'local rates, and governed according to the provisions of the 'management clauses (the substitution being made of rate'payers for subscribers); which school might, with the consent of the majority of the subscribers, be the national school of the parish.' It could not, however, be thus maintained by rates paid by the whole parish, unless it were subject to these two conditions: 1. That no child attending it, not being a baptized member of the Church, should be taught the Church Catechism. 2. That no child should be instructed in the Catechism, or otherwise in the distinctive doctrines of the Church, if his parents objected to his being so instructed. The fulfilment of these conditions being placed under the safeguard of the rate-payers, the Dissenters would probably in many parishes require no further concession. In any parish where they did, it should be competent to them to form a separate school, or to unite with the Dissenters of other parishes (within prescribed limits) in forming such a school, for the maintenance of which they might be rated instead of being rated to the parish school, which school might be an existing school, a British' school for instance, or the school of any particular dissenting community, as the Wesleyans. Schools, to which Dissenters were so taxed, should, like the Church schools, be open to all, with the condition that no child should be taught the distinctive religious doctrines of the school, if its parents objected to its being so taught. It should be a further condition, that all schools, whether Church or Dissenting schools, maintained by rates, should be taught by certificated teachers adequately supplied with assistant or apprenticed pupil-teachers, and with books and apparatus, and open to Government inspection.*

* With reference to the proportion in which the different religious communities contribute to the education of the people, which we have alluded to at p. 381., we beg to add the following calculation, based on two of the elements of the Census, which leads to a very remarkable result; for it demonstrates that, although the dissenting bodies have been foremost in opposing the measures of Government for the advancement of National Education, they have done scarcely anything upon their own voluntary principle for the permanent establishment of schools amongst themselves.

If a comparison be made of the numbers of poor children educated in day schools by the several religious denominations with the numbers of sittings in their respective places of worship, it will be found that there is 1 church scholar for every 5 sittings in a church, 1 congregationalist scholar for every 21 sittings in a congregationalist chapel, 1 baptist scholar for every 81 sittings in a baptist chapel, and that the other religious denominations taken together yield 1 scholar for every 41 sittings. In other words, if we suppose all the places

ART. IV. - The Private Life of an Eastern King. By a Member of the Household of His late Majesty, Nussir-u-deen, King of Oude. London: 1855.

GIBBON speaks of the deep and dangerous question how far the public faith should be observed, when it becomes 'incompatible with the public safety.' In India, at the present day, the public safety is happily not in peril; but still the British Government is in a state of chronic dilemma with respect to the question how far the public faith should be observed.' It has bound itself to native princes by solemn treaties, rendered the more obligatory by the circumstance that a heavy price in the double form of cession of territory and sacrifice of independence, was paid in each instance for the protection of a power felt to be irresistible; and the lamentable experience of the many years which have passed since these treaties were severally entered into, has demonstrated, to the conviction of all intelligent observers, that faith can be kept with the representatives of the princes in question only at the expense of perpetuating the most atrocious misgovernment, involving the misery of millions, throughout some of the fairest provinces of Hindostan.

Oude has long held a bad preeminence among the states thus situated. The sovereign enjoys the guarantee of the British Government, which has undertaken, for a large territorial consideration, not only to guard his dominions against aggression from without, but to protect him from all the consequences of misrule which might be expected to result from the indignation and violence of an oppressed people. It is said that there is no word to signify a republic' in any Asiatic language. Any constitutional limitation of the power of the sovereign is equally unknown. The only practical check is this:- when tyranny becomes utterly intolerable, the nobles, or the people, as the case may be, (for sometimes the one class, and sometimes the other, are the principal sufferers,) take the law into their own hands, act with all the promptitude and vigour of Judge Lynch, destroy the oppressor, his instruments, and it may be also, all the male members of his family, and then quietly submit themselves to the

of worship on the day of the Census to have been filled, then the degrees of support given to the cause of education by the worshippers may be estimated by the fact that, whilst every 5 of the churchmen were providing for the education of 1 poor scholar, it took the united efforts of 21 congregationalists, or 81 baptists, or 41 dissenters of any other denomination, to effect the same object.

like despotic rule exercised by the lucky adventurer whom circumstances have raised up to reign in his stead. Thus Nadir Shah, the conqueror of Persia, of Affghanistan, and of Western India, was murdered by the principal commanders of his army on his return from the sack of Delhi. Thus in countless other instances, tyrants, who have played a less conspicuous part on the stage of general history, but whose crimes and cruelties have worn out even Asiatic powers of endurance, have suffered the just punishment of their enormities, inflicted either by the victims of some special outrage, or by a general outbreak of popular indignation. But the King of Oude is safe-as far as human power can protect from all penal consequences of misgovernment. A considerable British force is cantoned in the immediate vicinity of his capital; his subjects are well aware that thousands more of the same irresistible troops are stationed close at hand, ready to support their comrades; and though these troops have been carefully restrained, of late years, from all interference in the internal administration of the country, such as the enforcement of the payment of the land revenue, or the execution of any acts of rapine or violence which it may please the king or his ministers to order, they have a rabble soldiery of their own sufficient and well qualified for such duties, and they know, and the people know, that if resistance be carried beyond a certain point, the aggressors need only to cry out Treason,' and to invoke the assistance of the British Government under the treaty. The result is, that the hateful yoke of the worst Asiatic tyranny is fastened upon the necks of the hapless people, by the gigantic strength of a well-organised European Government, with a gripe which excludes the slightest hope of deliverance. In no other country, we believe, has there existed-for many centuries, at least such a combination of an evil will and of absolute power to give it effect.

