The last mail from India brings news of serious disturbances
at Bombay, which, though as yet purely local, are of a kind which hesitation or injudicious treatment might easily cause to spread. An insult offered, or supposed to be offered, by the Parsees to the memory of " the Prophet," had roused the indignation of the Ma- hometans ; and the consequence was an attempt to enact on a small scale something very like the London Anti-Catholic riots of Lord George Gordon's mob. The rioters appear to have followed the usual course of such worthies ; they began by assailing their reli- gious adversaries, and proceeded by degrees to acts of indiscrimi- nate pillage and destruction. At the time the mail was de- spatched, one of the great Mahometan anniversaries was in the course of celebration, and fears were entertained that the disturb- ances might be renewed.
What gives importance to this local riot, is the intellectual supe- riority and greater energy possessed by the Mahometan nations of India than any other of the non-European inhabitants. The Ma- hometans have never forgotten that they were rulers before the advent of the Europeans ; and they maintain a close and constant correspondence with each other throughout the whole of British India, and with their co-religionists beyond the frontier. p a consideration not to be overlooked, now that the period t India Company's act of incorporation, and extensively the present form and distribution Ority, is approaching. CoMplaitts are made in Bombay, that' the present Gtdiersity of that Presidency is as habitually an absentee from his seat of government as the Geyer- nor4eneral it from Calcutta. It is allegodthat confidential papers of thelGovernment are constantly communicated to improper parties in return for very low bribes,—a practice for which the inadequate salaries paid to inferior officials are blamed. Again, we hear grave complaints of the prevaleazqe of gaming and other demoralizing ir- regularities in the Indian Army. In the course of a trial for conspi- racy in the Court of Queen's Bench, this week, it transpired that the prosecutor, after having ruined his reputation as well as fortune by extravagance, beinglinixed up with gambling transactions, contrived after leaving the Queen's army to have himself sent out as a cadet to India. Last year, another trial in one of our courts of law re- vealed to the public the existence of systematic trafficking in In- dian commissions. All these things show the necessity of a speedy and thorough revision of the system of administration in India, where the number and variety of races and sects render equitable government, in'the most favourable circumstances, so diffieult.
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