HENEWYORK ASTOR, LENOX AND 1899. LONDON: PRINTED BY COX AND BAYLIS, GREAT QUEEN STREET. CONTENTS. Chap. I.-On the Law and Constitution of India ...... Chap. II-On the Nature of Tenures, according to the Page PREFACE. It is by no means unusual with writers to commence their Preface by telling the public the reasons which induced them to undertake their prefaced work; as if the motives of an author, in attempting to edify or entertain them, were to be taken, forsooth, as a set-off against the meagreness of the repast he has provided. But the public do not believe one-half of what they are told on such occasions. I shall therefore not endanger a moiety of my veracity, by following, in this, the footsteps even of the greatest professors of patriotism and public spirit. It is nevertheless right I should intimate, that particular pursuits, both public and private, in which I have been engaged during a very long residence in India, demanded acquirements which, I presume, have given me some advantages in discussing the subjects contained in the following sheets. To how small an extent I have exhibited' those advantages, without the slightest affectation, I really am perfectly aware. But so much has been already written on the affairs of India, that the reader will not, I trust, expect any very great addition to the general stock of information, Yet, considering the jarring opinions which have been held, regarding the government of India, by men of the highest reputation as scholars, statesmen, historians, as functionaries both of the oriental and occidental branches of that government, I cannot but think that an attempt to trace the nature of that constitution through the long-prevailing aberrations of the administration of that country to its original place in the ancient system of India, whence the whole was precipitated by the convulsion which produced the decline and ultimate fall of the Moghul government, will not be deemed uninteresting nor void of importance. Those who have written on the affairs of India, whether as to the administration of the law or of the revenue, have, generally speaking, got entangled in the jungles (to use an Eastern phrase) both of "Hindu and Mahometan" antiquity; some looking to Sanscrit, some to Arabic, to guide them through the labyrinth: sometimes to Hindoo law, known to be obsolete; sometimes to Hindoo history, known to be fiction: sometimes to Moohummudan law, not understood; sometimes to Moohummudan history, not to be believed; till bewildered, and yet obliged to write, it is no wonder that they have not been able to explain intelligibly the nature of the institutions they attempted to describe, nor to fix upon the real source whence those institutions were derived. The whole fabric of the Moghul constitution must have been supposed not only to have been demolished, but even the ruins so completely dissipated, that they were irrecoverably lost; for, otherwise, the humanity of the English government would have induced them to examine its nature and try its value, before it was |