It is probable, indeed, that this world—the scene of so much misery has never witnessed such a government as that of Oude, unless it be thought impossible that any tyranny should surpass that of Nero or Domitian. But in ancient Rome we believe that the doctrine laid down in Goldsmith's well-known lines was verified; that the provincial governments were sufficiently strong, in spite of the horrible oppression exercised in the capital, to afford considerable protection to the great body of the people; and that those remote from courts,' suffered comparatively little from the atrocities even of the

'Monstrum, nullâ virtute redemptum

A vitiis.'

But Oude is a small and very compact country, with a

central capital; and the system of land revenue which prevails there, as throughout India, has this strong characteristic, that according as it is well or ill administered, it conduces more directly and intensely to the happiness or to the misery of the people than any other fiscal scheme. Nine tenths of the population are in the position of the cottiers of Ireland. The possession of land is to them a necessity, the very vital element:

if they have it not, they starve, with their wives and little ones. It is no wonder, therefore, that they cling to it with the same desperate tenacity which distinguishes the peasants of Connaught, submitting to any amount of extortion and wrong, rather than abandon it. Sorely is this tie strained in Oude. The several districts are either farmed out, or are managed by Amils, who regard their offices only as a means of amassing wealth from the difference between what they can extort from the Ryots, and what they are compelled (for the process is often one of compulsion) to pay in to the royal coffers. Where there are Zemindars, the only difference is that another screw is interposed between the farmers general or amils, and the actual cultivators of the soil. The zemindars often exact payment from their ryots, and then hold out in their mud-forts against the amil, until the contending parties can arrange, after a certain amount of battering and a sufficient number of parleys, the exact sum which will satisfy the royal exchequer, and leave a suitable balance for the benefit of the amil. Between such millstones as the amils and zemindars of Oude, the unhappy ryot is of course ground to powder. Besides growing the crop and paying the revenue, he is impressed by the zemindar to fight his annual battles against the amil, whose rabble retainers spoil his goods, and devour or drive off his cattle. The battles in question are of every day occurrence. A member of the House of Commons recently stated in his place, that whilst marching through Oude some years ago, he had heard the sound of artillery, either on the one side of his road or the other, on each of the first nine days of his journey. That was and is the ordinary mode of collecting the revenue from landholders of power and courage sufficient to resist the authorities, rather than patiently submit to be plundered. When the end in view cannot be effected by these which we have truly called ordinary means, still stronger measures are resorted to without scruple. Within the last ten years, an amil sold a thousand men, women, and children into slavery, in order to make good a deficiency of revenue from the proceeds of the sale.

The same despotic lawlessness pervades every department of the government,-if a state of things so wretched be worthy of

such respectable terms. Very recently, the king appointed one of his fiddlers chief justice of the realm. Probably, the judge was upon a par with the Court. Police there seems to be none for the prevention of crime; Government exists for the collection of revenue. Men are shot down in broad daylight close to the gates of Lucknow, and the murderer replaces the pistol in his belt, and deliberately walks off, without question or hindrance from any one. We are indebted to the surgeon of the British Residency, now a member of the Medical Board, for the following anecdote: He had been out into the country to attend a patient. On his return to the city, he heard a pretty brisk fire of musketry, but such sounds were too common to excite any great surprise. After passing the gate, however, he found that two regiments of the king's infantry having quarrelled, each corps had taken possession of the houses upon one side of the principal street, across which they were keeping up a smart fusillade. When the officer, whose person and equipage were well known, approached the scene of action, a chief combatant of one of the regiments rushed into the middle of the street, and bawled out at the top of his voice, Stop, stop! wait a minute till the Doctor Sahib has gone by!'

The curious volume which has called forth these remarks purports to be written by an Englishman, formerly in the service of a late king of Oude. We see no reason to doubt the genuineness of the work. If the narrative be not true in every particular, it is, at least, vraisemblable.' Every fact which it relates might well, we think, have happened at the court where the scene is laid; and there is nothing out of character in any word or deed attributed to the several actors. The work is anonymous, and we have no means of ascertaining more as to the authorship than the author has told us. Five European mem'bers of his household,' he says, usually attended the king's private dinners. His tutor was one of the king's friends; his librarian was another; his portrait-painter was a third; the captain of his body-guard was a fourth; and last, but by no means least, his barber his European barber - was a fifth: of these five I was one.'

That tastes differ is a proverbial truism; but how any one, with the spirit and feelings of an Englishman, could have endured the degradation and the unspeakable disgusts of such a service, as long as there was a wet ditch to be dug, or a heap of road-metal to be broken in this country, or the roughest drudgery of an indigo factory to be performed under the burning sun of India, we are utterly at a loss to understand. But as it has been proved to demonstration that Boswell's