Act he is bound to adhere. It is no part of our business to enquire how far the Act was a wise or an unwise one; our opinions on the subject may perhaps be derived from the general tenor of this article; but so long as that Act existed the Governor-General was bound to take it as his rule of conduct -bound not to suffer any motives of personal ambition or any feeling of arrogance and impatience to mislead him from the plain path of duty as marked out by the Legislature of Great Britain. If there were nothing else to be alleged in favour of Sir John Shore's moderation, it would be sufficient to declare that this moderation was prescribed by the Parliament of the country; that the Charter-Act from which he derived his authority expressly inculcated a close adherence to the system of non-interference which he made the rule of his political con

duct.

Of his character as a man but one opinion can be entertained. At a time, when to be corrupt was only to be like one's neighbours, he preserved, in poverty and privation, the most inflexible integrity. Ere religion had touched his heart, he was an upright and a virtuous man, but it was beneath the warm sunlight of Christianity that his character expanded into the fulness of life and beauty. His patience, his humility, his dependance upon God are beyond such praise as we are capable of bestowing. His talents, which were of a high order, he rendered subservient to his Christian principles; he had no ambition to shine; his sole desire was to be useful, and he turned aside from every temptation to distinguish himself at the cost of one conscientious scruple. There are men who

make themselves up to dazzle, as there are women who make themselves up to charm-men who would rather tell a lie than spoil a sentence; rather violate a principle than miss a point; rather destroy the happiness of thousands than lose an opportunity of doing a brilliant thing. Lord Teignmouth was not one of these. At the summons of his country he conceived that he was bound to do his duty in the state of life into which God had called him at the sacrifice of his own personal happiness. But though he could bring himself to sacrifice his ease and comfort, to abandon the joys of home and the pleasures of domestic life, he could on no account sacrifice one tittle of those high principles which glowed in his breast and rendered him a Christian ruler not merely in name. When his work was done, though scarcely advanced in his pilgrimage more than mid-way between the threshold and the bourne, he retired into private life as a man who deemed it a higher privilege to walk humbly with his God than to sway the poli

tical destiny of millions. From the day that he set his foot, for the last time, on the shores of England, he began as it were, a new life-a life of almost total abandonment of secular affairs; and for more than thirty years, though tempted with the offer of place and power, he continued to tread this lowly path of Christian well-doing, a happy and a cheerful man; of a kind and charitable nature, in his own family-circle loving and beloved; beyond it universally respected. Thus he lived to the age of four-score and "died, as he had lived, like a saint, "full of alms-deeds, full of humility, and all the examples of a "godly life."

All must to their cold graves.

But the religious actions of the just

Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust.

ART. II-THE AMEERS OF SINDH.

BY SIR JOHN KAYE, K.C.S.I.

I. Correspondence relative to Sindh-1838-1843. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. London, 1843.

2. Correspondence relative to Sindh [supplementary to the Papers presented to Parliament in 1843]. London, 1844.

3. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. 72-No. 3, Session, No. 3. London, 1844.

4. Personal observations on Sindh; the manners and customs of its inhabitants, &c., with a sketch of its History, a narrative of recent events, &c., by T. Postans, M. R. A. S., Bt., Captain, Bombay Army, and late assistant to the Political Agent in Sindh and Beloochistan. London, 1843.

WRITING on the 9th day of February 1812, Sir James

WRITING

Mackintosh made this entry in his journal :-" A Hindu merchant, naned Derryana, under the mask of friendship, had been continually alarming the Sindh Government against the English Mission. On being reproved, he said that though some of his reports respecting their immediate design might not be quite correct, yet this tribe never began as friends without ending as enemies by seizing the country which they entered with the most amicable professions.” "A shrewd dog!" exclaimed Mackintosh; yet little dreamt he the full extent of the dog's shrewdness.

Some thirty-two years after this strange journal-entry was made-on the 22nd of April 1844—one of those magic fireships, the first sight of which has ever struck awe into the hearts of a barbarian people, was beating its way up the river Hooghly; and on the evening of that same 22nd of April, the Ameers of Sindh disembarked from the British fireship, a hopeless and miserable captives, at a ghaut near the city of

Calcutta.

crew of

The outward history of the fall from its high estate of this wretched Talpoor family is, in all its main features, so

1

familiar to the general mind of our readers, that it would be unprofitable to exhaust their patience by demanding from them a reconsideration of all these details. Indeed, the question which we propose to ourselves to discuss-the question of the justice of the measures by which the Sindh Ameers have been reduced to their present state of captivity and degradation-has also, we are conscious, been entered into fully and understandingly. By the Press, and by Parliament has it been discussed, and so much has been said, that we scarcely hope, writing at this after-date, to throw much new light on the subject. But what has hitherto been written and said exists but in scattered fragments; different points have been considered by different writers at different times; and however able these commentaries may be in themselves, and however complete a view of the whole question they might, in a collected state, present to us, we have at present nothing that can be regarded as a single comprehensive view of the whole justice-question. To repair in a manner, after some unsatisfactory way of our own, this obvious deficiency, is what we are now endeavouring to achieve.

As far as we can make out the arguments--or quasiarguments-which are put forth in defence of the appropriation of Sindh, not without much over-weening confidence and dogmatism and some scattering of unserviceable Billingsgate, amount just to this much :-The Ameers of Sindh were traitors; they violated treaties; they insulted and offended the British Government; and, therefore, it was right that they should be driven into captivity. This is the direct defence of the measure, based, we presume, upon certain vague principles of justice to the extent that crime demands punishment, and that treason is rightly visited with

confiscation. Then there is the indirect or collateral defence. The ex post facto justification—not alleging that the thing was positively right in itself, but that it is likely to turn out all for the best. The plea is founded on the assumption that the Ameers were inhuman tyrants; usurpers with no real

title to the sovereignty of the country; that the people were intensely wretched, and that under the British rule, this country, fertile as Egypt, is likely soon to become a region of the blest. Then there is a third party calling the Prime Minister of England chief, which says the thing may have been very bad, but that owing to an incontrolable principle, or, as we have before said, an incontrolable no-principle at work, the result was in no way avoidable. These we believe are the three lines of defence which have been severally followed. Let us take a survey of them.

The Sindh Ameers, it is said, violated treaties. It would seem as though the British Government claimed to itself the exclusive right of breaking through engagements. If the violation of existing covenants ever involved ipso facto a loss of territory, the British Government in the East would not now possess a rood of land between the Burhampooter and the Indus. When that cunning Hindoo merchant said so truthfully thirty years ago, that the British had never entered a foreign country as friends without, in due course of time, making a seizure of it, and that Sindh was therefore doomed to be seized, the treaty existing between the Ameers and the British Government, ratified in 1809, contained but four simple articles—indeed, we may say but three; for as the first declared "eternal friendship," the second declaring that "enmity shall never appear," may be looked upon as a mere redundancy. The The "mutual despatch of Vakeels" was the second stipulation, and in the third it was set forth that "the Government of Sindh will not allow the establishment of the tribe of the French in Sindh." This very simple treaty seems to have answered all purposes for eleven years. 1820 another treaty, almost as simple as its predecessor, was ratified ;-"eternal friendship" and "mutual despatch of Vakeels"—an engagement on the part of the Ameers to restrain the depredations of the Khoosas and others inclined to make inroads on the British dominions; and this time, not merely "the tribe of the French" to be shut out of Sindh, but a pledge not to permit "any European or American to settle in their

In