Our Empire : Great Britain in Asia. By the Earl
of Meath, M. H. Cornwall Legh, and Edith Jackson. (Harrison and Sons. 7s. 6d.)—Abeut eight-ninths of this very sub- stantial volume—it numbers seven hundred and sixty pages —are devoted to the history of British India and Ceylon ; the remainder is given to an account of the smaller dependencies and possessions of the Empire on the continent of Asia and the adjacent islands. An earlier volume, it will be remembered, dealt with Great Britain in Europe ; a third and concluding volume will be concerned with America, Africa, and Australasia. This second volume seems to us to be a very good piece of work. Its authors, even with more than six hundred pages at their disposal, could not attempt anything beyond an outline, and this they have executed in a satisfactory way. It would be possible to question here and there the choice of points to be brought into prominence, and some of the judgments pronounced on men and events will not be universally accepted. We are inclined to think that the chapter headed " A Disastrous. Policy " scarcely maintains the tone which befits a history. We are not prepared to say that the ()ensure passed on the policy of Lord Auckland and Lord Ellenborough is unjust ; but it is not judicial, and judicial the language of an historian ought always to be. Something of the same kind may be observed in the chapter on Warren Hastings. We readily accept the general estimate of the services of this great man. Yet justice is hardly done to the motives of his adversaries. The trio of Councillors who thwarted him must have had some better motive than malignity and self-seeking, and his impugners at home had something more than reckless calumnies to bring against him. But, as we have said, the account of British rule in India, as a whole, is worthy of all praise. There is much also to be learnt from these pages as to the present condition of the country and its wants. What an appalling fact it is that there are twenty-three million widows in India, doomed to a life of unhappiness, many thousands of them scarcely beyond babyhood. Compared to these hideous totals, the horrors of sate—widow- burning—count for little. The greatest number of victims in one year was seven hundred; the figures refer to the chief seat of the practice, Lower Bengal.
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