price of salt is heavy on those who can scarcely buy food. We have shown above that a licence tax on trades is also to be levied; we have briefly alluded to its apparent inequality, and Sir George Campbell, in the Mail of 30th December, points out that this tax "touches every petty trader, but leaves all large traders, rich merchants, and bankers, and companies untouched." The Government of India and individuals are doing their best to meet famines in future, but only one, Mr. Rogers, of the Bombay Civil Service, advocates-in the Mail of 28th December-the moral improvement of the peasantry as the best insurance against famine. Mr. Pedder has remarked that they may die before they attain this moral improvement by education.

In whatever way we look at the condition of the peasants, we find heavy clouds hanging over them. Famines will come under natural laws; poverty has come under laws intended for their good. The Government is aware of the latter condition, but increases taxation upon them in the vain hope of saving its produce for another anticipated famine period; but it makes no effort to alter the laws which have helped to bring them to poverty now, and will bring them to desperation if allowed to continue.

The last things pawned or sold by the Indian peasants are the trinkets with which they adorn their women and children; in the course of last year silver and gold ornaments were brought to the Bombay Mint to the value of many thousand rupees. The value paid there did not represent the money realised by the starving owner. Mr. Pedder has shown how valuable land is sold at legal auctions for a trifle; can any one tell the price of the pottage sold by the Indian Jacob to his famishing brother, and can we foresee what the people will do when their pottage is gone? The papers of the day tell us of the importation to India of arms and ammunition; they tell of a Maratta sovereign with his training populations and his skilled officers; a nucleus for the brave race we are despoiling of their homes and their lands in the provinces of the Deccan under British rule.

The Prince of Wales visited India, the British Queen was proclaimed Empress of that great and many-tongued region; on the 1st of January, 1878, the anniversary of that proclamation was celebrated with much pomp and ceremony at Calcutta. The Viceroy unveiled a colossal marble statue of the Empress of India, given by His Highness the Maharajah of Burdwan, who again told the assembly of the "happiness and freedom we enjoy in our guarded rights, our protected religions, and our impartial laws." He talked of the "ties of sympathy, fellow-feeling, and brotherhood," but the peasants of the empire were not alluded to. The only great measure that required to

be done in 1875-a measure that had been suggested many times since England ruled the Deccan, and a measure that must be done if an Eastern empire is to be retained-has not yet been carried out; it is not too late now, though it soon may be, and it is not yet too late to associate new laws with the visit of the Prince of Wales, and with the new-found Empress, our British Queen.

It is easy to point out a blot; but it is impossible to see, at a distance from the scene, what measures would best obliterate it. We have the peasants to protect from the money-lenders, but we must not injure them. We have brought them more into collision than they were; we must undo the laws that have produced the evil; we must give justice to all, and this justice must be easy of access to those whose time is life. Many years ago we suggested that British civil judges should move about the districts, holding their courts at convenient central towns; we now repeat that suggestion, with the addition that where municipal bodies are established they should be made a stepping-stone for the poor. Our English boards of guardians ascertain the condition of our paupers; Indian municipalities might do the same in their arrondissements. These bodies might take first cognisance of agricultural money claims without fee, without stamped paper, and without the intervention of lawyers. The decision to be verbal to the parties, but noted in the municipal proceedings, and these should be available to the judge, who might indeed be an ex officio member of the municipalities in his circuit. It is, however, useless entering into details on measures which may already be in course of adoption. We have lately seen that farm implements and animals are no longer saleable for debt, under decrees of our civil courts; but we require something more, a speedy, inexpensive settlement of claims on the spot where the peasants live. We have to consider that the soil of India is the source of all the wealth of India, and that the peasant is the producer. On that produce he lives, by it he pays his land-tax. The sale of that produce in its raw or manufactured condition helps to circulate money all round the world. The Indian dealers and money-lenders initiate this widespread traffic. These capitalists are therefore important items in the social scale, and in taxing them under the system now proposed by Sir John Strachey, the greatest possible care should be taken in making the assessment equal upon all trades. The income-tax in India was a proof that natives cannot yet be trusted to assess one another, and so it failed, as we told the India Office it would fail, because there was no machinery adapted to it. Let us hope that the licence system may not fail from a fear of taxing the rich, and, while levying it, let us not forget that all we get is realised on the

produce of the soil, and while providing for future famines we must be careful not to cause them by now increasing the price of food to the poor peasants, who produce it. When an equal law has made these men rich, the higher-priced food would make them richer. The problem of Indian justice is like a Gordian knot-we must solve it by care and consideration. If we hurry even the complex subject of Indian social condition, if we go on increasing our expenditure without practising economy ourselves, and think that the produce of the soil can pay, while we are allowing the producers to be eaten up, we are not only doing what is repugnant to English feeling, but we are preparing an Indian blade to cut the knot that we cannot untie.

ART. VII.-RUSSIA ABROAD AND AT HOME.

1. The English Despatch of April 1, 1878.

2. The Protest of Roumania against the Treaty of San Stefano.

1878.

3. COBBETT'S Political Register. 1822-38.

4. MAZZINI'S Scritti Editi e Inediti.

5. Report of the Trial of Vera Sassulitch. 6. La Vérité sur la Russie.

ROUKOW. Paris: 1860.

