We cannot however, pursue the subject any farther at present; and simply conclude with thanking the author for his very valuable and instructive " Note."

Supplement to a "Brief View of the French in India" &c., by W. F. B. Laurie, Lieut. Madras Artillery. Calcutta, 1848.

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HAVING in our last No. bestowed a notice of considerable length "the Brief View of the French in India, we deem it unnecessary to do little else than draw the attention of those who have possessed themselves of "the Brief View, to the fact of the existence of a "Supplement. " And probably the best way of satisfying the Literary possessors of the Brief View will be to insert here the Advertisement and Notice prefixed to the Supplement. These together will convey all needful information. They are as follows:

ADVERTISEMENT.

It was during the delay in publishing that very small work, "A Brief View of the French in India," &c., that the idea of bringing out a Supplement started to my mind. The following pages are presented to the Public, as a substitute for a new edition of the "Notes on Pondicherry ;" and although matter will be found in the "Notes" which is not in these pages, and, to a less extent, vice versa; yet I have endeavoured, through revision, addition, and correction, to improve what I have selected; and I now trust that, should the "Brief View" meet with public favour, and should readers, wishing to extend their glance at the French in India, find themselves unable to obtain the "Notes" all will easily procure the Supplement.

The Chapter," Political Speculations," has never before been published; and the reflections on "Women of the East" have been considerably enlarged: these papers are the only ones which seem rather foreign to the subject of the French in India: yet they may possess interest for those who muse o'er the fate of nations, and have their own views concerning a moral revolution in India.

Sending forth this "barque legére" from the Orissa Mission Press, it may be as well to remark, that any great typographical excellence was hardly to be expected. The press-work done at Cuttack consists almost entirely of Uriya; so there is little occasion for English type. But this pamphlet, even in point of typography, may find favour from readers at home and in India, when they learn that it comes from the press, the identical Orissan Archimedes, which strives to move and better the heathen world, whose publications thunder against the "damnable heresies" of Juggernath aiding thereby the dawn of intelligence in Orissa. To the manager of the Orissa Mission Press I am indebted for his zeal and attention in the production of this Supplement.

January 1, 1848.

NOTICE.

W. F. B. L.

Subscribers to the originally projected work at 5 Rs., will receive this Supplement along with the Brief View; or, at least, as shortly after it as possible, an arrangement to which the Author hopes they will not object. To Subscribers, the price of the "Brief View," &c., with the Supplement, is fixed at Rs. 3-8. Non-Subscribers will be charged Rs. 2-8, and 1-8 respectively, for the "Brief View," and the Supplement.

May be had in CALCUTTA, of Messrs. Thacker and Co., and Ostell and Lepage ; in MADRAS, of Messrs. Pharoah and Co.; and in London, of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., 65, Cornhill.

We quite agree with the author that the typography is not only

creditable, but more than creditable to the Orissan Mission Press. We hail the march of improvement which the typographical appearance of this pamphlet indicates-issuing as it does from the neighbourhood of Juggernath's throne.

Since our Notice of the "Brief View was written, events of the most stupendous character have transpired in France and throughout Europe generally. The violent overthrow of the French Monarchy and the equally violent substitution of a republic instead, with the various organic changes which may in consequence be superinduced in the government and relationships of all the foreign dependencies of France-all tend to throw, at the present times, a fresh interest over Lieut. Laurie's laudable endeavours to illustrate the Local, Social, and Political condition of the French in India.

1. First and second Reports of the Proceedings of the Committee of the Calcutta Anti-Crimp Association: formed by Commanders of British and American merchant vessels sailing between various ports of Great Britain and the United States of America and the port of Calcutta; for the purpose of memorializing the Government of Bengal for a reform of the present inefficient state of the shipping regulations of that port, as they relate to European and American seamen, crimps and the crimping system. From the first meeting of the members, September 6, to the last meeting of the Committee on the 30th December, 1848.* With the correspondence referred to in the proceedings, and notes on the memorial, &c. Calcutta, 1848.

