it is inconsistent with the first principles of humanity: it is contrary to the genius of the nation: it is said to be going into disuse and let the practice be abolished by an immediate and peremptory prohibition. The law itself, as if conscious of its own enormity, dispenses with the sacrifice; but upon a most severe and impolitic condition *. This dispensation is further counteracted by the promise, which, in their mythology, is made to the fair victim, of an immediate admission into the highest heavens, to dwell with Brahma and a few of his first favourites. Hence the permission of burning is counted a privilege: " A Bramin once told me," writes a scientific traveller, who had visited India, “that his mother had been highly distinguished, by having obtained, as the reward of her virtue, the honour of being allowed to burn herself with her deceased husband." "Tis true, according to Niebuyr, this cruel custom has been prohibited both by Europeans and Mahometans; but from recent accounts we learn that it is still practised, and not a few are sacrificed every year under the very eye of authority. Still,

The widow'd Indian, when her lord expires,
Mounts the dread pile, and braves the funeral fires!

* Ch. xx. last sect. Halh. Comp.

P

Let then the rule be rigorously enforced. Let it be extended to all the new acquisitions of the Company, and made absolute.

The other practice to which we have alluded, is of an origin less dubious, and, though in aspect not so inhuman, is in influence even more unfavourable to the general interests of society, and to the progress of true refinement. In Hindostan polygamy is established by law; and if the common people content themselves with one wife, it is because crimes, introduced by this practice, and extremely prevalent, supersede the necessity of maintaining more, and because their extreme indigence cannot afford the means of a large domestic establishment. Among the wealthy natives, and especially among the Mussulmans, polygamy is carried to the utmost extreme of licentiousness. It will appear hardly credible to a European, that some seraglios have been known to contain hundreds, or even thousands * of females, secluded from all the comforts of society, and subjected to the capricious sensualities of an individual. This institution is against nature; for God, by creating throughout the earth an almost equal proportion of the

* Vide note N.

sexes, has, in the most unequivocal manner, intimated his will, that only one woman should be assigned to one man. And it is no less against society. The history of the practice has, in every age, been marked by mischiefs innumerable. Distracted affections, or the total loss of them on the part of the husband; jealousies and contentions on the part of the fair competitor; destruction of the harmony and comforts of domestic society; lasting feuds of families, with the neglect of parental education; voluptuousness on the part of the rich, producing that imbecility and indolence, both of mind and of body, which have long characterised the people of the East; the abasement of one half of the human species, who are degraded into slaves of passion to the other half; the frequent and often unnatural crimes into which the poor are betrayed by this worst of all monopolies ;—such are a few of the many evils attendant upon this institution *. But, with all its concomitant mischiefs, so congenial is the practice to the licentious propensities of human nature; so long has it been sanctioned in Hindostan; so intimately is it connected with the fascinating pre-eminence of wealth and

* For the suggestion of some, and the confirmation of all, of these views, the author is indebted to the late Archdeacon Paley.

of honour, that it is probable no arguments could persuade the legislature to incur the hazard arising from an immediate abolition. To what then are we to look for the remedy of a practice which taints the temper and principles of the individual, embitters the very source of social happiness, and corrodes the vitals of public vigour and virtue? Whether the idea, connected with the practice among the Hindoos, and recognised in their laws, that one of these wives is the chief, might not be seized by the reigning power, to invest her with such exclusive privileges, and with an ascendancy so great, as to deter others from entering into the household,—is an inquiry which may merit consideration, but which a knowledge of minute circumstances of a domestic nature could alone enable us to determine. The number of wives might also be restricted by a special statute, or a tax might be laid upon their increase in a rising proportion, and so heavy as would amount to a prohibition of many at least. To mitigate the evils arising to the family and to the public from the negligent education of the offspring, legislative authority might be interposed to sanction and enforce the dictates of natural affection; and each wife might be made responsible to the magistrate for the rearing of her own children, who should be committed, for this purpose,

to her charge exclusively. After all, however, so inveterate is this evil, so extensive is its prevalence in Asia, that, it would seem, we can look for a complete cure only to the superior illumination and benign influence of Christianity, which has, in so many other respects as well as in this, rectified the views and reformed the manners of those nations among whom it has happily obtained an ascendancy.

V. Common

From the consideration of the general structure of the government, and of the subordinate arrangements of policy, arts. we are naturally led to advert to the means of improving those arts, upon which the subsistence and the comfort of human life immediately depend; and to promote which is the primary care of every good government.

Of these the first, the most simple, the most important, is agriculture. It ministers most obviously and powerfully to the vigour of body and of mind. To it all the rest refer: from it they derive the materials of their operations. "What we call commodities," an ingenious author remarks," is nothing but land severed from the soil. Man deals in nothing but earth. The merchants are the factors of the world, to exchange one part of the earth for another. The king himself is fed by the labour of the ox, and the clothing of

Husbandry.