were held to bail, and the affair failed to produce the desired result. However, the man who had presumed to give evidence against a Governor-General was not to escape; he was now accused of forgery, committed to the common jail, tried by a jury of Englishmen, convicted, and hanged! Thus Warren Hastings removed his accuser. The name of the Judge who condemned Nuncomar (for, like that of Jefferies, it deserves to go down to posterity) was IMPEY; a name which nothing can ever obliterate from the memory of the Hindoos, or induce an historian of India to bury in kindly oblivion. Had Nuncomar been guilty of the crime with which he was charged, still punishment could not justly have been inflicted on him, according to our laws, since the statute which created the Supreme Court and its powers, was not made public till 1774, four years after the date of the pretended forgery; and, if he could not be capitally punished by our laws, still less by those of Hindoostan, since forgery is not placed by them, whether Moslem or Hindoo, among capital offences. Both Hastings and Impey endeavoured to set up some kind of defence, but sophistry so miserable is not worthy of being recorded in history; and if they managed, through the uncertainty of the law, to escape condign punishment, they could not manage to screen their characters from the judgment which impartial history will irreversibly pronounce against them. From legal assassination, the Governor-General again proceeded to inferior offences. In 1772, a regulation had been made under his authority, by which all collectors, and servants of collectors, were forbidden to farm any lands, or be security for any farmers. The reason was, that if they did, no competitors would come forward, and the Company's revenues would be defrauded. Notwithstanding this regulation, Mr. Hastings permitted his banyan, or secretary, to hold lands, the rent of which amounted, in 1777, to fourteen lacs and eleven thousand three hundred and forty-six rupees, upwards of 141,000l. sterling! The removal of Munny Begum now made it necessary to appoint another superintendent over the affairs of the Nuwaub; and as the Directors were not satisfied with the conduct of Nuncomar, they commanded his son, Rajah Goordass, to be removed, and Mohammed Reza to be substituted in his place. Their order was conceived in a confused and vague manner; they confounded distinct offices; and, through ignorance, directed what they did not intend to be done. However, their servants contrived, from their local knowledge and experience, to apprehend their meaning; and the majority, in opposition to the will of the Governor-General, restored the office of Naib Subah, and bestowed it upon Mohammed Reza Khan. THE HARBOUR LIGHT. At Ramsgate, Shoreham, and other towns on the coast, a light is hoisted at night, when there is a sufficient depth of water for ships to enter the. barbour. OVER the waves On the near lee shore: Star of the Seaman! when wilt thou rise Harder it blows, But she still rides brave, And shakes from her bows The broken wave; Hold but a while True anchors fast, And at morn we 'll smile O'er the dangers past: Star of the Seaman!-bright and warm- We part, great Heaven! 'Midst the tempest's jar, Where the breakers war, Is our hour come God-we are safe!-see the blessed light Of the harbour rise through the gloom of night! Cast loose all sail, Till the quivering mast Strains to the gale As it thunders past; Hard down!hard down! See the lights appear Of the welcome town! Now, near, boy!—near Our danger has passed like a frightful dream, Star of the Mariner!-bless thy beam! BERNARD WYCLIFFE. SIR, RECOLLECTIONS OF BURKE. To the Editor of the Oriental Herald. April 15, 1826. THE account (p. 98) of Mignet's History of the French Revolution,' has carried me back, through the various fortunes and events of more than thirty years, to that interesting period when I was associated with not a few active and enlightened politicians, of whom the survivors are now reduced to a very scanty remnant. I then not only read but listened to "the fanatical declamations of Burke," dignified as they were by his mighty but ill-devoted powers of eloquence; for he was largely accomplished, like the poet's Belial: his tongue Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason. Among these exhibitions, I especially recollect, as if it had occurred but yesterday, his loud lament, even like Ocean into tempest wrought, when he referred, on a memorable occasion, to the fall of "the King's Castle," for with that appropriate designation he was fond of complimenting the Bastile. It was, I well remember, on May 11th, 1792, when I visited the gallery of the House of Commons, while Mr. Fox was denouncing Protestant persecution, in a style of argumentative eloquence sufficient to persuade all except a Minister's majority, a Court of Leadenhall-street Directors, or a bench of Bishops. His clients were the Unitarians, whom William III., a pretender to liberal principles, had left exposed to rigorous penalties inflicted by two statutes, which appear to have as readily received the royal assent as the order for the massacre of Glencoe, and remained on record, among too many discreditable transactions of that over-vaunted reign. These religionists claimed the honour of enrolling in their number the names of Price and Priestley, whose disinterested attachment to the public cause had earned the rancorous hatred of the Pensioner expectant. The Unitarians also, while they rejected, as Anti-christian, some favourite dogmas