Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1879 — British Empire in India. [ARTICLE]

British Empire in India.

Nature has defined the greatness, the unity and the limits of this giant Empire by the Himalaya range on the north, the sea on the cast, south and west. It embraces a fifth part of the entire human race; its mistress is throned on an island thousands of miles away, and this Nation of 240,000,000 is ruled by a handful of some 30,000 stiangers, whose native land was still marsh and forest, and their forefathers clothed in the skins of wild animals, when India already possessed an uncommonly rich and highly elaborated language, great epic poems, philosophical systems and social order based on religion. And their foreign rulers are divided from their subjects by everything which elsewhere associates and binds men together by race, color, religion, language manners and customs; they do not come with the intention of settling and taking root in the country, but rather with the view of leaving it again after their work is -done, and have, therefore, neither the desire nor the expectation of ever becoming fused in one social community with the natives. We look in vain for any similar phenomenon, either in the past or in the present. The Roman Empire in its best days did not include half the existing population of India; it was for long periods a mere barren military domination; the majority of its Emperors lie under the ban of history, and it passed through growing impoverishment and depopulation to its inglorious fall, while—apart from extraordinary calamities—the population of British India increases—if the statements published by Anglo-Indian authorities may be relied upon—by 24,000,000 every year.* The Caliphate was, indeed, from the eighth to the eleventh century, a worla wide empire, extending from the Indus to the Pyrenees; but it rested on the oppressive and soulkilling power of a fanatically intolerant religion, forced on the natives at the sword’s point; its history is chiefly made up of an endless series of religious wars and palace revolutions, while the gifts it bestowed on its subjects were despotism, the domestic economy of the harem, the degradation of the., female sex, and, in the higher classes, the destruction of family life. In the presentTndian Empire, on the contrary, there has never been a quarrel among the rulers, a disputed succesr sion is impossible, and no one has ever been persecuted or even placed at a disadvantage on account of his faith. Still sharper is the contrast between the former dominion of Spain in South and Central America and that of British India. The Spanish was a Colonial Empire; the natives were distributed as slaves by the colonists through their system of Encomiendas. crushed under the burder of compulsory service, completely exterminated on the islands, and destroyed by millions in Peru and Mexico. In, India, on the contrary, the English hjave not sought to become colonists and landowners. The tropical climate itself makes that impossible; no English family stays there to the third generation, and parents are obliged to send their children to a cooler climate to be brought up. Fortunately, alike for England and for India, there are no creoles, nor mulattoes, mongrels, tertiaries and quaternaries, or by whatever other, name such races and halfbreeds may be called. In a word, to compare the Spanish and English rule over subject nations would be—to use the Persian simile—like comparing the kingdom of Ahriman to that of Ormuzd.—Von Dollingcr, in Contemporary Review.

, 1 'f-L * There must obviously, aa the author himself suspected,besoq}emistakelu)re.

A lady says, in the New York Evening Post: This week when the girl made yeast bread, 1 saijl, “ Work a lump of butter into some oi that sponge and stand the breadpan on the stone floor in the cellar until further orders.” That was Monday noon. Friday wc went down cellar and looked at the sponge. Yes, that was an experiment "turning out just a» I desired. To-day, Saturday, the pan of sponge was brought up to the pantry, and 1 dissolved a teaspoonful of soda in half a teacupful of warm water, cut gashes in the sponge, poured on the soda, worked it in awhile, lifted it out on the warm kneading-board and worked i£r thoroughly, battered the big breadpan, made large rolls, set the pan in a warm place, and when baked they were like great whiteurosea. bursting-open,--Atmospheric air is so heavy that its weight upon the body is fifteen pounds to the square inch. People can understand now why it is so hard to raise" the wind.