Commons Chamber

in moving that the order of the day be read for the House to resume the Committee on the East India Bill, begged to call the attention of the House to the stage of that measure. Ha trusted that the Bill would be suffered to proceed to the Committee without any previous discussion on the general principle. Such a discussion at the present moment would surely be thought unnecessary, when it was considered that there were two subsequent stages, the report and the third reading, on either or on both of which it might take place, and when to this consideration was added the reflection, how extremely material it was that no avoidable delay should take place in the progress of the Bill. He repeated therefore his hope that gentlemen would, when in the Committee, confine themselves to the discussion of the particular clauses of the Bill, and not The hon. travel into a more enlarged consideration of the subject.

thought the request of the noble lord rather extraordinary. When the Bill was read a second time the House were told that it was desirable not to discuss it, as the debate on the general principle might be taken on the question for the Speaker's leaving the chair. Now they were asked not to discuss it, as the debate might be taken on the bringing up of the report. At least this was not decorous. It was not parliamentary. For himself, he had no intention of saying a word on the question, but he protested against such a mode of treating the House.

observed, that the remarks of the right hon. gentleman would induce any one who did not know the fact, to suppose that there had not already been any discussion on the original motion for the Speaker's leaving the chair.

replied, that on that occasion there had not been an opportunity afforded to several hon. members who he knew wished to declare their sentiments to the House on this important subject.

adverting to the Committee on the 43d of the King, respecting cotton, which was fixed for that night, suggested the propriety of allowing that Committee to precede the Committee on the India Bill.

declared his intention on the third reading of the Bill of delivering his sentiments at length on the East India question. He should on that occasion particularly advert to the conduct of the Board of Controul, who had taken the East India Company up in great prosperity, and had brought them to a state of embarrassment and poverty.

also announced his intention of speaking at large on the third reading.

repeated his suggestion respecting the Committee on the 43d of the King. It was for the sake of the manufacturing interest, now so materially affected by the introduction of American cotton, that he was solicitous.

observed, that it would be convenient that the House should come to some understanding with respect to the period at which they would resolve themselves into the Committee adverted to by the worthy alderman.

said, that conceiving the East India question to be one of paramount importance, he could not consent to wave the Committee upon it for the purpose of giving precedence to the Committee proposed by the worthy alderman.

expressed himself ready to abandon the proposition, which he had given notice he would make in the Committee, on the 43d of the King, if ministers would agree to some measure that should affect the object which they had in hand. Would they repeal that Act? Would they lay a duty on American cotton?

repeated his statement on a recent evening, that he did not think any measure on the subject was advisable at this late period of the session. Unquestionably, as his proposition early in the session evinced, his opinion was, that a duty on the importation of American cotton, if any measure were resorted to, would be the best that could be adopted; but, considering that so large a proportion of members had left town, and that the commercial parties interested in the question were impressed with the persuasion that government had no measure at present in contemplation, he could not consent to. introduce any.

observed, that if his Majesty's ministers could render the blockade of the American ports effectual, the British manufacturers would be satisfied. Their objection was to the superior facility with which the nations of the continent procured American cotton.

declared that he would abandon his own proposition if government would agree to the introduction of a short Bill to repeal the Act of the 43d of the King.

once more declared, that he would not introduce, or consent to the introduction of any measure on the subject at the present period of the session. If at the commencement of the next session it should appear that the blockade was inefficient, some subsidiary measure might then be resorted to.

rose, and was speaking on the subject of the importation of American cotton, when

called the hon. gentleman to order, observing, that that was a topic which had not much bearing on the question before the House—that the order of the day for going into a committee on the East India Bill be read.

again pressed the necessity of deciding on the time at which the American cotton question should be brought forward.

was making some remarks on the effect which the prevention of the importation of American cotton might have on our manufactures, when he was interrupted by

in the following words: The House, Sir, seems to be of opinion, that the cotton question has nothing to do with that before it.

The question was then carried, and the House resolved itself into a committee. On the first clause being read by the chairman,

who had just entered the House, was proceeding to make some observations on the general principle of the Bill, when

informed the noble lord, that it seemed to be understood by the House, before they resolved into the committee, that the discussion should be confined to the particular clauses.

apologised and said, that he would avail himself of a future opportunity to communicate to the House his sentiments on the measure.

The clause was then agreed to.

On the second clause, which related to the trade to China, being read,

rose, in pursuance of his notice, to move an amendment with respect to the limitation of time. The subject had been so much dwelt and dilated upon, that he would not occupy the attention of the Committee, at any length, in stating the grounds which, in his opinion, ought to induce them to except the clause from the general rule, in point of duration, that pervaded the rest of the Bill. It appeared to him, that all the arguments which had been urged in favour of continuing the Company's monopoly of trade to India, were not only wholly unconnected with the support of a similar proposition respecting the trade to China, but were in a great measure at war with that proposition. It had always been contended by the advocates of the Company, that they opposed opening the trade to India, because it would affect the political power of the Company. They disclaimed any narrow views of commercial advantage in that opposition, maintaining that the unrestrained introduction of British adventurers into India would sap the foundation of their political power. The Company described themselves not as a commercial body, but rather as an instrument which the country had permitted to be constructed for the government of India. Now, these arguments were utterly inapplicable to the China part of the question. By opening the trade to China, the Company would suffer no diminution of political power. Neither by the irruption of adventurers, nor in any other way, could the fabric of that power be shaken by the opening of the trade to China, except as the profits of that trade might be considered as the revenues by which the sovereignty of the Company in India was maintained. He willingly admitted that the existing political character of the Company in India ought to be supported; but he contended that if at the expiration of the period to which he should propose to limit the monopoly of the China trade, it should be found that the profits of that trade were necessary to the maintenance of the sovereign authority of the Company in India, it would be wise, rather than continue the monopoly, to afford the means to the Company out of our own resources at home, to retain their political authority in India. It was contended also by the advocates of the Company, that independently of the preservation of the political power in India, by the profits arising from the China trade, that that trade must be carried on exclusively by a company. If he could admit this, he would have no hesitation in also allowing that the East India Company might be the most proper body to enjoy that privilege. But the two propositions were totally distinct. The attempt to connect the argument arising out of the expediency of maintaining the political power of the Company in India, and the argument arising out of the impossibility of the trade to China being carried on but by the Company, must naturally be unsuccessful. The question of revenue was the only one that could fairly be disputed, and this he met with a fair avowal of his opinion, that if the revenue should be found not adequate to the maintenance of the Company in the government of India, the means of making it so should be furnished by this country. That it was likely those meant would be required, he must, however, deny. India would, in his opinion, afford the Company an ample revenue for the desired purpose. But he repeated, that if the revenue of the East India Company should be found insufficient for that purpose without the profits arising from the China trade, he should be ready at the proper time to consider of the means by which the deficiency might be supplied. The question was thus reduced to very narrow grounds, and must be determined by a reference to experience and facts. It had been stated by the Company, that the trade to China was carried on with great profit to themselves, and with great advantage to the country at large. This was a prima facie reason why the merchants of this country should be allowed to participate in the benefit. In contradiction to the general declaration that it was desirable the trade of China should be in the hands of the Company alone, was the fact that other nations partook of that trade. The Americans for instance: and in the present relative situation of Great Britain and America, would it not be highly advantageous to exclude the Americans from the trade to China, and to fill up the chasm which would thereby be created with British traders? It might be that the American character had some thing in it better suited to communication with the Chinese—something more honest, more straight forward, more polished, than the British. But on those who opposed the opening of the China trade to the British merchants lay the onus probandi of shewing the motive that induced the East India Company to consider the Americans as preferable co-partners. If it were objected to him that his arguments tended to shew the expediency not of abolishing the monopoly of the China trade at the expiration of ten years, but of abolishing it at once, his answer would be, that he was not disposed, in the prosecution of any abstract system, to endanger any practical good that might exist. What he wished was, if possible, to compromise opposite interests, and to reconcile conflicting principles. On this subject, as on others, he was an enemy to sudden innovation, even when it tended only to shake existing prejudices. He should therefore propose the term of ten years, not as satisfying the principle for which he had contended, but as that period which, making allowance for interest, prejudices, and situation, it appeared to him not to be too much to concede even to arguments that had not convinced him. On these grounds he moved the insertion in the clause of an amendment, stating that the exclusive trade to China should be continued to the East India Company during the further period of ten years, from the 10th of April, 1814.

said, he would shortly state to the committee why he could not accede to the proposition of the right hon. gentleman. He used the word 'shortly,' because on a former occasion he had spoken at length on the subject; and he had heard nothing since to shake his opinion upon it. His conviction was, that the duration of the exclusive trade to China ought to be co-extensive with that of the Company's charter. Although he would not contend that, if necessity required the change, the danger arising from it Would be of such magnitude as should deter parliament from opening the China trade; yet, he contended, that in wisdom and policy, nothing short of an over-ruling necessity should induce parliament to disturb the existing mode of commercial intercourse with that empire, a mode by which an amicable understanding had been preserved with a country jealous and prejudiced. Though he would not maintain that it was impossible to devise another system under which the trade might go on, he contended, that, without some very strong motive, the existing system ought not to be broken in upon. The mode of communication adopted by the East India Company had secured the confidence of the Chinese, and it would be most unwise and imprudent lightly to risk the loss of such an advantage. The argument adduced from the participation of the Americans in the trade, was without foundation. They, no doubt, derived protection and security from the establishment of the Company, the abolition of which might probably lead to the most disastrous consequences; for it was well known how cheap commerce and foreigners were held by the Chinese government. If this country had no other resource, then the hazard of a change ought to be run, and he confessed that he should not despair of seeing a mode devised by which the benefits of the trade to China might be preserved; but the existing system was so valuable, that he could not consent to its alteration, unless on a specific necessity, and not on the general ground of commercial advantage. Looking at the question in a financial point of view, he contended, that the public would benefit more by the continuance of the monopoly than by the opening of the trade. He could not agree with the right hon. gentleman, that it would be better to increase the revenue of the Company by direct taxation, than to permit them to keep that revenue up by the preservation of the China trade. Undoubtedly, the Company could not administer the government of India unless secured in some way or other. There was a large debt for which the Company and the country were jointly responsible; and the best way to secure the payment of it would be to give to the privilege of an exclusive trade to China the same duration as to the Company's charter. On the fullest reflection that he had been able to bestow on the subject, he was persuaded that this was the Soundest policy; and he should therefore oppose the motion of the right hon. gentleman.

said, he should support the amendment. The arguments generally urged for an exclusive Company being better adapted than private merchants for carrying on the China trade, were ridiculous in the extreme. The private merchant would look as carefully into the quality of the tea he procured in China, as any public company could possibly do. He must therefore support the amendment.

was convinced the trade to China could be better managed by a monopoly than in any other way; and that those who did carry it on by means of private trade—as America—did it to a great disadvantage. Of late years the Americans had attempted to introduce the China trade into Europe, and they had found it a most disadvantageous one. To his knowledge there were cargoes of teas, &c. imported by Americans, now lying in different northern European ports, which the importers would be happy to sell at 50 per cent. loss. If there was any reason for supposing that the China trade might be opened in ten years, why not do it now? Another reason, however, for continuing the exclusive trade to China for twenty years, was, that the charter as to India was to be renewed for that period, and the profits on the China trade were deemed necessary to enable the Company to carry on their government in India.

said, the object of the right hon. gentleman's amendment was, to prevent the hands of parliament from being tied up for so long a period as twenty years; but to give them an opportunity, at the expiration of ten years, to act with regard to the Company as they might then consider wise and proper. He had heard no sufficient reason given to induce parliament to place the Company beyond their power for twenty years. It was said, that if a general intercourse with China were admitted, the government of that country might take offence, and not only drive from Canton those who occasioned the difference, but refuse to permit the Company again to trade with them, even if that branch of commerce were restored exclusively to them. But he would ask the committee, might not exactly the same thing occur, while the Company were in possession of the monopoly? Now, even if Canton were shut against us, he thought a very advantageous commerce in tea might be carried on with the Eastern Islands. The advocates of the Company stated, that the 2,500,000l. which, he believed, was the amount of the tea trade, was necessary to the revenue. This might be very true; but he was sure, as it must ultimately come out of the pockets of the people, that it would be much better to procure it by a free trade than by a monopoly.

was in favour of the Amendment.

said, that as Cochin China was not under the dominion of the emperor of China, he supposed that place was not included amongst those with which the Company were to be guaranteed in an exclusive trade. The private merchant would, he hoped, be allowed to carry on a trade with that fine healthy country, where it was understood, gold was to be found very near the surface of the earth. But the private trader having procured his bullion, he thought he should be permitted to dispose of it at Canton, as the East India Company did. He could not discover any commanding necessity for this monopoly. Why should not the Chinese have the benefit of missionaries, as well as the natives of India? Yet however anxious individuals might be to proceed to China, for religious purposes, they were precluded by the provisions of the Bill. Even if the Chinese emperor were anxious to have a few ingenious Englishmen in his dominions, the Company could prevent them from proceeding to China. Now, as the people of this country, and not the East India Company, paid those immense sums into the revenue, which had been so repeatedly spoken of, he thought it was a very great hardship that this monopoly should be suffered to exist I and he hoped government would, at least, keep in their own hands the power of opening it. Circumstances might Occur, which would render it necessary to throw the trade to China completely open. The proposed extension of the India trade might produce such alterations, even to the Company themselves, as would imperatively call for the extinction of the monopoly. Viewing the subject in this light, he should vote for the Amendment.

was decidedly adverse to the granting so valuable a monopoly for so long a term as twenty years.

sen. asked, where was the opening to the China trade, but through the East India Company? If the question was, how the country could best secure a great influx of trade, and a great revenue to this country from China, he should say, it was impossible to devise so good an introduction as through the East India Company. It was only through the China trade that the Company had been enabled to defray the expences of the Indian wars in which they had been involved on account of this country; and to limit the duration of the exclusive charter to China to ten years, was to limit the Indian charter to ten years also, instead of twenty. As to the Americans, they had conducted themselves more guardedly than the British had been found to do; and as to Co-chin-China, the Company had known it for forty years, and if an intercourse with it could have been rendered profitable, would long ago have availed themselves of it.

hoped, in any arrangement which should be made with the Company that care would be taken, that they should not turn their backs on the interest of the woollen manufacturers. A stipulation, for that purpose, ought, in his opinion, to be entered into.

said, the hon. gentleman, by voting for the Amendment, would place in the hands of parliament a controlling power, which might be directed to the point he had referred to.

thought it unjust to suppose that the Company would not in this respect act as they had formerly done.

opposed the Amendment, arguing how much more likely it was that the price of China produce should be increased, if 100 purchasers were to go to the market, instead of one. The manufacturers, too, might rest satisfied they would not export one piece of woollen cloth less than they now did; it being one of the best remittances the Company could make. Both interest and inclination therefore, would prompt them to remit it to China as formerly.

said, the proposition of the right hon. gentleman proved to him what had been effected by general discussions of this question throughout the country: for when it was first stated, that an extension of the Company's trade would be demanded, not a syllable, that he had ever heard, was mentioned on the subject of the China trade. He was convinced, if adventurers were permitted to proceed to China, the question of the Hong merchants would be, "Where is the East India Company?" and they would refuse to negociate with any other persons in their absence.

After a few words from Mr. Canning, the Committee divided—

For the Amendment	29
Against it	69
Majority	40

next opposed the clause by which notice was to be given to the Com- pany, on the 10th of April, 1831, that their exclusive trade should cease and determine, three years after that period. The hon. gentleman concluded by moving, "That, the 10th of April, 1821, should be substituted."

observed, that the proposition now submitted to the Committee, was exactly the same as that on which they had before decided. It was agreed by the Committee, that the China trade should be granted to be Company for twenty years. Now this being the only exclusive trade which they would be suffered to enjoy, the Committee were, in effect, called upon to decide the same point over again.

After a short conversation between Messrs. P. Carew, Phillips, Forbes. Grant, and W. Smith, the Committee divided, when there appeared—

For the Amendment	18
Against it	59
Majority	41

expressed his intention of proposing a clause on the bringing up of the Bill, by way of making provision for the Lascars.

observed, that any provision to that effect would be rendered unnecessary by the regulations which were under consideration.

