We have at length come to the volume of Mr Alison's History which belongs especially to the exploits of England. India and the Peninsula are noble themes, and we congratulate our country on its having found a historian equal to so large, and so spirit-stirring an achievement. The previous volumes led the reader through scenes of extraordinary boldness, and catastrophes which have not yet ceased to vibrate through the universal frame of Europe. It is due to this writer to acknowledge, that he has performed his strange and difficult task with remarkable effect. The world has teemed with narratives of the French Revolution; yet none have given so ample yet so clear, so impressive yet so authentic, a memoir of that terrible period. And we honour the vigorous perseverance and the practised skill, which, gathering their facts from all available sources, have compacted them, like the fragments of the mammoth, into a vast and consistent frame, that will give our posterity a conception of the time when the earth was overrun by a gigantic race of violence, and the thoughts of men's hearts were evil continually.

It is remarkable that, wherever in European annals, for the last three hundred years, the influence of England has begun to be felt, a great amelioration has uniformly followed. It is not less remarkable, that this powerful and beneficent result has been restricted to the last three hundred years, the period of British Protestantism. Before that age, the character of our European influence was wholly cast in another mould. England was the great disturber of Europe. Always either torturing herself by civil wars, or the Continent by fierce invasions, her gallantry, discipline, and public spirit, resembled the qualities of a great school of gladiators, mutinous at home, and merciless when let loose on society. But, from the period of the Reformation, a new heart and a new office seem to have been committed to her. The great im

press of all her policy has been peace to nations the great principle peace; and the great duty which, with more or less strenuousness, she has constantly fulfilled, has been that of setting the example of freedom without license, and subordination without slavery, and showing the exhaustless benefits of a limited monarchy and a pure religion.

In the French Revolutionary war, we find discomfiture falling heavier on Europe, in exact proportion as England is excluded from the contest; light returns as her orb emerges from the horizon, and it is only in her full ascendant that the sickliness and the shadows vanish together, and Europe is once more awakened to a sense of activity and ardour, to a view of the noble capabilities which lie before her, and, perhaps, to the loftier contemplation of those supreme sources of national hope and power, which man can neither create nor control.

It is scarcely less remarkable that, while the Revolution ravaged Europe, the force of England was preparing at the extremities of the earth the strength that was to restore it; and that, while almost every continental diadem was either stripped of its dominions, or condemned to hold them on conditions degrading to the name of sovereignty, England was adding kingdom to kingdom; and that, while the national spirit and the martial name of the Continent were perpetually trampled down, a succession of victories were throwing new lustre round the British standard, and more expressly preparing for triumph the soldier who was to fight the conquering battle for England and mankind. Mr Alison's preliminary view of the scene in which those exploits were performed, gives an elegant and most overwhelming conception of what may be done at once by the force of ability and the fortune of circumstances.

"The British empire in India, extending now with few interruptions, and those only of tributary or allied states, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya mountains, comprehending by far the richest and most important part of Southern Asia, is nearly four times the area of France, and six times that of Great Britain and Ireland, contains above a hundred millions of inhabitants, and yields a revenue of nearly twenty millions sterling." If such are the geographical and financial features, the other details are equally astonishing. The war of 1826, when the Burmese and the Bhurtpore Rajah were fought at the same time, raised the Indian force to two hundred and sixty thousand native troops, of which thirty-five thousand were cavalry, with 1000 guns, and thirty-five thousand English: and the peculiar and most admirable characteristic of this force is, that it is wholly raised by voluntary enlistment. And we have a proud right to insist on this as a national honour. To raise armies without violating personal liberty, is a discovery which never was made by any nation before; it has never been adopted, nor even been possible in any modern nation. Even the wildest enthusiasm of liberty in France, was never able to accomplish it. The Republican armies were at first recruited by terror, under a Republican tyranny; they were next recruited by the conscription, under a despotism; the guillo. tine was the recruiting-officer in the first instance the dungeon in the second. England alone has ever been able to produce a wholly voluntary army, and this single fact would amount to an evidence of her sustaining and understanding the love of liberty beyond all other nations that ever existed. The only spot that seems to rest upon this fairest of all fame is, the impressment of seamen; and, unquestionably, it is the wish of the nation that this forced service shall be obviated by voluntary enlistment as soon as possible. To effect this will be costly, but it must be wise; for there can be no purchase too costly for the services of brave fleets and armies; and there can be no policy in suffering the most skilful, hardy, and daring sailors in the world, to be seduced hourly into the service of our rivals and enemies. But impressment, in its worst shape, is a wholly different evil from the conscription. The sailor, when he adopts his profession, is fully aware that he may be impressed; and he

