stances, if they do not really impose upon the minds of the leading natives, may give them a very powerful handle for misrepresenting the intentions of government to the lower orders.

We see from the massacre of Vellore what a powerful engine attachment to religion may be rendered in Hindostan. The rumours might all have been false; but that event shows they were tremendously powerful when excited. The object, therefore, is not only not to do any thing violent and unjust upon subjects of religion, but not to give any strong colour to jealous and disaffected natives for misrepresenting your intentions.

All these observations have tenfold force, when applied to an empire which rests so entirely upon opinion. If physical force could be called in to stop the progress of error, we could afford to be misrepresented for a season; but 30,000 white men living in the midst of 70 millions. of sable subjects, must be always in the right, or at least never represented as grossly in the wrong. Attention to the prejudices of the subject is wise in all governments, but quite indispensable in a government constituted as our empire in India is constituted; where an uninterrupted series of dexterous conduct is not only necessary to our prosperity, but to our existence.

Those reasonings are entitled to a little more consideration at a period when the French threaten our existence in India by open force, and by every species of intrigue with the native powers. In all governments, every thing takes its tone from the head: fanaticism has got into the government at home; fanaticism will lead to promotion abroad. The civil servant in India will not only not dare to exercise his own judgment, in checking the indiscretions of ignorant missionaries; but he will strive to recommend himself to his holy masters in Leadenhall Street, by imitating Brother Cran and Brother Ringletaube, and by every species of fanatical excess. Methodism at home is no unprofitable game to play. In the East it will soon be the infallible road to promotion. This is the great evil: if the management was in the hands of men who were as discreet and wise

in their devotion, as they are in matters of temporal welfare, the desire of putting an end to missions might be premature and indecorous. But the misfortune is, the men who wield the instrument ought not, in common sense and propriety, to be trusted with it for a single instant. Upon this subject, they are quite insane and ungovernable; they would deliberately, piously, and conscientiously expose our whole Eastern empire to destruction, for the sake of converting half a dozen Brahmans, who, after stuffing themselves with rum and rice, and borrowing money from the missionaries, would run away and cover the Gospel and its professors with every species of impious ridicule and abuse.

Upon the whole, it appears to us hardly possible to push the business of proselytism in India to any length, without incurring the utmost risk of losing our empire. The danger is more tremendous, because it may be so sudden; religious fears are a very probable cause of disaffection in the troops; if the troops are generally disaffected, our Indian empire may be lost to us as suddenly as a frigate or a fort; and that empire is governed by men who, we are very much afraid, would feel proud to lose it in such a cause.

'But I think it my duty to make a solemn appeal to all who still retain the fear of God, and who admit that religion and the course of conduct which it prescribes are not to be banished from the affairs of nations-now when the political sky, so long overcast, has become more lowering and black than ever whether this is a period for augmenting the weight of our national sins and provocations, by an exclusive TOLERATION of idolatry; a crime which, unless the Bible be a forgery, has actually drawn forth the heaviest denunciations of vengeance, and the most fearful inflictions of the Divine displeasure.' Considerations, &c., p. 98.

Can it be credited that this is an extract from a pamphlet generally supposed to be written by a noble Lord at the Board of Control, from whose official interference the public might have expected a corrective to the pious temerity of others?

The other leaders of the party, indeed, make at present

great professions of toleration, and express the strongest abhorrence of using violence to the natives. This does very well for a beginning: but we have little confidence in such declarations. We believe their fingers itch to be at the stone and clay gods of the Hindoos; and that, in common with the noble Controller, they attribute a great part of our national calamities to these ugly images of deities on the other side of the world. We again repeat, that upon such subjects, the best and ablest men, if once tinged by fanaticism, are not to be trusted for a single moment.

2dly, Another reason for giving up the task of conversion is the want of success. In India, religion extends its empire over the minutest actions of life. It is not merely a law for moral conduct, and for occasional worship; but it dictates to a man his trade, his dress, his food, and his whole behaviour. His religion also punishes a violation of its exactions, not by eternal and future punishments, but by present infamy. If a Hindoo is irreligious, or, in other words, if he loses his caste, he is deserted by father, mother, wife, child, and kindred, and becomes instantly a solitary wanderer upon the earth to touch him, to receive him, to eat with him, is a pollution producing a similar loss of caste; and the state of such a degraded man is worse than death itself. To these evils a Hindoo must expose himself before he becomes a Christian; and this difficulty must a missionary overcome before he can expect the smallest success; a difficulty which, it is quite clear, that they themselves, after a short residence in India, consider to be insuperable.

