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 instalment 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 one only 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

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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.

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