NO. CCLXXXVI, VOL, XLVI.

thus adopts the pursuit with a knowledge of the contingency. In fact, this is equivalent to a voluntary service; for he volunteers the profession, of which the liability to serve in the fleet, whenever he shall be called upon, is the declared consequence. He is not, like the conscript, dragged from pursuits of a totally different order-forced suddenly, and against all the habits of his life and mind, into a career new and distasteful. He is not made liable to be sent to war and its perils, by the mere fact of his being born, which nobody can help; he is made liable by the selection of the sea for his livelihood-a matter which fairly a question of his own choice, and which, like every other matter of our own choosing, must be taken with all its encumbrances. Still we wish that impressment were abolished by a system of judicious arrangements and public liberality, not as an encroachment on liberty, which in principle it cannot be; but as a source of painful feelings, which it would be humane, and of course wise, to dry up altogether.

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The geographical features of this vast country, give room for striking contemplations. "From the snowy summits of the Himalaya to the green slopes of Cape Comorin, from the steep ghauts of Malabar to the sandy shores of Coromandel, it exhibits a succession of the most noble or beautiful features. Stupendous mountain ranges, their sides clothed with lofty forests, their peaks reposing in icy stillness; vast plains rivalling the Delta of Egypt in richness, and, like it, submerged yearly by the fertilizing waters of the Ganges; here lofty ghauts running parallel at a short distance from the shore of the ocean to the edge of its waters, and marking the line of demarcation between the plains on the seaside and the elevated table-land, several thousand feet in height, in the interior-those rugged hills or thick forests teeming with the riches of a southern sun.

"The boundaries of this mighty land are of corresponding magnitude. The Himalaya and the mountains of Cabul and Candahar on the north; the splendid and rapid stream of the Indus, seventeen hundred milesin length, of which seven hundred and sixty are navigable on the north-west; the deep and stagnant Tyrawuddy, fourteen

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hundred miles in length, winding its way to the Bay of Bengal through the rank luxuriance of tropical vegetation on the north-east; and the ocean, on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, on the south. Nature every where appears, in this highly favoured region, in her most magnificent array; the Himalaya mountains surmounting even Chimborazo in elevation

the Indus rivalling the river of the Amazons in magnitude-the plain of Bengal outstripping even Mesopotamia itself in fertility-form some of the features of a country which, from the earliest times, has been the seat of civilisation, and the abode of opulence and magnificence."

A striking characteristic of our Indian dominion is its developement of the original powers of the British mind. The condition of society in England affords room for little more than one talent, political ability, as it has scarcely more than one field for eminent distinction, Parliament. The faculties of the soldier, the philosopher, and even the scholar, if they are not often completely hidden, are, with a few exceptions, singularly restricted. It is probable that the men who have left names in our Indian history, might have passed through life unknown in England. In England Clive might have died at a desk, instead of being the founder of an empire; Warren Hastings solicited an Oxford professorship of Persian, which would have extinguished the noblest proconsul that England ever produced. If both Wellesley and the Marquis of Hastings must have been remarkable in any land, it was in India alone that they could have found the materials for the ample super. structure of their fame. What Wellington might have been as colonel of the 33d, and advancing through the slow gradations of our limited force, we fortunately have not now to enquire and regret. But India gave him the true expanse for a genius made for vastness of operation-the true place of exercise for a great con. trolling mind-the unrivalled field for administrative faculties which might have been buried in the details of a regiment and the lofty experience which, famished in the routine of a

court or a garrison, was prepared by the concerns of kingdoms raised and kingdoms overthrown-was refreshed and invigorated for the restoration of a continent, and the fall of the mighty despotism which held it in chains.

