generally, may similarly be imposed by a regulation passed as directed, within the limits of the special jurisdiction of the King's courts ;" and " if this tax were, indeed, illegal, the means of enforcing it would be wanting to the governinent,'

The other question in the case, namely, the expediency of the measure, is not capable of being so satisfactorily demonstrated. Instead of taking ground upon so untenable a position as that of the illegality of the tax, the opposers of it would have acted more discreetly had they confined themselves exclusively to pointing out the impolicy and inexpediency of this imposition. The local government seems to have been sensible of weakness on this point, from the remark that "the Vice-President in Council was prepared to expect, from the intelligent and practical men whose names are subscribed to the petition, such a representation as might assist government in judging of the probable effect of the stamp regulation on the various interests affected by it; and he looked naturally for a statement of the particular transactions on which the duty would bear with undue severity.” And again: the VicePresident in Council did not anticipate from the petitioners an application for the abolition of the enactment on the ground of its illegality, though he was prepared for an expression of dissatisfaction on the part of those affected, and for the exposition of some partial inconvenience from the operation of particular provisions of the law."

66

To express our sentiments candidly and frankly, this measure appears to us most ill-advised and injudicious. The financial benefit which will result from the enforcement of the tax will be far from counterbalancing the moral inconveniences which the government will incur through the distrust, jealousy, and dissatisfaction thereby engendered in the minds of the Calcutta community. These consequences might have been so easily foreseen, that no excuse can be claimed by the originators of the scheme, on the ground that they were unexpected: indeed the last passage quoted from the government reply shows the contrary.

There is something so odious in the very name of a stamp tax, it raises recollections so painful, that this consideration alone should have prepared government for the opposition which has been encountered. The clamour and discontent produced by the recent promulgation of a partial stamp tax at New South Wales induced the government of that colony to desist from enforcing it.

66

The government reply defends the tax on the principle that it is less objectionable than any others. Taxation," it is observed, " is at best a choice of evils; but if additional revenue is necessary, and that is a point that must be taken on the credit of government, a stamp duty on money-transactions seems among the least exceptionable of the taxes to which a government can have recourse." From this doctrine we wholly dissent. We have understood it to be a maxim in political economy which did not now admit of dispute, that every impost which directly diminished capital was highly objectionable and injurious. "On the mischievousness of all taxes which impede production," says the historian of British India,* "it is needless to enlarge. It is only necessary to make them known, or rather acknowledged. Of this sort are all taxes which take away any part of that property which has been already employed as capital; because there is always more or less of difficulty

*Mill's India, vol. i., p. 251.

in

in replacing it from the fund destined for immediate consumption:" and he particularizes, as specially injurious, "taxes upon law proceedings," constituting " a premium upon the practice of every species of iniquity."

A stamp tax is recommended by the facility with which it is collected, at least in this country, whereby taxation really falls lighter upon the people, who pay the costs attending the collection of taxes. But this recommendation, or rather palliative, is not justly applicable to a stamp tax in India, which is collected in a different manner from that in England, by expensive establishments of persons who sign and issue paper, which in this country receives its conventional value by a mechanical process. Hence the charges for collecting the stamp duties in Bengal, upon an average of the two last years shewn in the official accounts,* viz. 1823-24 and 1824-25, amounted to upwards of 42 per cent. upon the gross produce; whereas the stamp revenue in England is collected at the cost of less than three per cent. upon the gross receipt !

So far from a stamp tax being less exceptionable than any other, to us it appears that no tax, not excluding a direct tax on property, could have been more so. The unpopularity of a stamp duty arises not so much from its directness (whereby the diminution of his property is made obvious to the taxpayer), as from the vexatious system which is necessary to secure its punctual payment. The opportunities and the temptations to evasion are so numerous, that it is absolutely requisite to give encouragement to informers, and in fact to offer a premium to treachery: a vicious expedient, which acts with peculiar energy upon the Hindu character.

The experiment made in the imposition of this tax is extremely unfortunate, because the resistance to it has placed both parties in a very awkward dilemma. If this tax is persevered in, the inhabitants of India will consider themselves completely surrendered to the mercy of their government, and liable to an extent of taxation limited only by the wants and the moderation of their rulers; on the other hand, if it be abandoned, whatever salvo may accompany the relinquishment of this tax, it will be considered as a virtual acknowledgment that the Indian government does not possess the right of taxation for which it now contends, and any future attempt to exert it will excite a fiercer flame of resentment.

It would be invidious to speculate upon the source from whence the suggestion of a stamp duty in Calcutta originated. Both branches of the home government are answerable for the measure, whether it be good or bad. One could hardly suspect that the East-India Company, on the eve of the expiration of their charter, would spontaneously suggest a measure calculated to spread an unfavourable opinion of their moderation through the country, and call forth charges of rapacity and oppression from those who have sufficient inclination to raise an outcry against their conduct, and wait only a plausible pretext for so doing. It is conceivable that his Majesty's government may be desirous of expediting the improvement of the East-India finances; and, being convinced of the legality of this measure, and of the justice of taxing those opulent classes of the Indian community," who have hitherto contributed little or nothing to the support of the government," by which they are equally protected with the inhabitants of the interior, may have urged the Court of Directors to its adoption. The Board of Control can incur little unpopularity

See vol. xxiv., pp. 58, 59.

unpopularity from such a measure; they sanction it, indeed, but the odium must, and ought to be, borne by those who adopt it and carry it into execution.

