and uniform polity. The country had been the scene of more rapid and abrupt transitions, political and economical, than had ever, perhaps, been recorded in the history of nations. For in India old and new forms of civilization had become intermixed, not only by the influx of European ideas upon an Asiatic society, but because it contained an immense population in different stages of material and intellectual progress. The English had originally taken over an empire in a state of political dilapidation; and they had now to complete its administration on a scientific plan, with a solicitous regard for the inveterate prejudices of many races and religions.
Previously to the mutiny of 1857, this process of reformation had been going on slowly; but from that time forward it acquired great momentum. By an Act of Parliament passed in 1858, the supreme powers of control over Indian affairs, which had been hitherto divided between the Court of Directors and the ministers of the Crown, were vested in a Secretary of State in Council; and all the naval and military forces of the East India Company were transferred to the imperial service. Then, in 1861, the India Councils Act modified the constitution of the Governor-General's Executive Council in India, and remodelled the legislature by establishing a Council, presided over by the Governor-General, to make laws for the whole of India, with subordinate legislative Councils at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Another statute instituted High Courts of Judicature under royal charter, at these three capitals;