And a most cheering and ennobling national result is, that all those benefits to England have been achieved with still higher benefits to India.

"Of all the marvels attending the British sway in the East, the most wonderful is the extraordinary blessings which it has conferred on the inhabitants. Statistics, more irresistible than eloquence, place this beyond the possibility of a doubt. While under its native princes, the state of capital in India was so insecure, that twelve per cent was the common, and thirtysix per cent no unusual, rate of interest; under the British rule the interest of the public debt has, for the first time in Asiatic history, been lowered to five percent; and at that reduced rate the capitalists of Arabia and Armenia daily transmit their surplus funds to be purchased into the Company's stock, as the most secure investment in the East." Another admirable evidence follows. So complete has been the security enjoyed by the inhabitants of the British provinces, compared with what obtains under their native rajabs, that the people, from every part of India, flock to the three presidencies; and the extension of the Company's empire, in whatever direction, is immediately followed by a vast concourse of population and increase of industry, by settlers from the adjoining native dominions. Another highly gratifying circumstance is the decrease of crime. From the returns of many provinces, widely separate in India, during the last thirty years, it appears that crime has generally diminished one-half, in many sunk to a sixth, by the strong and steady discipline, and the acknowledged justice of England.

On this we have all kinds of testimony. Nothing can be more gratifying to an Englishman than to travel through the central and western provinces, so long the theatre of merciless war, and to witness the wonderful change which has every where been wrought. Every village in this part of the country was closely surrounded by fortifications, and no man ventured to go to the labours of the plough without being armed with his sword and shield. Now the forts are useless, and are crumbling into ruin; substantial houses begin for the first time to be built in the open plain; cultivation is extended over the distant and undefended fields; the useless encumbrance of defensive armour is laid aside, and the peasant may fearlessly enjoy the wealth and comforts which his labour enables him to acquire."

And this is, beyond all question, due wholly to the protection given by the British arms to the provinces from invasion, which used to be almost as regularly looked for as the monsoon; the suppression of the various tribes and gangs of hereditary robbers by the British police; and, most of all, the general increase of the knowledge of justice and the sense of right produced by the honest, regular, and faithful action of British justice and British character among the people.

"Englishmen, who have so long been blessed with internal tranquillity, and to whom the idea of an invasion presents only an indistinct view of bloodshed and rapine, can hardly conceive the delight which animates the Indian peasant, who has had, from time immemorial, a wretched experience of the frightful reality, or the gratitude which he feels to those who enable him to reap his harvest in security, defend his home from profanation, and protect his property from the never-ending extortion of the powerful."

The results of this most fortunate protection are now beginning to display themselves with great rapidity. Within the last twenty years, the period when the cessation of wars allowed the true influence of England fairly to be felt, roads, irrigation, and villages, to an extraordinary extent, are exhibiting the protecting activity of Government; the jungles are giving way before the axe and the plough, and men are taking the place of the lion and tiger; population swelling; and, what is the most unexpected, novel, and important feature of the entire change, a middle class, a thing wholly unheard of in the East, is forming; the old distinction which knew nothing between the peasant and

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the man of wealth, or almost between the beggar and the noble, is giving way to a rank of society which, in Europe, constitutes the strength of states, and in fact, as it is weak or powerful, vicious or vigorous, constitutes the source and the measure of all virtue to the community, teems with the promise of incalculable good to India, and perhaps to every portion of that mighty theatre of providence circumscribed by the boundaries of Asia. There is but one gift more to be given out of the great overflowing treasury which the supreme Giver of Good has given into the hands of England. No morality can be pure without a pure religion, and no religion can be at once pure and permanent without a church. India, left to the horrid idolatries and desperate pollutions of her native worship, must always be exposed, not merely to individual vice but to national convulsion. The late efforts made to plant the Church of England in the Indian peninsula, must have the most important effect; and those efforts must be persevered in. They have already done valuable service, and the influx of learned, indefatigable, and loyally-minded men, whom India will receive from the Church, will be the essential means of implanting English principles in those mighty territories. It must not be presumed that we can have any desire of forcing religion upon the people, or of doing violence even to their prejudices. Conversion by compulsion is contrary to the whole spirit of Christianity. But it is only our duty to give the Indian the choice between truth and falsehood_between the religion of civilisation and the religion of barbarism; between even the habits of that civilized religion as they see them set forth, too often humiliated, by the conduct of Europeans calling themselves Christians, and the habits of true teachers, expressly appointed to exhibit the true conduct of which Christianity inculcates the precept, and demands the example. We say farther, that this especial extension of religious knowledge is actually necessary even to the peace of India within our own borders. The closer connexion which every day produces, between England and the East, the extinction of all the obstacles to settling, and even the growth of a public mind, will make India a most

