The details of the new Indian Census, taken on February
17th, have reached London, and are even more extraordinary than the figures on which we commented some months since. The total population of India i, 252,000,000, the• total popula,
Lion of British India 218,000,000, and the increase since 1871 little less than thirteen millions—a nation in itself—requiring masses of additional food, which we fear are not produced. The separate provinces contain great nations. Bengal Proper, with Assam, numbers 78,000,000, or more than double France ; Madras, 30,000,000, or more than Italy and Greece ; Bombay, 14,000,000, or three Swedens; Ousle, 11,500,000, or three-fourths of Spain ; the Punjab, 29,000,000, or the population of Great Britain ; and the North-West Provinces, 32,000,000, or nearly as many as the whole -United Kingdom. Is it not like us Eng- lishmen to leave that last huge territory, the very core of our power, without a name ? Its proper name, Hindostan, is disused, because people will confuse it with India, and we are too intel- lectually lazy and indifferent to adopt another. So we leave a satrapy with a population exceeding thirty millions without any geographical name at all, for no one ever writes "North- West Provinces of the old Presidency of Bengal." " Hiudostan Proper " would do quite well.
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