of a Code. The time for its realisation has evidently not arrived.' When the present social effervescence shall have subsided and the newly-constituted Councils have had time to grow into a national representation, use may be made of all the inquiries, discussions and experiments which alone have been hitherto possible. To cite once more the able and eloquent language of the report :—

"The experience of the world, the decay of superstitions, enable us now to go back with comparative intellectual freedom to really first principles. In pursuing this course we come upon springs of thought and action common alike to Hindu, Musalman, and Christian. At these we should pause and appropriate all that they can yield to us; employ the results with frugal skill; and having thus established the base-line and some of the principal points of our system, leave the developments of details to time, to the sure germination of sound thoughts, and to the action of the Courts continually checked in any tendency to aberration by the constraining influence of great and conspicuous landmarks.”

When rulers and people shall be united a Code will be born on Indian soil, as if by natural process. Meanwhile we cannot do better than meditate upon those fine words of Edmund Burke :

"Government is a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind, and not to furnish a spectacle of uniformity for the gratification of visionary politicians."

[See Report of Commission, 1879. Also Chap. on Law, by Sir J. F. Stephen, in Hunter's "Life of Mayo." The author is much indebted to the kindness of Mr. S. Harvey James, Secretary in Leg. Dep., for other materials.]

E E

VOL. II.

APPENDIX III.

RECENT BOOKS ON INDIA.

SINCE the present work was undertaken a number of more or less important publications have appeared, showing the increased interest taken in the subject, and throwing upon it a variety of fresh lights.

Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt's "Ancient India" is the first of what promises to be a useful series.* As explained by the Editor, Mr. John Adam, it will be the object of these monographs to correct the tendency of specialists to confine their attention, in working the field of Indian history, to "special periods or particular areas." In all such works he finds "a universal want of balance; the writer insensibly, but inevitably, brings to the front the epoch [which] he has studied in detail, or the district where his experience has been gained," The avowed object therefore of this series will be "to correct this tendency by assigning each epoch to a writer who has made it a subject of special research." The subjects already announced are: "Ancient India” (the volume now under notice); "The Muhammadans," or the History of Hindustan (including Bengal), by J. D. Rees, C.I.E.; "The Mahrattas," or the History of the Deccan, by the Hon K. T. Telang, C.I.E.; "The Dravidians," or the History of the Peninsula Proper, by the Editor; and, finally, "The British Power in India" from 1800 to the present time, by J. S. Cotton, the accomplished Editor of "The Academy," and biographer of Mountstuart Elphinstone. Mr. Dutt's work treats of the history of the country-or rather of the northern regions-from the uncertain date of the first Aryan invasions (here assumed at 2,000 B.C.) down to the approach of the Muslim Conquest. Dividing this long, but obscure, subject into five epochs, the

*"Epochs of Indian History," London, 1893.

author treats of each epoch respectively in four separate chapters; and his study will be found to embrace much interesting information on manners, belief, and practices, from the standpoint of a patriotic Hindu.

Mr. Adam's complaint against the specialists is hardly applicable to Sir W. Hunter's encyclopædic work which, after some tentative appearances, has now taken a definite form.* Originally an article n the “Britannica,” then expanded into Vol. VI. of the "Imperial Gazetteer," it has had the benefit of frequent revision and of collaboration by many experts of various kinds, whose assistance is duly acknowledged. The present edition has but one serious blemish :

has become too vast and heavy in bulk to be used with convenience, consisting of more than 850 pages, presenting a complete panorama of the entire dependency from every point of view, and brought down to the very latest date. The story and the statistics have been alike modernised; the history of religion in India has been re-written; the revenues of the Muslim Emperors have been re-examined under the light thrown on them by recent studies of the coins and metric standards of their times. There is also a general history, commencing with the earliest authentic recordswhich receive more critical treatment here than in Mr. Dutt's volume-and ending with the administration of Lord Lansdowne. A book so full of instruction deserves respectful attention, and will repay continual reference, both of which, however, might have been more fully commanded if it could have been cut in two. The student of history might then have found occupation in the first fifteen chapters, while a second volume would have furnished all requisite information to the journalist and to the member of Parliament.

