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body of population, the modes in which national prosperity may be increased, will all at some future time form matter for the speculation, if not for the actual employment of the civilian. The Revenue officer will have ample opportunities for tracing the various windings of political economy, and will recognize the truth or falsity of many of its systems. Cause and effect will be to him equally familiar, and if a slight discrepancy in theory and practice does at times occur, he will acknowledge in the visible working of many great truths, the necessity of some acquaintance with the principles of the science. But in order to examine with certainty the condition of the Asiatic, he must first cast his eye over that of the European. He must be shown the causes of English wealth and prosperity before he can fully comprehend those of oriental degradation. Accordingly the series of lectures explain to him the position of the tenantry, churl and freedman, villain and serf, throughout most European states he learns why the Irish cottier is poor, vilified, and degraded; why the French metayer, though contented and in seeming affluence, must yet in his best aspect be far removed from the genuine hearty content of an English peasant: he illustrates and compares what at first seem the discordant institutions of the East and the West, and traces with delight a resemblance between the middleman of Ireland and the Talukdar of Bengal. This is hardly the place for a disquisition on the land tenures of India, or on the science of political economy from its rise to the present day; but it may not be irrelevant to show something of the real character of a science whose most valuable discoveries may yet be far in the distant future. Some may be old enough to recollect the time when political economy was but in her cradle. Her giant truths had indeed ever been stalking over the field of history, but their importance was disowned or at least unacknowledged by the many. From the days of Munn and Malines to the dawn of the science under Adam Smith, its maxims had however been gradually stealing a faint assent from speculators more clear sighted than their neighbours. At length the clouds were rolled away and men began to run into the opposite extreme. The wildest and most unhealthy doctrines were promulgated and caught up. Unholy devices were upheld as the sole means by which the national evils resulting from a rapid increase in the population could be warded off. The public, at first thirsting for the new draught of knowledge, turned away in horror from the poison it contained. The maxims of the few were set down as those of the science itself, and the tendency of Political Economy was again hid in darkness. But under the fostering hand

of those whose views are sound and healthy, the inquirer receives no shock to his old established belief-is not startled by the propounding of audacious theories-does not meet with a horrid vision at every turn of the road. In a calm and philosophic spirit he learns the real value of the science. Its importance to society is demonstrated by an appeal to facts. Its truths stand out in relief when made the test of great commercial questions. And at Haileybury, avoiding with care the miry paths into which so many visionaries have wandered, or only showing them in order to deter the unwary follower, the Professor leads his hearers through a succession of green fields and pleasant places, whose produce is a rich and teeming crop, and where rank luxuriance is unknown. At one time throwing a light on the fabric of Oriental Government-the want of fixed institutions-only relieved by the occasional happy accident of such characters as Akbar-at another rapidly surveying the courses of monied distress at different periods in the History of Greece and of England, of France and of Rome-now rising to discuss the events from which sprung our national debt-now descending to the details connected with the gradual improvement of the science of agriculture-here drawing a picture of that primitive state where flocks and herds alone constitute wealth-there happily discursive on the technicalities of cultivation-now giving a slight sketch of the causes which affect the general credit of a nation-now pausing to see how the earth may be made still more fruitful, and replenished still further in obedience to the great command amalgamating all these topics into one continuous series, the Lecturer aims at making his subject popular, and uniformly succeeds. If the value of the study is to be estimated by the ardour with which it is followed, we may safely pronounce Political Economy to be a gem of the first water. The Lectures of the present able Professor are attended with less reluctance by the students than those of any other branch, and it is here that we generally see at the close of every term the fairest average of merit distributed amongst the greatest number. It is true however that frequent opportunities of practically employing the axioms of this science do not occur to the great body of civil servants. A secretary may possibly find it aid him in his notes, or a Member of Council in his minute: a collector may be indebted to his early reminiscences whilst endeavouring to thread his way through the tangled labyrinth of Revenue questions, which men of high ability have professed themselves unable to comprehend after a thirty years study. But any daily application of its principles in a direct point of view is frustrated by the position of the Indian official.

A lord of many acres, uniting a sound knowledge of the science with an equally sound uprightness of purpose, may every day give a practical illustration of it on his estate. A landed proprietor in Ireland might find it direct his endeavours to raise from their prostrate condition the wronged and neglected children of Erin. But no such outlet for a beneficent philosophy is placed at the disposal of the English resident in India. We read of constant appeals to our native Babus and Zemindars in behalf of the ryot; let them study philanthropy and Political Economy combined, and the result will be highly beneficial to the interests of both master and man.*

