enforce peace on the frontier; and your quarrel puts the Punjab in jeopardy!"

We take a totally different view of these interferences; and congratulate Lord Hardinge and his agents in the N. W. on these eccentric "breaches of the treaty," which in one instance restored peace to the capital and prevented a rising at Amritsur; in another, saved the Maharajah from breaking the treaty with us, and so losing his kingdom; and in the third, put an instant stop to a civil war: brought an ill-used and victorious Governor as a suppliant to Lahore; and preserved to the state the services of the best Nazim in the Punjab.

We cannot leave this subject without expressing our regret, that the well-informed and trust-worthy journal, which supplies all India, and we believe all England with North West Frontier Intelligence (the Delhi Gazette," and which in general so cordially supports the forbearing policy pursued by Lord Hardinge in the Punjab, should not only assert our right, but set forth the propriety of killing cows at Lahore.

We utterly deny both.

The Punjab is not ours; it belongs to the Sikh people: and we have pledged ourselves solemnly by treaty "to pay every attention to their feelings; to preserve their national institutions and customs." History tells us that no national institution or custom has been more dearly cherished or more bloodily maintained by the Khalsa, than their veneration for the cow.

The Delhi's proposition therefore is simply that we should perjure ourselves, and break the treaty, in order that our soldiers may eat beef.

So much for our right to kill cows: the impropriety of our doing so rests on other grounds.

Would it be proper, or would it be humane, during our short occupancy of the Punjab, to sanction proceedings that would inevitably cause slaughter and bloodshed the day we leave the country? If we set the example of cow-killing ourselves, how can we expect to prevent the Mussulman population from doing so too? Then mark the consequences. The offence is murder by the Sikh law; and the Sikh law we are bound to uphold.*

Say it is a bad law; still the fact remains the same that it is the law, and that therefore we must maintain it; and just as certainly as any Mussulman would suffer death for killing

* In saying this we do not believe, that the political authorities would permit the Lahore Durbar to exact the penalty of a human life for that of a brute beast; but assuredly they would not interfere further than to commute the punishment of death.

a cow, were we not occupying Lahore; so certainly would the common practice of it under our protection be fearfully avenged by a Mussulman massacre as soon as we departed.

We anticipate here the easy but somewhat profligate jest that, "we shall never depart from the Punjab." In all deference, we do not see the certainty; and should be very sorry to do so much less should we like to see our authorities acting on such an expectation.

No: in entire good faith, let us act up to the honest spirit of our Sikh treaties; and we may rely upon it that we shall then have the Punjab, and all else that is good for us, as soon as it is our real interest that it should become an integral portion of British India.

In earlier numbers of the Calcutta Review we have made confession of our political faith; of our notions of the rights of Indian princes, and the Indian people; of the duties of residents, ministers and kings. We have repeatedly expressed our belief that those three authorities can never work well together; and the Lahore proceedings of 1846 are the latest, if not the strongest, illustration of the fact. But our readers require not to be reminded, that Lord Hardinge consented to the original occupation of Lahore against his own wishes and convictions-and that only at the last moment-in the magnanimous though desperate hope of re-establishing a prostrate state. There was just one new and favourable feature in the circumstances of the case which justified trying the experiment of a triumvirate policy again; the king was a nonentity from his age-thus reducing the triumvirate to two; and the minister knew so well that he kept his head upon his shoulders only by our presence, that it was reasonable to suppose there would be but one opinion between him and the British agent. But blinded by pride and vanity he "threw to the dogs" the physic of advice. He always accepted but never followed the prescription,-the_worst species of intractability either in medicine or morals. Incapable of taking a broad view of his own position, he thought that if he pleased the Sahib log, in little things, they would not look closely into great things. Accordingly he cultivated garrison popularity; and made his approaches to the good opinion of John Bull through the old avenue-the stomach. Grapes, quinces and pomegranates from Kabul, oranges from Shalimar; mangoes from Mooltan; ice from the Chumba hills ;-all were pressed upon the Generals, Brigadiers, Colonels, Captains, and Politicals. And wild boars were hunted down on the banks, and nets of fish drawn from the waters of the Raví, to relieve the monotony of the

European Soldier's Barrack fare. Scarce a British officer or soldier in Lahore, but owed him some courtesy or another From General Littler and Col. Lawrence, down to Jack Sepoy, he was a general favourite; but he drew a fatal distinction between private and public life, and miscalculating the serious earnestness of the English character, made the latter secondary to the former. To watch his policy, one would have thought that "Zeyafut" was the great business of the state; and that a strong Government could alone be maintained by a constant supply of lollipops and sugar candy. It would have been more to the purpose had he paid the Sikh soldiers instead of robbing them; reduced the army which was preying on the vitals of the country, instead of raising body-guards; appropriated confiscated jaghírs to discharging the obligations of the state, instead of to his poor relations; sought to consolidate what remained of the Punjab instead of hankering after Kashmír; and cultivated the friendship of the British government instead of seeking revenge on Maharajah Golab Singh.

