dustry naturally conduct. The regulations of Indian policy, with respect to the different orders of men, must necessarily, at some times, check genius in its career, and confine to the functions of an inferior cast, talents fitted to shine in a higher sphere. But the arrangements of civil government are made, not for what is extraordinary, but for what is common; not for the few but for the many. The object of the first Indian legislators was to employ the most effectual means of providing for the subsistence, the security, and happiness, of all the members of the community over which they presided. With this view they set apart certain races of men for each of the various professions and arts necessary in a wellordered society, and appointed the exercise of them to be transmitted from father to son in succession. This system, though extremely repugnant to the ideas which we, by being placed in a very different state of society, have formed, will 'be found, upon attentive inspection, better adapted to attain the end in. view, than a careless observer is, on a first view, apt to imagine. The human mind bends to the law of necessity, and is accustomed, not only to accommodate itself to the restraints which the condition of its nature, or the institutions of its country, impose, but to acquiesce in them. From his entrance into life, an InIdian knows the station allotted to

him, and the functions to which he is destined by his birth. The objects which relate to these are the first that present themselves to his view. They occupy his thoughts, or employ his hands; and from his earliest years, he is trained to the habit of doing, with ease and plea

sure, that which he must continue through life to do. To this may be ascribed that high degree of perfection conspicuous in many of the Indian manufactures; and though veneration for the practices of their ancestors may check the spirit of invention, yet, by adhering to these, they acquire such an expertness and delicacy of hand, that Europeans, with all the advantages of superior science, and the aid of more complete instruments, have never been able to equal the exquisite execution of their workmanship. While this high improvement of their more curious manufactures excited the admiration, and attracted the commerce, of other nations, the separation of professions in India, and the early distribution of the people into classes, attached to particular kinds of labour, secured such abundance of the more common and useful commodities, as not only supplied their own wants, but ministered to those of the countries around them.

To this early division of the people into casts, we must likewise ascribe a striking peculiarity in the state of India; the permanence of its institutions, and the immutability in the manners of its inhabitants. What now is in India, always was there, and is likely still to continue : neither the ferocious violence and illiberal fanaticism of its Mahomedan conquerors, nor the power of its European masters, have effected any considerable alteration. The same distinctions of condition take place, the same arrangements in civil and domestic society remain, the same maxims of religion are held in veneration, and the same sciences and arts are cultivated. Hence, in

all ages, the trade with India has been the same; gold and silver have uniformly been carried thither in order to purchase the same commodities with which it now supplies all nations; and from the age of Pliny to the present times, it has been always considered and execrated as a gulph which swallows up the wealth of every other country, that flows incessantly towards it, and from which it never returns. According to the accounts which I have given of the cargoes anciently imported from India, they appear to have consisted of nearly the same articles with those of the investments in our own times; and whatever difference we may observe in them seems to have arisen, not so much from any diversity in the nature of the commodities which the Indians prepared for sale, as from a variety in the tastes, or in the wants, of the nations which demanded them.

Another proof of the early and high civilization of the people of India, may be deduced from considering their political constitution and form of government. The Indians trace back the history of their own country through an immense succession of ages, and assert, that all Asia, from the mouth of the Indus on the west, to the confines of China on the east, and from the mountains of Thibet on the north, to Cape Comorin on the south, formed a vast empire, subject to one mighty sovereign, under whom ruled several hereditary princes and rajahs. But their chronology, which measures the life of man in ancient times by thousands of years, and computes the length of the several periods, during which it supposes the world to have existed, by millions, is so

wildly extravagant, as not to merit any serious discussion. We must rest satisfied, then, until some more certain information is obtained with respect to the ancient history of India, with taking the first accounts of that country, which can be deemed authentic, from the Greeks, who served under Alexander the Great. They found kingdoms of considerable magnitude established in that country. The territories of Porus and of Taxiles comprehended a great part of the Panjab, one of the most fertile and best cultivated countries in India. The kingdom of the Prasij, or Gandaridæ, stretched to a great extent on both sides of the Ganges. All the three, as appears from the ancient Greek writers, were powerful and populous.

This description of the partition of India into states of such magnitude, is alone a convincing proof of its having advanced far in civilization. In whatever region of the earth there has been an opportunity of observing the progress of men in social life, they appear at first in small independent tribes or communities. Their common wants prompt them to unite; and their mutual jealousies, as well as the necessity of securing subsistence, compel them to drive to a distance every rival who might encroach on those domains which they consider as their own. Many ages elapse before they coalesce, or acquire sufficient foresight to provide for the wants, or sufficient wisdom to conduct the affairs of a numerous society. Even under the genial climate, and in the rich soil of India, more favourable perhaps to the union and increase of the human species than any other part of the globe, the formation of Bb 2

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such extensive states, as were established in that country when first visited by Europeans, must have been a work of long time; and the members of them must have been long accustomed to exertions of useful industry.