Par le Prince PIERRE DOLGO

7. The Protocols of the Debates in the Turkish Parliament.

1877-78.

8. The Schouvaloff Salisbury Memorandum, of May 30.

TH

HOUGH the issue of the Congress, at the time we write, still trembles in the balance, there is good ground for being satisfied with, at least, the first result of a more energetic English policy. From the giddy height of his domineering position, the Czar has been brought down to an acknowledgment of his responsibility before a European Areopagus. Whatever may be thought of the composition of that diplomatic tribunal, or of the ideas which guide several statesmen that form part of it, it was well, at any rate, to teach the Autocrat of all the Russians and Baskirs that he cannot pursue his conquering career unchecked, in the fashion of a Ghengis Khan or Timur Leng.

"There is no longer a Europe !" had of late been a frequent cry of despair on the Continent. That cry was uttered when the arms of the unreformed Muscovite despotism-in defiance of a treaty-law established with great sacrifices of blood and treasure against aggressive Russia herself-once more pressed in upon

Turkey in the midst of her attempt at the most extensive reforms. With even greater intensity the same cry was repeated when the Czar began to dispose of his booty in high-landed manner, breaking the word of honour he had solemnly given at Livadia as unceremoniously as he had done in the case of Khiva. It was England which then came forward as a centre of resistance, round which Europe might rally. That move, in itself, was a praiseworthy one. It ought to have been approved of by none more than by those professed friends of peace and goodwill to all men, who talk so eloquently on the horrors of the "war-demon," -except, it is true, when that demon wears a Cossack head-dress and has a nagaïka, or knout, dangling from his lance-armed hand. So far, England has carried her point as regards the diplomatic form of procedure. Suddenly, however, we are startled by the news that Government have pusillanimously, and in violation of their own public pledges, receded from the famous programme of April 1 The publication of the Memorandum of May 30 has filled England with an ill-concealed disgust. We readily acknowledge that, when dealing with the Eastern Question, it is' difficult steering between the Scylla and Charybdis. Two great principles must be ever present to the mind of the thinking statesman. The one consists of the desirability and necessityfrom a humane, national, and general political point of view-to secure better government to races long held in bondage. The other refers to the paramount duty of keeping at bay a huge danger which, under the guise of philanthropic efforts, has been lowering, for a long time past, towards that great central position between Europe and Asia, whence a military Power, with the Black Sea as its naval stronghold, could, in the opinion of Napoleon I., who may be said to have understood these things, easily exercise a world-dominion.

To some extent, the solution of the vexed Eastern problem, or problems, had been facilitated by the change wrought in Turkey a year and a half ago, from a despotic state of things into a parliamentary condition. It is, no doubt, the way of men who are for ever singing pæans in honour of the northern Autocrat, to decry the Ottoman Parliament as "a mere farce." To them we would reply that constitutional government in England itself has come from very small beginnings. Had the first weak attempt in this country been traversed, centuries ago, by a successful foreign invasion in the despotic interest, it might be difficult to say what would have been the result, as regards the future of English freedom.

Wherever we look among nations in history, we generally find that some strong pressure had to be put upon kings before they could be made to grant a charter. The pressure sometimes

came through danger to national independence, when a Prince had to bid for the goodwill of his subjects; sometimes through insurrection at home. In Spain, during the Napoleonic wars, a Constitution was elaborated in the midst of a national struggle, whilst the king was held in foreign captivity. In Prussia, in 1813, the monarch promised, at least, to convoke a representative assembly, as soon as the invader were overthrown. It is true, the promise was never fulfilled by Frederick William III. The shadowy "United Diet" which his successor introduced on the eve of the Revolution of 1848, was swept away in the storm of that popular movement. In Austria, defeat on the field of battle, in 1859, forced the Emperor to return to those parliamentary institutions which had first been founded in the Revolution of 1848. In Italy and in Denmark, before or during that year of tumult and deliverance, popular risings compelled the Crown to accept the parliamentary principles. But it is scarcely necessary to multiply instances.

And

It was even so in Turkey. In the midst of public danger, forces, long held in check, came to the surface at Constantinople, and, by successive street demonstrations, and by dethronements of a sovereign, established at last representative institutions. Why should western Europeans carp at these notable events? why should they try to diminish the importance of parliamentary debates of which the English press, with a waut of enterprise that was not observable during the Russian campaign, omitted to present to its readers even the faintest image. The plain, unanswerable fact is, that the first Ottoman Legislature, though a number of its members were nominated under the influence of local Government authorities, at once showed a spirit of Liberalism and of determined opposition, which did great credit to so young an Assembly. We can testify to this in a double sense-first, from having carefully gone through the whole of the debates of the Ottoman Parliament in the French text of the Constantinople press; secondly, from the personal evidence of men conversant with the Turkish language, who were repeatedly present at the debates. These latter gave us an account of lively discussions which had been considerably toned down in the official report. If such was the spirit of legislators hastily brought together in a transitionary state of things: what might not have been expected from men elected on that freer law of suffrage which the late Assembly itself has enacted? At all events, there was quite enough of Liberalism even in the past Ottoman Parliament for the Czar to insist on its being sent home as soon as the Grand Duke Nicholas had arrived in close vicinity of the capital, and thus was able to hold a bayonet at the throat of the Turkish Government. Russians themselves, we imagine, would be right glad if they