curred without
a landed proprietor being at the bottom of it." The peasants were not
slow to follow suit, and those who were robbed of their winter's store
had no alternative left but to become robbers themselves. The thieveries
of the Fakeers, or religious mendicants, and the bold, though stealthy
attacks of Thugs and Dacoits--members of Masonic brotherhoods, which at
all times have lived by robbery and assassination--added to the general
turmoil. In the cold weather of 1772 the province was ravaged far and
wide by bands of armed freebooters, fifty thousand strong; and to such
a pass did things arrive that the regular forces sent by Warren Hastings
to preserve order were twice disastrously routed; while, in Mr. Hunter's
graphic language, "villages high up the Ganges lived by housebreaking in
Calcutta." In English mansions "it was the invariable practice for the
porter to shut the outer door at the commencement of each meal, and not
to open it till the butler brought him word that the plate was safely
locked up." And for a long time nearly all traffic ceased upon the
imperial roads.

This state of things, which amounted to chronic civil war, induced
Lord Cornwallis in 1788 to place the province under the direct military
control of an English officer. The administration of Mr. Keating--the
first hardy gentleman to whom this arduous office was assigned--is
minutely described by our author. For our present purpose it is enough
to note that two years of severe campaigning, attended and followed by
relentless punishment of all transgressors, was required to put an end
to the disorders.

Such was the appalling misery, throughout a community of thirty million
persons, occasioned by the failure of the winter rice-crop in 1769.
In abridging Mr. Hunter's account we have adhered as closely to our
original as possible, but he who would obtain adequate knowledge of
this tale of woe must seek it in the ever memorable description of the
historian himself. The first question which naturally occurs to the
reader--though, as Mr. Hunter observes, it would have been one of
the last to occur to the Oriental mind--is, Who was to blame? To
what culpable negligence was it due that such a dire calamity was not
foreseen, and at least partially warded off? We shall find reason to
believe that it could not have been adequately foreseen, and that
no legislative measures could in that state of society have entirely
prevented it. Yet it will appear