causes which resulted in the foundation of our Indian Empire. But many other circumstances combined at this time to force territorial dominion upon either the French or English.

The vigour of the Moghul conquerors of India was wonderfully shortlived. It commenced with Akbar's conquests in 1570, and endured barely as long as the career of the British conquerors of the Moghul conquerors has already lasted. It reached its culminating point under Aurangzib, and began to decay at his death, in 1707. The constituent elements of the empire rapidly disintegrated during the first half of the eighteenth century. It was as if the imperial crown, studded with the jewels of Golconda, had suddenly fallen to the ground, and a scramble had taken place for the scattered gems. Those who took part in the struggle were first the emperor's own Muhammadan deputies, and secondly his own Hindu subjects. Among the former were the Nawab of Oudh, the Nawab of Bengal, the Nizam ul Mulk, or administrator of the Dekhan, and the Nawab of the Carnatic, nominally subject to the Nizam. Among the latter were the Marathas, a powerful tribe of marauding freebooters, who first acquired power in the west of India under Sivaji, about 1650, establishing themselves on isolated hills whose basaltic summits formed natural forts, and fixing the seat of their dominion at different central localities, first at Satara, then at Poona (under the Brahman Peshwa, or Prime Minister*), and finally at Nagpur, Gwalior, Indore, and Baroda.

Each of these principal dependents of the Moghul Empire engaged in the struggle for dominion, and the more ambitious not only converted their own territories into independent sovereignties, but aimed at conquering the possessions of their neighbours. The French took advantage of the general disorder. They were not, like the English traders, averse from military operations. Contending chiefs sought their aid and solicited their alliance. Nothing could be more natural than that our French rivals, while intriguing with chiefs and ministers. and increasing by intervention the chaos of conflicting parties, should have thought more of constructing an empire of their own than of helping to build up that of any native potentate.

In the middle of the eighteenth century (about the year 1750), the power of the French reached its climax, and Dupleix erected a column, with an inscription in four languages, to commemorate his victories. It was then that a French army under Bussy utterly defeated our ally, Muhammad Ali, Nawab of the Carnatic. The fortunes of the English in India seemed hopelessly ruined. At this critical juncture, Clive's indomitable courage and extraordinary ability came to the rescue. A more youth changed the whole aspect of affairs. With only 200 Europeans and 300 sepoys, he seized Arcot (in the year 1731, defended it for seven weeks against overwhelming numbers, and added victory to victory til the power of the French was com• The first of these ministers was Baliji, and the second, his son Fiji Rão L.

pletely broken. The final blow was given at the battle of Vandivash (Vandvās), in December, 1759, when Colonel Eyre Coote (Clive having been called to Calcutta to avenge the Black-Hole atrocity) completely routed the French armies under Lally and Bussy.

The idea of a European Empire in India then, as it were, changed minds. It was abandoned by the French, to be taken up by the English. Not that any such conception had as yet really taken hold of the East India Company at home, whose sole aim continued to be money, and not war or political supremacy. Nor did the idea at once enter the minds of their daring representatives in India-Clive and Warren Hastings. It was forced upon them by the exigencies of the situation in which they found themselves. More than once they endeavoured to return to their stools and their desks; but the irresistible course of events hurried them away. The East India Company made them clerks and book-keepers. Necessity transformed them into conquerors and rulers. What, in fact, was the state of affairs at this momentous period of Indian history? Two of the competitors in the general scramble for the scattered jewels of the crumbling crown of Delhi were obliged for a time to retire from the field-the French disabled by Clive and Coote, the Marathas paralyzed by their defeat at Panipat. There remained the Nawabs of Bengal, of Oudh, and of the Carnatic, the powerful Nizam of Hyderabad in the Dekhan, the Muhammadan usurpers of Mysore-Hyder Ali and his son Tippu. Each of these aimed at expelling the English from India, hoping to clear the field for their own ambitious designs. The English had again to accept the alternative of defending themselves by sheer hard fighting from the bitter hostility of the various competitors for empire, or abandoning the country altogether. They could not retire like cowards from the sphere of activity in which circumstances had placed them. They were drawn into the mêlée. A peaceful policy was possible among the Directors of the trading company at home-impossible among the English on Indian soil.

