Mr. URBAN,

THE British Empire in India has been described as the most extraordinary spectacle "which the political world ever saw :" as nearly equalling in extent that which the Romans once established in Europe; while it has surpassed and differs from theirs in the celerity and inferior agency, numerically considered, by which it has been acquired; in the benevolent character and efficiency of its administration; and in its remoteness from the seat and source of the ruling power and influence.

It is not proposed to enter, in this letter, upon a review of the political, much less of the naval and military history of India, rich as the latter undoubtedly is in splendid instances of British skill and prowess; but rather to show, by a very brief reference to the more prominent features of the Company's administration in that country, that public opinion, or a persuasion which has been instilled into the minds of the natives that those into whose hands the government had fallen were at all times disposed to do the best that could be done with a view to the welfare of the whole community, was, and still is, the basis upon which the dominion now exercised by the East India Company on the Indian peninsula rests. This enquiry may

be the more seasonable at a moment when, public opinion being the admitted basis of government at home, such changes may be contemplated in the government of that immense colony, as by suddenly outraging native prejudices, an attention to which has hitherto been one of its principal sup

* Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. ccviii. p. 775.

ports, may, by their consequences, endanger the British Empire in the East.

During the whole of the seventeenth and till the middle of the eighteenth centuries the East India Company, by whom and in whose name this empire has been acquired and established, traded to the shores of India as merchants, with various success; exposed during a considerable part of that time to hostile competition from home, and to many untoward and distressing accidents abroad. The factories which they were allowed to establish were never numerous, and the amount of their territorial acquirements was limited to the Island of Bombay, the fort and town of Madras, and the marsh within the limits of the Mahratta Ditch, upon which the splendid city of Calcutta has since been erected.

The Company's agents during this period appear generally to have traded, in their character of merchants, with the native Banyans or merchants, observing in their mercantile intercourse an integrity and punctuality, to which the natives till then had been strangers, and the most scrupulous abstinence from all avoidable interference in, or identification with, their religious distinctions and customs; but themselves maintaining, among the Mahomedans and Heathens by whom they were surrounded, the public profession of the Christian faith and worship in churches which they erected for that purpose, and by the observance of the seventh day as a day of rest and intermission of worldly occupation.

In the Black town of Madras, one of the Company's earliest possessions, the case was in some respects different. This town may perhaps be regarded as the school in which the Anglo-Indian system of territorial administra

tion was first learned. Its population was composed of Portuguese Christians of the Roman Church, Mahomedans, and Hindoos; the latter being in great numbers, and comprehending two opposite and rival castes-the right hand and the left hand castes. Towards this mixed population the agents of the Company stood in the relation of lords of the soil and administrators of the police, accountable to no supenor in India; in which character they appear to have considered it to be their only safe and warrantable course to allow of the free but peaceable observance of all forms of worship which were regarded as religious by the worshippers; and to recognize all rights, and to protect all property, connected with the religion of any persons resident within their jurisdiction. The propriety of this course may probably have been suggested to them by the fate of the Portuguese and Mahomedans, whose systems of persecution on a religious account had been experimented in different parts of India, and had been found not more prejudicial to those who were its victims, than detrimental to the power and interests of the persecutors; while on the contrary the obvious design of the measures pursued by the Company's servants, being to impress the natives with confidence in their equity and justice, there was every reason to expect that the natives would be conciliated, by protection af forded to them without the exaction of sacrifices in return.

Acting on these principles, and with these views, the servants of the Company administered the government of the Black Town at Madras very successfully for a century and a half; controlling even the right and left hand castes, whose feuds, arising out of conflicting religious pretensions (such as a claim to carry a certain number of pots and pans on a tray at the wedding of two young Hindoos, or some equally notable cause), would not unfrequently, notwithstanding that they had separate parts of the town allotted to them, lead to sanguinary results. The merits of these rival pretensions were generally referred for adrudication to the heads of the castes, who were bourd, under securities of lage amount, so to adjudicate as to restore and preserve the peace of the towa, and the instances are rare in which the Courpany's servants were

compelled to interfere any further, although they always reserved to themselves the right of so doing.

That memorable event, the battle of Plassey, by its consequences, opened a new and much wider field, upon which the principles of the Company's government in India were to be experimented and illustrated. In less than ten years it placed them by treaty, in the character of Dewan, or sovereigns depute of the King at Dehli, in the absolute government of three fair provinces, BENGAL, BEHAR, and ORISSA; inhabited by many millions of natives, both Mahomedans and Hindoos. The general condition on which the Company first obtained this and other large territorial trusts was, that they should "attend to the rights and customs thereof, and observe the Law of the Empire" in their administration of justice. Accordingly attention was given to these objects by the Company's servants in Bengal at a very early period of their administration. The languages and laws of the natives, both Mahomedan and Hindoo, became objects of the closest attention and study; and the native establishments for the administration of justice were retained, with such modifications only as admitted into them the concurrent jurisdiction or superintendence of British judges or magistrates.

