The province of Allahabad was settled on the emperor, but he unfortunately left it for Dehli, which occasioned all his subsequent sufferings. The vizarut was confirmed in the family of Suja ul Dowlah. The son of Jaffier Khan, who himself had been both the predecessor and successor of Casim Khan, was, on the death of his father, appointed nawab of Bengal under his mother Munny Begum. Every principal city admitted an English resident; and the predominance of British influence was felt both in the cabinet and the field. Such was the state of Hindostan when Mr. Hastings became governor-general on the part of the Company: and as, since that time, the history of India belongs properly to that of Britain, I shall conclude this rapid sketch of the rise and decline of the Mussulman power in India.

The state of that country, from the death of Aurengzebe, was so disastrous both to the nations and individuals who compose it, that not a momentary doubt can exist of the advantages of its present government over the past, whatever be the opinion as to the merits of the government itself. Every man may now repose under his own plantain tree; and if in the early and unsettled period of our first posses sion of the country, some injustice was com mitted, and some enormous fortunes unfairly

amassed, the present purity of the Company's servants is best attested by the unfeigned respect in which most of them are held by the natives, and by the very moderate fortunes which, after long and arduous service, they can now at tain to.

MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER XIII.

AFTER So long a digression to the Mussulmans, I intend to go back to the Hindûs; and though I know no more of their history than I have already sent you, their customs, and manners, and the division of castes, which so peculiarly distinguish them from every other nation, may perhaps be interesting.

The division of the different classes of society into separate tribes, forbidden to intermarry or hold communion with each other, seems anciently to have been by no means confined to the Hindus. The perpetuity of trades and professions in ancient Egypt, the setting aside the tribe of Levi and house of Aaron for the priesthood among the Israelites, attest this; and though, in the latter instance, it was by the peculiar disposition of heaven, we may well suppose it to have been in conformity with the

wants of that people, and with the customs of the surrounding nations, whose ignorance and grossness required a visible pomp as the external sign of religion and devotion. So, in compassion to their weakness, the ark of the covenant was permitted to be built, which, like the moving temples of even the modern Hindûs, accompanied the nation in its wanderings, whether in warlike expeditions or peaceful ceremonies, the brazen serpent was erected in the wilderness, and the tent of the tabernacle was watched and guarded by a consecrated tribe, as the family of Koreish served the sacred Caaba.

With the exception, however, of the customs of the small remnant of the Jewish nation, and perhaps of the Chinese hereditary trades, the Hindûs are the only people which now presents a complete model of the system of castes. The number of distinct classes at present acknowledged among the Hindûs, is infinitely greater than it was at first, if we may believe the ancient books in which they are enumerated. But as this very artificial system must have been formed long after the wants of society had produced difference of professions to supply those wants, it is most probable that, in order to introduce with more authority a division so extremely oppressive to certain orders, the lawgivers referred it to more ancient times, and thus

added the sanction which respect for ancestry never fails to give, to their own institutions. If one wished to illustrate the doctrine that knowledge is power, it would be scarcely possible to find a history more apposite than that of the subordination of castes in India. Nothing but superior knowledge could have procured for the Brahmins a sufficient ascendancy over the minds of their countrymen, to allow them to take to themselves the first rank in society, to enjoy without labour the conveniences and even luxuries which others must toil to gain, and without taking on themselves the burdens of either go-. vernment or war, to reap the advantages of both, and to enjoy the privileges without incurring the dangers of dominion. Such, however, is the highly endowed Brahmin, who, in the solitude of his caverned mountains, or consecrated groves, studied the various powers and passions of the human mind, in order to bend and wind it the more surely to his purpose, while he investigated those laws of nature, the application of which, among a simple people, might make him alternately the prophet of blessings or the denouncer of woes. Nor were these the only means by which they virtually governed their fellow-citizens. Those religious feelings which are inherent in every human breast, and which sanctify every association with which they are

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combined, are of all others the most easily wrought upon.

The Brahmins feigned to hold immediate in tercourse with the deity: they personified his attributes, and held them up as objects of wor ship to the people; they multiplied ceremonies and expiations, in which themselves were the officiating ministers, and thus placed themselves in the awful situation of mediators between the gods and men. Thus powerfully armed and ar rayed, the first bold step towards the securing for ever such transcendant advantages, was the positive prohibition against the study of any of the sciences which had founded and maintained their empire of opinion, by any one who should either bear arms or exercise any profession separate from the priesthood; and this would probably not be difficult, for the natural dispo.. sition of man inclines him to lean on others for that knowledge and that protection which singly he feels so necessary, and at the same time so incapable of affording to himself. Even the monarchs of the earth were below the Brahmins in dignity. Caressed and flattered, or reviled and anathematized by the subtle Brahmins, the greatest sovereigns moved but as they willed; and if, provoked by their insolence, he called upon his warriors for revenge, he had no sooner extirpated the race within his own do