The great subjects of free trade, free settlement, and a free press, advocated by Mr. Buckingham, in the paper alluded to, were unpalatable, however, to some in authority; and led them to cherish feelings of animosity against him; and-the Marquis of Hastings having returned to Europe, and being succeeded for a short interval by a temporary Governor-general, Mr. John Adam-after suffering much persecution at his hands, Mr. Buckingham was suddenly ordered to quit Calcutta, without a hearing, trial, or defence; the fortune he had acquired was utterly annihilated; debts were entailed on him by the suppression of his paper, and protracted proceedings to avert this stroke, to the amount of 10,000l.; and his wife, who had just joined him after ten years' separation, was ejected with him from house and home-an act of cruelty and tyranny which excited the just indignation of all classes of Indian society.

Again, and most cruelly disappointed in his hopes, Mr. Buckingham returned to England, where the injuries he had suffered in India equally excited the commiseration and indignation of the public at home; and where his claims to compensation were recognised and defended by many distinguished men, including Lords Durham, Russell, Denman, and other members of the Senate; Sir Charles Forbes, Sir Henry Strachey, Mr. Joseph Hume, and other Indian proprietors of East India stock; and Lord William Bentinck, the ex-Governor-general, who presided at a public meeting in London, and passed the highest eulogies on Mr. Buckingham's character and labours; were pleaded by the press; petitioned for by the people; echoed by the colonies; and recommended for redress by two successive Committees of the House of Commons. Yet he could not even obtain permission from the Company to return to India to wind

of its censures; it greatly improved the administration of justice in the native courts; and was the first to inveigh openly against Suttee, or the burning of widows alive on the funeral piles of their husbands, and ultimately forced on the suppression of that frightful and murderous rite; condemned the equally revolting practice of the Government deriving a revenue from the superstitions of the natives in their pilgrimages to Juggernaut, and accelerated the abolition of that iniquitous source of gain; defended the Christian missionaries in their holy and benevolent labours; advocated the education and elevation of the Indian population; opposed every despotic act; and pleaded, boldly, earnestly, and incessantly, for the great reforms then required for India, nearly all of which have since been accomplished.

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up his affairs and collect the numerous debts there owing to him; and his claims for recompense were repudiated alike by the Company and the Ministry.

When the severity of the punishment to which Mr. Buckingham was subjected is considered, most persons would conclude that he must have been guilty of some heinous crime, some attempt to overthrow the established government of the East India Company, to excite the natives of Hindostan to revolt against the English rule, or some similar atrocity; or that, at least, he had been guilty of some foul and dangerous libel against the chief authority of the State; for to crimes and offences of this description alone could such heavy punishments as banishment without trial, confiscation of hard-earned property, and the utter ruin of an innocent family, be appropriate. It is but justice, therefore, to the reputation of the subject of our biography, that the true state of the case should be accurately known; and for this purpose, we place on record, in our pages, from the Parliamentary evidence produced before the Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the case, the entire text of the article, for the writing and publishing of which all the vengeance of the Indian Government was thus poured out on its author's devoted head. It was a playful allusion to the ludicrous impropriety of appointing a Scotch Presbyterian minister to the secular office of a Clerk of Stationery for the Government offices, as a reward for his political services in opposing the free trade party of Mr. Buckingham, through the columns of an Indian newspaper, the "John Bull," and was as follows:

"The reverend gentleman named below (Dr. Bryce), who, we perceive by the index of that useful publication the "Annual Directory," is a Doctor of Divinity and Moderator of the Kirk Session, and who, by the favour of the higher powers, now combines the office of parson and clerk in the same person, has no doubt been selected for the arduous duties of his new place from the purest motives, and the strictest possible attention to the public interests. Such a clerk as is here required, to inspect and reject whatever articles may appear objectionable to him, should be a competent judge of the several sorts of pasteboard, sealingwax, inkstands, sand, lead, gum, pounce, tape, and leather; and one would imagine that nothing short of a regular apprenticeship at Stationers' Hall would qualify a candidate for such a situation. All this information, however, the reverend gentleman no doubt possesses in a

more eminent degree than any other person who could be found to do the duties of such an office; and though, at first sight, such information may seem incompatible with a theological education, yet we know that this country (India) abounds with surprising instances of that kind of genius which fits a man in a moment for any post to which he may be appointed.

