The Manchester Examiner. — 1848-03-07 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

RESULTS OF THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION.—Though the revolution abolished many gross oppressions, it could not. immediately alter the habits either of the ruled or the ruling classes. The former having bad a notion of the importance of the land deeply impressed on them through ages, by the latter seizing the soil as the source of power and wealth, and despising the occopfitions of the bargeoisie clung to the land as the only means of support. The aris tocraey founded their power on its distribution; the democracy, naturally imitating them, based their newly-acquired power also on its dismbution. The revolutionary govern-. went, founded on the new distribution of the soil, encouraged, as governments are wont to encourage, though not successfully, the cultivation of the soil. Other nations were stigmatised as shopkeepers. Licenses or parents were required to be tahen out for the exercise of every employment. Onerous tariffs restricting various kinds of industry, and absolutely preventing and prohibiting other kinds, long were and sail are in existence. Labour was not and is not free. The old habits of anti-revolutionary France, as well as the protracted war, supplied the place of restrictions, or came to their aid, and forced the people to rely altogether on their own soil. The agriculturists, the graziers of France, as well as their nascent cotton and iron manufactures, were protected—that is, stilled by law. To encourage home agriculture was as as natural to the landed proprietors of France, before the revolution, as to those of England; and thus the laws founded on the moral habits or minds of the people, as formed before the revolution, have, since the , revolution, suppressed and they continue to this day to be =favourable to numerous arts by which the people might live. To check the progress of other arts and other industries, is to stifle the market for the produce of the agriculturist. The backward state of agriculture in France is the consequence of the backward state of other industrious arts, and the want of manufacturing consumers, both of which were and are caused by the aristocratic appropriation of the soil which obtained before the revolution.—Eclectic Review for March.  HUMAN SACRIFICE IN BRITISH INDIA,-It has been asserted on competent authority, that within the last century such a human sacrifice took place in Calcutta before the shrine of Kalee, the Black, or most terrific form of Devee' • and the records of the Indian government Might unfold a tale regarding a similar alleged sacrifice at Baroda, within a still more recent period. Our readers may at first be startled at such an allegation, and be sceptical as to the existence of such atrocities under the British rule; but the discovery of the thug system has placed it beyond a doubt, that the doctrin” of this old worship still live amidst the bosom of the Indian community; that thousands of systematic murders have been recently perpetrated, year after year, in the name of religion; and other proofs are not wanting, that, however abhorrent from the general character of the people, this dark notion of the efficacy and lawfulness of human sacrifice, has ever survived in certain classes of the community, and. still survives! One striking evidence of the recent prevalence of this practice, or at least of this notion, is to be found in the imputation, universally current against the Kurade Brainbins, of poisoning theii guests, especially their own sons-inlaw, as an offering to Devee for the obtaining of wealth, precisely in the spirit•of Thuggism. This imputation is not cast upon them, it must be observed, by Etiropeans, or other parties prejudiced against the Hindoo religion, but by their own brother Brahmins. The feeling is sostrong on this subject, that many of the latter will not, to this day, eat in their houses. This prejudice we believe to _be groundless in the present d K ay, especially as regards the urade Drambins of Bombay, amongst whom are to be found many men distinguished alike for their learning awl humanity of character; but, as toe secret worship of the Shuktis; or female energies, triple forms of Devee, has long been very prevalent amongst the southern Brahmins of this class, there is every reason to suppose it originally rested upon some very strong foundation. At all events it shows the familiarity of the people with such ideas: and it is a lamentable fact, proved by the courts of justice in the Mofussil, that poisoning is a crime still extensively prevalent in India; one m raification, indeed, of the Thug system consists, or consisted, of a society of poisoners.—Dublin Universdy Magazine for March.  AN