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BEFORE attempting to describe the present constitution and functions of the local governments of British India, with their effects upon the industry of the people over whom their rule is established, it is necessary that the reader should peruse a sketch of the form of government prevailing in the early times of Hindoo supremacy, with a few notices of the modifications the system underwent during the Afghan and Mahomedan rule in India. This is the more essential, because by so doing I shall render this picture of British India more complete, and at the same time provide the means of rightly estimating the value and effects of the changes introduced in the government and taxation of the country by the legislature of Great Britain. We can but judge of men and things by contrast, and it is only by looking back to what has been done during times long since past in this vast but half-known country, that a right appreciation can be formed of the shortcomings of the present, and the hopefulness of the future of our Indian empire.

In the time of which the first records are handed down to us through the code of Menu, it appears that the government of Hindostan was founded on the relative positions of the four classes of society existing at that period.

It was vested in an absolute monarch, whose authority arose out of the necessity, and partook of the character of the extremely simple state in which the people of India lived in that remote age. He was apparently controlled by no human power, but yet was so limited in his dominance by the moral influence of the code, and the necessities of the