Some observations were made on the clause vesting the power of licences in the Board of Controul, as also on the clause respecting the tonnage of ships. Lord Castlereagh could not consent to allow the tonnage to go below 350 tons. A conversation took place on another clause respecting the production of the log-books of the private ships. These clauses were passed with some amendments. The clause respecting the importation of saltpetre being confined to the Company's vessels was left out, lord Castlereagh wishing to introduce a proposition on this subject on the report. This clause had not originated in a suggestion of the Company, but of the Board of Ordnance. It would be unfair to impose a responsibility on the Company, by which they were to provide saltpetre at a low rate, if we interfered with their monopoly. On the clause respecting India built shipping, lord Castlereagh intimated his intention to bring in a Bill on that subject, leaving the present system to continue for one year. The clause concerning the whale fishery was also deferred. After some other clauses were disposed of, Upon the clause being read which respected the propagation of Christianity in India,

expressed a strong wish that this clause might be allowed for the present to pass without discussion. It was very important to get through the Bill in the committee as expeditiously as could be done, and other stages would occur for discussing (if any farther discussion was necessary) this point as well as others.

said he could not suffer a clause fraught with so much danger as this was to pass any stage without giving it his most decided opposition, and he should certainly divide the Committee upon it, but that he understood such to be the intention of an hon. member more adequate to the task.

disapproved of this clause, because it avowed the object for which missionaries were to go to India. As to the preamble to the clause, he should be glad to have it rescinded. Its only effect could be, to irritate and alarm the feelings of the people of India; and considering that we had the power of sending these evangelical teachers, without so openly and distinctly avowing the objects for which they would go, he thought it impolitic to risk the opposition of so great a body of people as might be. arrayed against our government of opinion. He did not altogether agree with what fell from an hon. member (Mr. W. Smith) on a former night on this subject. He thought the natives of India might say, if too open and avowed efforts were made to propagate Christianity, "you have taken from us our territories, you have seized upon our revenues; and not content with taking our country from us, you wish to deprive us of our religion. But our religion you shall not take from us." Might they not reason thus, if he were to judge from the feelings that generally operated on the human mind? He was as friendly as any one in that House could be to the principle of the clause. He thought they would be abandoning their duty as a legislature, if they were not to do all in their power to provide for the further propagation of that religion the blessings of which were our boast and our solace—our comfort and our hope. To neglect this would be to proclaim themselves dead to the feelings of Christians; but then they were not to risk not only the happiness but the security of so vast an empire by hasty and impolitic measures— with the bare probability of doing some good, they were not to expose the empire to many great and possibly lasting evils. His dislike to the clause was, to its open avowal, to its unqualified terms. With the view of removing these objections, amongst other alterations he should propose, after having declared that it was expedient to send persons to India for "the above purposes" (namely, to propagate Christianity), that those words be left out, and that it be declared, it is therefore expedient to send persons to India "for various lawful purposes."

deemed the wording of the clause necessary to satisfy other feelings than his own. To satisfy his own feelings he might not have thought the declarations in the clause necessary, but in a legislative measure he considered that it was incumbent on them to put forth such sentiments. But the clause enacted nothing—it declared nothing—it made no provisions for enforcing our religion or for abolishing that of the natives of India, It simply gave the weight and sanction of parliament to the principle; but so far from taking away, or doing any thing to interrupt or abolish the religion of the natives, its free exercise was in this very Bill secured to them. Their religious opinions were to remain free and undisturbed. The introduction of a declaration so temperate in the preamble, would give repose to the minds of the people, and so far from looking at it as a circumstance likely to create disturbances, he considered it in the light of a tranquillizing measure.

spoke to the following effect:^*

^* From the Original Edition, printed for Black, Parry, and Co, Leadenhall street.

I should have adhered to the prudent silence on the subject of this clause recommended to us by the noble lord who has just sat down, had it not been for the alarming exposition of it which has been given by the hon. member opposite (Mr. Wilberforce). He has fairly spoken out; and the natives of India cannot mistake the meaning of the proposed enactment. I am anxious, therefore, to offer my feeble protest against it. It appears to me a most portentous novelty in Indian legislation. In all former modes of polity for the government of India, the inviolability of the religious feelings and customs of the natives was considered a sacred and undisputed axiom. And although a resolution was voted in 1793, that it was desirable to promote their moral and religious improvement, it was a mere abstract proposition, wholly inoperative, and unembodied in any legislative shape; and therefore did not disturb (as this enactment must do, if it is not a mere dead letter) that wholesome policy, which has hitherto preserved India to us, of abstaining from all interference with the religion of its inhabitants. A departure from that policy will shake our empire in that part of the world to its centre. Not that there can be any danger of an avowed or systematic departure from it; or that on a sudden we should become so weak, or mad, or fanatical, as to renounce all the wisdom which history and experience and common sense have imparted to us. But the real danger is this; that the actual attempt, by parliamentary enactment, to convert the natives of India; and the mere suspicion on their part, however wild and visionary, that such schemes are in contemplation; will produce the same degree of mischief and disorder. No man can dream that such a project could be soberly entertained, or deliberately discussed in this House. But it has unfortunately happened, that enough has been said to diffuse this alarm in India; and the clause now inserted in the Bill, combined with certain resolutions and speeches at public meetings, and the petitions which cover the tables of both Houses of Parliament (all of which, without any squeamish or affected delicacy, profess the conversion of the natives of India to be their object), are but little calculated to dissipate or appease it. Here is at once the text and the commentary; the doctrine, and its exposition.

It is true, Sir, that all this may be said to proceed from the over-heated speculations of a certain class of persons, who have worked themselves up to a diseased degree of enthusiasm upon this subject. But my apprehensions are, that the natives of India, contemplating the matter through optics peculiar to themselves, will not distinguish between the projects of these gentlemen, and plans countenanced by the authority, and intended to be effectuated by the power of the state. For they are not only most tremblingly sensitive to alarm on the subject of their religion; but they are so little schooled in our political usages, and the genius and form of polity under which they have been nurtured are so dissonant from, the genius and frame of ours, that they will not readily separate the acts and opinions of a large portion of the country acting permissively under the state from the authentic and solemn act of the state itself. That which is permitted, they will hastily infer to be sanctioned. The time, the great legislative question now pending relative to the renewal of the Company's charter, will corroborate this inference. What other conclusions can they draw from the numerous meetings convened for the avowed purpose of deliberating about the means of converting and civilizing them; the petitions for the same objects from every part of the country; and, above all, the opinions avowed by the hon. member, and urged with all the ardour and zeal of his eloquence;—opinions, of which it is the fundamental maxim, that our subjects in the East are sunk in the grossest ignorance and the lowest debasement of moral and social character?

In confirmation of the jealousy which must be awakened amongst them by so extraordinary a zeal for their conversion, comes this preamble; evidently emanating from the petitions on the table; framed to promote the prayer, conceived in the spirit, and almost expressed in the language of those addresses. And although it is followed by a proviso, "that the authorities of the local governments respecting the intercourse of Europeans with the interior, and the principles of the British government, on which the natives of India have hitherto relied for the free exercise of their religion, shall be inviolably maintained," it is plain, that such a proviso will be nugatory and unavailing. The principle is violated, and then you declare it inviolable. You determine that facilities shall be afforded by law to the missionaries who are desirous of proceeding to India, with an affected reservation of powers in the local governments to send them back; without adverting to this obvious consequence, that those powers, if not wholly repealed, will be considerably impaired by the licences granted them by law to go out. For if the controul, under which, missionaries have been heretofore permitted in India, was the general power inherent in your governments abroad to send them home as unlicensed persons, is it not pretty clear that such a controul will be greatly enfeebled by the licences antecedently granted them at home? Hitherto, if a missionary misdemeaned himself, the remedy was at hand. His commorancy being under the connivance and permission of the local government, it was no longer connived at or permitted. The nuisance was instantly abated. But now he will be enabled to set up his licence at home against the revocation of it abroad; the sanction of the British government against the jurisdiction of the colonial governor. To be sure, the local governor, if he is determined to execute his duty, must prevail in the controversy, and the missionary will be sent to England. But is there no risk incurred of giving offence to those through whose patronage or recommendation the missionary was sent out? Is not the very circumstance of sending him back an implied censure on the discernment, or good sense, or vigilance of those who permitted him to go out? Besides, it is a discretion which must be exercised by the local governor at the hazard of drawing down on himself, at home, the clamours and resentments of a body of persons, who are every day acquiring fresh accessions of influence and numbers; who are knit together by the strongest sympathy which can unite, and the closest confederacy that can bind a party of men subsisting within the bosom of a community. The slightest affront offered to any member of their fraternity, vibrates as a blow to every one of them. It demands no great effort of fancy to conceive the spiritual denunciations with which every conventicle will ring at the persecution of brother Carey, or brother Ringle-taube, should the jurisdiction, which is still nominally left to the local governments over the missionaries, happen to visit those pious gentlemen. So that, in effect, though not in form, that controul will be removed,—certainly impaired; and the governments of India will be disarmed of the means of coercing them, when their zeal becomes licentious and dangerous. This, too, in the very teeth of ample and unanswerable documents now upon the table of this House, which demonstrate that this controul, even in its fullest extent and vigour, was insufficient to repress the evil arising from the increased number and unguarded conduct of these persons. I refer to lord Minto's letter from Calcutta, addressed to the secret committee of the court of directors, dated the 2d of November 1807. That letter states several alarming instances of misguided and intemperate zeal; and of low and scurrilous invective, circulated in the native languages, against the feelings, prejudices, and religions of the natives: and it concludes with this impressive admonition:—"On a view of all the circumstances stated in this dispatch, your committee will admit the expediency of adopting such measures as your wisdom will suggest, for the purpose of discouraging any accession to the number of missionaries actually employed under the protection of the British government, in the work of conversion." I will not shock the ears of the House by reading any extracts from these publications. They must be offensive to the moral taste of every cultivated mind: and to the people of that country they exhibit a picture of Christianity, by no means clothed in those alluring colours, which can alone win over their hearts or understandings; but displaying a fearful and disheartening system of terrors, from which the affrighted reason of man would gladly fly to the most barbarous of superstitions for refuge and consolation.

On what grounds, then, is it proposed to grant these gentlemen the further facilities which are claimed for them? Is it upon any recommendation from those who are on the spot, in high stations there; and whose testimony ought to carry with it no slight authority, not only as spectators of the movements of the native mind, but personal witnesses of the procedures and character of the missionaries? Is any case of grievance, of hardship, of persecution made out, which calls for any new provisions in their favour? Quite the contrary. The governor-general sends home a strong complaint of their misconduct, with a solemn warning against any augmentation of their numbers. So far from having been visited with persecution, the tolerance they have so long enjoyed is not withdrawn from them, even on the strongest proof of their delinquency. The offensive publications are suppressed, but the authors and circulators of them are still permitted to exercise their callings in India. Nay, the very clause which is now under discussion, gives the Court of Directors, subject to the controul of the Board of commissioners, the general discretionary powers of licensing all persons whatsoever to go out to India. The words of the preamble, therefore, which are exclusively applicable to persons going out for religious purposes, are superfluous, with this evil belonging to them; that they indicate a deliberate intention, on the part of the British government, to send out persons for the express object of proselytism.

The noble lord (Castlereagh) indeed, tells us not to be alarmed, either at the undue increase of missionaries, or the kind and description of those, who are likely to go out under the new provisions, by reminding us of the salutary controul, which the Board of India Commissioners will have over their appointment. I confess that nay apprehensions on this head would be put to rest, if the noble earl (of Buckinghamshire) who now presides at that Board were always to remain there, or if his successors were necessarily to be influenced by his prudence and good sense. No man is less infected than my noble friend with the cant and fanaticism of the day. No man is inspired with a more philosophical and dignified contempt of it. But here is the inconvenience of making a law, which, to be beneficial or noxious, depends on a personal discretion. The law is permanent; the discretion is transitory. The noble earl's successor may have a different set of opinions on this subject. He may be of the new evangelical school; careless of the mischiefs which may result from premature schemes of converting the Hindoos; or taught, by contemplating only the end which is to be attained, to consider those mischiefs as light and evanescent. So far, therefore, from pursuing a cautious and restrictive policy with regard to the missionaries, he may be of the number of those, who think that the fulness of time is arrived for Hindoo conversion; and that every inspired cobler, or fanatical tailor, who feels an inward call, has a kind of apostolic right to assist in the spiritual siege, which has been already begun, against the idolatries and superstitions of that degraded and barbarous country.

What man, that has rendered himself by study or observation competent to pronounce upon the subject, will not deprecate a provision so well calculated—from the time at which it is introduced, and the explanations with which it is ushered in—to accelerate the calamities, which folly and fanaticism have been long preparing for us in that country, and of which all that we have experienced in the horrors of Vellore may be considered only as the type and forerunner? The noble lord (Castlereagh) himself does not appear quite at ease as to the harmless or beneficial quality of the measure. He has repeatedly suggested to us, with somewhat indeed of paradox, but with great earnestness, that it was a subject too delicate for debate, and too important for deliberation. Hitherto, indeed, we had been in the habit of considering, that, in a ratio to the delicacy or importance of a legislative proposition, it became matter for grave deliberation and anxious discussion. But with regard to the policy of sending out an enactment which may probably undermine an empire, the course is to be inverted. We are required to enact a secret; to whisper a legislative provision; and to convey it clandestinely and without noise into the statute book. This, I say, looks like somewhat of diffidence in the noble lord as to the safety or propriety of the measure. That which it is expedient to adopt, it can never be unwise to discuss. But I know the embarrassments of the noble lord's situation. I know that this measure must be considered to have been rather wrung from his good-nature, than to be the legitimate fruit of his understanding; and that it has been reluctantly conceded by way of compromise, to brush off as it were the importunities that have so long assailed him. However, as it will be no easy matter to make a law affecting the feelings, the rights, and the happiness of so many millions of men, without letting them into the secret; I am disposed to suspect, that the enactment, when it reaches India, will inspire the more alarm, from the very mystery and concealment in which the noble lord has endeavoured to envelope it. I cannot therefore shrink from the discussion.

Reasoning only á priori, and with the total oblivion and disregard of all facts (if those facts could be forgotten or overlooked), I should entertain strong apprehensions of this clause, from what I myself know concerning the irritable feelings both of the Hindoos and Mussulmauns, upon the subject of their religions. But all á priori reasonings would be absurd, with the fatal occurrences of Vellore, in 1806, staring us in the face, and preaching volumes of admonition against the folly or rather the madness of reviving an alarm in India, of which those occurrences have bequeathed us such mournful illustrations. It is a transaction which has been much misunderstood. It was a religious mutiny, in the strictest sense of the expression. It originated from a belief artfully instilled by the emissaries of the Mussulmaun princes^* into the minds of the seapoys, that the British government intended to convert them gradually to Christianity. If any one affects to doubt concerning the origin to which I have traced it, let him read lord William Bentinck's proclamation of the 3d of December following, nearly six months after the mutiny; an interval which had been employed in a minute and accurate investigation into the causes which led to it. The fact is distinctly stated in that paper. It was issued by the government of Madras, to dispel the apprehensions which had worked up the native mind to that dreadful carnage. That proclamation is among the papers on your table. There is also among the same papers, the recorded opinion of lord Minto, given nearly two years afterwards, of the same tenor, and deduced from the same materials. I know it has been the fashion amongst some reasoners to narrow the causes of this event to the injudicious orders, which had been issued about that time, respecting the shape of the turban, and prohibiting the distinctive marks of caste on parade. But they confound what in human affairs are so frequently unconnected and disjoined; I mean, the cause and the occasion. The cause was in the inherent and fixed antipathy of the natives to any change of their religion. The occasion was, the proposed alteration in their dress, with the prohibitions against wearing their marks of caste; which unhappily furnished a powerful topic to awaken and inflame that antipathy, to those who, being implacably adverse to the British authority, were naturally eager to seize every opportunity of seducing the native soldiery into their own schemes of alienation and resistance. The orders, though highly obnoxious, would under other circumstances have been submitted to. Similar orders had been cheerfully obeyed, because they had been unconnected with any religious purpose. In truth, much unmerited obloquy has been thrown on a most gallant and honourable officer, now holding a high colonial station, (sir John Cradock,) for having issued those orders. But it is a justice due to my highly-valued friend, to state, that he had satisfied himself, by the reports of the most experienced official men, that those orders were not at variance with the feelings and prejudices of the natives; and these reports were confirmed by the testimony of some of the oldest native officers, and the opinions of Brahmin and Mahommedan doctors. We must therefore look to the specific circumstances which made the orders in question offensive. They were these. The seapoys were taught to consider them as exterior signs of that gradual conversion to Christianity, which other circumstances had given them reason to suspect was meditated by the British government. Unfortunately, those circumstances were of a kind most likely to strengthen this misconception: for it did happen, that, for some time before the massacre of Vellore, an unusual degree of countenance had been shewn to the various missionaries who had insinuated themselves into India. They had been permitted to circulate, with extraordinary industry, in different parts of the Carnatic, translations of the Scriptures into the native languages; and had exerted much inconsiderate zeal in the commentaries and expositions which accompanied them. The ecclesiastics, too, at the principal presidencies happened at this time to be of the evangelical school; Mr. Buchanan at Calcutta, and Doctor Kerr at Madras. These gentlemen were zealous patrons of the sectarian missionaries. Of course, these persons, thus patronized and caressed, sent home accounts of the flattering reception they had met with. Those accounts induced the societies in Europe to send out fresh exportations. The indiscreet activity of these persons, and their increased numbers, confirmed the suspicions which had been infused into the minds of the seapoys concerning the late innovations in their dress. The result was, that dreadful massacre to which it is impossible to look back without trembling. If it is imagined that the plot, which broke out, indeed, only at Vellore, was confined to that garrison, the matter is much under-rated. It was to have been a general rising on the same day at every principal station in the peninsula: Nundydroog, Cannanore, Quilon, and even at Madras. And had it not been prematurely executed about a week before the appointed day (in consequence of information given by a native officer, which however was not regarded, but the informer actually confined as a madman), the British name would now have been a mere matter of history in India.

