bours on the weft and north, been of the same opinion with themselves!

Not abfolutely relying on what claffical writers have written concerning India, yet, in the course of our retrofpect, not wholly regardless of their exaggerated narrations, let us confult the more accurate accounts which British diligence and zeal, in India, have recently procured for us of that country in its earliest periods, either from books or living authorities of the highest rank; let us inquire what actually was that government fo celebrated for its wifdom and equity, and in what manner it was conducted to render it at once fo lasting and fo refpectable.

It certainly was, in the strictest sense, monarchical, but with very just and severe checks to guard against the poffible abuse of the powers intrusted to the ruling fovereign. The Indian monarchy, as originally established, at the fame time exhibits to us in a more marked manner than most other countries of Afia glaring veftiges of the original patriarchal mode of government, founded on the model of the paternal, in which the chief of each family exercifed the fovereign jurifdiction over the individuals of it, even to the infliction

of

of death, when merited; continuing to flourish unviolated for a long fucceffion of ages. With the regal, in him were combined the facerdotal dignity, and a kind of prophetic fanctity of character, fuppofed to have defcended to him from that venerable perfonage who was the grand fountain of all postdiluvian honours; the KING, PRIEST, and PROPHET, of the regenerated world! A band of holy Brahmins, who, like the Magi of Perfia, were the hereditary counsellors of the Indian crown, constantly attended in the palace, and around the facred perfon of the prince, to give him their advice in the most important concerns of his empire, to inculcate upon him the duty of a just and wife fovereign, - at stated periods to chaunt the folemn hymns of devotion, to affift at the frequently returning rites of facrifice, and explain the omens of the blazing altar.

Though the functions of government, by the laws of Menu, devolved on the Khettri or Rajah tribe; yet it is certain, that, in every age of the Indian empire, afpiring Brahmins have ufurped and fwayed the imperial fceptre. A whole nation of Brahmins was found by Alexander in the western districts of India, on whom,

whom, for their obftinate oppofition, that conqueror exercised the greatest severity, and even crucified their king. But, in fact, there was little neceffity for the Brahmin to grasp at empire: he ruled both the empire and the monarch: he was greater out of the purple than in it. Without the immediate fanction of that tribe, in no event of national confequence did the fovereign dare to embark, either in the season of profound peace, or amidst the turbulence of the embattled field. He was invested with equal power in the palace and in the camp. He elevated alternately the olive of peace, or wielded the thunderbolt of war. Strabo pofitively afferts,* and his affertion is confirmed by the refults of modern inquiry, that the code of Brahmin law was not originally committed to writing; in fact, the very name of that code, which is MENUMSRITI, or inftitutes remembered from Menu, proves this representation to be just. Till the age of Vyafa they were deposited folely in the memory of the Brahmins; and to them the prince applied in all matters of difficulty. On occafions of extreme natio

Strabonis Geograph. p. 716..

nal

nal urgency he visited them in the dead of the night, and their anfwers were given in all that gloomy pomp and profound folemnity attendant on the midnight hour. By an overftrained conception of the high fanctity of the priestly character, artfully encouraged for political purposes by the priest himself, and certainly not justified by any precept given by Noah to his pofterity, the Brahmin stood in the place of the Deity to the infatuated fons of Indian fuperftition; the will of heaven was thought to be uttered from his lips, and his decifion was reverenced as the irrevocable fiat of destiny. Thus, boafting the pofitive interpofition of the Deity in the fabrication of its fingular inftitutions, guarded from infraction by the terror of exciting the divine wrath, and directed principally by the facred tribe, the Indian government as originally formed may be justly confidered in the light of a THEOCRACY; a theocracy the more terrible, because the name of God, by this perverfion, was made ufe of to fanction and fupport the moft dreadful fpecies of defpotism; a defpotism, which, not content with fubjugating the body, tyrannized over the proftrate faculties of the enflaved mind.

We

1

We are informed by Strabo, that the great body of the Indian nation was divided into feven diftinct claffes, but we know, from more authentic sources, that this divifion was only four-fold, that is to fay, into the claffes facerdotal and regal; the tribe agricultural and mercantile; and that of artificers, mechanics, and fervants. These, however, are again subdivided into an infinite variety of inferior cafts, and in these, by the arbitrary mandate of their great legislator, they are bound to remain without hope of removal or poffibility of exaltation. The apparent impolicy of this divifion has been often defcanted upon, and juftly anathematized as a barbarous attempt to chain down the powers of the human soul, to check the ardour of emulation, and damp the fire of genius. On that ground, it certainly deferves the fevereft reprobation; yet, by this arrangement, it should be remembered, the happiness and fecurity of a vast empire was preserved inviolate during a long series of ages under their early fovereigns; by curbing the fiery spirits of ambitious individuals, intestine feuds were in a great measure prevented, the wants of an immenfe population were amply provided for by the industry of the labouring

claffes,