and its climate varies with the degrees of elevation. Its vast plains present the double harvests, the luxuriant foliage, and even the burning deserts of the torrid zone; the lower heights are enriched by the fruits and grains of the temperate climates; the upper steeps are clothed with the vast pine-forests of the north; while the highest pinnacles are buried beneath the perpetual snows of the arctic zone.
The native principalities sometimes consist of great blocks of country situate in the most fertile and desirable portions of India; but though these states are nominally independent, they are really under British control, having an English Resident at their courts, and a subsidiary English force cantoned near their capitals, without whose knowledge and concurrence they cannot take a single step of any political importance; for though the subsidiary troops are sent into their countries ostensibly to protect them against foreign aggression, they are bound to oppose them at a signal from the Resident, should he even suspect any clandestine measure hostile to the views or interests of the British Government.[1]
The vast country whose geographical extent we have just indicated possesses a population of 150 millions, of which upwards of 100 millions are comprised in the British portion;[2] while its known and available sources of national wealth would be altogether unbounded, if it were properly fertilised and cultivated; but under the system that has been unhappily entailed upon it by foreign conquest of a date many ages anterior to British occupation, immense tracts are overrun with noxious jungle, or dismal swamps, unavoidably left waste, and productive of nothing but malaria and jungle-fever.
The natives of India may be divided into two classes – the Hindoos and the Mussulmauns; the former being the legitimate descendants of the Aborigines, and the latter
- ↑ "In addition to the British contingent, which is always at our command, some of the native states are required to keep up a large army of their own, that we may use it when we deem it necessary." – India Reform Tract.
- ↑ France contains thirty millions of people; the Bengal Presidency alone close on fifty millions.