^* They were confined in the fortress of Vellore.

Is it possible, that this House will go off into such a fit of absurdity and fanaticism, or be visited with so fatal a fatuity, as not to keep so awful an event before them, in the grave discussion of matters affecting the religion of that country? That event has interposed the warning of sobriety and wisdom to this head- long, precipitate, busy, meddling, gossipping, officious, interference with matters, which the laws of God and nature have placed beyond our jurisdiction. What is the lesson it has left us? Why, that our subjects in India, immoveably passive under our political domination, are wakefully sensitive to all attempts at a religious one; that while they are upholding our empire by the steady and willing services of a patient and unwearied attachment, there are still limits to their allegiance, however firm and enduring, in those unconquerable feelings, and unbending habits, which bind them, as by links of adamant, to the religion and laws of their country. Surely, Sir, we need not the acting over again of that dreadful drama, to be taught, that all attempts on their religion, however cautiously and covertly made, must not only be unavailing, but calamitous; and if the change in the shape of a turban, or the temporary disuse of the marks on their forehead, drove that most passive and obedient soldiery into the bloody revolt of Vellore, what may we not dread from grave discussions at meetings convened for the avowed purposes of converting them; those purposes avowed in petitions from every town in England, and countenanced by a large portion of the legislature of Great Britain, while the great question relative to the civil and political administration of that country is still under its deliberation? If the atrocities of Vellore were prompted by unfounded suspicions, or causeless jealousies, I fear, should that dreadful scene be again acted, we shall be deprived even of that consolation: for we are now administering to their religious fears, something more than mere pretexts to feed on. I feel, therefore, most unaffected apprehensions on this subject; so much, that if my hon. friend (sir Thomas Sutton) had not moved his amendment, I should have proposed a clause of a very opposite character from the noble lord's; prohibitory, instead of permissive, of the ingress of missionaries into India; and accompanied with a solemn declaration, that the inviolability of the religion of the natives ought to be the basis of whatever political system it may be expedient to provide for them.

It is by this policy that India has hitherto been governed. The court of directors, I trust, are not unmindful, that it is the only policy, which can keep the native mind tranquil. Were they not so, with the ample communications they have had from India on this most delicate subject, they would exhibit a memorable proof of their unfitness for any share in its government. It would be their own attestation to their own incompetency. But is there not already a most fatal oblivion of that policy? The opinions of more than one member of that board who scarcely lag behind the wildest enthusiasts in the great work of conversion, have filled me with apprehension. They are omens of the most alarming kind. They convince me, that the powers granted by this clause will be most unsparingly exercised. But should that not be the consequence, those opinions will corroborate the fears already prevalent amongst the natives, who have so long and habitually contemplated the court of directors as the chief depositary of their interests, and the organ in which the political power of Great Britain in India chiefly resides. Mr. Cowper, in his evidence, furnished us with a most important aphorism, when he told us, that "an expression of the most distant recommendation on the part of persons in power, is received by the Hindoos and Mussulmans as a kind of order."^*

^* See vol. 25, p. 496.

When I see, therefore, that this spirit of religious enthusiasm, which has so long been at work amongst ourselves, is likely to be let loose on a people not more disjoined from us by their customs and prejudices, than by the ocean that divides us; and that ultimate success is problematical, while intermediate mischief is inevitable; it can be no difficult matter to find out the genuine deductions of duty and reason and common sense. And are these deductions overturned by setting up the general, vague, indefinite duty of imparting the Christian religion to every country and people, whom the mysterious ordinances of heaven have hitherto deprived of it? For, as all human duties lie within certain lines of expediency and practicability, it is plain, that the alleged duty is destroyed and negatived by the inexpediency and danger of bringing it into action. In these cases, then, it is our business first to inquire, whether morality and right reason prescribe any, and what mode of action; or (which is a still more important question) impose on us the obligation of acting at all? Whether, to put it into a form more developed and precise, the alleged duty of acting is not overpowered by the opposite and antagonist duty of not acting at all? For it would be absurd, in any problem of civil or moral duty, to shut from our contemplation the probabilities of success or failure. It would be worse than absurd to overlook the dangers of the experiment; and of an experiment, which, in this instance, is to be tried on a machine so delicate, so complex, and so easily deranged as our empire in India. This appears to me the point we are to decide; remembering at the same time, that the Hindoo religion is not only to be overthrown, but the Christian planted: and taking care to discover, whether we may not eradicate the religion of India without advancing at all nearer to the establishment of our own: and in so doing, get rid of a system which is beneficial to a certain extent, without being able at last to replace it with a better. The faintest probability of our stopping short of the full accomplishment of our project, of preaching down the Hindoo religion (the first step only in the process,) and getting no further, ought of itself to make us wary and cautious in undertaking it. Neither reason nor history tells us, that the adoption of a new religion is a necessary consequence of the abdication of the old. It is one thing to dispel the charm that binds mankind to established habits and ancient obligations; and another, to win them over to the discipline of new institutions, and the authority of new doctrines. In that dreadful interval, that dreary void, where the mind is left to wander and grope its way without the props that have hitherto supported, or thelights tnat hitherto guided it, what are the chances, that they will discern the beauties, or submit to the restraints of the religion you propose to give them? What then will have been done? You will have extinguished a system, which, with ail its demerits, has been the very foundation of your empire in India. You will have destroyed that peculiarity of national character, that singular contexture of moral properties, which has given you an immense territory, an immense revenue, and 60 millions of subjects; while you will have done nothing more towards the realization of your own schemes, than the destruction of those institutions, that have for ages kept the vices and passions which overrun the western world from that favoured country. Such may be one result of our experiment. The missionaries, it seems, from the papers on the table, have begun at this end of the project. Their efforts have been directed to the pious object of disgusting the natives with their religion, their laws, their customs, and every thing that is venerable and authoritative amongst them.

There is no controversy about ends. No man can be more unaffectedly solicitous than myself for the diffusion of Christianity. I should be undeserving of an audience in a Christian assembly, were I cold or indifferent to its blessings. But there are questions, desirable as it may be to infuse Christianity into India, which will give pause to deliberate minds in attempting it. Have I the means of accomplishing my purpose? If I have not, will not the mere attempt be attended with calamities, that constitute an opposite duty to abstain from it? Not that this is the sort of reasoning which will go down with those who are so hotly engaged in the work of conversion; and who (such is the nature and character of all religious enthusiasm) are little likely to be startled or appalled by the difficulties they will have to encounter, or the miseries they may produce, in the glorious object of making sixty, millions of men Baptists or Anabaptists. But, seeing the dangers, and difficulties, and suffering, that must result from the experiment, the conversion of that immense population seems, for the present at least, out of the course of things. It is only through the circumstances that surround him, that Providence deigns to confer with man. For as Providence condescends to act by human instruments and human agencies, it can be no impiety in us, who can calculate only on the efficacy of human means as applied to human objects, to pronounce a purpose discountenanced by so many impediments, and exposed to so many evils, to be out of his destinations. The power of working miracles is not assumed. The conversion of Hindostan by an instantaneous effusion of grace is not expected. Force is disclaimed. Not that there is any great magnanimity in disclaiming force; since no force could be effectually applied to an object so incommensurate with all physical means of obtaining it. If, therefore, it is probable that the mere attempt, though unaccompanied with force, will be both abortive and mischievous, I confess that my understanding is driven into this inference (no doubt a gloomy one), that the mere attempt ought to be discountenanced. It seems no easy matter, however, to persuade gentlemen of the impracticable- lity of their project; and having, by some rapid process of reasoning, made up their minds to its practicability, they seem to laugh at its dangers. But they are ignorant of the very elements of their experiment; of the raw material they have to work upon; in one word, of the Hindoo mind and character. They appear never to have reflected, that this artificial being, moulded, and fashioned, I had almost said created, by his religious institutions, (and all his institutions are religious ones,) is distinguished by properties, that give him no affinity to the proselytes who crowd their tabernacles and conventicles. They apply to this most singular people the same reasonings that are applicable to mankind in general; wholly unmindful of that deep colour of character which has divided them, almost since the foundation of the earth, from the common family of the world. For, the same peculiarity which the philosophical historian attributed to the ancient Germans, might with equal truth be attributed to the Hindoos: "Propriam atque sinceram, et tantum sui similem gentem." Rendering therefore full homage, as I am disposed to do, to the purity and benevolence of the motives which actuate the advocates for conversion, I am convinced, that had they been sufficiently skilled in the genius and moral constitution of the Hindoos to appreciate the temporal misery which every Hindoo convert must suffer, their humanity would long ago have taken the alarm, and probably dissuaded them from the further prosecucution of their scheme. Can it be necessary then to remind them of the stupendous moral effects produced in that country by the division of castes? The loss of caste is the immediate consequence of conversion; and it is the most dreadful ill with which an Hindoo can be visited. It throws upon him every variety of wretchedness. It extinguishes all the wholesome charities and kindly affections. His very kindred desert him. It becomes an abomination to eat with him, or even to speak to him. The hand is accursed that ministers to him. All mankind fly from him, as from an infection. His only refuge from this overwhelming force of misery is death; a solitary, friendless, uncomforted death, amid the scoffs, and scorn, and revilings of his species. I am drawing no fancied picture. The reports of the missionaries themselves have given more than one instance of it. The very few converts, whom they have made among those who are entitled to the privilege of caste, have endured all this: a circumstance that will account satisfactorily, I should think, for this most curious and important fact; that amongst persons of caste, that is, amongst those who essentially are and alone ought to be denominated Hindoos, they have hardly made any converts at all. The great mass of their proselytes, scarcely exceeding eighty in seven years, are drawn from the Chan-dalâhs, or Pariars, or out-casts; a portion of the population who are shut out from the Hindoo religion, and who, being condemned to the lowest poverty and the most sordid occupations, are glad to procure, by what the missionaries call conversion, whatever pittance they are enabled to dole out for their subsistence. As to the church of Syrian Christians, which has so long subsisted in the province of Travancore, let us be on our guard against the ingenuity with which it is made to form a part of the argument. They are not descendants from the original inhabitants of Hindostan; of course, therefore, they can never be said, in fairness, to have been converted from the Hindoo religion to Christianity. They are the remnant of a church planted there in the early ages of Christianity; where they have remained, without any material increase of numbers, from their primitive institution; tolerated and despised by the successive rajahs. They are an independent community amongst themselves; and are not only too narrowly watched to make converts; but, I believe, from the influence of mutual habitudes and intercourses between them and the community in the bosom of which they are permitted to reside, wholly indisposed to molest them by any unseasonable or indiscreet attack on their feelings or prejudices.

This division of caste has always erected an invincible barrier to the proselytism of the Hindoos. A Gentoo considers the privileges of his caste as exclusive and incommunicable. It is this that imparts to him the highest prerogatives of his nature. Man is not separated by a wider discrimination from the inferior world, than that which the pride and dignity of caste have interposed in that country between the several orders of mankind. He acquires a class of emotions incident to the character that elevates him. He breathes, as it were, a more etherial element. Taught to revere himself by the same standard which secures to him the esteem and reve- rence of others, he considers the loss, or even the pollution and degradation of his caste, as evils worse than death. The same feelings descend through each successive gradation; each caste cultivating the same spirit of an exclusive character; all of them united in one common sentiment of contempt of the Pariars, or outcasts, amongst whom they class the Christian missionary and his convert; the pastor and his disciple. Some new power, therefore, hitherto undiscovered in the moral world, and equivalent to that which the old philosopher required in the physical, will be requisite to pull down this consolidated fabric of pride and superstition, which has stood, unmoved and undecaying, the sudden shock of so many revolutions, and the silent lapse of so many ages. If you begin with one caste, you have to fight in another against the same host of feelings, motives, and affections, which render place and homage and distinction despotic over the heart of man. Your struggles are only begun when you have converted one caste. They are perpetually to be renewed. Never, never, will the scheme of Hindoo conversion be realized, till you persuade an immense population to suffer, by whole tribes, the severest martyrdoms that have yet been sustained for the sake of religion; to tear themselves from every habit that sways in the human bosom; from the sweets of social communion; the ties of friendship; the charities of kindred; from all that life contains to support or adorn it; and all this—to embrace a new religion proffered them by polluted hands; a religion on the threshold and in the very vestibule of which are planted all the appalling forms of penury, contempt, scorn, and despair:

Vestibulum ante ipsum—

Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia curæ,

Et metus et male-suada fames et turpis egestas.

And are the missionaries, whom this Bill is to let loose upon India, fit engines to accomplish the greatest revolution that has yet taken place in the history of the world? With what weapons will they descend into the contest with the acute, the intelligent Hindoo, prepared to defend his religion by reasonings drawn from the resources of a keen and enlightened casuistry, and wielded with all the vigour of a sharp and exercised intellect? Will these people, crawling from the holes and caverns of their original destinations, apostates from the loom and the anvil, and renegades from the lowest handicraft em- ployments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they will have to encounter, should the brahmins condescend to enter into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace and discomfiture of whole hosts of tub-preachers in the conflict? And will this advance us one inch nearer our object?

In whatever aspect I view the question, the impracticability of converting India by such means to Christianity looks me in the face. The advocates for the scheme have scarcely favoured us with one argument, that shews it to be practicable. In some of the papers, however, published by the Baptists, there appears a faint historical analogy, from which they infer the probability of success; and a learned and honourable gentleman near me (Mr. Stephen) put it in the shape of an interrogatory to one of the witnesses at the bar. He asked Mr. Graham, "Whether the natives of India were more attached to their superstition, or more under the influence of the brahmins, than our ancestors in this island were to their superstitions under the influence of the druids?" The witness, it may be recollected, very modestly declined speaking of the druids from his own personal knowledge; but expressed himself pretty strongly as to the folly and danger of interfering with the religion of India. Does the learned and hon. gentleman think that there is the slightest analogy between the two religions? The religion of the druids was extirpated from this island by the ancient Romans, because its institutions were too intractable and unyielding, to give them quiet possession of their conquest. But it was not extirpated till their priests were slaughtered, their sacred groves and temples destroyed, and their population ravaged, with every species of bloody and ferocious violence. I advert to the finishing stroke given to that religion in Britain, under Suetonius Paulinus. To make the analogy, however, at all an approximation to an argument, the hon. member is bound also to contend, that the Roman procedure towards the druids is to be followed as a precedent by us with regard to the Hindoos. The hon. member's humanity starts at the suggestion. Why, then, the argument drawn from the analogy is destroyed. But whatever points of resemblance there may be between the two religions, they will be found to furnish an argument against our interference with that of the Hindoos. Those points of resemblance are these: the exclusive character common to both; the domination of the priesthood; the indissoluble and adamantine strength with which the soul and all its faculties were bound to the druidical, as they are now to the brahminical system; the jealousy, with which the druids once preserved, and the Hindoos still preserve, the inviolability of their faith. Why then, if the civilized conquerors of ancient Europe, deeming it expedient to get rid of the druidical superstition, and not, as it may be presumed, ignorant of the most efficacious means of effecting it, found that there was no other mode but extirpation—the matter is settled. The means of extirpating the Hindoo religion are not in our hands: extirpation is out of the question: and we must endure the evil. But here the resemblance stops. The points in which these religions differ, will supply much stronger illustrations (if they were wanted) of the danger and folly of interfering with that of the Hindoos. The superstition of the druids inspired a spirit of resistance to the civil and military yoke of their conquerors. That of the Hindoos makes them the passive, unresisting subjects of theirs. It is of the very essence and nature of the Hindoo religion to extinguish and subdue the spirit of civil resistance. Accordingly, the natives of Hindostan have borne with the most unrepining acquiescence from their Patan, Tartar, and Mahommedan invaders, every shape and mode and alternation of oppression. But neither the Tartar nor the Mahommedan sword could subdue their religion.