2. Supplement to the Reports of the Proceedings of the Committee to the Calcutta Anti-Crimp Association; formed by Commanders of British and American merchant vessels. Containing the Newspaper Reports of the two Anti-Crimp meetings held on the 11th February, 1848. To which are added, the Ship-masters' Memorial to the Governor-General in Council, for a Reform of the present inefficient state of the shipping regulations of the port of Calcutta as they relate to European, American and Native seamen, crimps and the crimping system; and the addenda of the ship-owners, under-writers, merchants and agents uniting in the prayer of the same memorial; with the appendices prepared under the instructions of the Committee, approved by the public meeting convened by the Secretary under their authority at the Free-Mason's Hall on the morning of the 11th February,

* Query 1847 ?

1848, adopted by the public meeting convened by Captain Engledue and other gentlemen at the Town Hall on the afternoon of the same date; and finally presented, by deputation appointed at the Town Hall meeting, to the Right Honorable the Earl of Dalhousie on the afternoon of March the 11th, 1848. Calcutta, 1848.

3. The Nineteenth Report of the Calcutta Seaman's Friend Society, 1847. Calcutta, 1848.

4. The Seaman's Friend Society; Sailor's Home; Crimps and the Anti-Crimp Association. (Extracted from the Calcutta Christian Advocate.) Calcutta, 1848.

ALTHOUGH the first two of the prefixed titles be of the longest, we have given them at full length, because this will in great measure supersede the necessity of our detailing the history of the " Anti-Crimp Association." The evil for whose remedy this association was formed is a most serious one, be it viewed economically, morally or religiously. But as very many of our readers may be presumed to be ignorant of what crimping is, we must give a brief account of the system, and of the class of persons engaged in it.

Every ship leaving England has her crew engaged for the outward and home voyage, and certain penalties are attached to the crime of leaving the ship, without the consent of the master, before her arrival at some port in Great Britain or Ireland. We believe it is customary for ship-masters on leaving England to grant a note of hand for one or two months' wages. These notes are payable by the owners or agents of the vessel after she has proceeded to sea. When such a vessel arrives in Calcutta after a four months' voyage, the men have of course two months' wages due to them, but this is not legally claimable until the termination of the return voyage. It is very probable that a ship may, in the course of a long voyage, or during the time that she remains in port, lose some of her crew by death, or be obliged to leave them behind in hospital. The commander of a ship thus situated must make up his complement of men, and this he finds difficult of accomplishment. He is thus obliged to give higher wages than those given in England; sometimes we believe so much higher, that seamen shipping from Calcutta for London will receive more wages for the single voyage than those who shipped from London will receive for the double voyage to Calcutta and back. Hence it is evident that a strong inducement is held out to seamen to desert from other ships; then their places must be supplied in their own ships, and so a regular system of desertion from one ship and reengagement in another ship goes on from day to day. In point of fact, it appears from the pamphlets before us that very few ships indeed leave Calcutta with the same crew that they brought to it.

As however there are severe penalties attached to desertion, and to the engagement of men in one ship who have deserted from another,

it is evident that the transfer cannot be made immediately or directly. The deserters must remain in concealment until the ships from which they have deserted leave the port; and in point of fact there is perpetually a very large number of men in this species of concealment, waiting until the ships from which they have absconded shall have sailed, when they may safely enter into service aboard of other ships.

Now as the men have no money when they leave their ships, and in general no clothes but those they wear, and perhaps a few that they have managed to bring on shore under the pretext of having them washed, the occupation of the crimps takes its rise. These men, to whose character as a body we believe we should do no injustice were we to apply to them far more vituperative epithets than any wherewithal we choose to adorn our pages, receive the sailors on their coming ashore. They supply them with board and lodging at enormous rates of charge during the period that their ships continue in port, encourage in the grossest debauchery those who too generally (alas!) need no encouragement, and then, after their own ships have sailed, have them entered aboard of other ships, and receive their reimbursement in the shape of those "advance notes" to which we have already referred.