For example, what happened in Bengal, where the Nawab Alivardi Khan had been succeeded by the atrocious Sūraj-ud-Dowla? This man seized the English factory near Murshidābād, taking the officers prisoners (Warren Hastings among the number), and marched on Calcutta. There the garrison capitulated, and the Black-Hole tragedy was enacted. Colonel Clive, then at Madras, came again to the rescue of the British arms. With a handful of Europeans and 2,100 sepoys he defeated Suraj-ud-Dowla on the celebrated field of Plassey (so called because planted with groves of the Palāsa tree), on the 23rd June, 1757. It was then that the Zamindari of the twenty-four Pargannahs round Calcutta was made over to the English, and the germ of our vast Indian Empire was first thrust upon us. What was to be done? Were we to decline the gift, and hand it over to monsters of the Suraj-ud-Dowla type-to any of those unprincipled and unscrupulous

adventurers who swarmed everywhere, eager for political power and intent on enriching themselves at the expense of the natives? True, we found ourselves strong enough to annihilate the Black-Hole miscreant, but the country gained nothing by the substitution of our creature, his successor, Mir Jafir.

Mir Jafir's administration of Bengal was corruption worse corrupted. We dethroned him, and set up his son-in-law, Mir Kāsim Ali. This man began well, but turned out as great a monster as Sūraj-ud-Dowla; for when we attacked him at Patna in 1763, with the intention of reinstating Mir Jafir, he had 148 English prisoners massacred by a German serving in his army, under the name of Sumru (the native equivalent of Sombre).* No one else would undertake the bloody task. Mir Kāsim took refuge with Shuja-ud-Dowla, the powerful Nawab of Oudh, with whom was the then less powerful Shah Alam, Emperor of Delhi. The three combined against us, but our victory, under Munro's generalship, at Buxar, in October, 1764, made us virtually masters of the whole country from Calcutta to Delhi.

As, then, we had either to fight the Nawabs of Bengal and Oudh, or basely abandon that part of India to their tender mercies, precisely so had we to fight the other unprincipled competitors for empire-the usurpers, Hyder Ali and Tippu of Mysor, and the Marathas. We stormed Seringapatam, conquered Tippū, and brought part of his territory under our own jurisdiction in 1799.

As to the Marathas, although their power had been broken at Panipat (7th January, 1761) by the Afghan chief, Ahmad Shah Abdāli, or Durrani, on his third invasion of India, yet four wars had to be undertaken by us before they were subjugated. The treaty of Bassein, by which the Peshwa (Bāji Rão II.) engaged to receive a British subsidiary force, and to pay for its maintenance, ended the first war, and broke up the Maratha confederacy. The chiefs were then disunited. Sindia and Bhonsle would not accept the treaty, and prepared for the second war, during which Wellington defeated the Maratha army on the renowned field of Assai (September 23, 1803). Two other wars followed. The Maratha chiefs did not venture on open hostility, but excited the Pindāris-wild, predatory tribes, the Bashi Bazouks of the Maratha armies-to attack us. All these marauding powers were put down during the administration of Lord Hastings. The last Maratha Hill fort was taken in 1819.

In the case of Hyderabad, we made a treaty with the then Nizam in 1798, by which he was bound (and is still bound) to support a contingent of 6,000 troops, and dismiss all French or other European officers from his territory. In the case of Oudh, we made the then Nawab an independent king in 1818; but his country fell into such utter disorder

His real name was Reinhard. He was a native of Salzburg, and first served under the French, who nicknamed him Semère, from his melancholy cast of countenance. The well-known Dyce Sombre was his grandson.

that it had to be annexed under Lord Dalhousie's administration.