1

The argument. contained in the petition to the British Parliament from the inhabitants of Calcutta against the alleged equity of equalizing this duty throughout India, though it is not strictly maintainable before the tribunal to which it is addressed, ought to be considered by the government. They say justly, that although they may not contribute directly, they indirectly pay the taxes imposed in the interior; and that the British principle of equal taxation is unfairly applied to a country where a system of government prevails so wholly different from that of Great Britain. The British residents of Calcutta are scarcely to be considered otherwise than as transient visitors, not naturalized to the soil; the several capitals of British India are therefore regarded as distinct from the Mofussil, and their inhabitants as not liable to the same claims as the natives on the part of the government. Whilst we state these considerations we do not pretend to be convinced of their justness; yet they ought not to have been disregarded.

The interruption of the harmony which has hitherto subsisted between the local government of Calcutta and the British and native community of that city, is a mischievous effect of this measure which will probably be some timé before it disappears.

SIR: Being desirous to submit the following system of orthography tỏ orientalists generally, I request the favour of your giving it a place in your

pages.

From being engaged in establishing an institution for the cultivation of oriental languages, particularly those of India, I have had many opportunities of observing the great advantage, if not necessity, of applying to them a consistent and uniform system of European orthography. 1st. In order to facilitate the entrance upon the study of those tongues, from which many are deterred by the supposed difficulty of acquiring a strange character, an obstacle which strikes their attention at the very outset, and though a difficulty more apparent than real, is not on that account the less calculated to discourage a beginner. 2dly. That the learned may have a general key equally available to all for the explanation of oriental writings, and that all writers on oriental subjects, particularly travellers, may thus be enabled to record the names of persons and places with perfect correctness and precision. 3dly. That oriental works, or extracts from them, may, whenever required, be printed with greater facility and exactness than is often practicable in the original character: this being little adapted for typography, and still less understood by the practitioners of this valuable art in Europe. Hence accuracy is hardly attainable, notwithstanding great labour and expense incurred by the author. My chief object, however, is not to supplant the use of the oriental character, but rather to extend and facilitate its acquisition, by introducing an exact counterpart of it, as a key for its attainment, founded on the basis of the European alphabets already known to the student. The principles on which the proposed system is constructed are as follows:

Principles.

Principles.-1. That each of the oriental characters used in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hindoostanee, &c. be represented, in European orthography, by a single letter corresponding to it in power as nearly as possible.

2d. That as no one of our alphabets can furnish the requisite number of appropriate symbols, while either the Greek, Roman, or Italic alphabet may be adopted as the ground-work of the new system, letters must be borrowed from the rest to supply its deficiencies.

. 3d. That the Italic alphabet is best adapted for forming the ground-work, from its being more generally known than the Greek, from its greater facility of transcription than the Roman, and at the same time harmonizing better in form with the principal additions that must be made to it.

4th. That the Arabic language, being the prime source of the Persian, Turkish, and the Mussulman tongues in general, the letters used in them be yiewed as consisting of three classes; viz. 1st, those peculiar to the Arabic; 2d, those foreign to that language; and 3d, those nearly common to all..

5th. That the Italic alphabet, as forming the ground-work of our new system, will represent the latter class; that Greek characters be adopted to represent the first, i. e. the consonants more peculiar to the Arabic; and that the remaining class, i. e. letters foreign to this language, be represented by Italic capitals. These leading principles being kept in view, reflection will confirm the propriety of some minor modifications, such as

6th. That some few oriental characters (not exceeding three or four) which are pronounced differently in different countries, or for which it is difficult to find a suitable representative in any European alphabet which could hope to obtain the concurrent sanction of the learned, (as & and perhaps) be adopted in their original form, which, with a little care on the part of the printer in selecting and adjusting the different founts, will be found to harmonize tolerably well with the general alphabet.

7th, and lastly, to avoid the great inconvenience attending the use of those vowels, of which the power is rendered very ambiguous among European nations, on account of the opposite values assigned them in our different languages, they may be replaced by vowels adopted from the Greek alphabet, which, being employed among us only in a dead language, can with less difficulty be converted to a particular use than the letters of any living language generally spoken and understood.

I shall now take the liberty of noticing a few of the principal advantages which I flatter myself this system offers.

1st. Its freedom from the redundancy of dotted or accented letters, which tend to embarrass some other systems, and render their use in typography too troublesome, as well as expensive. Besides which it may be observed, that accents or dots, and other minute marks, are a sort of distinction which renders very feeble aid to that large portion of the faculty of memory which depends on the eye.

2dly. Its exemption from the confusion sometimes occasioned by representing simple sounds, or single oriental characters, by two or three, or even four Roman letters. For example: and で which some orientalists write dsch and hhhh!

رع

3dly. Its elegant property of discriminating by a glance of the eye, in the mixed language of India, Persia, Turkey, words springing from an Arabic, Sanscrit, or other sources.

4thly. That the above advantages are attained with the smallest possible

degree

degree of labour and expense. As no new characters are employed besides those already existing, nearly all of which are already familiar to the eye of the European scholar, and for which the appropriate types can easily be supplied by most of the respectable printing establishments in this quarter of the world.

This system having already been partly reduced to practice, though but in a few pages struck off in haste, without time for making a careful selection of types properly adapted to each other, I have the satisfaction to add, that even this hurried and imperfect specimen * furnishes a satisfactory demonstration that the mixture of various characters, instead of being a deformity, presents an agreeable variety to the eye, and forms an alphabet by no means deficient in elegance of appearance; while from its sloping, curved and Italic form, the occasional use of it, in quotations or extracts, gives relief to the uniformity of the text, and affords an useful contrast with the square upright Roman letters generally employed in European works.

SCHEME OF THE PROPOSED GENERAL EUROPEAN ALPHABET FOR THE ARABIC AND OTHER MUSSULMAN LANGUAues,

Vide Clavis Orientalis, or Lecture Card of the Oriental Institution, Part ii, pp. 13-20.