PREFACE.

THE announcement of contemplated changes in the Government of India, has naturally given rise to various suggestions as to the policy to be adopted in the future Administration of that portion of the British Empire.

The object of the following pages is not to multiply these suggestions, or to scrutinize the causes of those calamitous events, which have riveted the interest of all classes of the community in England, on India and its destinies.

Valuable as are the speculations of thoughtful and earnest men, on a question so momentous as that which affects the loss, or the maintenance of British authority in India, it is yet too evident that those speculations have in the present case often rested on a basis of actual knowledge of the past and present circumstances of our Eastern Empire, too slender for the superstructure of theories which it has been called upon to bear.

If Indian taxation, law, and judicial procedure are to become the battle-field of English Parliamentary

warfare, it is, at all events, important, that we should know what Indian taxation, law, and judicial procedure now are. If the Civil Government and Military defence of India are to be re-organized, it is well that we should know what is the actually-existing system on which India now depends for its Civil Government and Military defence.

Those who have no personal knowledge of Asiatic character and institutions depend necessarily for their guidance in their practical dealings with these momentous questions, on those who possess such knowledge. There is, nevertheless, a certain stock of facts which is, or ought to be, accessible to all.

Buried in the folios in which repose minutes of evidence, obtained by Parliamentary Committees, and in those well-known histories of India, and treatises on its government, which are familiar to all students of Indian politics, all, and more than all, that it is necessary to know is, doubtless, to be found. But it is difficult sometimes to extricate this information from the mass of criticisms and controversies in which it is imbedded. To disentangle facts from the opinions in which they are, generally, interwoven, is the purpose of this volume. Simply to present, as faithfully and concisely as possible, the machinery of the Anglo-Indian Government, as it now exists, together with its fiscal and judicial apparatus.

The object to be attained being rather accuracy of statement than originality of language, the extracts of public documents, from which information is drawn, have been copied verbatim. Of those chapters which

relate to the Home Government and the "Services in India, the analysis of the evidence, taken before the Parliamentary Committees of 1852 forms, with slight alterations, the chief substance. For such portions of the table, appended to the Revenue Map, as are not contained in the territorial accounts, laid before Parliament, as well as for other valuable information, I am indebted to the Statistical Department of the East India House.

The Revenue Map is intended to afford data for a fair comparison of the various systems under which the Land Revenue of India is now collected. In classifying the Revenue Systems, the arrangement presented by the Government returns has been in all cases followed. Those Provinces, for instance, which are directly under the administration of the Governor-General in Council, are included in the Bengal accounts: the only exception being the CisSutlej States, which are, for revenue purposes, classified with the North-West Provinces. It will be observed that in the Punjaub, the boundaries of the Collectorates are not marked, the survey for this purpose being as yet incomplete. The "Village System" which there exists cannot be said to fall strictly under either of the two great divisions of Indian tenures; the peculiarities of this system are described in the fifth chapter.

In order to form a satisfactory estimate of the relative productiveness of the systems under which the Land Revenues of India are now assessed, accurate data as to the comparative fertility of the various

soils, the localities of culturable and unculturable, irrigated and unirrigated lands, are manifestly essential. In the absence of such data, the areas of the Collectorates can only be compared.

The brief chronological summary of the legislative changes and annexations which have marked the rise and progress of our Eastern Empire, contained in the first chapter, seemed an almost essential introduction to those which follow.

The leading events of Anglo-Indian history, and the various systems of policy through which it has passed, are associated, not so much with the successive Charters granted to the East India Company, as with the names of those men to whom the local government of that empire has been, from time to time, committed; from the days when peaceful traders presided over our earliest factories, to be afterwards succeeded by the warriors, who expelled the French and crushed the Mahrattas, and the diplomatists who were to absorb, one by one, under British supremacy, nearly all the ancient feudatories of the Mogul Empire.