a voyage to Europe. Nothing, however, could be more evident in the Government organs than their dislike to such a step. Here, on Mr. Ludlow's own showing, there are two sides to the question. He takes only one. Or, look at his opinion on what certainly may be called an extrajudicial point as regards India, but one on which every one has now enjoyed opportunities of forming a right im pression:— [Lord Hardinge's] ambition, T believe, by leading him to oust Lord Raglan from the commandership in•chief, for which he was admirably fitted, and to thrust him by way of compensation into the command of the Crimean war, for whica he was not fitted, was one of the main sources of our disasters in the first half of that war. There is much in the history of the late war, no doubt, on which the public is still mis informed. But if there is one point by this time clearer than another, it is the military character of Lord Raglan. That almost every thing well done in the Crimea was in pur- suance of his plans, and that almost everything ill done was in contravention of them, has been, we should have thought, made out to the satisfaction of everybody, except the Times correspondent and Mr. Ludlow. When we find him thus misled by the representations of a portion of the English press, we regret to observe that in the latter part of his historical narrative Indian newspapers have been his chief authorities, and that while aware, as he of course is, of their frequent misinformation and general unscrupulousness, he should show hardly any sign of a disposition to weigh their statements in a firm and impartial balance. The same remark applies to his use of the Life of Sir Charles Napierlwhich, how ever admirable as a vindication of a great man, has been too often impugned to make a wri:er prudent in adopting it as the sole source of his facto in the periods it covers. The subjects of Mr. Ludlow's concluding chapters are such as belong to another part of our columns than that dedicated to literature. He treats of them under the heads of the Military, the Religious, the Race, the Govern mental, and the National questions, and on all these points he is what may be called a Radical reformer. Many of his views are similar to what we ourselves have frequently urged : with many others we should not at present be disposed to coincide. But his reasoning on all is well worthy of attention by those who wish to form an opinion on the present state of affairs as to the condition of India which is likely to result from the modi fications which will shortly be effected in its Government. The work of Mr. Mills, though an able and useful one, does not admit of any lengthened notice, it purpose being entirely statistical, and partaking in no respect of the nature either of history or disquisition. Its object is to supply actual knowledge on the subjects of Indian taxation, law, judicial procedure, and military defence. It sets out with a sketch of the political history of British India, giving a summary of the area and population, a list of the charters which have been granted to the Company, and of its acquisitions from the earliest period to the present time. This is succeeded by a chapter on the Home and the Local Government ; an extract from which will answer a question not unfrequently asked—What is the Board of Control ? The Board of Commissioners for the affairs of India, commonly called the " Board of Control," is practically a corporation sole—the duties of which devolve on a Cabinet Minister, who is designated " President " of a Board which has, for purposes of business, no real ex istence. The present theoretical constitution of the Board is defined by statute 3 and -I Will. IV. cap. 85, by which the Crown is empowered to appoint as Commissioners for the affairs of India any number of persons, whether of the Privy Council or not; and it is enacted that the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the First Lord of the Treasury, the principal Secretaries of State, and the Chancellor of the Eachequer shall , by virtue of their offices, be members of the Beard ;—two to form a quorum, and the Commissioner first named in the patent to be the President. --- The Commissioners never now sit as a Board, though it appears that in former times they did so, and minutes of the attendance of Mr. Dundas, Mr. Pitt, and others exist. Subsequently, when there were two paid junior Commis sioners, there were occasional meetings; but since the only paid Commissioner has been the President, no Hoard has been held. The President is regarded as acting on his own responsibility. The fiction of a " Board " is however still kept up, by the signature of one of the ex-officio members, being in conformity with the law, attached to all documents record ing the decisions of the President. The Indian Government and its instruments, the administration of justice, the financial system, an account of the admini s t rat i on of native States, and a list of the laws and publin documents relating to India, occupy the remainder of the volume. At p 110 Mr. Mills says : In 1844, Scinde (in which territory a plan of collecting land revenue under military superintendence had been at tempted by Sir C. Napier) was annexed to Bombay, and partly subjected to the same system with that Presidenev. This is hardly accurate ; though we have not at present the information necessary for sub- stituting a truer statement. The book how ever is compiled with much cam, and the data it affords will make it a valuable work of re ference as long as the existing government of India remains unaltered, and as regards Indian administration, probably even after that time. The Revenue Map is both curious and interesting. Oulita, the Serf. A Tragedy. London: J. W. Parker and Son. THE revival of dramatic poetry at the present (lay is more to be desired than expected. The surface of society has lost those inequalities which produce broad and striking effects: its mountains are levelled, its forests cleared, and its marshes drained. We still have the pie• turesque, but the grand has departed. It would be easy to show, if the occasion re quired, to what extent comedy as well as tra gedy has been affected by the change. But at present we merely wish to point out that an author who chooses the dramatic form in which to clothe his conceptions labours under the double disadvantage of an unpopular method and a constrained imagination. Of the first, we need say nothing. By the second, we mean that as a man cannot wholly dissever himself from the tone and temper of the age in which he lives, so he cannot give free play to his genius unless in accordance with the ge neral current of contemporary humanity. The age . of Queen Elizabeth found its natural expres sion in objective poetry—the age of Queen Vic toria in subjective. Tennysonlind Keats aro as much superior to Herrick and Cowley as Johnson and Massinger to Knowles or Byron. What Shakespeare would have been had bo struggled to give utterance to " The two voices," that is an author at the present day when he strives to reproduce an Othello or Macbeth. The distinguished writer to whom the pre sent volume is attributed would not probably care to stake his reputation on " Oulita." We could not say it was a fine tragedy, though it contains one or two highly effective scenes. But it is in some respects a fine poem. A sus tained flow of noble thoughts clothed in pure and elevated language, and a touching, if not art exciting, story, will be extensively and de servedly admired. The heroine is a beautiful Russian serf, with whom a great Russian noble falls in love, hut the latter being betrothed to a lady of his own rank, the mistress of Oulita, for political objects, a terrible commotion ensiles on the discovery of his passion. The Russian police play a conspicuous part in the conduct of the story, and the Emperor himself is one of the minor personages. The period is the beginning of the nineteenth century. The leading defect of " Oulita" is that it partakes too much of the character of a simple narra tive. The story does not unfold itself. Mr. John Dennis would have said that there is no Avayvw . flat;, and hat the If ErIrITtICS comes too late. It is open to doubt, also, whether the concluding catastrophe be not too abrupt. but, as Coleridge has said of Shakespeare , the dra tnatic interest of " Oulita" is sometimes great when quite independent of the plot. Thus