mount position for promoting the_material, social, mental, moral, and spiritual good of the millions brought under our rule. This is our national calling, but only a portion of our people there can be represented as actually engaged in its prosecution. Even deducting those who take a subordinate part in this work, many take no share in it, and if not forcibly restrained would take an active part in thwarting it. This remark is not applicable to India alone. It is applicable to the many regions over which we have spread ourselves. There are large classes in our country who have no conception of our national calling, who have no idea of the grandeur of our Empire, to whom the mention of it would seem a mockery, as it would present a painful contrast to their actual condition, and who, if even in a measure they understood it, have not the character which would prompt them to take a part in accomplishing the great designs for which this Empire has been given to us, which would rather prompt them to defeat these designs.

We have mentioned that there are 140,000 Europeans in India. These are scattered over the land. The soldiers are in

places deemed best fitted for strategic purposes, sometimes as regiments, frequently as a moiety of regiments, very seldom in small bands. Non-military Europeans are most numerous in the Presidency cities-Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay; but even in these they form a very small part of the population. For instance, there are only 5,000 in Calcutta, which has a population of 500,000. They are found in smaller number in the great cities of the interior, such as Delhi, Agra, and Allahabad. At the head-quarters of districts there are a few European officials, and generally a few non-officials. Many of our people are very solitary, living often at a great distance from their European brethren.

In our survey of Europeans in India we may begin with English sailors in Indian ports when the census was taken, and who we suppose were included in it. The character of our sailors at home and abroad is well known. The restraint on board ship on long voyages is followed in most cases by licence on shore. In a country like India the licence has often taken a peculiarly revolting form. Once when sailing down the Hoogly we had as a fellow-passenger an old inhabitant of Calcutta, who pointed out to us a grove near one of the places where large vessels were often anchored for days, where sailors were allowed to land, and where scenes were enacted which in vileness could not have been exceeded by the worst orgies of heathen nations. Such scenes are no longer witnessed, but still, when on leave from their ships, with many

the grog-shops and houses of infamy are the favourite resort. The more respectable natives dread them, and keep aloof from them, but a class of low natives pander to their vices. While there is still much to deplore in our sailors, much has been done and is being done for their improvement in character and conduct. Not a few have become decided Christians, and the wickedness of many more has been restrained Thei treatment on board ship is better, the voyages are shorter, many are on board steamers that are never for a long period at sea, many can read, and much is done to supply them with good books.

We have mentioned that of the 140,000 Europeans in India no fewer than 63,000 are soldiers. They form a very important and indispensable portion of the community. Let them be withdrawn, let it be known all over the Indian Continent they are withdrawn, and our government would speedily collapse. We do not say that our government, because alien, rests mainly on force. It rests largely on the good-will of the nations of India, and that good-will rests on their being justly and wisely ruled; but in the ambition and interests of various classes there are elements of strife, ready to burst into a desolating storm, if unrestrained by the knowledge of a power which cannot be successfully resisted. Neither is it just to say that our army is maintained to fasten down a foreign yoke on the neck of India. It does maintain our power; without it in the great Mutiny we should have been swept away, but it maintains our power to preserve peace and order all over the Continent. If withdrawn we believe scenes of bloodshed and anarchy would be soon witnessed, such as the world has seldom seen. We may well attach a high value to a body of men so indispensable for our security and the fulfilling of our national vocation.

What is the character of our soldiers in India? The question is answered by our knowledge of their character at home. Many, we know, enter the army from the lower classes of our people to better their circumstances, some enter from love for a roving life, and others, again, drift into it from failure in character or circumstances. At home strict discipline is necessary to mould such a body of men into order and obedience, to restrain them from mischief, and to fit them for the work required at their hands. In a country like India, where they are surrounded by a large population, on whom they look down as a dark-skinned race, though often themselves far more ignorant and less cultured than those they despise, strict discipline is peculiarly necessary. In all the large

cantonment magistrates

cantonments there are military officers with no regimental work-whose duty it is to judge all cases between the soldiers and natives within their jurisdiction, to uphold the rights of both classes, to punish wrong by whomsoever it may be done, and very specially to guard against soldiers being injured by natives who prowl near them to minister to their love for strong drink. We are sorry to say the Contagious Diseases Act has been introduced to save the soldier from the effect of vicious conduct, but which we believe tends, as at home, to degrade him. Neither by cantonment magistrates nor by the civil magistrates, to whom soldiers charged with serious offences are made over, is favouritism shown. Offences against natives are punished as severely as if committed against Europeans. For such offences soldiers have been sentenced to long terms of penal punishment, and for murder they have been executed.