Clive was appointed Governor of Bengal a second time in 1765, and on the 12th of August in the same year the Emperor of Delhi, Shah Alam, conferred on the East India Company the Diwani, or right of collecting the revenue-equivalent to the whole sovereignty-of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Warren Hastings was our first GovernorGeneral, from 1774 to 1785. With all his faults he was perhaps the greatest of our great Indian rulers. He was the parent of our whole civil administration. In England the mistake was made of judging him by European standards of political morality. In spite of occasional acts of injustice, oppression, and extortion-the excusable result of bewildering difficulties and brain-disturbing complications-his conduct on the whole was marked by a high-minded integrity redounding greatly to his honour. He made all the servants of the Company sign a covenant not to accept presents or engage in any kind of private traffic. Thenceforward they were no longer merchants and traders, but administrators. At that time our possessions in India were (1) Bengal, Behār, Orissa, and Benares, (2) a jāgīr of land round Madras, and the strip of country on the eastern coast, called Northern Circars, (3) the island of Bombay.

Since that time by a further concatenation of circumstances unparalleled in the world's history, the whole of India from Kashmir to Cape Comorin, from Karachi to Assam and Burmah, has gradually fallen under our rule.

What statistics, then, exist which will enable us to institute a comparison between the state of the country when its administration was first made over to us and its condition in our own time? Every good Government is sensible of the duty of making statistical inquiries -of collecting, classifying, registering, tabulating, and comparing the facts of the every-day existence of the people committed to its rule. The Ayin-i-Akbarī remains a monument of the great Emperor Akbar's efforts in this direction. He was far in advance of his age, and his successors were not equal to the task of carrying on his investigations. The East India Company, however, was never unmindful of its duties in this respect. Returns have occasionally been called for by the House of Commons. In every district a vast mass of knowledge on every conceivable subject relating to the condition of the country and its inhabitants has been collected, digested, and committed to writing; and from time to time the information thus gained has been carefully arranged and formulated. The first effort of this kind in Bengal dates from 1769, four years after that Province began to be administered by the East India Company. In 1807, Dr. BuchananHamilton was formally appointed to carry out a statistical survey of the Bengal Presidency. This survey, which only embraced the northern districts, including Behar, extended over seven years, but

was never completed, though twenty-one thick volumes of manuscript were produced.

In fact great difficulties have always impeded the progress of statistical investigation. Even to this day the natives of India are not sufficiently enlightened to understand our real motive. They have been so long accustomed to exactions, that, to their minds, government is only another name for oppression. They persist in expecting our little finger to be thicker than the loins of our predecessors. They are haunted by suspicions that every unusual inquiry is the precursor of a fresh assessment. During the taking of the census in 1871-72, a man detected in the act of hiding his babies gave as his excuse that they were too young to be taxed. Besides, designing agitators are always at hand to thwart the good intentions of our Government by exciting the superstitious fears of a credulous peasantry. In Murshidābād, the surplus population, according to popular report, was to be blown away from guns; in other places it was to be drafted to the hills, where coolies were wanted.

Sir William Muir, in his Report on Indigenous Schools, mentions that at the beginning of the inquiry a rumour spread among the natives of the North-west Provinces that four Christian missionaries, whom the Oriental imagination of the inhabitants converted into magicians, had come from Benares. One of them, it was alleged, was about to visit their houses in the garb of a mendicant; he would stretch a magic wand over the heads of their children, compel them to follow him, and turn them into Christians by witchcraft.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, the collection and registering of accurate information has proceeded with a certain degree of continuity, though in an unsystematic manner. The energy and wisdom of Mr. Thomason, who was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the North-west Provinces in 1843, devised the first organized scheme. Every magistrate and collector was required to throw together and arrange all the information-historical, geographical, economical, educational-he could obtain regarding his own jurisdiction. These compilations were to serve as guides and companions for every district. One of them, by A. Shakespear, published in 1848, gives the result of a first census of the whole province, and the most minute information as to the area of revenues of each pargannah. A second census was made under Mr. Thomason's instructions on the night of December 31st, 1852. The results were published, and no such valuable returns were ever before obtained.

The year 1847 saw the first formation of a regular statistical department at the India-house, and the merit of constantly stimulating its activity belongs to one of the old Company's directors, the late Colonel Sykes. In 1853 this statistical office published the first series of statistical papers relating to India, illustrated by useful maps. A at deal of fairly accurate information was given under various