regard to the revenue, a matter of so much practical consequence to the happiness of every country, he held that the taxes were not to be extended beyond the state in which we found them, without the greatest caution; he suggested that Government should grant leases of land, to prevent the exactions to which the ryots were exposed in the laying on of the annual impost. To the natives he wished to leave the internal trade, confining the English to the foreign import and export trade, as formerly: he was anxious that the natives should have the entire management of their own concerns, undisturbed as far as possible by the intrusion of Europeans, whose misconduct, which in many instances had been carried to a grievous excess, there was at that time no judicial or political machinery for keeping in order. He did not, however, adopt the wild idea of introducing English laws into a country for which they had never been framed. With more wisdom than has even yet been shown by the Legislature, he recommended that the Company should be authorised to send out an Attorney-General with some able lawyers, (not certainly, however, the most proper persons, especially if a majority,) to new model and regulate the Courts of Justice, and that, with the assistance of the Governor-General and Council, they should form a system of regulations proper for our settlements, pointing out the defects that existed, as well as the proper remedies. He concluded with perfect truth, "that the attempt to introduce the English laws throughout our possessions in India would be absurd and impracticable." He foresaw, from the spirit of the times, that expense was the rock on which the Government was likely to split, and used every means in his power to raise barriers against it. It was partly this which made him recommend that we should confine ourselves to a rich but limited territory, a small army, and few but well-paid English servants, and not plunge into the wide sea of Indian politics. He foretold, that if every thing was to be done directly by Company's servants, and if the expenses of fortifications and cantonments continued on the extravagant scale then in operation, the revenues of India, far from affording a surplus to be conveyed to England, would not long suffice even to support our various establishments on the spot. His predictions were soon verified; though there was but an inconsiderable change in the amount of the actual revenue, yet the expenses of the army, of buildings, fortifications, commissariat of every department, joined to the ill-conducted wars at Madras, had, in the course of a few years, increased so much, that the large free produce which he had left was totally absorbed. Indeed, such is the natural course of human affairs; and the only question is, whether even an energy like his, could have rendered possessions so distant permanently productive. He saw the means of defending our possessions against the native powers, by well-timed attention to