Though monarchical government was established in all the countries of India to which the knowledge of the ancients extended, the sovereigns were far from possessing uncontrolled or despotic power. No trace, indeed, is discovered there of any assembly or public body, the members of which, either in their own right, or as representatives of their fellow-citizens, could interpose in enacting laws or in superintending the execution of them. Institutions destined to assert and guard the rights belonging to men in a social state, how familiar soever the idea may be to the people of Europe, never formed a part of the political constitution in any great Asiatic kingdom. It was to different principles that the natives of India were indebted for restrictions which limited the exercise of regal power. The rank of individuals was unalterably fixed, and the privileges of the different casts were deemed inviolable. The monarchs of India, who are all taken from the second of the four classes formerly described, which is intrusted with the functions of government and ercise of war, behold among their subjects an order of men far superior to themselves in dignity, and so conscious of their own pre-eminence, both in rank and in sanctity, that

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they would deem it degradation and pollution, if they were to eat of the same food with their sovereign.* Their persons are sacred,› and even for the most heinous crimes they cannot be capitally punished; their blood must never be shed.† To men in this exalted station monarchs must look up with respect, and reverence them as the ministers of religion, and the teachers of wisdom. On important occasions, it is the duty of sovereigns to consult them, and to be directed by their advice. Their admonitions, and even their censures, must be received with submissive respect. This right of the Brahmins, to offer their opinion with respect to the administration of public affairs, was not unknown to the ancients; ‡ and in some account preserved in India of the events which happened in their own country, princes are mentioned, who, having violated the privileges of the casts, and disregarded the remonstrances of the Brahmins, were deposed by their authority, and put to death. §

While the sacred rights of the Brahmins opposed a barrier against the encroachments of regal power on the one hand, it was circumscribed on the other by the ideas which those who occupied the highest stations in society entertained of their own dignity and privileges. As none but the members of the cast next in rank to that which religion has rendered sacred, could be employed in any function of the state, the sovereigns of the extensive kingdoms anciently established

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in India, found it necessary to entrust them with the superintendence of the cities and provinces too remote to be under their own immediate inspection. In these stations they often acquired such wealth and influence, that offices conferred during pleasure, continued in their families, and they came gradually to form an intermediate order between the sovereign and his subjects; and by the vigilant jealousy with which they mantained their own dignity and privileges, they constrained their rulers to respect them, and to govern with equity.

Nor were the benefits of these restraints upon the power ofthe sovereign confined wholly to the two superior orders in the state; they extended, in some degree, to the third class, employed in agriculture. The labours of that numerous and useful body of men are so essential to the preservation and happiness of society, that the greatest attention was paid to render their condition secure and comfortable. According to the ideas which prevailed among the natives of India (as we are informed by the first Europeans who visited their country), the sovereign is considered as the sole universal proprietor of all the land in his dominions, and from him is derived every species of tenure by which his subjects can hold it. These lands were let out to the farmers who cultivated them, at a stipulated rent, amounting usually to a fourth part of their annual produce paid in kind. * In a country where the price of work is extremely low, and where the labour of cultivation is very inconsiderable, the earth yielding its

productions almost spontaneously, where subsistence is amazingly cheap, where few clothes are needed, and houses are built and furnished at little expence, this rate cannot be deemed exorbitant or oppressive. As long as the husbandman continued to pay the established rent, he retained possession of the farm, which descended, like property from father to son.

These accounts given by ancient authors of the condition and tenure of the renters of land in India, agree so perfectly with what now takes place, that it may be considered almost as a description of the present state of its cultivation. In every part of India, where the native, Hindoo princes retain dominion, the Ryots, the modern name by which the renters of land are distinguished, hold their possessions by a lease, which may be considered as perpetual, and at a rate fixed by ancient surveys and valuations. This arrangement has been so long estabished, and accords so well with the ideas of the natives, concerning the distinctions of casts, and the functions allotted to each, that it has been inviolably maintained in all the provinces subject either to Mahomedans or Europeans; and, to both, it serves as the basis on which their whole system of finance is founded. In a more remote period, before the original institutions of India were subverted by foreign invaders, the industry of the husbandman, on which every member of the community depended for subsistence, was as secure as the tenure by which he held his lands was equitable. Even war did not inter

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rupt his labours, or endanger his property. It was not uncommon, we are informed, that while two hostile armies were fighting a battle in one field, the peasants were ploughing or reaping in the next field in perfect tranquillity. These maxims and regulations of the ancient legislators of India have anear resemblance to the system of those ingenious modern speculators on political economy, who represent the produce of land as the sole source of wealth in every country, and who consider the discovery of this principle, according to which they contend, that the government of nations should be conducted, as one of the greatest efforts of human wisdom. Under a form of government, which paid such attention to all the different orders of which the society is composed, particularly the cultivators of the earth, it is not wonderful that the ancients should describe the Indians as a most happy race of men ; and that the most intelligent modern observers should celebrate the equity, the humanity, and mildness, of Indian policy. A Hindoo rajah, as I have been in formed by persons well acquainted with the state of India, resembles more a father presiding in a numerous family of his own children, than a sovereign ruler over inferiors, subject to his dominion. He endeavours to secure their happiness with vigilant solicitude; they are attached to him with the most tender af fection and inviolable fidelity. We can hardly conceive men to be placed in any state more favorable to their acquiring all the advantages derived from social union, It is

only when the mind is perfectly at ease and neither feels nor dreads oppression, that it employs its active powers in forming numerous arrangements of police, for securing its enjoyments and increasing them. Many arrangements of this nature the Greeks, though accustomed to their own institutions, the most perfect at that time in Europe, observed and admired among the Indians, and mention them as instances of high civilization and improvement. There were established among the Indians three distinct classes of officers, one of which had it in charge to inspect agriculture, and every kind of country work. They measured the portions of land allotted to each renter. They had the custody of the Tanks, or public reservoirs of water, without a regular distribution of which, the fields in a torrid climate cannot be rendered fertile. They marked out the course of the highways, along which, at certain distances, they erected stones, to measure the road and direct travellers. To officers of a second class was committed the inspection of the police in cities, and their functions, of course, were many and various; some of which only 1 shall specify. They appropriated houses for the reception of strangers; they protected them from injury, provided for their subsistence, and, when seized with any disease, they appointed physicians to attend them; and, on the event of their death, they not only buried them with decency, but took charge of their ef fects, and restored them to their relations. They kept exact registers of births and of deaths. They vi

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