But it was not in him to be so wise. His talents had raised him as high as they could reach, and there they left him. He was born the paramour of a queen, not the minister of a king.

We have seen in the "Blue Book," how he fell; and what scheme of Government was projected for the future. The kind friends and "constant readers" to whom the Calcutta Review owes so much of its success, will share with us the pride we feel at seeing adopted at Lahore, the system which long ago was recommended in our pages for Oude, which we still recommend for that ill-ruled country; and advise now for Hyderabad.

The system is briefly this. The minister is a British officer; but instead of being as in other despotisms, Commander-inChief, and every-thing-else-in-chief, holding all offices in his hands; he acts through a council of selected chiefs and elders; his own and their plans, opinions, and proceedings being canvassed twice a week in open Durbar, attended by all the officials of the Government, and the chiefs present at the capital. All the executive officers of the state remain in statu quo: the machinery of Govermnent is in fact the same; though worked by a firmer hand and a single purposed intellect. One organic change we can discover in "The Lahore Intelligence," viz. the appointment of four Sirdars to administrate the judicial duties of the four Doabs; to take cognisance of the acts of kardars, and to do justice to the ryot on the spot; appeals

from all, whether high or low, lying to the British Resident and his assistants. This is an institution as new as it must be beneficial to the people, if kept pure from bribery, by occasional circuits of the political officers.

That the change has even in these few months effected much good is deducible from the fact that we read no more of the Khalsa army. Reduced to a constitutional number, routed out of Lahore, and dispersed by single regiments or Brigades over the country, they now keep the peace of the provinces, instead of revolutionizing the capital. We should not know of their existence, if it was not for the regular issue of their pay;—at least as gratifying to them, we suspect, as to us.

Are we too sanguine in hoping ere long to hear of a revenue assessment, however rough; something to define quotas; and what is to be given by the ryot?

Civilization has already made its great "premier pas" at Lahore! A gibbet has been erected near the Delhi gate, and some fifteen or twenty murderers and highwaymen swing thereon as a warning to their brethren.

At Peshawur, the key of the kingdom, we read that the best parts of General Avitabile's code have been again brought into play, after an almost total suspension of justice for three years.

We may, therefore, reckon that there is both vitality and energy, in the administration; the want of which was what we most apprehended. Those who remember Sirdar Lenah Singh taking ignoble refuge in Calcutta during the troubles of his country; or have read of Sirdar Tej Singh's declining battle at Ferozshah, might be excused if they despaired of a lion's heart in the breast of the new Governor of the lawless Manjha! or of finding courage enough in the "Commander-inchief" to preside at the Council Board in times when the army was to be reduced.

Fortunately there has been no jobbing in the selection of the British Corps Diplomatique. From the Resident to his junior extra (who baptised the appointments?) we believe they have all been chosen for their abilities, and not their blood; practical men who know their duty, and fear not to do it.

In the arduous but noble enterprise in which they are engaged, may their efforts be crowned at the end of the eight years of the treaty, by the delivery to a grateful sovereign, of a flourishing country, a contented people, and an overflowing treasury, by the firm establishment of a friendly Hindu power between us and Mahommedanism, and by the happy consciousness of having secured the peace of India.

THE

CALCUTTA REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. Report on the state of Public Instruction in Prussia, by M. Victor Cousin, translated by Sarah Austin.

Effingham Wilson, 1834.

London,

2. On the state of Education in Holland, by M. Victor Cousin, translated by Leonard Horner, Esq. F. R. S. London, John Murray, 1838.

3. The Training system of Education, religious, intellectual and moral, by David Stow, Esq. &c. &c. Sixth Edition. Glasgow, Blackie and Son, 1845.

4. Letters from Hofwyl by a parent, on the Educational institutions of De Fellenberg. London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1842.

5. Religion in connexion with a National System of Institution, by W. M. Gunn, one of the masters of the High School, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1846.

6. The Quarterly Journal of Education. Vols. I-X. London, Charles Knight, 1835.

7. General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1845-46. Calcutta, W. Ridsdale, 1846.

THAT it is the duty of a Government to assist in educating the youthful portion of the population under its care is a principle recognized by our rulers in the establishment of the existing colleges and schools; and its being so recognized, renders it unnecessary for us to point out the grounds of the obligation. If an education is to be given, however, to the people of India, it is unquestionably of the utmost importance that that Education should be of the best possible description, and hence the utility of such discussions on the subject as are likely to elicit truth; hence, too, the wisdom of reform in, or addition to, the existing system, when the necessity of such has been established.

In connexion with education man presents himself to our notice under three different aspects-as an individual, as a social being, and as a citizen, or member of the state-and, in

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