colonisation. It is essentially to the great
freedom from restraint that we are indebted for
those proud results which have placed England
far in advance of all European nations in the
skill of colonising.

While the French organise, arrange, plan, and
systematise, we settle. While with them years are
wasted in preparing the ground-plan of civilisation
we run up the whole edifice: not very
architectural always, but enough for our purpose,
and an excellent shelter until we have
time to build better. No one will presume to
say that our system has not its disadvantages;
all we assert is, that it suits our people, is well
adapted to their ways and habits, and has had
immense success. It is only fair to add that
our governing powers have wisely adapted
themselves to the exigencies of the situation,
and by forbearance have avoided many of the
grave embarrassments that a spirit of meddling
interference had been certain to create.

While we can point to Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand as proud illustrations of our
system, how can we explain the fact that the
richest and greatest of our possessions, India,
should be the marked exception—India, the
traditional land of wealth to all fortunate enough
to be engaged in her service; India, whose resources
appealed to every form of enterprise, not
alone inviting the merchant and the trader, but
holding out vast promises of gain to the man of
capital and the agriculturist?

It is true that the charter of the East India
Company gave them absolute power in excluding
settlements— a power which, rightfully or wrongfully,
they believed essential to the maintenance
of their rule, and of which their servants never
hesitated to declare the absolute necessity. Thus,
in 1775, Mr. Francis asserted in a formal minute
" that Europeans in Bengal, beyond the number
the service of the government required, are a
useless weight, and an embarrassment to the
government and an injury to the country, and
that they are people to whom no encouragement
should be given." Later on, we have Lord
Cornwallis assured by the Company, that licenses
to go to India should not exceed five or six, or
at most ten, in the year! And so recently as
1818 we find an elaborate remonstrance to Mr.
Canning, from certain agents of the Company,
to restrict those licenses, setting forth that
" British residents in India were too prone to
assert what they conceive to be their constitutional
and indefeasible rights, were disposed to
a leaning towards each other, and a common
jealousy of the authority of govermnent."

This was the traditional policy of the Company,
and it survived the Company in the prejudices
and instincts of her civil servants.
When, by the expiration of the lease, the East
India Company's rule was terminated, the old
agents of her policy still remained: the rancour
of their prejudices only the more embittered by
the change thus forced upon them. The English
despot in the East now saw himself, for the
first time in his life, beneath the control of the
parliament and face to face with public opinion;
he saw, besides, his social ascendancy menaced
in a land where he had never before acknowledged
an equal, and where the right of the new
settler to establish himself was now as unimpeachable
as his own. They could no longer be excluded;
it only remained, therefore, to discourage
them from coming, and to harass them when they
did come. How perfectly this system has been
carried out, how skilfully devised and successfully
effected, there is at this moment an instance
before us in the case of the indigo planters of Bengal.

The indigo culture, though subject to all
the vicissitudes of climate, and eminently critical
in many of its details, was supposed to be
so remunerative as to attract the attention of
English capitalists in India, and to induce them
to speculate largely in it. From time immemorial,
this cultivation has been carried on in
one way. The ryot, or peasant, borrows on
the security of the coming crop, whatever is required
for the tillage. He is miserably poor,
and has neither carts nor bullocks, nor the
implements of agriculture, unless he borrows
funds to purchase them; and even for the
very seed he must mortgage his industry. The
usurious Indhajun, or native merchant and
money-lender, to whom he has recourse, charges
him most iniquitously for everything— frequently
cent per cent is exacted— so that the
ryot's condition is hopelessly wretched. In the
words of one who has described his state, " he
is housed and fed, and nothing more."

The English settler in India found this system
in operation, and, however injurious both to proprietor
and peasant, saw how difficult it would
be to change it. The ryot had always lived by
means of advances, and it was not possible,
even if prejudices had permitted it, at once to
abrogate the mode of life he had inherited from
his fathers. It could, however, be modified and
improved; the loan could be rendered less
onerous; timely aid could be afforded in seasons
of pressure or distress; due allowance made for
years of failure. These were all within the
power of the new settler, who brought to his
enterprise not only the wealth of the capitalist
but the clear intelligence of a man of business,
and who thoroughly appreciated the greater
security for property and the better remuneration
for outlay, that will accrue where the labourer
is neither debased by servitude nor enslaved
by misery. Schools, workshops, hospitals
— all the blessings, in fact, of a Western civilisation
— now arose in what had once been
the lair of the wild-boar or the tiger, and
the gentle beneficence that graces the happy
homes of our English life might be seen dispensing
its blessings among the dark sons of the
East. The planter's home has not only its well-
earned reputation for a generous and graceful
hospitality; but as the centre of those daily
charities by which, far more than by legislation,
the humbler classes are drawn to love and respect
their brethren above them.

Still, as we have said, the improver could not
do all. The unhappy system of advances was the