"In Scotland, we believe, the duties of a Presbyterian minister are divided between preaching on the sabbath, and on the other days of the week, visiting the sick, comforting the weak-hearted, conferring with the bold, and encouraging the timid, in the several duties of their religion. Some shallow persons might conceive, that if a Presbyterian clergyman were to do his duty in India, he might also find abundant occupation throughout the year, in the zealous and faithful discharge of those pious duties which ought more especially to engage his devout attention; but they must be persons of very little reflection indeed who entertain such an idea. We have seen the Presbyterian flock of Calcutta take very good care of themselves for many months without a pastor at all; and even when the shepherd was among them, he had abundant time to edit a controversial newspaper, long since defunct, and to take part in all the meetings, festivities, addresses, and flatteries, that were current at that time. He has contrived to display this eminently active, if not holy disposition, up to the present period; and according to the maxim, 'to him that hath much (to do) still more shall be given, and from him that hath nothing, even the little that he hath shall be taken away,' this reverend doctor, who has so often evinced the universality of his genius and talents, whether within the pale of divinity or without it, is, perhaps, the very best person that could be selected, all things considered, to take care of the foolscap, pasteboard, wax, sand, gum, lead, leather, and tape of the Honourable East India Company of Merchants, and to examine and pronounce on the quality of each, so as to see that no drafts are given on their treasury for gum that will not stick, tape short of measure, or inkstands of base metal."

For this and this alone, Mr. Buckingham's license to reside in India was withdrawn, and he was ordered, at his peril, to quit India, without the power, as the law then stood, of appealing to any Court for protection, and without any opportunity being af forded him of hearing, trial, or defence!

What renders the case more remarkable is this:—that the very appointment at which he thus lightly and perhaps irreverently laughed, was no sooner heard of by the India Directors in England,

than it was instantly ordered to be annulled, as grossly improper. The Board of Control for the affairs of India pronounced the same condemnation on the appointment, so that the ministers of the Crown and the India Directors concurred in their joint censure of the act; and lastly, the General Assembly of Scotland, to whom this reverend clerk was responsible in his ecclesiastical capacity, denounced the appointment as most unclerical, and gave the reverend offender the option either of resigning his new appointment or being stripped of his ministerial gown. All these high authorities were deemed quite right in thus uniformly disapproving and annulling the appointment as soon as they heard of it, while Mr. Buckingham, for merely making it the subject of a premature pleasantry, was decidedly as wrong; and when the India Directors were appealed to for redress, they had no hesitation in admitting that Mr. Buckingham's was, indeed, a very hard case, but that it would be very dangerous for them to establish such a precedent, as the redress of any wrong inflicted by the governors abroad, however unjustly, because it would open the door to endless applications for redress. Such are the maxims of Oriental policy, and such the perversions of justice to which they lead!

On his landing from India, Mr. Buckingham had established a monthly journal, entitled "The Oriental Herald," which was indeed a continuation of the suppressed Calcutta Journal; and to this he devoted all his energies, making it the medium of articles advocating free trade with China and various Indian reforms; and the circulation of this Journal for six years, from 1824 to 1830, in all the manufacturing and mercantile towns and large sea-ports of the kingdom, did much to prepare the way for the abolition of the East India Company's trading monopoly in 1834, and the many reforms introduced into the renewed charter of that period, when Mr. Buckingham was himself in Parliament.

The Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in the session of 1834 to examine the whole case, consisted of no less than thirty-seven members, including the leaders of both parties in politics, among whom may be named, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Althorp, Mr. Charles Grant, the President of the Board of Control; and two of its Secretaries, Mr. Robert Gordon and Mr. Stuart Mackenzie; Mr. Williams Wynn, an ex-President of the

Board of Control; Lord Granville Somerset, Mr. Cutlar Fergusson, an East India Director; Mr. Hume, Mr. Alderman Thompson, and Mr. John Smith, the City banker-all large proprietors of East India stock; Mr. Charles Ross, ex-Secretary to the India Board; Mr. Abercrombie, afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons; Mr. Walter, proprietor of "The Times," Mr. W. Ewart Gladstone, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer; and others,-a Committee, as will be seen, strongly imbued with ministerial and East Indian prejudices and interests. Yet even these, after many days' examination, and a full hearing of all the arguments urged by the East India Company, and their officers in their defence, came to the unanimous resolution : "That your Committee are of opinion, that Compensation ought to be made to Mr. Buckingham;" adding further, "that your Committee abstain from expressing an opinion as to the amount of Compensation, in the hope that the subject will be taken into the favourable consideration of the East India Company, and thus the interposition of Parliament in the next session, to fix such amount, be rendered unnecessary."

It will scarcely be believed that, after such a unanimous resolution, passed by such a body of men as this, and reported to the House of Commons, the Company should refuse to accede to their recommendation. But so it was. It is understood that, as the loss proved to have been sustained by Mr. Buckingham was the sudden deprivation of an income of 8,000l. sterling per annum, which his popular Journal yielded him of net profit after all expenses were paid, and the entire destruction of its capital by forcible suppression, amounting to 40,000l. of ascertained marketable value,-the economical Mr. Hume, himself a proprietor of India stock, proposed in the Committee that 20,000l. should be named as the sum to be given to Mr. Buckingham in compensation. But the rest of the Committee, pretending that it would be more courteous and complimentary to the East India Company (as if they deserved this homage of excessive delicacy) to leave the sum open, to be settled by their discretion, it was so determined; and as no sum was named, the Company refused to give anything, and treated the resolutions of the Parliamentary Committee as so much waste paper!

It should be observed, that out of the large annual profits made by Mr. Buckingham from his Journal he formed one of the largest