Well then, let us survey the ground we occupy, before we advance further. We have a mighty empire in India, from which a great revenue has hitherto been derived, and an exuberant tide of wealth may hereafter flow in upon us; a civil and a military government cheerfully and quietly obeyed by many millions of its inhabitants, disciplined and nurtured to that obedience by the peculiar genius and character of the religion we are anxious to destroy. It is required of us, in defiance of all that experience and reason have taught us, that we should throw away what we have acquired, or at least incur the hazard of losing it, in order to erect a spiritual ascendancy on the ruins of our political dominion. Such, also, are the inconsistencies and contradictions that beset us in this extraordinary discussion, that the very gentlemen (Mr. Grant, and Mr. Thornton) who are the most eager for this evangelical project,—alarmed at the perils that threaten their exclusive privileges, and in defence of those privileges imploring us jealously to shut the door of India, even on those who, being invited thither by commercial enterprize, must have an obvious interest in carrying on a quiet, prudent, and conciliatory intercourse with the natives—feel no scruple to tell us, that there is no danger in opening every port to swarms of missionaries, and hosts of fanatics; men, whose nature and character it is, to consider themselves absolved from all human restraints, and free from all human motives, in effecting the objects of their calling. Nay, the same reasoners, while they would convince us that so fixed and immutable are the prejudices and customs of our subjects in the East, that it is absurd to expect that they will consume our woollen cloths and hardware manufactures, have no compunction, in the same breath, to contend that those prejudices and customs, fixed and immutable as they are, would by no means impede the reception of the coarsest texture of theology, that can be dealt out from the shops of the Anabaptists, or woven in the loom of their fevered and fanatic fancies. It is in vain to tell them, that every European throat will be cut, if the missionaries are encouraged, and the attempt at conversion persisted in. The answer is—These are ridiculous fears; bugbears, to use the phrase of the hon. member (Mr. Wilberforce) that haunt the imaginations of that part of the House, who, having been in India, are the least competent to pronounce on the subject. It savours indeed somewhat of paradox, that we should be disqualified from bearing testimony by the only circumstance that can entitle us to credence. It is our fate, however, to hear things pushed still nearer to the brink of absurdity. For the hon. gentleman, to shew that no danger is to be apprehended from missionaries, assures us that they have carried their zeal so far, as to publish and circulate the most indecent attacks upon the customs and opinions of the natives, and that no commotion has yet followed;—a fact which suggests a strong argument for recalling those who are now in India, or preventing any more from going out; but which is not quite so clear in favour of granting them fresh facilities. The fact itself, how- ever, is questionable. The conduct of the missionaries has already excited much disquietude amongst the natives. The papers on the table, particularly the letters from the Bengal government, shew it. But had they been wholly passive and silent, whilst these persons were reviling their institutions, would it be good reasoning to suppose, that there was no point of endurance beyond which they would cease to be the contemptuous witnesses only of the folly and phrenzy of the missionaries? It is comparatively but yesterday that we became the dominant power in that country. When we had no political ascendancy there, they were not alarmed at the prospect of a religious one. It is not so now. Every other power in India has been gradually absorbed into our own. They can bear that. They are unmoved spectators of your rapid strides to territorial conquest and political power. But when, with all this territorial influence and political power, you begin to make laws, and preach parliamentary sermons about their religion, they will begin to connect your politics and your religion together, and endeavour to shake off the one to secure themselves from the other.

What matters all this to a finished and graduated doctor in the new evangelical academies? He is not disturbed by the prospect of a little mischief. The end sanctifies the means. The people of India are sunk into such gross heathenism; their superstitions are so brutal; their national character is such a compound of fraud, falsehood, perjury, cunning, and I know not what vices, that the duty of converting them takes the lead of every other in importance, and is influenced neither by those times, seasons, or opportunities which regulate and controul the other duties of life. Such is the senselesss cant of the day. I have no scruple in saying, that this cant is founded on the falsest assumptions. I say nothing of the total want of philosophical precision in comprehending the mixed character of an immense population covering an immense territory within the terms of one general national description. But this I will say; that if such is our opinion of our fellow subjects in India, we are unfit to govern them. It is a mischievous hypothesis, corrupting the very fountains of pure and beneficent administration. Hatred and contempt for those whom you govern, must, in the very nature of things, convert your government into a stern and savage oppression. On the other hand, a favourable estimate of the character of this very people (it is a striking passage in their history) softened even the rugged features of a Mahomedan government into a paternal and protecting policy. The emperor Akber, a name dear to Oriental students, under the influence of an enlightened vizier (Abulfazel) who had learned to form a correct estimate of the Hindoo virtues, governed them, as we are told, with such equity and moderation as to deserve and obtain the title, which has alone transmitted his memory to posterity, of "guardian of mankind."

I hope therefore that I heard not aright, when an hon. member (Mr. W. Smith) discoursed of the Hindoos as a people destitute of civilization, and degraded in the scale of human intellect. Is it possible that such things can be imagined? Whence has the hon. member, whose learning in their customs and history I am bound by the courtesy of the House not to call in question, whence has he derived this theory of their moral and intellectual inferiority? Is it in the remains to be traced through that vast continent, of a system of law and polity, which shews them to have been a people abounding in all the arts which embellish life, and all the institutions which uphold it, from an æra long before the dawn of our most venerable establishments, and before the primæval silence of our forests had been, broken by the voice of man; professing also the great principles of natural theology, the providence of God, and the future rewards of virtue, before our ancestors had arrived at the rudest elements of a religion? Is it in that habitual government of the passions, that absolute subjugation of the will to the reason, which would shame the Stoic doctrine, and falls little short of that purity and perfection of the Christian discipline which the best of us rather hopes, than expects to attain? Indeed, when I turn my eyes either to the present condition or ancient grandeur of that country; when I contemplate the magnificence of her structures; her spacious reservoirs constructed at an immense expence, pouring fertility and plenty over the land, the monuments of a benevolence expanding its cares over remote ages; when I survey the solid and embellished architecture of her temples; the elaborate and exquisite skill of her manufactures and fabrics; her literature, sacred and profane; her gaudy and enamelled poetry on which a wild and prodigal fancy has lavished all its opulence: when I turn to her philosophers, lawyers, and moralists, who have left the oracles of political and ethical wisdom, to restrain the passions and to awe the vices which disturb the commonwealth: when I look at the peaceful and harmonious alliances of families, guarded and secured by the household virtues; when I see amongst a cheerful and well ordered society the benignant and softening influences of religion and morality; a system of manners, founded on a mild and polished obeisance, and preserving the surface of social life smooth and unruffled;—I cannot hear without surprise, mingled with horror, of sending out Baptists and Anabaptists to civilize or convert such a people, at the hazard of disturbing or deforming institutions, which appear to have hitherto been the means ordained by Providence of making them virtuous and happy.

Where is the evidence to support the bill of indictment which the hon. member has drawn up against the natives of India? Here we are, as usual, treated with general and unmeaning invective. But it seems, that the Hindoos are addicted to perjury; and sir James Mackintosh is cited as an authority, because he lamented, in pretty strong language, the prevalence of judicial perjury, from the numerous instances of it which fell under his own observation, as judge of the Recorder's court at Bombay,—a jurisdiction, by the bye, scarcely exceeding five miles. And what judge in this country has not made the same complaint? But is this a fair sample of the national character of Hindostan? Is it a rational ground upon which criminal judgment ought to be pronounced on the aggregate population of that vast territory? What would be thought of that reasoner on the manners and moral qualities of the people of Great Britain, who, happening to be present at the trial of a horse-cause at Nisi Prius, and hearing twenty witnesses swearing flatly to the soundness and perfection of the animal when he was sold, and as many on the other side swearing that he was spavined or wind-galled and a mass of defects, should jump into the conclusion, that perjury was the general characteristic of her enlightened and cultivated inhabitants? Is it candid, or just, or correct, to dip your hands into the feculence and pollution of a great empire for a specimen of its general character? The Hindoos, like every mixed portion of mankind, are infected with the great and lesser vices, which disfigure human society:—fraud, theft, perjury, and the other offences, which it is the province of law and police to keep down. But is that enough for the hon. gentlemen, who are so intent on the conversion of the Hindoos? Will that chequered state of virtue and crime, which with different modifications is the moral condition of every civilized nation, authorise a wild and visionary attempt to pull down ancient establishments which have struck their root deep into the hearts and affections of a people? At any rate, these revolutionary projectors have a tremendous burden of proof thrown upon them. They are bound to prove that the people, whose habits, laws, and religion they are about to break up, is so far depressed beneath our own level in morals and civilization; so brutalized by their superstitions; so regardless of that universal law of nature which holds together the common confederation of man; so loose from the yoke of manners, and the restraints of moral discipline, and, by consequence, incapable of holding those relations which pre-suppose and require some progress in culture and refinement;—in one word, is in so helpless and savage a condition, as to constitute it a duty on our part to give them a religion, in order to raise them to an equality with the species to which they nominally belong.

But these are reasonings, which however applicable to the savages that roam along the river Niger, or the Caffres and Hottentots who people the south of that continent, are not quite so applicable to the natives of India. They, Sir, are under the guidance of a religious system, favourable in the main to morality and right conduct; mixed indeed with superstitions which dishonour, and absurdities which deform it; but many of which are already worn out; and many will hereafter give way to more enlightened habits of thinking in the progress of that gradual march of human societies, which reason and philosophy tell us is never stationary or retrograde in the affairs of mankind. As to their civilization (it is almost ridiculous gravely to argue the question), let it not be forgotten what colonel Munro, not the least intelligent of the witnesses who have been examined upon the state of India, told us with so much emphasis: that, "if civilization was to become an article of trade between the two countries, he was convinced that this country would gain by the Import cargo."^* The same witness has distinctly pointed out to us in the Hindoos one of the most infallible indications of refinement which can characterize a cultured people. It is a maxim which history and philosophy have established, that no nation can be barbarous or uncivilized, where the female condition is respectable and happy. That gentleman, among the most striking of the Hindoo characteristics, has enumerated the deference and respect which is paid to the women; the obeisance which usuriously pays back what it receives in the grace and splendour which it throws over social life, arid which, producing and re-produced, is at once the parent and the fruit of good institutions. The hon. member for Norwich, however, not unmindful of the obvious effect of that testimony, triumphantly quotes from the Institutes of Menû, the great lawgiver of India, a passage in which I think six cardinal vices are attributed to women: and then he asks us, whether the influence of that religion can be beneficial, when it appears, from such high authority, that the female condition is so despicable and degraded? Those vices were, an inordinate love of finery, immoderate lust, anger, and other propensities, which I will not enumerate. Now, the hon. member appears to me strangely inconclusive in his argument. The lawgiver, like other moral teachers, denounces the frailties and infirmities to which the heart is inclined. Looking into the female bosom, he found what the female bosom, in every state of society, would furnish; a fluttering busy group of vanities, of desires, of passions; the theme of satirists and moral writers in all ages and countries. Pope said, that "Every woman is at heart a rake." Would it not be more than nonsense to adopt it as the criterion of the manners or morals of our countrywomen? But the denunciation of failings to which we are prone by the very law and condition of our existence, is no proof of their undue or excessive prevalence. It is legitimate reasoning to infer the defective morality of a country, from its immoral practices; but not to prove its immoral practices by the moral admonitions against them. It is unfair to infer a debauched and vicious state of female manners, from the precepts of moralists, or the denunciation of lawgivers against female vice and debauchery, or to deduce the existence of the offence from the existence of the propensity. Religion, law, and imorality, are barriers between propensities and vices. To say that women are by nature subject to the impulses of lust, is to say nothing more, than that they are subject, by the laws of nature, to an instinct which she ordained for the conservation of the species; an instinct, which, and against the unhallowed or unlawful indulgence of which the warning of morality and wisdom is wisely interposed. The inference deducible from the passage is not that the morals of the women are defective, but that the system of moral precept is perfect. It shews a pure and finished moral law, which, winding itself into all the labyrinths and recesses of the heart, anxiously shuts up every crevice and avenue through which vice or passion may pollute it. The same observations will apply to the rest of the catalogue. If Menû said that the women of India were prone to anger, does it prove that every woman in India is a scold? But I will dwell no longer on an argument which carries with it its own refutation.

—"Through certain strainers well refined, Is gentle love:"—

^*See Vol. 25, p. 775.

The natives of India are a sober, quiet, inoffensive, industrious race; passive, courteous, faithful. I fear, were we to descend for an illustration of their national character to the lowest classes of their population, that an equal portion of our own. countrymen, taken from the same condition of life, would cut but a despicable figure in the comparison. To be sure, we have heard much declamation on the immoral exhibitions of the dancing girls; a class of women dedicated most undeniably to prostitution, but, at the same time, not to shameless open prostitution, and by no means obtruding themselves upon public observation. Yet, in striking the balance of national character, it would be rather unjust to overlook the disgusting spectacles of vice and brutality exhibited in the streets of the metropolis of this country, from which we are to send out missionaries to reform the dancing girls of Hindostan; spectacles, which choke the public way, and shock the public eye with all that vice has in it of the loathsome, polluted, or deformed. Is it uncandid to observe, that these victims of depravity afford at home, at our own doors, and under our own eyes, a much more ample harvest for the spiritual labours of our evangelical reformers, than that which they are seeking abroad? With what colour of reason, or good sense, or consistency, can we send our crusades against the same vices in distant countries, with which our own is overrun? With what face ran we impute those vices to their defective morality or pernicious superstitions, while, in the very bosom of Christendom, among the most polished states and the most enlightened communities, they are shooting up with still ranker luxuriance? There is, however, one relation of life, on which all its comfort and most of its security depends, and in this the Hindoos are punctiliously faithful; I mean that of servants. I cannot help demanding the testimony of those who have resided in India, to this fact; a fact, which pleads for them, I should hope, with the more efficacy, from the dreadful occurrences which have of late destroyed the confidence, and impaired the safety of that most important of the social connexions in this country. You entrust your servants in India, without apprehension, with money, jewels, plate. You sleep amongst them with open doors. You travel through remote and unfrequented countries, and your life and property are safe under their protection. Can all this be the fruit of a superstition, which morality and right reason require us to extirpate, as a nuisance and an abomination? I know not, whether the Hindoo virtues are the offspring of their religion, or their nature. Those virtues have been remarked by all who have resided there. They will not be denied, but by those, in whom a selfish and fanatical pride has extinguished every spark of charity or candour. But their religion, imperfect as it is when compared with the purer morality and more efficient sanctions of our own, must not be excluded from the influences which have moulded the Hindoo character. Their sacred books unquestionably contain the leading principles of morality imparted in all the varied modes of fable, apophthegm, and allegory, and clothed in the characteristic graces of oriental diction. The duties of conjugal life, temperance, parental affection, filial piety, truth, justice, mercy, reverence for the aged, respect for the young, hospitality even to enemies, with the whole class and category of minor offices; these are not only strongly enforced; but beautifully inculcated in their vedas and purahnas.

