mand; whilst Ryots have frequently been known, sometimes for anticipated payments, and sometimes for their own expences, to borrow money on the security of growing crops at 3, 4, and 5 per cent. per mensem.

No fact is perhaps better established in political economy than that industry cannot, in any of its branches be promoted without capital. Capital is the result of saving from annual profits. Here there can be none. A dense or rather redundant population occasions in India, as in Ireland, a competition for land; because, in a nation of paupers, land is indispensable as a means of existence. It is therefore at times greedily sought for in India, notwithstanding the exorbitance of the revenue chargeable thereupon, for the same reasons that small portions of land in Ireland are occupied under payment of exorbitant rents to landlords; and this extension of cultivation in India is often mistaken for an encrease of prosperity, when, in fact, it is but the further spreading of pauperism and want. Hence the acquisition of capital in India, by the cultivators of the soil, is absolutely impossible. Either the revenue absorbs the whole product of industry, except what is indispensable to preserve the workers of the hive from absolute starvation; or it is engrossed

bya Zemindar, or farmer, who will not re-apply his gains to the improvement of lands within the power of a tax-gatherer's grasp.

source.

In this series of proceedings, effects are presented to our notice deserving the most serious consideration. It is clear, that whenever the wants of Government, real or imaginary, may call for increased supplies, recourse will be had to the "improvement" or extension of an impost already almost intolerable. It is in fact the only available reUniversal poverty leaves no other. Measures will therefore be multiplied for assessing wastes; for resuming rent-free lands ; for invalidating former alienations; for disputing rights which had been allowed to lie dormant for half a century; for increasing the aggregate receipts from lands already taxed, or supposed to be taxed, at 50 per cent. of the gross produce-in short, for the most harassing and vexatious interference with private property, and the pursuits of private industry. Every improvement or extension of agriculture is thus sure to be followed, sooner or later, by the graspings of the tax-gatherer. Industry, therefore, will be effectually checked, or only prosecuted where the demands of Government may chance through bribery, fraud, or concealment to be eluded. Or, if the necessities of

human life, or increased population, should occasion agriculture to be extended to waste lands, to be thereafter taxed at "the just amount of the public dues," what is it but the further spread of pauperism and wretchedness?

Under these circumstances to profess an anxious desire to promote general prosperity, to augment the comforts or protect the rights of the people, when our acts and deeds thus belie our avowed intentions, is but to arm the intensity of disappointment with a keener sting. Every new act of the Government will be viewed as a portentous omen of increased burthens. A collector, raised to the judicial bench, with leanings highly proper for him to entertain as guardian of the public revenue, or as an advocate, becomes, in his capacity of judge, an object of suspicion and distrust. Confidence and attachment, -the great bulwarks of national prosperity-will thus give way to a sense of injury and wrong; and no feeling of injustice is more irritating to the mind than that which a people suffer at the hands of their rulers. It rouses the most submissive and peaceable of mankind to acts of secret opposition, or open violence. Government, under these circumstances, may be feared, but it is also hated. Its ordinary measures, wanting aid and efficiency from popular concurrence, are thwarted or opposed. Dominion is held by

a thread; a thousand accidents may snap it; and every infusion of fresh vigor to restore a fallen, or to prop a tottering, power only aggravates the recollections of its past injustice. A late French writer, describing the sufferings which an oppressed people endured at the hands of their local rulers, has well observed, “L'injustice les a revoltés. Reduits au desespoir par ces magistrats memes, leurs naturels appuis, opprimés au nom des lois qui doiv"ent les proteger, ils ne connaissent plus de frein, parceque, ceux qui les gouvernent " n'ont point connu de mesure.” * The Edinburgh Review, wherein this passage is also quoted, remarks on it, that it is a lesson to all rulers, and applicable to every people.

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66

SECTION X.

Decoity, or Gang-robbery.

In the preceding pages I have, more than once, adverted to the circumstance of the inhabitants of India being driven by oppression to join associations of public or gang-robbers. The armies of Pindaries, which lately required so large a British force to put down, were supposed to have been recruited, in part, from the population of the Company's own dis

Euv. de P. L. Courier, tom. i. p. 98.

tricts; persons, whom misery, and want had forced to quit the habitation of their fathers. Gang-robbery, therefore, as before observed, (Vol. I. p. 260.) was common, under different denominations, to many parts —almost, indeed, the whole of the interior-of India. But in no part has this practice prevailed in greater excess, and cruelty, than in the lower provinces of Bengal; and, what is still more remarkable, in the districts immediately adjoining the seat of the supreme government, where it is known by the term "Decoity."

The crime of Decoity is of great antiquity in Bengal; probably as old as the oppressions which gave rise to it; and to guard the inhabitants generally against the cruelties and atrocities of Decoits, a very numerous and powerful establishment was formerly kept up, and placed under the orders, or subject to the disposal, of Zemindars, who were then considered responsible for the crimes committed within their respective circles. It will give the reader some notion of the magnitude of the crime itself, the terror it universally inspired, and the power required to repress it, by laying before him an official statement of the police establishment in one district only, Burdwan, the capital of which is only about 60 miles N.N.W. of Calcutta.