Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/381

Rh against an enemy from abroad, population has increased, cultivation has been extended, the country has become a great garden, and landed property has risen in value more than forty-fold in one province, nineteen-fold in another, and more than ten-fold throughout all Lower Bengal.

“The Mahratta freebooter, the murderous Patan, and the Jaut bandit, have settled down to an agricultural life, and honest labor has superseded lawless rapine as an occupation.”—Vol. I, p. 421, etc.

I can add my personal testimony to this general peace and security. Traveling for nearly ten years in a palankeen, alone and unprotected in the hands of the natives, I have slept in their serais and under their trees, often fifty miles from any white man, yet I moved in perfect security, was never molested, and never lost the value of a cent in all my peregrinations. So profound is the confidence in the power of law and the care of the Government, that ladies travel alone in this way every night in the year without hesitation or anxiety. Such is the security of person and property under English rule in India. It never was so before; and every honest and candid mind should give them credit for what they have there accomplished. The Hindoos do so frankly, and have even tried to make capital out of the wonderful fact, to the credit of their own system of idolatry, in the following singular fashion, as related by General Sleeman in his “Recollections.” He says:

“A very learned Hindoo told me in Central India that the oracle of Mahadeva (the Great God) had been at the same time consulted at three of his greatest temples—one in the Deccan, one in Rajpootana, and one in Bengal—as to the result of the government of India by Europeans. A day was appointed for the answer, and when the priest came to receive it, they found Mahadeva (Shiva) himself, with a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them ‘that their European government was in reality nothing more than a multiplied incarnation of himself, and that he had come among them in this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats, as they had been doing for