The immolation of widows, however, on the funeral pile of their deceased husbands, and the dreadful custom of infanticide are made the principal charges in the hon. member's bill of indictment against the Hindoos. As to the former practice, it is right to observe, that it is enjoined by no positive precept of the Hindoo religion. On the contrary, one of the most authoritative of their sacred texts declares, "that a wife, whether she ascends the funeral pile of her lord, or survives for his benefit" (that is, to perform certain expiatory ceremonies in his behalf), "is still a faithful wife." I cite from the text of Mr. Colebrooke's Digest of the Hindoo law. It is, in truth, a species of voluntary martyrdom, meritorious, but by no means obligatory. Shocking as it is to the moral taste, I know not, whether it is strictly chargeable on the Hindoo religion. It is a species of overstrained interpretation of its duties; and the offspring of that fanaticism which will inevitably grow up, and has more or less grown up, under every system of religion. But let us not look at the frequency of the sacrifice abstractedly from the immense population of India. For it is not a correct mode of making the estimate, to take the number of these immolations in one particular province, and then multiply them by the whole extent of India; a criterion, by which Mr. Chambers has unfairly computed their prevalence. In many provinces instances of this superstition have never, in others very rarely, happened. But it may safely be affirmed, that the custom itself is wearing away even in the northern provinces. Yet conceding, to their fullest extent, the statements of those gentlemen who have given us such warm pictures of the horrors of this dreadful rite, the evil could not, with any precision, be attributed to the Hindoo religion. It may be an erroneous interpretation of its ordinances, an aberration from its principles, but by no means a necessary consequence from its precepts. What would be said of the candour and fairness of that enemy of the Christian faith, who should array against Christianity all the absurdities, nay, the cruelties practised by persons calling themselves Christians, in obedience, as they imagine, to its ordinances? With what affecting pictures might he not embellish the controversy? What dark and gloomy shades might he not throw over that pure and perfect dispensation of happiness to man! Might he not, for instance, describe the horrid sa- crifice, still practised in the greater part of Christendom, which dooms youth and beauty to the walls of a convent? With what nice strokes of art might he not describe the lingering torments of that living death, compared to which the flames which consume the Hindoo widow, are almost mercy and benevolence itself? How might he not dilate upon the sufferings of the victim, as all the scenes of youth and the visions of hope first recede from her eyes; when the feverish devotion, which lifted her for a while above the world, begins to subside, and all its beloved scenes of friendship, of paternal endearment, its loves, its gaieties, throng again upon her remembrance? I know the argument, with which a Protestant reasoner would defend his faith. We have reformed all this. We have brought Christianity back to its original purity. And is the Hindoo, in whose religious code the self-devotion of the widow is no more to be found, than the dedication of nuns to celibacy and confinement is to be found in the gospel—is he to be denied the benefit of the same argument? The same kind of reasoning is applicable to the other crime, that of infanticide, on which the honourable member (Mr. W. Smith) also enlarged. So far from its being an injunction of the Hindoo religion, it is strongly inhibited by their law. Nay, the horror of this practice seems to have been so present to the mind of the law-giver, that it is the standard both of the guilt and punishment of acts, which have the remotest tendency to prevent the birth of the offspring. For it is declared by Menû, that a woman who bathes immediately after conception, commits a crime equal to infanticide. Infanticide did indeed prevail in one or two provinces, and superstition and ignorance clothed it in the garb of a religious duty. But by what legitimate reasoning can a practice be charged on their religion, which that religion has not only not enjoined, but absolutely inhibited; and which so far from being prevalent through Hin-dostan, (as it has been most unfairly stated,) has scarcely been heard of, but amongst the inhabitants of a very few provinces, bearing scarce any proportion to the general population of the country? Granting, however, the existence of the evil, are there no means of subduing it, or of bringing a people back to the instincts of nature and of affection, but by letting loose amongst them a description of reformers, who will in all probability drive them into a more obstinate adherence to the very crimes and errors they pretend to correct? The evil, however, has been extirpated, and without the aid of missionaries, by Mr. Duncan, the late governor of Bombay, in one of the countries under his government; and lord Wellesley, in the same manner, abolished the unnatural custom of exposing children at the island of Sauger. How did they proceed? They proclaimed to the natives, upon the authority of their own pundits and brahmins, that the practice was unlawful, and as much at variance with the injunctions of the Hindoo religion as with universal law and natural reason; at the same time denouncing the punishment of murder on those who should hereafter commit the offence. Here then is an instance in which that religion inhibits and corrects the very evil of which it is supposed to have been the parent.

So much then for the vices of the Hindoo character, and the brutal superstitions (such is the polished eloquence of the London Tavern) of the Hindoo religion. But, Sir, it is a singular symptom of this epidemic enthusiasm for the conversion of the Hindoos, that missionaries are to be sent out of all sects and persuasions and opinions, however diversified and contradictory. No matter what sort of Christianity is imparted, so that it goes by that name: Calvinists, Unitarians, Methodists, Moravians. Provided India is supplied with a plentiful assortment of sects, no one seems to feel the least solicitude whether the Christianity that is to be taught there, be the genuine language of its author, or the dream of mysticism and folly. I own, that to me it does not appear quite a matter of indifference, if missionaries must be sent out, what the doctrines are, that they are to teach. I am disposed to think, that Christianity may be imparted in such forms as to render it something more than problematic, whether it would be an improvement on the religion it supplanted; that it may be so defiled and adulterated in the vessels from which it is administered, as to lose all its restoring and healthful virtues. Are there not nominal systems of Christianity, which are at an equal distance from its primitive perfection with the very superstition which we are striving to abolish? It might, therefore, become an important investigation, whether the blessings of a corrupted Christianity so far outweigh the evils of a tolerably en- lightened heathenism, as to make it worth while to exchange that which is appropriately Hindoo, for that which, after all, is not Christian. For instance, if a Christianity is sent out to them, attributing to the beneficent Author of nature the same morose, capricious, revengeful passions which agitate the human tyrant, but with infinity to his power, and endless duration to his inflictions; if it was the primary tenet of that doctrine that the same Being had made a fanciful and arbitrary destination of a large portion of his creatures, without blame or delinquency, nay, before their birth, to everlasting misery; and to have as fancifully and capriciously destined the rest to an eternal happiness, unearned by one real merit, or one virtuous aspiration;—and if, in this gloomy creed, an assent to mystical propositions was the chief claim to salvation, while it pronounced the purest and most exalted morals to be equivalent to the most abandoned wickedness;^*—reason and common sense might be allowed to throw out a few scruples against the subversion of the established morals or theology of India, however absurd or superstitious, if such was the system by which they were to be superseded. Suppose, then, that the missionaries of this persuasion were to establish their creed amongst the natives of Hindostan. It is obvious that they will have lost all the excellencies of the Hindoo system; but who will say that they will have got the advantages of the Christian? Compute their gains. Amongst other prominent peculiarities of their religion, its severe and inviolable prohibitions against the use of intoxicating liquors will have been overthrown. It is scarcely possible to estimate the complete revolution, which this single circumstance will produce in their manners and morals. It will destroy every shade and tint of their national character. It will overturn the mounds, by which they have been secured from the whole rabble of vices, which scourge the western world; vices, of which drunkenness is the prolific parent, and which render the mass of the population of our own country the most profligate and abandoned in Europe. It is not that other religions do not prohibit this species of intemperance; but the oriental are the only ones that render it impossible. I really believe, that if the foundations of your power in India, were, accurately explored, you would find that it was to this national peculiarity (which must be destroyed, if you disturb the sanctions of their law and their religion) you chiefly owed the discipline of your native army, and the obedience of your native subjects. In exchange for this, they will have been initiated into the mysteries of election and reprobation. I leave it to those who are versed in moral calculations, to decide, what will have been gained to ourselves by giving, them Calvinism and fermented liquors; and whether predestination and gin will be a compensation to the natives of India, for the changes, which will overwhelm their habits, and morals, and religion?

^* These consequences have been unanswerably traced to the Calvinistic scheme by the bishop of Lincoln, in his learned Refutation of Calvinism, p. 258.

Can we overlook, also, the difficulties which will be interposed to the progress of conversion by the jarring and, contradictory doctrines of the missionaries themselves? For there seems to be no kind of; anxiety to introduce into India that unity of faith, on which the mind of man may find settlement and repose. The church of England is to send, out no missionaries at all. She is provided indeed with her bishop and her archdeacons; and is to loll, in dignified ease, upon her episcopal cushions. But the supporters of the clause have reserved all their zeal for the sectarians. The whole task of conversion is abandoned to them; and the, parliament of Great Britain is, called upon to grant new facilities to the diffusion of dissent and schism from every doctrine which the law and the civil magistrate have sanctioned. It is a most ingenious scheme for the dissemination, on the widest scale, of every opinion and dogma that is at variance with the national church, But is it the best way of. communicating Christianity to a people hitherto estranged from its blessings, to start among them so many sects and doctrines? You will have Calvinists, Independents, Presbyterian, Moravians, Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and other tribes and denominations. It is not, of course, proposed, to give them an eclectic Christianity composed of a little of each; or a piebald, incongruous, patchwork Christianity, that is to combine all the varieties into which the, Christian world is divided. Has it, however, never occurred to these gentlemen, that although schisms and sects may, and in the nature of things must, arise subsequently to the establishment of a new religion, it is in vain to think of beginning a religion with these contrarieties and divisions? The Hindoo may fairly enough be permitted to ask: "Gentlemen, which is the Christianity I am to embrace? You are proposing to us a religion which is to supplant the rites, the doctrines, the laws, the manners of our fathers; and you yourselves are not agreed what that religion is. You require us to assent to certain mysteries, of an incarnation, a miraculous conception, and to other tenets, which some of you hold to be of the vital essence of your creed. But others amongst you deride these mysteries: and the very passages in your Shasters, to which you refer for the testimony of your doctrines, they tell us are forged and interpolated." Surely such perplexities as these must create doubts and distractions, which will frustrate the whole scheme of conversion.

It will be perceived, that I have chiefly confined my remarks to the Hindoos, who, in all questions relative to India, must occupy the principal share of the discussion. They will of course apply with equal force to the Mahommedans. Bernier, who travelled into India during the Mogul government, who has been cited, as an authority in this debate, and whose writings were admitted by the House of Lords, on the trial of Mr. Hastings, as good evidence of oriental customs, and who, besides, evinces no inconsiderable portion of zeal for the introduction of Christianity into the East, having witnessed the efforts of the Capuchin, and Jesuit missionaries at the courts of Delhi and Agra, speaks most despairingly as to the practicability of converting the Mussulmaun population. He cautions his readers against the stories that other travellers had spread of the progress of Christianity in the Mogul states, and against too easy a credulity in the facility of diffusing it. The sect, he says, (I quote from memory) is too libertine and attractive to be, abandoned. It is the necessary tendency of doctrines which have been propagated originally by the sword, afterwards to spread of themselves; nor do I see, he adds, that they can be overthrown or extirpated, but by the means by which they have been propagated—unless by one of those extraordinary interpositions of heaven, which we may occasionally look for, and of which striking appearances have been exhibited in China and Japan. Now, Sir, need I refer the House to the result of. the attempt in China and Japan, which M. Bernier did not. live to witness? But I am aware, that these reasonings would be entitled to little weight, if there were not absolute peril in the attempt. Perhaps any kind of Christianity, even the gloom of Calvinism, or the impoverished and scanty creed of the Unitarian, would be an improvement on the ancient religion of India. That; unfortunately, is not now the question. It is one of the necessities of human affairs, that the choice of man is for the most part placed betwixt evils. The preservation of an empire is delegated to us. No matter how it was obtained. It is in our hands. Of all tenures, it is the most delicate. The threads and ligaments which hold it together are so fine and gossamery, that one incautious movement may snap it asunder. It is a chain which no artificer can repair. But we hold it on this simple condition—abstinence from all aggression on the religions of the country. If the existence of those religions be an evil, it is one which we must endure. The alternative is the loss of our empire. It is idle casuistry to set ourselves about gravely balancing and computing these evils, as if they were arithmetical quantities. It is in truth, only with the political question, that the House ought to concern itself. Political considerations in this place have an acknowledged ascendancy. All the dignity of our character, and the efficiency of our function, would be destroyed, if our theology was admitted into a partnership with our policy; and religious enthusiasm, the most intractable of all passions, should disturb us in our legislative duties. In this view of the subject, it is enough for us, that the religious revolution which is proposed, involves in it political changes which must destroy our Eastern establishments. Without tracing all its consequences it is sufficient to keep before our eyes, this direct and primary one; the abolition of castes, that astonishing and singular institution, which compressing the restlessness of ambition and the impatience of subjection by the united weight of an irreversible law and an inveterate habit, gives you sixty millions of passive, obedient, industrious citizens, of whom the great mass are, by that very institution, which you propose to abolish, irrevocably disarmed, and destined to the pursuits and arts of peace. It is enough for that practical, sober wisdom, which has hitherto presided over our councils, that the over- throw of such an institution would let loose all the elements of strife, and discontent, of active and robust rebellion, before which your dreams of empire, of commerce, of revenue, would be scattered as vapour by the blast. I ask you, then, whether it is worth while to make an attempt, which must be subversive of our existence in India? The moral obligation to diffuse Christianity, binding and authoritative as it is, vanishes, when it is placed against the ills and mischiefs of the experiment. There never was a moral obligation to produce woe, and bloodshed, and civil disorder. Such an obligation would not exist, were the wildest barbarians the subjects of the experiment. But, when, in addition to these considerations, which are sanctioned by justice, and policy, and virtue, it is remembered, that the people we are so anxious to convert, are, in the main, a moral and virtuous people; not undisciplined to civil arts, nor uninfluenced by those principles of religion which give security to life, and impart consolation in death; the obligation assumes a contrary character; and common sense, reason, and even religion itself, cry out aloud against our interference. I shall therefore vote for the amendment.

I am sensible, Sir, that the matter is not exhausted. But I feel too deeply the indulgence of the House, to abuse it with any farther observations on a subject, which unfolds itself as I advance, and to which I feel, the more I think of it, my own incompetence to render even imperfect justice.

^* rose for the purpose of making a few observations in answer to the speech of the honourable member who had just sat down.

^* From the Original Edition, published by J. Hatchard, Piccadilly.

With the well-founded claims (said Mr. Wilberforce,) which, on a former evening, I stated the missionaries to have to your respect, it will not, I trust, be very injurious to them, to have this night received in this House the contemptuous appellations of Anabaptists and Fanatics. For my own part, I have lived too long to be much affected by such epithets, whether applied to others or to myself. But I confess, Sir, that it was not without some surprize, as well as concern, that I heard these missionaries spoken of in a style like this, by a gentleman whose elo- quent exhibition this day, certainly indicates a liberal education and an instructed mind. It has been truly stated by perhaps the greatest philosopher as well as one of the ablest writers of the present day^*, that to have the mind occupied with little blemishes where they are associated with real and great excellencies, is by no means an evidence of superior intellectual or moral acuteness or refinement, but that it rather indicates a contracted understanding, and a vitiated taste. And I confess, Sir, that if there had been any little foibles or infirmities (of none of which however I am aware) in men of such exalted merit as those of whom I am now speaking, it might have been expected that the eye of every generous observer would be so filled and captivated with their excellencies, as to have no power, no leisure, to perceive their defects. But what shall we say? What estimate shall we form of the judgment of some of our opponents in this cause, and of their candour towards those who support it, when in the want of any defect in character, or even in conduct, to be imputed to the missionaries, such terms as Anabaptist and Fanatic are applied to them. It has justly been said to be a sign that men begin to find themselves lacking in arguments, when they begin to call names. But I own, Sir, I should have conceived, that let the consciousness of that want have pressed ever so severely, the missionaries would have been shielded against such attacks as these, from any assailant of a cultivated mind, by their having conceived, and planned, and in the face of much opposition undertaken, and so long persevered in carrying on, at a vast expence of time and study and money, such dignified, beneficial, and disinterested labours.

Anabaptists and Fanatics! These, Sir, are men not to be so disposed of. Far different was the impression which they produced on the mind of the marquis Wellesley; far different the language he has bestowed on them. While in India, he patronised their literary labours; and very lately, in another place, publicly and on a solemn occasion, after describing, with a singular felicity of expression which must have fixed his words in every hearer's memory, their claim to the protection, though not to the direct encouragement of government, he did them the honour of stating, that though he had no concern with them as missionaries, they were known to him as men of learning. In fact, Sir, the qualifications which several of them have exhibited are truly extraordinary. And while the thoughts of a Christian observer of them, and of their past and present circumstances, would naturally dwell on that providential ordination by which such uncommon men had been led to engage in that important service, and would thence perhaps derive no ill-grounded hope of the ultimate success of their labours; even a philosophical mind, if free from prejudice, could not but recognize in them an extraordinary union of various, and in some sort contradictory, qualities;—zeal combined with meekness, love with sobriety, courage and energy with prudence and perseverance. To this assemblage also, I may add another union, which, if less rare, is still uncommon,—great animation and diligence as students, with no less assiduity and efficiency as missionaries. When to these qualifications we superadd that generosity which, if exercised in any other cause, would have received as well as deserved the name of splendid munificence; and when we call to mind that it is by motives of unfeigned, though it had been misguided, benevolence, that these men were prompted to quit their native country, and devote themselves for life to their beneficent labours; is there not, on the whole, a character justly entitled at least to common respect? And may I not justly charge it to the score of prejudice, that the hon. gentleman can here find only objects of contempt and aversion? For my part, Sir, I confess the sensations excited in my mind are of a very different kind, and I would express them in the words, if I could recollect them with accuracy, which were used by a learned prelate (bishop Hurd) on a similar occasion, by acknowledging, that I can only admire that eminence of merit which I despair myself to reach, and bow before such exalted virtue.

^* Mr. Dugald Stewart.

