people speak the same language, Bengáli. About onehalf of them are classified as Hindu, and half as Mohammedan. In some of the Eastern districts the Mohammedans constitute three-fourths of the whole population. But, as I have already observed, in speaking of the religions of Northern India, they are often Mohammedans in name only, and the religion of multitudes of them might not unfitly be classed among the varieties of Hinduism. Changes, however, have been in progress in this respect during the last half century, and there has been a tendency among the Mohammedans of Bengal towards the purification of their faith from Hindu superstitions and from Brahmanical influence. The great mass of the Mussulman population is agricultural, but, even where it is most numerous, wealth and property in land are chiefly in the hands of the Hindus. If we look merely to numbers, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal is, as Sir William Hunter says, as great a Mussulman power as the Sultan of Turkey himself,' but in our political speculations we need not alarm ourselves about the millions of Mohammedans in Bengal.

The educated Mohammedans deserve to be named with respect. They are not very numerous or wealthy, but they often present, by their loyalty and good sense, a happy contrast to the English-speaking Hindus, of whom I shall have again to speak.

I shall not attempt to give any detailed account of the people or of the administration. I can only point out a few of the more remarkable facts.

Many years ago Lord Macaulay gave a description of the Natives of Bengal. There is good reason, as I have already said, for calling in question the accuracy of some of his historical pictures, based on fallacious

records, which have taught to thousands of Englishmen almost all that they know about India, but when Lord Macaulay wrote his character of the Bengális he was describing, from personal knowledge and observation, a people among whom he had himself lived. Its accuracy has hardly been denied by the Bengális themselves, and will be disputed by no Englishman.

'The men,' he writes, by whom this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe. The Castilians have a proverb that in Valencia the earth is water and the men women; and this description is at least equally applicable to the vast plain of the Lower Ganges. Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by habit for a foreign yoke.'1

In another passage Lord Macaulay has passed upon the Bengális a similar judgment. I will quote a portion of it :

'The physical organisation of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapour-bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breeds. . . . His mind bears a singular analogy to his body. It is weak even to helplessness for purposes of manly resistance; but its suppleness and tact move the children of sterner climates to admiration not unmingled with contempt. .. Nor does he lack a certain kind of which courage is often wanting to his masters. To inevitable evils he is sometimes found to oppose a passive fortitude, such as the Stoics attributed to their ideal sage. An European warrior who rushes

1 Macaulay's Essays. Lord Clive.'

on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah will sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall into an agony of despair at the sentence of death. But the Bengalee, who would see his country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonoured, without having the spirit to strike one blow, has yet been known to endure torture with the firmness of Mucius, and to mount the scaffold with the steady step and even pulse of Algernon Sidney.'1

Lord Macaulay would have been the first to declare that you might find Bengális of a different stamp. Courage is no more an invariable virtue among the hardiest races of Europe than cowardice an invariable infirmity among the population of Bengal. There have been many changes since Lord Macaulay wrote, but the general character of the people throughout a great part of the province remains as he represented it. His description may be applied without exaggeration to the majority of the people of Western Bengal, and especially to those with whom Englishmen come most into communication in Calcutta and the neighbouring districts. The Mohammedan peasantry of the eastern portion of the province are men of robuster character. It has often been said, and it is probably true, that Bengal is the only country in the world where you can find a great population among whom personal cowardice is looked upon as in no way disgraceful. This is no invention of their enemies; the Bengális have themselves no shame or scruple in declaring it to be a fact.

Although it cannot, I am afraid, be said that English education, which has taken so deep a root, has hitherto made any class of Bengális more manly, it is, we may hope, encouraging the growth of this among other virtues. For a Bengáli it is something to have begun to talk in grandiloquent English about patriotism 1 Macaulay's Essays. Warren Hastings.'

and manliness and courage. Even the academic admiration of such things is perhaps a mark of progress. The people generally are acute and intelligent, patient and industrious, and when they get more knowledge they may become more self-reliant, less timid, and less helpless against wrong.

Leaving speculations on possible changes that may come to pass if our dominion should last sufficiently long, and looking to present facts, it is difficult to conceive for Bengal any independent political future. What expectations can be formed for a people that no necessity would induce to fight? In all the Native armies of India there is not, and I suppose there never has been, a Bengáli soldier. We may think of troopers from the Punjab riding with Englishmen in a Balaclava charge, of Sikhs and Gurkhas fighting as French and Germans fought at Gravelotte, but is it possible by the wildest stretch of the imagination to suppose such things of Bengális? But for the presence of our power, Bengal would inevitably and immediately become the prey of the hardier races of other Indian countries. It is for such reasons that Englishmen who know Bengal, and the extraordinary effeminacy of its people, find it difficult to treat seriously many of the political declamations in which the English-speaking Bengális are often fond of indulging.

The condition of the people of Bengal has been profoundly affected by action taken nearly a century ago by the British Government. In 1793 the so-called Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue was introduced.

We found in Bengal, when we succeeded to the Government, a class of middle-men, called Zemindars, who collected the land revenue and the taxes, and we

continued to employ them. As a matter of convenience and expediency, but not of right, the office of zemindar was often hereditary. The zemindars had never been in any sense the owners of the land, but it was supposed by Lord Cornwallis and the English rulers of the time that it would be an excellent thing for Bengal to have a class of landlords something like those of England; the zemindars were the only people that seemed available for the purpose, and they were declared to be the proprietors of the land. It was by no means intended that injustice should thus be done to others.

Excepting the State, there was only one great class, that of the ryots or actual cultivators, which, according to immemorial custom, could be held to possess permanent rights in the land. The existence of those rights was recognised, and, as it was supposed, guarded by the law. It was provided that the GovernorGeneral in Council will, whenever he may deem it proper, enact such regulations as he may think necessary for the protection of the dependent talookdars, ryots, and other cultivators of the soil.' There has been much dispute as to the exact nature of the rights given to the zemindars, but every one agrees that it was not the intention of the authors of the Permanent Settlement to confiscate anything which, according to the customs of the country, had belonged to the cultivators. The right of property given to the zemindars was a portion of those rights which had always been exercised by the State, and of which the State was at liberty to dispose; it was not intended that they should receive anything else. The land revenue, representing the share of the produce or rental to which the State was entitled, was fixed in perpetuity. The ryots were to continue to hold their lands permanently at the