Of course it is not only those who come on shore with the purpose formed to desert that fall victims to these harpies. Great multitudes who come on shore "on liberty," with the full purpose of returning at the proper time, are inviegled by them and seduced into the crime of desertion; and a considerable number also obtain their discharge in the hope of procuring situations on shore, or in what is called the country or coasting trade. The evils that arise from this system are manifold, and the system itself has for several years been steadily on the encrease. A few of the evils which are patent and obvious, we may as well specify. In the first place, the ships from which the men have deserted are deprived of their services in unloading and loading their cargoes; but this is not of so great moment in Calcutta as it might be in some other ports, for here the services of coolies can at any time be procured for this purpose. Then the men, that have left their ships in all the bloom and vigor of health, have their places occupied by those whose strength is totally destroyed by the dissipations in which they have indulged during their stay in the dens of the crimps. It may be easily imagined what is too often the consequence, when a ship has to be navigated down such a river as the Hugly, by men whose whole strength and substance has been sucked out of them. It may be too that the desertion takes place on the very eve of the day when the vessel should sail; the commander has engaged a steamer to tug her down the river, she is detained one or two days, before he is able to procure a fresh crew. Meantime he has to pay demurrage for the steamer at the rate of some 200 rupees a day. Such are a few of the economical results of the system to owners and under-writers.

But these evils are of no moment at all in comparison with the moral ruin that it works upon many hundreds of our sailors. Hundreds upon hundreds of youths who have left England with the high hopes and the generous enthusiasm of youth in their hearts, have buried all these in the dens of our Lal Bazar. Hundreds of mothers and sisters who have been left behind, and who count the weeks, and at last the days, that must elapse before the good ship's return are doomed to find the cup of happiness dashed from their lips, when he who left them, a fair-haired ruddy boy, with ne'er a secret that could not be confided to a sister's ear, returns with his heart contaminated, his principles perverted, his "body, soul and spirit," but a wreck of their former selves. We speak not of imaginary things but of things that happen every day, of things that we have seen again and again with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. And are not these mothers and these sisters, our own mothers and sisters, or our own wives and daughters? For in the present extensive state of the commercial relations of the British Empire, how few families there are of the middle classes of whom there is not one member whose "home is on the deep."

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As to the spiritual ruin that is the fruit of the system, we feel it impossible for us to speak in any terms even approaching to adequacy. It was of such a system, though probably far less accomplished, far less perfect in evil, that the wise man spoke when he said of a certain class of persons that their " ways take hold on death."

In order to remedy this crying evil, various plans have been suggested, many of them good so far as they go. They are of two kinds, which we may distinguish as moral and legal remedies. The former kind has been tried in Calcutta, and, it is asserted in one of the pamphlets before us, with complete success, so long as the experiment was properly conducted. We allude now to the Sailors' Home, which was founded in 1837, and which at first wrought so well that we are assured by the pamphlet in question, that after it had been in operation for eighteen months, the punch-houses were all, with a solitary exception, shut up, and the remaining one had but one occupant. Now, it is true, the Sailors' Home exists, and punchhouses exist also, by scores, and their occupants or visitors are so numerous that each owner pays three rupees a day out of his profits for his licence from Government. This statement will astonish our extra-Indian readers. We hear of the attorneys in England reclaiming vehemently against the price they have to pay for their licence. What will they say when told that the lowest punch-house keeper in Calcutta, pays 939 rupees, or £93-18s sterling a year for his, and pays it, so far as appears, ungrudgingly.

The evil therefore still existing, notwithstanding the existence of the Sailors' Home, the conclusion that many will be disposed at once to draw is, either that the Institution is not of a nature to counteract the evil, or at all events that it is inadequate to its full counteraction.