As a rule English soldiers do not learn to speak an Indian language. We have known men who have been in India for years who could not utter a single sentence in the vernacular. They have no intercourse with natives generally. There are only two classes with whom they have to do the natives in cantonments, or close to cantonments, and their native servants. With the former class they contrive to communicate in some fashion by signs and broken words. The latter class is largely composed of very low-caste people, who have attached themselves to English regiments, and follow them from place to place almost with the fidelity with which dogs follow their masters. Native servants of English regiments learn English enough to understand the soldiers, and to be understood by them. They no doubt get often cuffs and curses, but they cling to the service as the best thing open to them. In campaigns, under peril, toil, and privation, they cling to their English masters. During the protracted siege of Delhi, in 1857, our soldiers had many servants, whose attendance was of the highest value-we may say indispensable. We are told that the cook-boys carrying food to the soldiers had often to dodge the balls from the rebel city whistling about their ears, and that some of the soldiers were in the habit of threatening these poor lads with a severe drubbing, if they allowed any of the food to be spilt.

Government makes full provision for the accommodation, food, health, and comfort of its soldiers. The money value of a soldier, the cost of his transit to India and his maintenance there, apart from other and higher considerations, demands this care. Of late years their position has undergone

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great improvement. Military stations have been formed on the hill, to which invalids, and in a few instances whole regiments, have been sent. The great body of the soldiery, however, remain in the plains, and they have, like other European residents, to endure the heat and closeness of the hot and rainy season. Much is done to alleviate the suffering necessarily borne. The soldiers have far less to do for themselves than they have at home; ample native service is provided. Punkahs-great fans suspended over their heads-are drawn day and night during the hot months (we speak of Northern India, which we know); they have little drill, but they are kept close in barracks the whole day long, in darkened rooms with just sufficient light to enable them to read, and it is a military offence to go out from an early hour till toward sunset. With men whose mental resources are often very limited, we may suppose how wearily the day passes. In every regiment there are a few married soldiers, whose families are well provided for. With the setting in of the cold weather cantonment life rises from its slumbers. Morning and evening the soldiers are out for drill and military manœuvres. At that season the movement of regiments from one station to another takes place. On to a very recent period the soldiers marched on foot by daily stages of twelve or fourteen miles, with a formidable amount of tents and baggage carried on carts and camels. We now have railways in India connecting the principal cities of the different provinces, and we suppose where they are available marching on foot is generally abandoned.

We have been describing the ordinary life of an English soldier in India. Very different is his life in time of war. There is no close season in the land, no truce of God, during which war is forbidden. Our soldiers have had to take the field at all seasons. Under scorching heat and drenching rain campaigns have been undertaken and battles fought. The sufferings of our soldiers at such times can be conceived only by those who know by experience how trying those seasons are, even to those who have the shelter of comfortable homes. In these campaigns our soldiers have suffered much, but not so much as might have been anticipated. Some have succumbed to the severity of the climate; but the excitement of war has not only braced the mind to brave peril, but has so strengthened the body to endure toil and privation, that the greater number have come out from the ordeal well-nigh unscathed. This was the case during the Sepoy war in a remarkable degree.

Much has been done during late years to improve the character of our soldiers. Roman Catholic and Church of England Chaplains, paid by Government to look after the adherents of their respective Churches, and Protestant NonConformists under the name of Presbyterians, are marched on Sabbath to a service conducted ordinarily by a missionary. Missionaries of course give their time and strength to work among the heathen; but since the Mutiny; with the increasing number of Europeans in the land, they have felt themselves bound to do more for their own countrymen and for Eurasians than they had previously attempted. Much has been done to lessen intemperance by the formation of Temperance Societies. In this work Mr. Gregson, Baptist missionary at Agra, has taken the most prominent part. Much good has, we believe, resulted from these efforts. We can say, from personal observation, there is among them a band of truly godly men, and we trust this band is increasing. There is still much to deplore in the drunkenness and licentiousness of many, but those who labour for their good have great encouragement to persevere.

We are in India not a mere conquering power, or a power merely charged with the preservation of the peace. We are there as rulers, as the ministers of justice charged with the administration of affairs, bound to watch over the rights and liberties of the people. Our civil officers are the most influential class in the land; they are in a peculiar sense the representatives of our nation; by them more than by any other class is our character in India to be tested, and their conduct largely determines the question, whether our rule is a blessing or a curse. It is, then, very important for us to understand the character of the official class.

We have first to inquire, What is our policy in India? What are the means we employ to secure its being carried out?

It must be acknowledged that at first our policy was simply personal aggrandizement. We did not rise to the dignity of seeking national aggrandizement. Personal interests were paramount, almost exclusive. Macaulay's Essays on Clive and Warren Hastings are well known. They have the rhetorical glow characteristic of his work, but we believe they are mainly accurate as to facts. They leave on the mind of the reader the too well-founded impression, that neither our personal nor our public morality was of a high order. The rapacious demands made after the battle of Plassey on Meer Jaffier, whom we set on the throne of the deposed Suraj-ud