whose produce may have suffered from drought, to another more fortunate, though at the distance of several days' journey. Immense crowds of persons who depend upon day-work for their subsistence, are sometimes seen moving through a country in rags or nakedness, flying before the pestilence of threatened famine, whilst pampered luxury prevails in the palaces of their chiefs. The natives of India, subjected to a wretched government, under which the fruits of labour are not secure, are without a motive to work, no less so than the enslaved African for whom the English affect the warmest sympathy.

CHAPTER IV.

FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BRITISH INDIA.

By referring to the foreign relations of the IndoBritish empire, we shall instantly see the fragile tenure by which England preserves possession of her Oriental dominions. According to the highest authority it is alone by the bravery and fidelity of the sepoys that India can be preserved to Great Britain. Sir John Malcolm deprecates any accession to the European force, on the ground that it might, from particular causes, weaken the attachment and lessen the efficiency of the native troops; at the same time this very competent judge acknowledges that his countrymen can never succeed in establishing any cordial or social union with their Indian subjects, so widely do they differ in manners, language, religion, and feelings. Other material circumstances contribute to render the British dominion precarious and unique, and to exact the utmost care in the selection of the depositary of that arbitrary power, without which it cannot be prolonged, or even beneficially administered for the rulers or the people.*

* "British government without British law!"

Sir John Malcolm observes: "The only safe view that Great Britain can take of her empire in India, is to consider it, as it really is, always in a state of danger, and to think it quite impossible to render her possessions in that country secure, except under the management of able and firm rulers. If a succession of men of great talents and virtues cannot be found, or if the operation of any influence on party feelings and principles prevents their being chosen, we must reconcile ourselves to the serious hazard of the early decline, if not the loss of the great dominion we have founded in the East."

This was the condition of the British power in India at a time when there was no European rival, or the prospect of an antagonist, on the immense arena of conflicting nations. How has the precarious position of the government been aggravated by the approximation of a hostile power in the Russian military demonstrations and prevalence of her diplomatic influence in Persia, in Central Asia, and the contiguous provinces of India! Considerations of this nature induced the governor-general of India to attempt and effect the military occupation of Avghanistaun. This measure of the Indo-British government is a profound error of policy. Diplomacy and economy condemn the movement, no less than the national safety and defensive plan of operations which the position of India suggests.

It was remarked by a son of Jelall ul Deen, Akber, the greatest of his race who dignified the throne of the Great Moghul, that the fortress of Akberabad was without a ditch. The Emperor replied, "My son, the river Indus is the ditch of Agra." The Indus has always been alleged as the frontier of India, and the laws of Menu prohibit the

followers of Bramah from crossing that stream. But the institutes of the reverend Menu are not without the pale of reformation; the god of Menu has been partially displaced from his temples in these degenerate days, and gold is worshipped as the spirit of the age. The conservative and unchanging Brahmin, at the bidding of his golden deity, threw dust in the eyes of Menu, and irreverently disobeyed the laws of his forefathers. The geographical boundary on the west has been crossed; a barrier to the self-protection of India overthrown; new kingdoms have been subdued at an enormous and incredible expense. Extended foreign relations, and the acquisition of strange dominions unconnected with India, require separate establishments, military and civil, for their maintenance; and we have now a portion of the empire of Central Asia to engage our consideration, which is another and an independent Tatar dominion, in no way a part of the Indo-British government, having relations with the surrounding states involving a web of policy that brings back again to Europe the universal sway of England.

A line now drawn from Constantinople to Pekin, (exclusive of Persia,) will divide the East between England and Russia; all to the south falling to the former, whilst the latter emphatically claims and holds the north. By advancing their frontier into Central Asia, the British re-established what has some time been the political boundary of India, viz.: the Indian Caucasus; though if this consideration influenced their measures, they should have gone to the river Oxus, which still more frequently has been the political boundary of the Persian or the Indian empire, dividing the Maver ul Neher and Khwarizm of Arabian geographers from the latter.

Unconnected and distant from India, the partially subdued and struggling Avghans still oblige their infidel masters to depend upon their southeastern dominion as a base of action; thus they aggravate the hazard of compromising the safety of their Indian empire, for without elaborating the means of sustaining a large military force in Central Asia, they have incurred the responsibility of defending, from a distant base, liable to interruption from political, and they may be permanent causes, a position, the evacuation of which cannot be proposed without displaying an inferiority to their competitors. The elucidation of this truth would draw upon them the quiescent but not subdued energies of a turbulent and oppressed population. The approach of Russian influence, and the extension of her frontier, places the British government in the dangerous position of being obliged to defend her Indian empire against internal commotion, at the same moment she is necessitated to repel the agression of a foreign power, with whom the means of her defence are physically inadequate to contend! But I am of opinion that the moral influence of Russia could extinguish by diplomacy alone the British power in India. Sustained by a military force at Bulkh, the intelligent and astute corps diplomatique of Russia "would excite those causes of fermentation existing there," which would produce "a convulsion within the bosom of the empire," revolutions of opinion, rebellions, insurrections en masse of the whole population, war, violence, and devastation, desolating and exterminating the English, and ending in the disintegration of the British empire.