But of all the ground that has been taken by our opponents, that on which they appear to conceive themselves the strongest is, the mutiny at Vellore. On no subject has there ever prevailed more gross, and, among our opponents, more obstinate misconception. For I hesitate not to declare, that this sad transaction, fully reviewed and fairly considered, will shew, like the circumstance which I lately mentioned of the obnoxious Mahometan pamphlet, that the natives are very far from being as jealous and resentful of the most distant approaches towards any interference with their peculiar institutions as our opponents have represented them to be. Let me however entreat you always to bear in mind, that it is no rude attack on their native superstitions which we are meditating, but only that prudent and gradual communication of light and truth which will cause the natives themselves spontaneously to abandon them.

The leading particulars of the Vellore mutiny are so generally known, that I need not give you the pain you would suffer from hearing a fresh recital of the melancholy detail. Indeed, from motives of delicacy towards justly respectable individuals, I wish to forbear entering minutely into particulars; the most detailed inquiry into which, however, would only serve to strengthen my conclusions.

But before I proceed to touch lightly on this melancholy subject, permit me to remark, that it has been the common infirmity of our species in all uncivilized and uneducated nations, to overvalue their own peculiar customs and institutions, and sometimes to be devoted to them with such an excessive fondness of attachment, that a degree of power which has been sufficient to sway the people at its will in more important matters, has been forced in these to feel and acknowledge its own inferiority. Peter the Great, we know, in all the plenitude of his power, in vain endeavoured to force the Muscovites into the shaving of their beards; and the page of history furnishes other instances which inculcate the same lesson. But where the force of religion also intervenes, the principle becomes still stronger and more efficient. Indeed, in addressing an assembly so enlightened as this, I scarcely need remark, that men in general, in proportion as they have been uneducated and uninformed, have commonly been found to feel an extravagant attachment to the exterior symbols and observances of their various systems of religion; and, in truth, that the religion of the bulk of mankind has too often consisted altogether in these exterior ceremonies. Hence it would be the part of true wisdom, and I am sure, for I say it on the authority of Scripture, of true Christianity also, in communicating to any people the principles of a purer faith, to leave them in quiet possession of these petty distinctions, instead of attacking or outraging them, reasonably trusting, that when the judgments of their converts should be convinced of the falsehood of their old principles, these distinctive characteristics of them would drop off of themselves.

If this be true, nay, indisputable reasoning, verified by the experience of all times and all countries, what a comment on them shall we find in the proceedings which led to the fatal mutiny at Vellore! Though in the progress of that unhappy affair, the deposed family of Tippoo Sultan were found very naturally to have fomented the disaffection which prevailed, yet I have the highest authority, that of the governor of Madras himself, confirmed also by the deliberate judgment of the Court of Directors, pronounced after a full investigation of the whole business, for saying, "that whatever difference of opinion the dispute respecting the more remote or primary causes of the mutiny may have occasioned, there has always prevailed but one sentiment respecting the immediate causes of that event. These are, on all hands, admitted to have been certain military regulations, then recently introduced into the Madras army." These regulations were, the ordering "the sepoys to appear on parade with their chins clean shaved, and the hair on the upper lip cut after the same pattern; and never to wear the distinguishing marks of caste, or ear-rings when in uniform," and "the ordering, for the use of the sepoys, a turban of a new pattern."^*

Such were the new regulations; and how were these obnoxious regulations enforced? How was the rising discontent treated which these changes began to produce? Was it by argument and persuasion, the only weapons in the missionary armoury? The refractory non-commissioned officers were ordered to be reduced to the ranks; nineteen of the ringleaders (privates) were condemned to receive severe corporal punishment, and to be dismissed the Company's service, as turbulent and unworthy subjects; the greater part of these offenders, shewing strong signs of contrition, were indeed forgiven; but the sentence was executed in front of the garrison on two of them, each receiving 900 lashes. Can we wonder at the sequel? Though the flame appeared for a while to be smothered and suppressed, the fire burnt in secret with only the greater vehemence. Can we be surprised that secret oaths began to be administered, and secret engagements to be made? While to these religious discontents, combined with all those bad passions which raged the more violently because they durst not shew themselves but raged in secret, was superadded a political cause of powerful efficiency. The adherents of the deposed sovereigns of Mysore, who were in custody in that part of the country, fanned the rising flame, and used every method for increasing the general discontent. For a time the volcano burnt inwardly, until at length, on the 10th of July, the fatal eruption took place, the dreadful circumstances of which are too well known to need enumeration. Can we wonder, Sir, that such causes as I have stated should have produced such effects? That which may more justly excite our wonder is, that such discontents as these were so easily quieted. But so it was; for, though the obnoxious regulations, strange to say, being still persisted in, a repetition of mutinies, followed perhaps by the same dreadful consequences, appeared likely to ensue, yet no sooner were the offensive alterations abandoned, than all was order and obedience. "About the 21st of July the same regulations were ordered to be introduced in the subsidiary force at Hydrabad, when the turban, the orders respecting the marks of caste, ear-rings, and whiskers, threw the whole of that force, amounting to 10,000 men, into the utmost disorder. They resolved not to submit to the new regulations, and every thing was ripening for an open revolt, when by the revocation of the orders the tumult was instantly allayed, and the troops resumed their obedience." "The tranquillity," says the governor of Madras, "which at that place instantaneously followed a revocation of the orders, sufficiently marked the true cause of disaffection. The revocation, as I have been assured by an eye-witness, operated on the troops with the suddenness and efficacy of a charm.^*"—That when the troops were on the very point of breaking out into open mutiny, the revocation of the obnoxious order should in a moment calm the storm, is a decisive proof that the men who in such circumstances could at once hear and obey the voice of reason, were men of well-disposed and temperate minds, who had been slowly and with difficulty urged into resistance, rather than that they were men of the quick and eager, and irritable spirit which the natives of India are alleged by our opponents to display whenever their peculiar opinions and institutions are ever so temperately opposed. And now, Sir, I have stated to you from the first authority the nature and causes of the Vellore mutiny; and, in the first place, may I not ask, if there was ever any attempt more atrociously unfair than to charge that event on there having been a greater number of missionaries than before, or on any increased diligence in the circulation of the Holy Scriptures? Yet, strange to say, such is the force of prejudice even in sagacious and honourable minds, that to these causes it has been in a considerable degree attributed.^* To dis prove this assertion I might refer even to military authority, from which it would appear that there had been no such increased measure of attention to the propagation of our religion in that part of India, as to have had any share whatever in the production of the effect. "In no situation," says the respectable officer who was then commander-in-chief of the forces under the Madras government (general sir John Cradock), "have so few measures been pursued by British subjects for the conversion of the people to the religion which we profess. No Englishmen have hitherto been employed on this duty in the provinces of the peninsula; and from the almost total absence of religious establishments in the interior of the country, from the habits of life prevalent among military men, it is a melancholy truth, that so unfrequent are the religious observances of officers doing duty with battalions, that the sepoys have not, until very lately, discovered the nature of the religion professed by the English."^*

^* It is due to the highly respectable officer, who was at that time first in command in the Carnatic, to state, that he appears to have been misled by the erroneous judgment of some officers of long experience in the Indian army, as well as (in the instance of the new turban) by a Court of Inquiry, into conceiving that no bad consequences would result from the new regulations; and having once commanded them to be introduced, it became a matter of extreme doubt and difficulty to decide whether it would be best to retract or enforce the orders.

^* Though for many reasons I wish not to enter more particularly than is absolutely necessary into the various circumstances which followed and were connected with the Vellore mutiny, yet in justice to the great cause for which I am contending, it is fit that I should state, that after the Vellore mutiny, an undue and unreasonable degree of suspicion and distrust prevailed for some time throughout all that part of India. This was naturally produced by the suddenness of the explosion, combined with a consciousness that it was commonly supposed that there had been a great if not a faulty want of vigilance and attention to various circumstances which preceded its actually breaking out, and ought to have suggested the necessity of precautionary measures for preventing that catastrophe. "Till that period," says the governor of Madras, "the confidence of the European officers in the affection of their sepoys had been literally unlimited, and indeed found more than its justification in a fidelity which had stood the proof of a series of years, and of a vast variety of fortune. In the midst of this security a mine was sprung. The mutiny at Vellore overthrew all reliance on received principles, and produced a violent though not unnatural transition from the extreme of confidence to that of distrust. The officers were tortured by the conviction of a general plot; and, from the detached manner in which the Indian troops are cantoned, found themselves left to the mercy of traitors. All was suspense and horror; and in one instance, the agony of these emotions actually ended in insanity."

The noble writer himself illustrates the state of mind, of which he is speaking, by another still more general and more lasting delusion, the Popish Plot. "The progress of the alarm created by the apprehension

of the Popish Plot in the reign of Charles the Second, as described by Hume (vol. 6, p. 275), corresponds to a degree of curious exactness with the public feeling at Madras. Hume writes, 'While in this timorous and jealous disposition, the cry of a 'plot all on a sudden struck their ears. 'They were wakened from their slumber; 'and, like men affrighted in the dark, took 'every shadow for a spectre. The terror 'of each man became the source of terror 'to another. And an universal panic 'being diffused, reason and argument, and 'common sense and common humanity 'lost all influence over them.'" These generally prevailing apprehensions very naturally led to measures, which might have produced the very worst consequences if the native troops had been less attached to us at heart than they really were.—Many useful reflections, and of a nature highly favourable to our cause, will be suggested to the considerate mind by the preceding statement of lord William Bentinck. I will only put it to every unprejudiced mind to declare, whether the above transactions do not account for the prevalence of a somewhat morbid degree of sensibility in many both of the civil and military gentlemen of India and their connections, when the probability and amount of the danger of interfering with the religious opinions of the natives are in question. "That danger may perhaps have been estimated at too low a rate, and have been too little regarded, previously to the Vellore mutiny. If so, nothing can be more natural than that overweening confidence should be succeeded by feelings of a contrary nature. We all know the proneness of the human mind to pass from one extreme to its opposite.

^* It is clearly proved in a pamphlet, written by lord Teignmouth, and published in 1808, on the practicability, duty, and expediency of endeavouring to diffuse Christianity throughout India, that there had been no increase in the numbers of the missionaries or of the translations of the Scriptures.

And now, Sir, let me again ask you, after your having heard this brief account of the unhappy transactions connected with the Vellore mutiny, and I will confidently put the question to every unprejudiced mind, whether they afford any reasonable foundation for the inference which has been so precipitately drawn from them, that the morbid irritability of the natives in all that concerns their peculiar opinions and institutions is so great, as to render it infinitely dangerous to endeavour, even in the most temperate and guarded manner, to propagate among them a purer system of religion and morals. Be this however as it may, you will at least see, I am confident, and I beg it may be carefully kept in mind, that the persuasion of this morbid irritability did not exist in the minds of our military officers, when they issued their new regulations. Those ordinances rather indicated a persuasion of a directly opposite sort;—that the natives were, even in their peculiar usages, so patient of provocation as to be very tardily and with great difficulty roused into resistance. But have we no reason to believe that this last impression, rather than that which now possesses the minds of our opponents, prevailed among the civil servants of the Company also, till their views were lately changed by their extravagant dread of missionaries? For has not my hon. friend (Mr. W. Smith) stated to you an incident which is decisive to this point; that they were not afraid of seizing the car and the idol of Jaggernaut himself for the payment of a deficient tribute? And as my hon. friend truly remarked, are we, after this transaction, to hear with patience, men, who in the way of business, when the raising of some paltry tax was the object in question, could treat thus contemptuously the most sacred religious usages of the natives, and that in the very moment and circumstances in which the insult would be most keenly felt:—can we, I repeat it, with patience hear the same class of men speaking the language we now hear, of the tender sensibility of the natives, in all that concerns their religious opinions and practices, being such, that our opposing them even by argument and persuasion, would be too hazardous to be attempted; and this, when the object in view is no less than that of rescuing sixty millions of our fellow-subjects from the lowest depths of moral degradation? There is a grossness of inconsistency here which would be beyond all precedent ridiculous, if the serious effects to be apprehended from it were not such as to excite in us the graver emotions of indignation and astonishment. I have dwelt the longer on the Vellore transactions, because I am convinced that, though most groundlessly, they have operated very powerfully in producing, in the minds of many well-disposed persons, strong prejudices against the question for which I am now contending.

^* It is right to state, that this neglect of the common offices of religion was by no means chargeable on the military gentlemen themselves; and to the honour of the military character it should be stated, that general Macdowall addressed a letter to the Madras government for the purpose of effecting a reform in that particular. In this letter he stated as his opinion, that the indifference manifested by the European inhabitants of India in the adoration of the Supreme Being, which was ascribed to the want of places exclusively appropriated for divine service, was so far from being favourable even to our political interests, that the constructing of convenient chapels at a moderate expence, at all stations where European troops might probably be quartered, would render the British character more respected by the natives, and would be attended by no evil consequences.

But the fair statement of these Vellore transactions, combined with the seizure of Jaggernaut and his car, will by no means have produced its just and full effect, if, besides dashing to the ground that superstructure of unjust prejudices which has been raised on the basis of this particular incident, it does not also contribute powerfully to strengthen the persuasion, which so many other circumstances concur to produce in us, that our opponents are absolutely run away with by their prejudices and prepossessions on this subject of Christianizing, if for brevity's sake I may so term it, the natives of India. In every controversy, it is highly important to be furnished with a standard, by which to judge of the soundness and correctness of the reasonings of the contending parties respectively. Now it fortunately happens, that in the Vellore business, on which our opponents have rested so much of their case, we are able to ascertain on what foundations they ground their opinions, to discover from what premises they draw their conclusions; and, as in this instance, in which that foundation and those premises can be scrutinized, we plainly see, that their opinions and conclusions are altogether unwarranted, we may fairly conclude it to be highly probable, that in other cases also, in which we have not the same opportunity of closely examining the grounds of their persuasions, those persuasions are equally unwarrantable. In short, Sir, our opponents shew us, that though, in other cases, men even of superior understandings and intelligence, we ought, on this subject, to except against their authority, because they are not so much under the guidance of their reason, as of their passions and their prejudices. Hence, like all men who are under the influence of prejudice, though otherwise reasonable and intelligent, they draw conclusions from slight and insufficient premises; they shut their eyes to unquestionable facts, and are led into gross errors and inconsistencies. In truth, we see good reason to suspect, that when this contest commenced, our opponents were almost wholly unacquainted with the subject; that their minds were never called to it, till it had become a strongly-contested question, in which, as men are apt to do, they then took their side from the influence of their preconceived opinions.

But, Sir, as if to do away every remaining doubt which might still adhere to the most apprehensive minds, respecting the reasonableness of the alleged danger of our endeavouring, even temperately and cautiously, to enlighten and improve the natives of India, we are happily furnished with some particular instances in which the pernicious institutions of the natives have been combated and overcome. Indeed, the many improvements we have introduced among them, whether in our civil, judicial, financial, or military system, are all examples of this kind; for in all these we had to contend against that formidable principle of unchangeableness, which attaches to all the Indian institutions, and has been supposed to indicate their sacred source, and to forbid our presuming to question their wisdom or expediency. But there are two remarkable instances of our successful endeavours to root out inveterate and pernicious practices, which from their being complete within themselves, and being therefore more detached than those which are parts of a large and complicated system, may be more advantageously brought under our review. For a more minute detail of the cases I am about to lay before you, I refer to the papers on the table.

In the first of the instances which I am about to mention, I am happy to state, that the benefactor of India was a nobleman whom I may take the liberty of calling my noble friend (the marquis Wellesley.) That nobleman, who, greatly to his honour, in the midst of all his political and military concerns, found leisure to attend to the internal improvement of his government, and who, as if eager to avail himself of an opportunity of inculcating the real superiority of the honour to be obtained in bloodless victories over ignorance and error to those laurels that are reaped in the field of battle, founded the college at Calcutta, as a trophy to commemorate his success in the Mysore war. The marquis Wellesley was informed, that a practice prevailed of sacrificing, at the change of every moon, many victims, chiefly children, to the river Ganges. He wished to put an end to this horrid practice: but he was conscious, as all men of sense must be in such cases, that he must feel his way cautiously and tenderly. To those who had adopted the principles of our opponents, it would have been sufficient, I fear, to make them acquiesce in the continuance of this practice, to be told, that it had subsisted for many hundreds, perhaps even for thousands, of years. But my noble friend consulted no such advisers: he took counsel with his own excellent understanding, and humane heart; and the consequence soon followed—the practice was at an end. He conferred with some of the learned natives who were attached to the college, concerning the origin and principle of these horrid murders, and ascertained, that they were prescribed by no ordinance of religion, and that, probably, no objection would be made, no discontent produced, if they should be prohibited. They had gone on, from time immemorial, from the habit which had prevailed in India of suffering all such wicked and cruel practices to prevail, without question or opposition. A law therefore was issued, by the governor-general in council, declaring the practice to be henceforth murder punishable by death. The law was obeyed, without a murmur: and not only have all the wretched victims, who would otherwise have been sacrificed, been since saved to the state; but this cause at least has been taken from the number of those which injure the community in India more than in proportion to the direct loss of life they occasion, by their hardening and depraving effects on the hearts and practice of the whole population.