In the year 1793, a very important step was taken with a view to the future administration of justice in these provinces. After much and anxious deliberation, it was determined to enact laws or regulations, establishing courts on the European plan, viz. superior courts, both civil and criminal, circuit courts, and local magistrates; but still reserving to the native population their own laws, religious institutions, and distinctions, subject to such occasional and cautious ameliorations as the better principles of justice which obtain in Europe might supply.

The first section of the third regulation, passed by the Bengal Government in the year above mentioned, expressly declares that the regulations of the British Government were calculated to protect the natives in the free exercise of their religion; and in perfect accordance with this principle, many enactments of that year and of subsequent dates, secured to the inhabitants of India a judicial recognition of their severa antes ̋ective religwas,

the means employed to prevent infantiIcide have been far less, if at all, successful. All that is known is that the Rajpoots in general have no female children in their families.

HUMAN SACRIFICES. There are unfortunately among the Hindoo idols two, the Goddess Khalee and the God Devi, who claim to be propitiated by human victims. Upon the discovery of one of these sacrifices in 1805 the subject underwent considerable discussion, and it was ascertained that the sacrifices had the sanction of the vedas; the mode of the sacrifice being described in a chapter on human sacrifices in the Puranas, in which all the qualifications, and particularly the age of the victim, are expressly prescribed. It was at the same time ascertained that a more modern treatise on Hindoo law, called the "Cali, or Present Age," forbad it, and under all the circumstances the Government resolved to deal with it as an act of murder, consent on the part of the victim having no place in the transaction. In conformity with this decision Ram Dyal, a native of Bengal, was sentenced to death in 1805 for offering up a boy of twelve years of age to Khalee. Instances have nevertheless occurred since that date of Hindoos attempting to make, and even of their making, this sacrifice; for which, in some cases, a punishment less than death has been awarded. In consideration of the superstition which prompts the act the punishment awarded for it in the year 1828 was seven years' confinement. In the Nagpore territory it has been prohibited by the authority of the Government, at the instance, it is believed, of Mr. Jenkins, who was then the East India Company's Resident at the Court of the Nagpore Rajah, and is now a member of the Court of Directors.

SUICIDES. Among the aborigines of eastern nations, suicide appears never to have been regarded as a crime, but as a virtue. Throughout the empire of Japan the worship of the god Zaca is attended with acts of suicide, which are performed in the most public manner; the votaries of that idol usually announcing their intention long previously to the fact, and fulfilling it with more ostentation and display than used to attend a Suttee in India. In the latter country the Hindoos appear always to have considered themselves

as possessing a power over their own lives, for the exercise of which they were not accountable to their fellow creatures while the great veneration in which they hold the waters of the Ganges, and the superstitions connected with that sacred river, have suggested to them a mode of quitting life, when they have become weary of it, at once speedy, easy, and, according to their notions, blissful in its consequences beyond all calculation. Hence has arisen among the Hindoos the custom sanctioned by their religion, of lepers and other diseased persons, when they have become weary of life, requesting that they might be borne down to the margin of the Ganges, and there be left to the tide, certain ceremonies having previously been performed over them. In other instances the suicide is performed by the victims causing themselves to be carried into boats, in which they are rowed into the middle of the river, and there falling or being thrown overboard, are drowned. Others cause themselves to be buried or burned alive. Although accession to these acts of suicide was forbidden by regulation as far back as the year 1799 (No. 8, Sec. 3), instances of that accession are continually occurring in India, and as the parties when arraigned for their conduct, uniformly acknowledge the fact, pleading that they are justified in it " by the tenets of their religion," the Company's government has in general judged it prudent to treat the offenders with considerable leniency on that account.

SUTTEES. Respecting this species of suicide, some controversy has taken place, which it is not my present intention to review. At a very early period after the establishment of the East India Company's power in India, it became an object of desire with their servants to discourage, and if possible to prevent this sacrifice; and in 1805 Mr. Elphinstone, the acting magistrate in Behar, following the examples of Mr. Brooke in 1789, and Mr. Rattray in 1797, prevented the immolation of a widow of very tender age. The enquiries respecting the sanction which the sacrifice derived from the dogmas of the Hindoo superstition, which immediately afterwards took place, resulted in a report from the Nizamut Adawlut, or chief criminal court, that the "practice of widows