The numismatic and metric records of the past have received fuller consideration from Mr. S. L. Poole in separate works. The result is to lead to a higher estimate than that taken by the present

"The Indian Empire: its Peoples, History, and Products," By Sir William Wilson Hunter, K. C.S.I., etc., etc. 1893.

+"Catalogue of Indian Coins in the British Museum," 1892. Aurangzeb. "Rulers of India," by S. L. Poole, etc., 1893.

[Mr. Poole has also contributed, on the subject of Mughal Revenues, to Sir W. Hunter's work.]

writer, so far as the revenues of the Mughal Empire are concerned. In regard to what has been sometimes termed the "casual" revenue, that derived from customs, fines, escheats, benevolences, etc., Mr. Poole admits uncertainty. Even in regard to land-revenue he appears to shrink from endorsing the extreme calculations of the late Edward Thomas. No "Turkish Ruler of India” could ever have had the financial skill to extort a permanent land-revenue of eighty millions of pounds sterling from the parts of the country included in the Mughal Empire in the period of its widest extent. The misconception arises, apparently, from the readiness of European visitors of those days to believe in the riches of a country which produced Peacock-thrones and Taj-Mahals. They were thus disposed to accept estimated maximum rent-rolls as if they were budgeted accounts based on actual averages of receipt. Moreover Mr. Poole gets some of these extravagant estimates by rendering French statements as if the writers used the livre parisis, whereas they referred to the livre tournois, which was only about three-fourths of the former. It is of the deepest importance to remember that India is, and always has been, an extremely poor country, and that the constant difficulty of its governors-one by no means destroyed by modern developments-is to introduce and maintain Occidental administration out of the resources supplied by an Oriental income.

The commencement of these modern developments receives important and interesting record from the labours of Sir George Birdwood.* Assisted by Mr. William Foster, the able and accomplished statistician of the India Office has put together two most valuable collections of early official papers bearing upon the estab lishment of the East India Company, with that of its trade, out of which such mighty consequences were to spring.

That the East India Company contemplated a territorial Empire from the first is the thesis of a remarkable book that has been already cited, the work of an author whose originality of thought is as undoubted as his clearness of exposition is attractive. Sir Alfred "The

Report on the "Old Records of the India Office," 1891. Register of Letters, etc., 1600-1619," 1893.

+ Sir A. C. Lyall, "The Rise of British Dominion in India " (Murray's

Lyall shows how the unflinching rivalry of the Dutch almost expelled the old British Company of Sir G. Birdwood's records; how the latter gradually regained their position in the last quarter of the 17th century; and how the gradual collapse of the Mughal Empire left the country, without a valid Central Government, as a huntingground for adventurers. The decay of the Dutch and the colonising ambition of the French are then shown; while the masterly treatise of Captain Mahan, U.S.N., is cited for its illustration of the difficulties which beset the French in competing for India with the maritime superiority of Great Britain.* In all this there is much that the student ought to ponder. Whether the gradual acquisition of political sway in Bengal and the Carnatic was the result of a deliberate purpose entertained by the founders of the British Company is a different question. The view taken in the present work is the more usual one, that political sway came, almost accidentally, as to the son of Kish. It is true that the Company had written out strongly on the subject of subordinating trade to Empire towards the close of the reign of James II. Sir G. Birdwood is well aware of this, and was the first to draw attention to the letters. But the movement was premature, and was probably due to the enthusiasm of one man— Sir Josiah Child-misplaced and disastrous in immediate consequences. For more than half a century after the failure of Child's effort the English Company maintained an inoffensive attitude and minded their immediate business. As Sir George distinctly, and indeed emphatically, points out, “the East India Company never suffered itself to be deluded with the idea that 'Trade follows the flag'; while the French have over and over again demonstrated for our edification [that] it does not." It was only when trade could not otherwise take root that the flag was raised to protect it; that the Factories grew into Presidencies, and that the Market became an Empire. Sir Alfred's bright and very pleasant volume ends with an expression of earnest but moderate expectation. "Whatever," he observes, "may be the eventual advantage to England from her possession of India, it seems already plain that the effect upon the general progress of the human family must be very great.'

The volumes of the "Rulers of India" series which have

* "The Influence of Sea-power upon History." N.D.