But the second instance in which we are able to speak of a conquest already achieved over the native superstitions and cruelties of India, is of a still more striking nature, and where originally the obstacles were of a far more formidable character. It is now more than twenty years since Mr. Duncan, afterwards governor of Bombay, then resident at Benares, learned that a custom existed, among a tribe of the natives in that neighbourhood, of murdering their female infants; and he was able, through the influence of the British government (for the influence of government was in that instance used not only innocuously but successfully), to prevail on the tribe (she Rajkumars of Juanpore) to enter into a positive engagement, to abstain in future from such detestable acts; and that any of their number who should be guilty of them, should be expelled from their tribe.

Thus the practice was abolished in Juanpore. But it had been suggested by captain Wilford to Mr. Duncan in his former inquiries concerning infanticide in India, that the Greek historians had stated it to prevail in the neighbourhood of Guzerat. Accordingly, recollecting the success of his former humane endeavour, he was animated by the benevolent desire of extending in that quarter also the triumphs of humanity. After some inquiry he ascertained, that the practice of murdering the female infants was very general among the tribes of Jarejah and Cutch. And so firmly bad this detestable custom rooted itself, and so powerfully was it established, as to have overcome the strongest of the human instincts, a mother's love of her infant. Not only did these mothers assist in destroying their offspring, but even when the Musselman prejudices (Mussel-man prejudices observe, Sir! it is with shame that I pronounce the words!) occasionally interfered to preserve their offspring, they held these females in the greatest contempt, calling them by a name which indicated that their fathers had derogated from their military caste, and were become pedlars. Governor Duncan's humane designs against this horrid practice were most ably and effectually furthered, and at length accomplished, by the resident, colonel Walker, who displayed on this occasion a sagacity, address, and firmness, as well as humanity, which are beyond all praise. The whole progress of this admirable enterprise is published to the world; and the leading particulars in Moor's Hindoo Infanticide, are now, on my motion, upon your table. Observe therefore, Sir, that here, as in other instances, I ground my arguments on attested, indisputable facts, and undeniable experience. Colonel Walker's attempt, at first, wore a very unpromising aspect. In return to a letter which he wrote to one of the chieftains of the tribe, reasoning with him on the cruelty of the practice, and urging him to discontinue it, he received an answer which would have been sufficient not only to discourage; but to intimidate, a less zealous, and, I may add, a less able adventurer. He was told, that it was "notorious that the Jarejahs had been in the habit of killing their daughters for 4,900 years; and that no doubt he was aware that all of God's creation, even the mighty emperors of Hindustan, Shah Jehan, Aurenzebe, and Akbar, had always preserved friendship with his court, and had never acted in that respect (female infanticide) unreasonably. Even the king of the world had never once thought of putting a stop to the cus- tom which prevails amongst the Jarejahs, of killing their daughters."

After much more in defence of the practice, he concludes with a declaration, which, if somewhat ambiguously mysterious in its outset, is clear enough as to its meaning before it ends:—"God is the giver, and God is the taker away; if any one's affairs go to ruin, he must attribute his fortune to God. No one has until this day wantonly quarrelled with this Durbar, who has not in the end suffered loss."

"This Durbar wishes no one ill, nor has ever wantonly quarrelled with any one."

"Do not address me again on this subject."

Such, Sir, was the reception of colonel Walker's first application to the chieftains of the Jarejahs. And even one of the mothers returned him an answer of the same hopeless tenor.

Now, Sir, let me fairly put it to the House, whether such an answer as this, to any application which had been made for putting an end to any instance of native superstition, would not have been deemed such a decisive proof that it was dangerous to proceed in the attempt, that any one who had advised that the endeavour should be still persevered in, would have drawn upon himself the epithets of fanatic and enthusiast: and it would perhaps have been thought, even by candid and humane men, that an excess of zeal only could prompt any one to a continuance of efforts which appeared not only hopeless, but even highly dangerous. Colonel Walker might even have obtained the praise of having engaged and done his best, in this work of humanity, though he had not been able to achieve it. But colonel Walker, Sir, was not so easily to be disheartened: colonel Walker's humanity was not satisfied with enjoying this barren and unprofitable triumph: he persevered, but by the only prudent, the only just and legitimate, means: he took frequent occasions of discussing the subject in the court of justice, and of exposing the enormity of so unnatural a practice: and, that I may hasten to so welcome a conclusion, within twelvemonths of the day on which the letters which I lately quoted had been written, the very writers of those letters, together with the Jarejah tribes in general, formally abjured for the future the practice of infanticide, and declared themselves highly satisfied with the engagement which they made to that effect. To a man of principles and feelings such as colonel Walker's must be, how delightful must have been the recompence which about two years afterwards he received! He took the opportunity afforded by his being in that neighbourhood, of causing to be brought to his tent, some of the infants which had been preserved: and let all who are now opposing us, listen to colonel Walker's account of the scene. "It was extremely gratifying on this occasion, to observe the triumph of nature, feeling, and parental affection, over prejudice and a horrid superstition: and that those who but a short period before would (as many of them had done) have doomed their infants to destruction without compunction, should now glory in their preservation, and doat on them with fondness. The Jarejah fathers, who but a short time back would not have listened to the preservation of their daughters, now exhibited them with pride and fondness. Their mothers and nurses also attended on this interesting occasion. True to the feelings which are found in other countries to prevail so forcibly, the emotions of nature here exhibited were extremely moving. The mothers placed their infants in the hands of colonel Walker, calling on him and their gods to protect what he alone, had taught them to preserve. These infants they emphatically called 'his children.' And it is likely that this distinction will continue to exist for some years in Guzerat."

Why, Sir, with but one such incident as this, with but one such cordial to cheer us on our progress, we should be indeed faint-hearted, we should be indeed chargeable with being wanting in the zeal and spirit of perseverance which such a cause as ours inspires, if we could faint by the way, and not determine to go forward in the face of every obstacle, prudently indeed and cautiously, but firmly and resolutely, pressing on towards the great object of our endeavours. In fact, Sir, here, as in other cases, when you are engaged in the prosecution of a worthy end, by just and wise means, difficulties and obstacles disappear as we proceed; and the phantoms, not to call them bugbears, of ignorance and error, melt away before the light of truth.

Had the noble lord, whom I have already mentioned, continued in India, it is highly probable that he would have achieved other conquests over the cruel practices of the natives of India. It is highly probable that he would have been able to put an end to the barbarous custom of widows destroying themselves; a custom which has been the disgrace of India for above two thousand years. But had the doctrines of our opponents continued to govern the practice of all the East India Company's servants in India, those two barbarous practices, the termination of which has been already effected, would still have carried on their destructive ravages. For let me ask our opponents, were these practices in any degree less firmly established, or of a later date, than various others which still continue? And with these instances before our eyes, in which the success of the efforts of humanity has been more rapid and more complete than probably our most sanguine expectations could anticipate, shall we suffer all the other detestable practices of India to prevail without the slightest attempt to put a stop to them? And shall we at once admit the assertions of those who thus, in defiance alike of reason and experience, inculcate on us that it is infinitely dangerous, though ever so prudently and cautiously, to endeavour to substitute the reign of light and truth and happiness, for that of darkness, delusion, and misery?

But, Sir, it is time to speak out, and to avow that I go much further than I have yet stated, and maintain, not only that it is safe to attempt, by reasonable and prudent methods, to introduce into India the blessings of Christian truth and moral improvement, but that true, aye, and imperious and urgent, policy, prescribe to us the same course. And let me not be misunderstood on this subject: I do not mean that I think our Indian empire rests on such firm foundations as to be shaken by no convulsions, and that therefore we may incur the risk of popular ferments with impunity: no, Sir; I frankly acknowledge, that I have long thought that we hold our East Indian possessions by a very precarious tenure. This is a topic on which it would be painful to expatiate, and perhaps imprudent to be particular; but the most cursory survey of the circumstances of our East Indian empire must be sufficient, in the minds of all who are ever so little read in the page of history, to justify the suspicion which I now intimate.

On the most superficial view, what a sight does that empire exhibit to us! A little island obtaining and keeping possession of immense regions, and of a population of sixty millions that inhabit them, at the distance of half the globe from it! of inhabitants differing from us as widely as human differences can go! differences exterior and interior—differences physical, moral, social and domestic—in points of religion, morals, institutions, language, manners, customs, climate, colour, in short in almost every possible particular that human experience can suggest, or human imagination devise! Such, Sir, is the partnership which we have formed; such rather the body with which we are incorporated, nay, almost assimilated and identified. Our oriental empire indeed is now a vast edifice; but the lofty and spacious fabric rests on the surface of the earth, without foundations. The trunk of the tree is of prodigious dimensions, and there is an exterior of gigantic strength. It has spread its branches widely around it, and there is an increasing abundance of foliage and of fruit; but the mighty mass rests on the ground merely by its superincumbent weight, instead of having shot its roots into the soil, and incorporated itself with the parent earth beneath it. Who does not know that the first great storm probably would lay such a giant prostrate?

This, Sir, I fear, is but too just a representation of the state of our East Indian empire. Various passages in the papers on the table clearly illustrate and strongly confirm this position; sometimes they distinctly express it. In truth, Sir, are we at this time of day still to be taught that most important lesson, that no government can be really secure which does not rest on the affections of the governed; or at least on their persuasion that its maintenance and preservation are in some degree connected with their own well-being? And did we want the papers on the table to inform us, as, however, in more than one place, they do inform us, that, notwithstanding the vast improvements we have introduced among the people of India, and the equity and humanity with which our government is administered, the native population is not attached to us? It might easily be shewn also, that many of the peculiar institutions of India, more especially that of its castes, greatly favours the transference of dominion from one conqueror to another. Then, the situation and neighbourhood of India! Region's which have been again and again the prey of those vast Tartar hordes which at different times have descended like some mountain torrent, and have swept all be- fore them with resistless fury! Sir, would we render ourselves really secure against all such attacks, as well as against any, less perhaps to be dreaded, which our great European enemy may make upon us in that quarter, let us endeavour to strike our roots into the soil, by the gradual introduction and establishment of our own principles and opinions; of our own laws, institutions, and manners; above all, as the source of every other improvement, of our religion, and consequently of our morals. Why, Sir, if it were only that we should thereby render the subjects of our Asiatic empire a distinct and peculiar people; that we should create a sort of moral and political basis in the vast expanse of the Asiatic regions, and amidst the unnumbered myriads of its population, by this change we should render our East Indian dominions more secure, merely from the natural desire which men feel to preserve their own institutions, solely because they are their own, from invaders who would destroy them. But far more than this;—are we so little aware of the vast superiority even of European laws and institutions, and far more of British laws and institutions, over those of Asia, as not to be prepared to predict with confidence, that the Indian community which should have exchanged its dark and bloody superstitions for the genial influence of Christian light and truth, would have experienced such an increase of civil order and security; of social pleasures and domestic comforts, as to be desirous of preserving the blessings it should have acquired; and can we doubt that it would be bound even by the ties of gratitude to those who had been the honoured instruments of communicating them?

Here again, Sir, we can answer this question from experience. We have a case precisely in point; by which, on a small scale, we are enabled to judge what would be the effects of the same experiment tried upon a larger. All around me have heard of the great Albuquerque, one of those extraordinary men who, nearly 300 years ago, raised to the highest pitch the glory of the Portuguese name in India^*. The commentaries of his son Bras de Albuquerque contain the following curious passage. "When Alf. de Albuquerque took the kingdom of Goa, he would not permit that any woman from thenceforward should burn herself; and although to change their customs is equal to death, nevertheless they rejoiced in life, and said great good of him, because he commanded that they should not burn themselves." It is added, in proof of the veneration in which this great man was held by the natives, "that long after his death, when a Moor or "Hindoo had received wrong, and could obtain no redress from the governor, the aggrieved person would go to Goa, to Albuquerque's tomb, and make an offering of oil at the lamp which burned before it, and call upon him for justice."

^* For the above curious fact I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Southey, who has also been so obliging as to furnish me with the following curious and important fact, which from forgetfulness I omitted to mention in the House of Commons. When Joane de Barras wrote (a man who, for the extent of his researches, is worthy to be ranked with Herodotus), a fourth part of the population of Malabar consisted of native Moors; and the reason which he assigns for their rapid increase is, that they had obtained privileges from the king, and put themselves upon a level with the high castes, "for which reason many of the natives embraced their faith." He says in another place, that "the natives esteemed it a great honour when the Moors took their daughters to wife." The above fact plainly shews what has been abundantly confirmed to me by private testimony, that the real cause which renders the natives of India afraid of losing caste is not any religious scruple, but merely the dread of the many and great temporal evils which proceed from the loss.

And now, Sir, if I have proved to you as I trust I have irrefragably proved, that the state of our East Indian empire is such as to render it highly desirable to introduce among them the blessings of Christian light and moral improvement; that the idea of its being impracticable to do this is contrary alike to reason and to experience; that the attempt, if conducted prudently and cautiously, may be made with perfect safety to our political interests; nay, more, that it is the very course by which those interests may be most effectually promoted and secured; does it not follow from these premises as an irresistible conclusion, that we are clearly bound, nay, imperiously and urgently compelled, by the strongest obligations of duty, to support the proposition for which I now call upon you for your assent. But what is that proposition? Its only fault, if any, is, that it falls so far short of what the nature of the case requires. Is it that we should immediately devise and proceed without delay to execute, the great and good and necessary work of improving the religion and morals of our East Indian fellow-subjects? No; but only that we should not substantially and in effect prevent others from engaging in it. Nay, not even that; but that we should not prevent government having it in their power, with all due discretion, to give licences to proper persons to go to India and continue there, with a view of rendering to the natives this greatest of all services. Why, Sir, the commonest principles of toleration would give us much more than this. Where am I standing? Where is it, and when, that I am arguing this question? Is it not in the very assembly in which, within these few weeks, nothing but the clearest considerations of political expediency were held sufficient to justify our withholding from the Roman Catholics the enjoyment of the fullest measure of official as well as political advantages, and when you yourself. Sir^*, though you felt yourself bound to continue some few official disabilities, acknowledged that it was with reluctance and even with pain? And shall we now lay the religion which we ourselves profess under such a restraint in any part of our own dominions? No, Sir: it is impossible: you will not, you cannot, act thus. But, in addition to what I have already said, it deserves well to be considered, that if we should fail in our present endeavour, and if Christianity should be, as it then would be, the only untolerated religion in the British dominions in India, the evil would not stop here. The want of toleration would not be merely a negative mischief; the severest persecution must infallibly ensue. For, assuredly, there are, and by God's help I trust there ever will be, both European and native teachers prepared in the face even of death itself, to diffuse the blessed truths of Christianity.

But let it never be forgotten, it is toleration only that we ask: we utterly disclaim all ideas of proceeding by methods of compulsion or authority. But surely I need not have vindicated myself from any such imputation. The very cause which I plead would have been sufficient to pro- tect me from it. Compulsion and Christianity! Why, the very terms are at variance with each other: the ideas are incompatible. In the language of inspiration itself, Christianity has been called "the law of liberty." Her service, in the excellent formularies of our Church, has been truly denominated "perfect freedom;" and they, let me add, will most advance her cause, who contend for it in her own spirit and character.

^* The Speaker, See p. 312.

I have often been reminded, Sir, during the course of these discussions, of the similarity of the present case to another great contest of justice and humanity, in which, with many confederates far abler than myself, I was perseveringly and at length, blessed be God, successfully engaged some years ago. The resemblance I see is acknowledged by my hon. friend near me (Mr. William Smith), who is still faithful to the great principles which animated us in our former struggle, during the whole of which he was among the ablest as well as the most zealous and persevering of my associates.

