s cavalry covering the siege of
Delhi by his regular brigade. In the midst of the festivity he had a
European soldier of the King's 76th Regiment, who had been taken
prisoner, strangled behind the curtain, and his head stuck upon a
spear and placed in the midst of the assembly, where the 'nach'
(nautch) girls were made to dance round it. Lord Lake reached the
place the next morning in pursuit of this monster; and the gallant
regiment, who here heard the story, had soon an opportunity of
revenging the foul murder of their comrade in the battle of Dig, one
of the most gallant passages of arms we have ever had in India.[4]

Near Kosi there is a factory in ruins belonging to the late firm of
Mercer & Company. Here the cotton of the district used to be
collected and screwed under the superintendence of European agents,
preparatory to its embarkation for Calcutta on the river Jumna. On
the failure of the firm, the establishment was broken up, and the
work, which was then done by one great European merchant, is now done
by a score or two of native merchants. There is, perhaps, nothing
which India wants more than the concentration of capital; and the
failure of a I [5] the great commercial houses in Calcutta, in the
year 1833, was, unquestionably, a great calamity. They none of them
brought a particle of capital into the country, nor does India want a
particle from any country; but they _concentrated_ it; and had they
employed the whole, as they certainly did a good deal of it, in
judiciously improving and extending the industry of the natives, they
might have been the source of incalculable good to India, its people,
and government.[6]

To this concentration of capital in great commercial and
manufacturing establishments, which forms the grand characteristic of
European in contradistinction to Asiatic societies in the present
day, must we look for those changes which we consider desirable in
the social and religions institutions of the people. Where land is
liable to eternal subdivision by the law and the religion of both the
Muhammadan and Hindoo population; where every great work that
improves its productive powers, and facilitates the distribution of
its produce among the people, in canals, roads, bridges, &c., is made
by Government; where capital is nowhere concentrated in great
commercial or manufacturing establishments, there can be no upper
classes in society but those of office; and of all societies, perhaps
that is