precarious possession, unless we shall ally her to England by principle. Religion is the only source of principle; and a community of faith is the safest strength of an empire. For this work the dominion has been given: and as we fulfil our duty in this work, shall prosper or we shall fall.

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"To complete the almost fabulous wonders of our Oriental dominion," adds Mr Alison with equal truth and eloquence, "it is only to be remembered that it has been achieved by a mercantile company in an island of the Atlantic, possessing no territorial force at home, who merely took into their temporary pay, while in India, such portions of the English troops as could be spared from the contests of European ambition; who never had, at any period, 30,000 British soldiers in their service, while their civil and military servants did not amount to 6000; the number of persons who annually proceed to India under their auspices is never 600; and the total number of white inhabitants who reside among the two hundred millions of the sable population, hardly 80,000. So enormous, indeed, is the disproportion between the British and their native subjects, that it is literally true, as the Hindoos say, that if every one of the followers of Brahma were to throw a handful of earth on the Europeans, they would be buried alive in the midst of their conquests." But, fully coinciding in the author's general views on this subject, we must admit with rather more reserve the remark which he adopts from the French annalist, and the higher authority of Gibbon, that, "in a light of precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual unless it could be universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility." Mr Alison thinks that there can be no doubt that this remark is well founded, and that it sufficiently explains the experienced impossibility which the British, like all other conquering nations, have felt, of stopping short in their career when once commenced." The misfortune of this maxim is, that it would sanction the principle of perpetual war for perpetual aggrandizement-would entitle the bloody ambition of a Timour or a Napoleon to the name of a providential impulseand would convert a furious caprice into a sacred necessity. If a nation

is to go on making war, while any other power exists which may become, in the contingencies of time, a formidable enemy, not kingdoms but continents must be subdued, and devastation must go round the globe. We doubt whether it has been ever claimed by either Roman or Frenchman as the pretext for their sweeping havoc. The conquests of Rome were in general founded on a plain and unhesitating determination to be masters of the world. The conquests of Napoleon, palpably originating in his mad passion to be the first man in history and on earth, never adopted the maxim in any other shape, than as a state necessity imposed on his government of employing so restless a people as the French in war, to prevent sedition. "The democratic spirit must be crushed by power, or dazzled by glory," was the nominal ground of a policy which Louis-Philippe, delicate as his task has been, has proved by so long a period of unbroken peace, to be wholly unnecessary. It is perfectly true that the British conquests in India have been progressive, and that they have been inevitable. But their principle was not precaution, nor ambition, but absolute self-defence. There is not a fragment of evidence that they ever commenced an Indian war; that they ever made war against a peaceful neighbour, with a view to the future curtailment of its power; or that they ever retained even the conquered dominion, when it was possible to restore it to some one of its old possessors, without direct and notorious hazard to the conquerors. The maxim, in fact, would be but a more specious form of "doing evil that good may come," of taking the direction of this world out of the hands of Providence and extinguishing the clear and comprehensive rules of national justice, in the obscure, selfish, and desperate covetousness of conquerors.

However the charge may stain the Roman mantle, the Republican costume of Napoleon, or the ermine of Nicholas, we must exonerate England from the principle. We are the more strengthened in this conviction, from the force with which the able author himself sustains it :-" The slightest acquaintance," says he, " with the annals of the Company, is sufficient to show that they stood, in every in