On that occasion, let it be remembered, it was our ultimate object, by putting an end to those destructive ravages, which, for centuries, had produced universal insecurity of person and property along a vast extent of the coast of Africa, and had thereby protracted the reign of darkness and barbarism in that quarter of the globe, to open a way for the natural progress of civilization and knowledge; of christian light and moral improvement: so now, likewise, we are engaged in the blessed work of substituting light for darkness, and the reign of truth and justice and social order and domestic comfort, of substituting all that can elevate the character or add to the comfort of man, in the place of the most foul, degrading, and bloody system of superstition that ever depraved at once, and enslaved, the nature, and destroyed the happiness of our species. In the case of the slave trade, as well as in this, we had the misfortune to find ourselves opposed by many of those whose means of local information were certainly considerable, but whose notions of facts were so obscured or warped by prejudices or prepossessions, as to be rendered strangely inaccurate and preposterous.

There, likewise, owing no doubt to the strange prejudices and prepossessions I have noticed, our opponents maintained, that there was no call whatever for the exercise of our humanity: that the slave trade, whatever our English notions of comfort might suggest to us, like the superstitious practices in India, added to the sum of human happiness, instead of lessening it; or at the least, we were wishing to make men happier against their will: and that so far from there being any need for our interference to improve the condition of the slaves in the West Indies, already they were as happy as the day was long; nay happier, for they danced all night. Consistently therefore with these opinions, they called upon us, just as we have been called upon this evening, to find some other and better selected sphere, for the exertions of our humanity. Really, the similarity of the two cases runs almost on all fours: for on that occasion, as well as now, we were assured that we should infallibly produce insurrections; while it might be truly affirmed in both cases, that the language of our opponents themselves was far more likely than ours to produce the apprehended evil. Happily, the West Indian predictions have been so far from verified in this particular, that I scarcely recollect any other period of the same length as that which has elapsed since we commenced our abolition-proceedings in which there had not been some insurrection or other. Sir, allow me to hope that the resemblance, which I have shewn to exist between the two cases with so striking an accordance, will be completed, by our finding, that notwithstanding the different views and expectations which different gentlemen have formed of the effects of this measure, we shall all rejoice over it together ere many years shall be completed, and find all the fancied mischiefs apprehended by our opponents disproved by the event. I beg, however, that it may be observed, that the resemblance which I have been describing is not merely an illustration: it is an argument; and a very powerful one too it will appear to all who remember that we had then the misfortune to number many considerable men among our opponents; inasmuch as it shews how possible it is for men of eminent attainments to be misled, not merely into tolerating as an unavoidable evil, which it is only fair to confess was the argument of some of our opponents, but into supporting and panegyrizing, as warranted by the principles of justice and humanity, a cause, that now, after a few short years have expired, not a single man can be found to lift up his voice in its favour.

And now, Sir, if we suffer our imaginations to follow into its consequences the measure in which we are now engaged, and to look forward to the accomplishment of those hopes which I trust will be one day realized, what a prospect opens on our view! In the place of that degrading superstition, which now pervades those vast regions, Christianity, and the moral improvement which ever follows from its introduction, shall be diffused with all their blessed effects on individual character, and on social and domestic comfort. Surely, we here see a prize which it is worth contending for, at any cost of time and labour. And I can assure our opponents, that they are greatly deceived, if they imagine that we are likely to give up the contest, even if we should fail in our present attempt. Happily, Sir, it appears from the unprecedented number of petitions now on your table, that the importance of the question is duly appreciated by the public mind. And let it not be imagined that these petitions have been produced by a burst of momentary enthusiasm; that the zeal which has actuated the petitioners is a mere temporary flame, which will soon die away, and be exhausted. No, Sir: I am persuaded, that in proportion as the real condition of our Asiatic fellow-subjects shall be more generally known, the feeling which has already been so forcibly expressed, will prevail still more extensively. If, therefore, our opponents really apprehend the greatest evils from discussing the subject, in common consistency with this opinion, they should suffer our question to pass, as the only way by which that discussion can be terminated. For they may be assured, that otherwise the public voice will call upon this House still more loudly than even it has now done. And assuredly, my friends who are associated with me in this great cause are animated with the same determination as myself, never to abandon it, either till success shall have crowned our efforts or till it shall appear utterly unattainable.

But after all, Sir, at the very moment when my friends and I were ready to raise the shout of victory, a proposition has been made to us by an hon. baronet, of which, though offered to us in the language, and by him, I do not deny, with the meaning of good will to our object, I must confess I am more afraid than of all the other modes of opposition we have experienced in the course of these discussions. I am the more afraid of it, because the plausible and specious appearance with which it conies forward is likely to render its hostility so much the more efficient and destructive. It accosts us with a language of this sort—"We all mean the same thing: we all wish Christianity and moral improvement to be communicated to the natives of India: but we are afraid of the effects which will be produced in India by the appearance of your proposed clause on the statute book. Government may grant licences to persons to go over to India for religious purposes, as well as any others, under the general powers to be granted to them by the Bill. We must, therefore, resist your clause."

If what has been already stated to the House should not have sufficed for dispelling any apprehensions of a dangerous ferment being produced in the public mind of India, by the existence in the statute book of the clause we have now proposed, all such fears will, I think, be removed, when I shall have read an extract from one of the volumes on your table, concerning the extreme difficulty that is experienced in India, in diffusing the most interesting intelligence throughout the mass of the people. Our opponents will assign more weight to the extract, because it is taken from Judge Strachey's Answers to lord Wellesley's Interrogatories, "I take this opportunity," says he, "of remarking, that to render generally known any penal law, is extremely difficult, particularly among the lower orders of the people. Till they see the effect of it, they remain ignorant of it; and this in spite of advertisements and proclamations. News and information of all kinds are, in Bengal, slowly and inaccurately transmitted from one to another. Among us, events obtain publicity through the means of periodical prints, of epistolary correspondence, and of verbal communication. Among the natives, there is nothing of the two first, and even of the other hardly any^*."

After hearing the above extract, the House will not, I think, participate in the apprehensions which some gentlemen seem to entertain, that the mere insertion of this clause into our statute book may produce a dangerous commotion among the native population of India. Besides, Sir, as has been well remarked by my noble friend, (lord Castlereagh) who, in truth, has treated the whole of this subject with extraordinary discretion and ability, the natives; if they should read the clause, which, however, is a highly improbable occurrence, will find in it, and find I believe for the first time expressed in terms, a clear recognition, an effectual security, of their right to preserve their religious principles and institutions sacred and inviolate. The clause thus framed, will therefore produce satisfaction among them rather than discontent, on that very subject of religion.

^* Answer from Judge Strachey to Interrogatories, 30th Jan. 1802.

But, Sir, it is an additional argument, and with me I confess a very powerful one, for retaining this clause, that though the general power of granting licences with which the friends of the hon. baronet's motion would have us be satisfied, might provide sufficient openings for the sending over of missionaries to India, and for the employment of them there, so long as they should conduct themselves properly; which, however, I utterly deny; yet I beg the House ever to bear in mind, that my friends and I have far more in view in the measure we have been recommending, than merely the sending over and maintenance of missionaries. I beg they will recollect what I stated in one of the first sentences which I addressed to you, that it is not merely for the purpose of enabling government to grant licences to missionaries that I support the present clause, but because, especially when taken in conjunction with the Resolution on which, according to the usage of parliament, it is founded; by affirming the duty of enlightening the minds and improving the morals of our East Indian fellow-subjects, it establishes the principle; it lays the ground for promoting education among them, and for diffusing useful knowledge of all kinds. When truth and reason, so long excluded from that benighted land, shall once more obtain access to it, (and we are this day engaged in the great work of breaking down that barrier which has hitherto substantially and practically excluded them), the understandings of the natives will begin to exert their powers; and their minds, once enlightened, will instinctively reject the profane absurdities of their theological, and the depraving vices of their moral system. Thus they Will be prepared for the reception of Christianity, for "Christianity is a reasonable service," and then, we may appeal to the moral superiority of Christian Europe in modern times, in comparison with that of the most polished pagan communities, for the blessed effects which may be expected to follow on their moral, their social, and, above all, their domestic comfort.

But, Sir, to return to the question concerning the necessity of retaining our clause; I cannot but hope, after all we have heard in the course of our discussions, and more especially after what has passed subsequently to the hon. baronet's motion for leaving out our clause; after all this, I repeat it, I cannot but indulge the hope, that all those at least, who were disposed to leave our clause out of the Bill, on the ground of its being unnecessary, if not dangerous, will at length discover, that some such clause as this is absolutely indispensable for accomplishing the desire, which they profess in common with us, of furnishing the means of introducing Christianity into India. Indeed, it ought to open their eyes to the real practical effect of their own amendment, that they who are the most decidedly hostile to the introduction of Christianity into India, so readily assent to it, or rather so warmly support it.

But, Sir, let me ask, do they not see that if the clause be left out, the act of parliament will contain no mention whatever of religion or morals? no recognition of its being our duty to endeavour to communicate to our East Indian fellow-subjects the blessings of Christian light and moral improvement? That recognition will still, I grant, be contained in the resolution of the House of Commons, as well as in that of the House of Lords; but let me ask, will not this be precisely the situation in which the cause has stood, and stood, alas! to no purpose, for the last twenty years? For on the renewal of the charter in 1793, both Houses of Parliament, as has been repeatedly stated, passed, and have ever since kept on their Journals, a Resolution similar to that which we have now adopted. But, as was unanswerably urged in defence of the Court of Directors, by one of the ablest and most active opponents of all attempts to convert the natives of India, this recognition, being only contained in the Votes of the two Houses, but not in the act of the legislature, the executive body, whose business it was to carry into execution what parliament had prescribed by that Act, could not be chargeable with neglecting any duty which that statute had ordained, when, so far from favouring, they rather thwarted and hindered the attempts of the missionaries. The guilt, as was irresistibly ar- gued by the writer just alluded to; the guilt, if any, of not having favoured the endeavours of individuals to convert the natives of India, was not justly chargeable on the East India Company's directors, nor yet on the Board of Controul, but on the legislature, which prescribed to both the principles on which the government in India was to be conducted, but said not one syllable about religion or morals. And if the present Act, like the former, were to leave religion and morals unmentioned, the same inference might fairly be drawn from the silence of the legislature; but with greatly increased force, since the enemies of East India missions would truly state, that the subject, which had formerly attracted little attention, had now been long under the consideration of parliament; and that, in the House of Commons especially, it had occasioned much debate. They would allege, that the advocates for the religious and moral improvement of India had maintained, that the moral degradation of our East Indian fellow-subjects, and their pernicious and cruel institutions, rendered it eminently desirable that we should endeavour to impart to them a purer system of faith and morals; that the attempt was perfectly practicable, and that it might be made with safety, nay even with advantage to our political interests;—that, on the other hand, our opponents had maintained, that we were bringing forward an unnecessary, nay a most pernicious project; that the principles of the Hindoo religion were eminently pure, their practice superior to our own; hut, were this more doubtful, that the endeavour could not be made without endangering the very existence of our empire in India. Such, I say, it would be alleged, had been the state of the argument, and it would be added irresistibly, that parliament had shewn, by rejecting the clause which had been offered by the advocates for Christianity in India, that it disapproved the project they had proposed.

If any thing more could then be needed to supply additional force to the above argument, it would be the language which has at length been used by the ablest of our opponents. For happily, Sir, in the progress of our discussions, they have warmed in their course, one of them especially, to whose abilities and eloquence I pay no unwilling testimony, though I must say that he has imposed on himself a task which exceeds his, or indeed any human abilites, in undertaking to reconcile the manifest inconsistency, of feeling the highest respect for Christianity, and of preserving at the same time any measure of reverence for the Hindoo religion, which, both in its theology and its morals, Christianity utterly abjures and condemns. The hon. gentleman, however, has spoken out; (I thank him for it;) and has relieved the question from all ambiguity,—speaking in terms of high admiration of the excellence and sublimity of the Hindoo religion, and pretty plainly intimating that we, who are endeavouring to substitute Christianity in the place of it, are actuated by a zeal the most fanatical and absurd. Indeed, he frankly acknowledged to us, that he had it once in contemplation to move a clause, expressly forbidding all further attempts of Christian missionaries, leaving us to conclude that he abstained from so doing merely on prudential grounds. All this may be right, or it may be wrong; but after such sentiments have been uttered, and after the exulting approbation with which they were received by our opponents in general, let it no longer be said that we are all of one mind, all wishing alike for the diffusion of Christianity in India, but only differing as to the mode of accomplishing that desirable event. No, Sir; the question is now put on its true basis, and it clearly appears to be no other than this, whether, as Christianity is the religion of the British empire in Europe, the religion of Brahma and Vishnoo is not to be the acknowledged system of our Asiatic dominions.

I beg pardon, Sir, for having trespassed so long on the indulgence of the House: but the subject is one, the importance of which can scarcely be over-estimated. If, Sir, a British judge and jury, the former often at an advanced period of life, after a long course of professional labours, will sit patiently for more than an entire day to decide whether the life of some criminal shall be forfeited to the offended laws of his country; nay, even to settle some doubtful question of property; how much less will you grudge, even to me, a still larger portion of your time and attention than I have presumed to occupy, when you consider, that the question which we are now deciding involves not the prosperity, not the life merely of an individual, but the religious and moral inserests, the temporal at once and the eternal well-being, of 60 millions of our fellow creatures!

repeated the arguments he had urged on a former night against the principle upon which the preamble was framed, and contended that the introduction of men with heated imaginations into India, under the title of Missionaries, would be attended with the most mischievous consequences. He re-asserted, that he had heard Dr. Carey, on a hogshead, exhorting the Hindoos, and telling them that hell's flames would certainly be their portion if they did not become Christians. The attempt to convert the Hindoos was the most absurd infatuation that ever besotted the weakest mind.

said, that the hon. gentleman who had spoken second in the debate, in supposing that government wanted to patronize missionaries going out to India, had misunderstood the plain meaning of the Resolution, as no such proceeding on the part of government was in contemplation. With regard to the mutiny at Vellore, he denied that the melancholy transaction was at all attributable to an attempt to introduce Christianity among the troops, but was solely to be ascribed to other causes, namely, to an order which had been given to remove the marks of their caste, than which nothing could be more degrading to a Hindoo. With respect to the argument of the invincibility of the prejudices of the natives, he said a sufficient answer had been afforded to this by the admirable effects which had resulted from the exertions of colonel Walker, in putting an end to the crime of infanticide, which had, before his interference, existed for centuries.

expressed his surprise that the duty imposed by this clause on missionaries, was not also imposed on the bishop and archdeacons who were proposed to go to India, in a subsequent clause. That there were many dignified clergymen of the established church prepared to pursue so laudable a design as the conversion of the Indians, he had not a doubt; and as he was not disposed to pay the missionaries a compliment at the expence of the church of England, he should not vote for the insertion of the preamble, unless it was also applied to the clause respecting the appointment of the bishops.

pointed out the certain ill effects which would result from this clause, and said that the natives of India were now watching every ship for the arrival of the Bill which was to constitute their future government. The moment it arrived it I would be translated into their language and they would study it with peculiar earnestness. The result they would draw from the proposed preamble would be, that the British government intended to force them to adopt the Christian religion, and hence would arise a spirit of dissatisfaction that would not terminate till the British authority in India was annihilated.

resisted the clause because it was altogether unnecessary.

could not admit that the preamble was not absolutely requisite. He thought that the dangers had been grossly exaggerated and the Hindoo character mistaken by the enemies of this clause. Why was this Christian country to abjure its doctrines in India? He was convinced that the mutiny of Vellore was not owing to the violation of any religious prejudices. If the preamble were rejected, it would be a complete bar to the introduction of Christianity into India.

said, that the House was to act as statesmen legislating for an empire, and not merely, as had been said, as a Christian assembly.

resisted the tone of authority assumed by gentlemen on the other side, not of the House, but of the question. Those gentlemen who had been in India, seemed to think they had a right to dictate what they pleased to those who had not been there; but he thought it very possible to have been in India and to know nothing of India. As to the charge of fanaticism, there was, he conceived, a fanaticism in religion, and also a fanaticism in indifference.

pleaded not guilty to the charge of indifference. His father was a clergyman, he had a brother a clergyman, and he intended making one of his sons a clergyman. It could scarcely be supposed, therefore, that he was indifferent on this head. He had assisted, besides, in translating the four gospels into the Hindoo language, and had received the thanks of several of those gentlemen for so doing. He had translated the gospels, but he left the Hindoos to do with them what they pleased.

spoke in favour of the original Resolution. He thought it prudent and moderate, and that it was such, that in the words of a great statesman, a Christian parliament could not do less—a British parliament could not do more.

The House then divided, when there were,

For the original Clause	54
For the Amendment	32
Majority	22

Hansard

Volume 26: debated on Thursday 1 July 1813

House of Commons

Mr. Hargrave's Books and Manuscripts

East India Company's Charter Bill