The corrected figures of the Bengal Census, reported in the
Times of Thursday, reveal the immense magnitude and im- portance of that province, of which, in comparison with frontier districts, so little is heard. It now contains 74,610,000 people, or more than twice the population of France, packed at the average rate of 398 to the square mile. This huge body of people, though not exactly " civilised " in our sense, is perfectly orderly, requiring no military control, is as industrious as the population of Belgium, and has created hundreds of cities and thousands of prosperous villages of which no one in Europe ever hears a word. Bengal is by far the noblest Dependency of the British Crown, and the best illustration of the capacity of Englishmen to govern gently when they are unresisted. Moreover, the government of Bengal is vivifying, as is evident not only from the enormous spread of education, but from the efforts made by the cultivated classes to secure more political power, and the astonishing freedom with which all administrative acts are discussed. The discussion is often eminently annoying, owing to the contempt of Bengalee rhetoricians for facts ; but it is a pity to modify a policy of tolerance which, in less than a century, has produced such results.
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