As a proof of the tenacious manner in which the Hindoos cling to their religious prejudices, we shall state two or three very short anecdotes, to which any person who has resided in India might easily produce many parallels.

In the year 1766, the late Lord Clive and Mr. Verelst employed the whole influence of Government to restore a Hindoo to his caste, who had forfeited it, not by any neglect of his own, but by having been compelled, by a most unpardonable act of

violence, to swallow a drop of cow broth. The Brahmans, from the peculiar circumstances of the case, were very anxious to comply with the wishes of Government; the principal men among them met once at Kishnagur, and once at Calcutta ; but after consultations, and an examination of their most ancient records, they declared to Lord Clive, that as there was no precedent to justify the act, they found it impossible to restore the unfortunate man to his caste, and he died soon after of a broken heart.'-Scott Waring's Preface, p. lvi.

It is the custom of the Hindoos to expose dying people upon the banks of the Ganges. There is something peculiarly holy in that river; and it soothes the agonies of death, to look upon its waters in the last moments. A party of English were coming down in a boat, and perceived upon the bank a pious Hindoo, in a state of the last imbecility-about to be drowned by the rising of the tide, after the most approved and orthodox manner of their religion. They had the curiosity to land; and as they perceived some more signs of life than were at first apparent, a young Englishman poured down his throat the greatest part of a bottle of lavender-water, which he happened to have in his pocket. The effects of such a stimulus, applied to a stomach accustomed to nothing stronger than water, were instantaneous and powerful. The Hindoo revived sufficiently to admit of his being conveyed to the boat, was carried to Calcutta, and perfectly recovered. He had drank, however, in the company of Europeans;-no matter whether voluntary or involuntary-the offence was committed: he lost caste, was turned away from his home, and avoided, of course, by every relation and friend. The poor man came before the police, making the bitterest complaints upon being restored to life; and for three years the burden of supporting him fell upon the mistaken Samaritan who had rescued him from death. During that period, scarcely a day elapsed in which the degraded resurgent did not appear before the European, and curse him with the bitterest curses as the cause of all his misery and desolation. At the end of that period he fell ill, and of course was not again thwarted in his passion for dying. The writer of this article

vouches for the truth of this anecdote; and many per sons who were at Calcutta at the time must have a distinct recollection of the fact, which excited a great deal of conversation and amusement, mingled with compassion.

It is this institution of castes which has preserved India in the same state in which it existed in the days of Alexander; and which would leave it without the slightest change in habits and manners, if we were to abandon the country to-morrow. We are astonished to observe the late resident in Bengal speaking of the fif teen millions of Mahomedans in India as converts from the Hindoos; an opinion, in support of which he does not offer the shadow of an argument, except by asking, whether the Mahomedans have the Tartar face? and if not, how they can be the descendants of the first conquerors of India? Probably, not altogether. But does this writer imagine, that the Mahomedan empire could exist in Hindostan for 700 years, without the intrusion of Persians, Arabians, and every species of Mussulman adventurers from every part of the East, which had embraced the religion of Mahomed? And let them come from what quarter they would, could they ally themselves to Hindoo women, without producing in their descendants an approximation to the Hindoo features? Dr. Robertson, who has investigated this subject with the greatest care, and looked into all the authorities, is expressly of an opposite opinion; and considers the Mussulman inhabitants of Hisdostan to be merely the descendants of Mahomedan adventurers, and not converts from the Hindoo faith.

'The armies' (says Orme)' which made the first conquests for the heads of the respective dynasties, or for other invaders, left behind them numbers of Mahomedans, who, seduced by a finer climate, and a richer country, forgot their own.

"The Mahomedan princes of India naturally gave a preference to the service of men of their own religion, who, from whatever country they came, were of a more vigorous constitution than the stoutest of the subjected