The Diaries of Steynsham Master. Edited by Sir Richard Cameo
Temple. 2 vols. (John Murray, for the Government of India. 12s. per voL)—This work, which belongs to the "Indian Records" Series, gives us a vivid picture of British affairs in India as they wore in the early days of the Company. It is a case where no comparison between past and present can be made. On one hand we have a not very well-managed trading concern, on the other a great Empire. Steynsham Master, who was connected with the well-known Kentish family of the Oxendens, went out to India in 1856, when he was sixteen. He was with Christopher Oxenden at Surat for four years, learning his business, and then formally entered the Company's service. After eleven years of good work, in which he showed groat financial ability, ho took furlough, to use a modern phrase. In 1675 he was sent out to get things in order in the Company's factories in the Bay of Bengal. His mission lasted for six years, and it is his own record of his work, as it is to be found in his " Diary," that we have in these two volumes. It gives us, as has been said, a vivid picture of the time, and it vindicates the character of a man who seems to have done very good work for his country ; one of the honest, patient labourers who have built up the great fabrio of the Empire. He was not appreciated at the time ; the Company dis- missed him, and he has been depreciated by more than one writer on Indian affairs. Sir Richard Temple has furnished a most interesting Introduction. Readers who master this will have learnt much about the man and his time ; if they go further
and study the Diary itself and the illustrative documents which accompany it, they will find their labour well repaid. Of course there is much detail which in itself can scarcely be said to be interesting. Such are the inventories of goods belonging to deceased functionaries in the factories. But even in these we find something of value—facts, for instance, bearing on changes in value. Some of tho figures are certainly curious, so is what wo find about wages, &a. An Englishman working at Kasimbazar as a dyer gots an advance from a yearly pay of £14 8a. (reckoning the rupee at its old value of 2s.) to .618. The first sum, we learn, was "souldier's pay."
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