all the people sunk in
depravity, ignorance, and misery:" and who cling to the comfortable
delusion that we have succeeded, by the equity of our civil government,
in attaching to our rule the population of India. As a view of this
important subject _from the other side of the question_, taken by one,
however, by no means indisposed to do justice to what he considers as
the meritorious features of the English administration, the Khan's
comparative summary, though not wholly devoid of prejudice, possesses
considerable interest: and it must be admitted, that with respect to the
internal improvement of the country, his strictures have hitherto had
but too much foundation, though the schemes of the present
governor-general, if carried into effect, will go far to remove the
stigma from the Anglo-Indian rulers. After contrasting, in a
conversation with an English friend, the expedition of legal proceedings
under the Moslem rule, with the slow process of the English courts in
India, to be finally remedied only by the endless and generally
ineffectual course of appeal to the privy-council at home, (in which,
according to the Khan's statement, not a single individual of the number
who have undertaken the long voyage from India has ever succeeded,) he
proceeds--

"Historical facts seem to be wholly lost sight of by those who talk of
the conduct of Mohammedan rulers in India, who, as I could prove by many
instances, were constantly solicitous of the happiness of their
subjects. Shah-Jehan constructed a road from Delhi to Lahore, a distance
of 500 miles, with guard-houses at intervals of every three miles, and
at every ten or twelve miles a caravanserai, where all travellers were
fed and lodged at the Emperor's expense. Besides this, canals were dug,
and public edifices built, at the expense of millions, without taxing
the people to pay for them as here; and these edifices still stand, and
will endure for many years, as monuments of the munificence of the
monarchs who erected them. During the seventy years of the English
dominion in India, what has been done which would remind the people
fifty years hence, if they should retire from the country, that such a
nation had ever held sway there? The only memorials they would leave,
would be the numerous empty bottles scattered over the whole empire, to
indicate what has been done _in_, if not _for_ India! In some cases
also, they have squandered millions without benefit either to the peo