of established churches, generally regarded with approbation the principles which were then intruding their influence on the despotic regime of some established Governments. Thus the champion of the Bastile would easily connect the case of the English Unitarians, claiming relief from religious persecution, with that of the French people demanding civil liberty. Yet, as it has been justly remarked by an unceremonious biographer, "whatever the subject of debate might be, whether religious or political, Mr. Burke's ingenuity could always find means of introducing his favourite topic, the French revolution." On this occasion, after the Orator had violently assailed the English Unitarians, for the liberal political senti ments which some of them had then lately expressed in public, I heard him close a large collection of charges against the French revolutionists, by solemnly declaring, that they had destroyed "the King's Castle." This royal castle, Mr. Fox, during his powerful reply, thus apostrophised, in the well-known lines of Cowper: Ye horrid tow'rs, the abode of broken hearts; The sighs and groans of miserable men! There's not an English heart that would not leap "Yes," added Mr. Fox, looking at Mr. Burke, who sat just below him, "there is an English heart, and, I am sorry to say, it is the heart of that honourable gentleman." I am more induced to state these particulars, because, so far as I have observed, justice has not been often done to the strikingly happy manner in which I saw and heard Mr. Fox apply the quotation. Mr. Hayley, in his Life of the Poet,' (4to. ii. 236,) remarks, that Cowper felt the full value of applause, when conferred by a liberal and a powerful mind. I had," he proceeds, " a singularly pleasing opportunity of observing the just sensibility of his nature in this point, by carrying to him, in one of my visits to Weston, a recent newspaper, including the speech of Mr. Fox, in which that accomplished orator had given new lustre to a splendid passage in the Task,' by reciting it in Parliament." Now I am reverting to this "tale of other times," you will, I dare say, excuse me if, "narrative with age," I here record my recollection of two English hearts which beat in unison with those of the amiable Poet, and the philanthropic Orator. A friend of mine visited, in 1790, the ruins of the Bastile, from whence he brought a few fragments, with which he designed to ornament a summer-house. On this occasion, another friend wrote, con amore, the following lines, for an inscription, which I now bring out from one of the cells of memory, in which they have lodged for the last five-and-thirty years: Ye who, by Fancy led, delight to trace Each scene where Sculpture did her Athens grace, For, lo! they tell how Justice claims her sway, Tow'rs, that for ages braved the observant sky, Sink, at her sov'reign word, to rise no more: Let man rejoice, though priests and kings deplore. I have now before me, though I must reserve the use of them to another occasion, two interesting documents, printed before the revolution. They disclose a few secrets of the prison-house." The mighty number are reserved to be disclosed when the oppressor and the oppressed shall meet together before an impartial tribunal, where names of awe and distance here," must " rank with common men." POPULARIS. PHILLIPPINE ISLANDS. The following particulars, regarding these valuable islands, are drawn from a statistical work published at Manilla in 1820, an abstract of which has been inserted in that ably-conducted publication, the Singapore Chronicle : "The revenue of the Phillippines amounts to 1,466,610 Spanish dollars, and is made up of such articles as the following: a poll tax on the natives of the country, commonly called the contribucion, amounting to 70107 Spanish dollars, a monopoly of tobacco amounting to 357,288 dollars; a capitation tax on the Chinese, amounting to the exorbitant sum of six dollars a head, &c., with custom house duties, among which are included a duty on the exportation of bullion. The impolicy and unproductiveness of such a system of taxation will readily occur. There exists no land-tax, but in room of it a poll-tax, comparatively trifling in its amount, as highly unpopular in the Phillippines as capitation taxes have always been in every age and country. The subjects of the European Government of Java amount to about the same number as those of the Spanish Phillippines; and Java can scarcely be said to be either more fertile or more favourably situated than Luconia and its dependent islands, yet the revenue of Java, for the corresponding period quoted for the Phillippines, amounted to very near ten times as much; which shows how much more skilful is the system of taxation established in that country, since it cannot be alleged that it is either more burdensome or more unpopular." "The Phillippines are divided into thirty-one provinces, sixteen of which are situated in the islands of Luconia, and fifteen in the smaller islands, including the Mariannas. The total population is two millions two hundred and forty-nine thousand eight hundred and fifty-two; of this number, 137,622 belong to the great island of Luconia, giving about forty-five inhabitants to the square mile; a rate which shows it to be much less populous than Java, which, to the best of our recollection, has more than double this density of inhabitants. The contrast is still stronger with the British provinces in Hindoostan, some of which, as will be seen by an able and original Oriental Herald, Vol. 9. 2 L |