called them so, because they were of the tribe or caste of the banians or merchants,—­the Indians being generally distributed into trades according to their tribes.  The name still continues, when the functions of the banians are totally altered.  The banian is known by other appellations.  He is called dewan, or steward; and, indeed, this is a term with more propriety applied to him in several of his functions.  He is, by his name of office, the steward of the household of the European gentleman:  he has the management of his affairs, and the ordering of his servants.  He is himself a domestic servant, and generally chosen out of that class of natives who, by being habituated to misery and subjection, can submit to any orders, and are fit for any of the basest services.  Trained under oppression, (it is the true education,) they are fit to oppress others.  They serve an apprenticeship of servitude to qualify them for the trade of tyranny.  They know all the devices, all the little frauds, all the artifices and contrivances, the whole panoply of the defensive armor by which ingenious slavery secures itself against the violence of power.  They know all the lurking-holes, all the winding recesses, of the unfortunate; and they hunt out distress and misery even to their last retreats.  They have suffered themselves; but, far from being taught by those sufferings to abstain from rigor, they have only learned the methods of afflicting their fellow-slaves.  They have the best intelligence of what is done in England.  The moment a Company’s servant arrives in India, and his English connections are known to be powerful, some of that class of people immediately take possession of him, as if he were their inheritance.  They have knowledge of the country and its affairs; they have money; they have the arts of making money.  The gentleman who comes from England has none of these; he enters into that world, as he enters into the world at large, naked.  His portion is great simplicity, great indigence, and a strong disposition to relieve himself.  The banian, once in possession, employs his tyranny, not only over the native people of his country, but often over the master himself, who has little other share in the proceedings of his servant but in giving him the ticket of his name to mark that he is connected with and supported by an European who is himself well connected and supported at home.  This is a commission which nothing can resist.  From that moment forward it is not the Englishman, it is the black banian, that is the master.  The nominal master often lives from his hand.  We know how young men are sent out of this country; we know how happy we are to hear soon that they are no longer a burden to their friends and parents.  The banian knows it, too.  He supplies the young servant with money.  He has him under his power:  first, from the necessity of employing such a man; and next, (and this is the more important of the two,) he has that dreadful power over his master which every