stagnant
mass of its impurities, and making it a life-giving sea of active
industry and progress.

Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so; let him
go to those districts where British capital and energy are not employed;
let him leave the planting districts, and go up to the wastes of
Oudh, or the purely native districts of the North-west, where there
are no Europeans but the officials in the _station_. He will find
fewer and worse roads, fewer wells, worse constructed houses, much
ruder cultivation, less activity and industry; more dirt, disease,
and desolation; less intelligence; more intolerance; and a peasantry
morally, mentally, physically, and in every way inferior to those who
are brought into daily contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and
gentlemen, and have imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of
progress. And yet these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors,
and Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully slandered;
they have been described as utterly base, fattening on the spoils of a
cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly unscrupulous, fearing neither
God nor man, hesitating at no crime, deterred by no consideration from
oppressing their tenantry, and compassing their interested ends by the
vilest frauds.

Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many years
ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
that the planters of Behar--and I speak as an observant student of
what has been going on in India--have done more to elevate the
peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every
way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the same
end in view.

The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in extremes.
It never seems to hit the happy medium. The Lieutenant-Governor for
the time being impresses every department under him too strongly with
his own individuality. The planters, who are an intelligent and
independent body of men, have seemingly always been obnoxious to the
ideas of a perfectly despotic and irresponsible ruler. In spite
however of all difficulties and drawbacks, they have held their own. I
know that the poor people and small cultivators look up to them with
respect and affection. They find in them ready and sympathizing