We shall revert to this branch in connection with the study of History; for the present, Law must cause us to diverge for a few pages. When we consider that many civilians are destined to fill at some time the important situation of an English judge, and that not in a country whose inhabitants have been known to him since his childhood, but in one where everything from first to last is strange and uncongenial-that he is to present the spectacle of a man, calm and dignified, holding the even balance of the scales of punishment, and deciding on cases where life and death are at stake, it would not seem too much to require that one-half of the time spent at College should be devoted to the acquirement of a regular legal education. But, as usual when legislating for a body whose future destinations are uncertain, we should fall into a grievous error did we advocate the claims of law to the exclusion of other knowledge. Of the many who leave Haileybury, but one-half, or even less, are called upon to fill the responsibility of the judicial chair. Some become political secretaries, or agents, others are sheltered in the customs, or preside over the salt or the opium department, and some remain devoted to revenue matters, and turn away from the dark side of human nature, crime and its attendant punishment. Hence any thing like educating men for a particular line whilst in England is rendered nugatory, and the course of law resolves itself into a general exposition of the principles on which it is based. Strong meat is withheld by a judicious hand; and in order that the tyro may not be dismayed by the iron toughness of the subject, or wearied with its technicalities, a course of moral philosophy and the great unwritten laws of nature is selected as affording the fairest opening for all. Accordingly the Collegian is led at first to the break of that broad gulf which must ever separate the confines of morals and of law. He sees how near they approach and again how far diverge. Why the

* We might also include the maligned class of Indigo Planters in this appeal.

law from its hard character "never speaking but to command, and never commanding but to compel," is forced to leave many provinces entirely untouched, and to extend its rigid sceptre only over the trespasses which cause a positive injury to society or to individuals regarded as integral parts of society. These are the first views selected from the mighty landscape. We proceed a little further, and equally interesting scenes are displayed. The quæstio vexata of the origin of property, our duties to ourselves, to each other and to society, the jura belli et pacis, international law, the varying principles of inheritance, primogeniture and equal partition, the laws of sale and contract, all the numerous cases which can reasonably be supposed to arise in a highly civilized state of society, set forth in language at once energetic and clear, are selected as the course of law which naturally follows from the moral philosophy of Paley. It may be imagined that such a great and comprehensive view, drawn with a graphic pencil, and evidently bearing directly on the duties of a public servant, must allure the greater number, and lead them fearlessly to grapple with the more detailed and intricate portions of the science. And when we tell our readers that, reluctant to enter on the duller and drearier paths, and imbued with an enlightened spirit of philosophic enquiry, the Professor often dared to branch out into several parts on which the law seems hardly as yet decided, that he would discuss in the spirit of Montesquieu the systems of law best suited to societies in their different phases, and would enquire whether some points hitherto abandoned to the moral code might not with safety be brought within the grasp of the legal, when he would contrive to invest his seemingly dry and barren subject with interest and freshness, and almost with fascination--when we assert that law on its first stages at Haileybury seems to carry on its face much that is calculated to allure and little to deter, shall it not be thought strange if we say that of all the branches taught, law, with the exception of Sanskrit, is decidedly the most unpopular! Such however is the stern reality of the case. A few, conscious of the parts they may be called on to sustain, endeavour to make themselves masters of the first great principles: the greater part are hopelessly ignorant of the very nature of what they hear weekly discussed. They are not told that in India they will occupy the stations of barristers, that they will be forced to plead in the courts, and that the measure of their legal knowledge is to be the measure of their success in life. Many are aware, in spite of the Cimmerian darkness which hangs over the future of their Indian life that a legal examination does not form one of the

criteria of fitness for the public service, or a subject of anxiety to the authorities of Fort William College. They know that ignorance of the principles of jurisprudence will not be brought against them as an absolute disqualification for office; and they turn away from the law lecture, not to pursue other studies perhaps of equal importance, but to revel in the hey day of unrestrained idleness. Yet the youth of sixteen is not altogether without excuse. It must be conceded that the subject, loaded from its very nature with numerous heavy impedimenta, and appealing to the manifold authorities who stand as the beacon lights of the science, presents such a succession of appalling objects, hill mounting over hill, and Alp arising upon Alp, that many, trembling notw ithout reason at the growing labours of the path they have chosen, retire with precipitancy altogether from the field.

After the primary course, which however must leave much unsaid, some one particular region is selected. The collegian enters on the department of criminal law, crimes and punishments, with the objects of the latter according to the system of Bentham,-on a slight sketch of the proceedings of the Court of Chancery-and on an excellent exposition of the great rules of evidence. We may be excused for digressing still further on this latter part, as the weighing and digesting evidence forms perhaps the most difficult part in the duty of the English Hakim. It has been well observed that in England little or no difficulty is ever experienced in deciding on the actual evidence, however intricate may be the law, whilst in India the resolving of such double-tied knots as are often woven by two opposite parties, forms matter of serious perplexity to the bench. At home the separation of law and fact-the point where one terminates and the other begins-may often prove a question to try the powers of the clearest sighted: the two join issue on a kind of debateable land, and the boundaries of either cannot be clearly ascertained. But suppose the doubt removed, and the weighing of mere evidence is comparatively easy. Truth, or at least the germ of truth, when brought into court by almost every witness, under the fire of a searching cross-examination, expands into a full blown flower. The principles of evidence are easily tested on so smooth a surface. But in India the very contrary is the case. Tossed about in the stormy and opposing tides of native evidence, who has not felt the want of a guiding hand, when, even in a common case of affray, the testimony of two opponent Zemindars and their clans have been so totally irreconcileable, and yet so ingeniously supported, as to baffle the most penetrating glance? Something, it is true, beyond a mere set of