they wonder whence we have derived our principles of justice, humanity, magnanimity, and truth. Amidst all our conquefts in the Eaft; amidft the glory of our arms or policy; amidst our brilliant difplay of juft and generous qualities, the Englishman is ftill in their eyes "the Cafir;" that is, the Infidel.

"The Scriptures have been lately tranflated into fome of the vernacular languages of India. The natives read thefe Scriptures, and there they find the principles of the English. "But

if these Scriptures be true," say they, "where is your church?" We anfwer," at home." They shake the head, and say that fomething must be wrong; and that although there are good principles in our holy book, they might expect fomething more than internal evidence, if we would wish them to believe that it is from God; or even that we think fo ourselves." P. 13.

In the fifth chapter, the author replies to the objections which may be made to fuch an establishment. To the following momentous enquiry, what English reader, who feels (as we truft the majority of such readers do) a sense of piety, can hesitate to answer in the affirmative?

"Does it not appear a proper thing to wife and good men in England, (for after a long refidence in India, we fometimes lofe fight of what is accounted proper at home,) does it not seem proper, when a thousand British foldiers are affembled at a remote ftation in the heart of Afia, that the Sabbath of their country fhould be noticed? That, at least, it should not become what it is, and ever muft be, where there is no religious restraint, a day of peculiar profligacy? To us it would appear not only a politic, but a humane act, in refpest of thefe our countrymen, to hallow the feventh day. Of a thousand foldiers in fickly India, there will generally be a hundred, who are in a declining ftate of health; who, after a long ftruggle with the climate and with intemperance, have fallen into a dejected and hopeless state of mind, and pafs their time in painful reflection on their diftant homes, their abfent families, and on the indifcretions of their past life; but whofe hearts would revive within them on entering once more the houfe of God, and hearing the abfolution of the Gospel to the returning finner.

"The oblivion of the Sabbath in India, is that which properly conftitutes banishment from our country. The chief evil of our exile is found here; for this extinction of the facred day tends, more than any thing elfe, to eradicate from our minds refpect for the religion, and affection for the manners and inftitutions, and even for the local feenes, of early life." P. 18.

Such are the contents of the first division of this memoir : the fecond, as it communicates more curious facts, will be read with fill increafing intereft. The first chapter of this

fecond

second part treats of the practicability of civilizing the natives of Hindoftan. To this point we shall immediately copy the following paffage.

"To civilize the Hindoos will be confidered, by most men, our duty; but is it practicable? and if practicable, would it be confiftent with a wife policy? It has been alleged by fome, that no direct means ought to be used for the moral improvement of the natives; and it is not confidered liberal or politic to disturb their fuperftitions.

"Whether we ufe direct means or not, their fuperftitions will: be difturbed under the influence of British civilization. But we ought first to observe that there are multitudes who have no faith at all. Neither Hindoos nor Muffulmans, outcafts from every faith; they are of themselves fit objects for the beneficence of the British Parliament. Subjects of the British empire, they feck: a caft and a religion, and claim from a just government the franchife of a human creature.

<< And as to those who have a faith, that faith, we aver, will be disturbed, whether we with it or not, under the influence of British principles: this is a truth confirmed by experience. Their prejudices weaken daily in every European fettlement. Their fanguinary rites cannot now bear the noonday of English obfervation and the intelligent among them are ashamed to confefs the abfurd principles of their own cafts. As for extreme delicacy toward the fuperftitions of the Hindoos, they understand > it not. Their ignorance and apathy are fo extreme, that no means of inftruction will give them ferious offence, except pofitive violence." P. 22..

The queftion of the policy of civilizing the natives is difcuffed in the fecond chapter. In this chapter is strongly painted the hoftile and contemptuous fpirit of the Mahometan, and the extreme moral depravity of the Hindoo, and from these are justly deduced the policy as well as the duty of introducing Chriftianity by all peaceable means. The fact of the depravity of the Hindoos is perhaps but little known in this country, for which reafon we fhall copy the following paragraph.

"The Chriftian miffionary is always followed by crowds of the common people, who liten with great pleasure to the difputa. tion between him and the Brahmins; and are not a little amufed when the Brahmins depart, and appoint another day for the difcuffion. The people fometimes bring back the Brahmins by copftraint, and urge them to the conteft again."

"The moral state of the Hindoos is represented as being still worse than that of the Mahometans. Thofe, who have had the beft opportunities of knowing them, and who have known them for the longest time, concur in declaring that neither truth, nor honefty, honour, gratitude, nor charity, is to be found pure in the breast of a Hindoo. How can it be otherwife? The Hindoo children have no moral inftruction. If the inhabitants of the British ifles had no moral inftruction, would they be moral? The Hin doos have no moral books. What branch of their mythology has not more of falfehood and vice in it, than of truth and virtue? They have no moral gods. The robber and the proftitute lift up their hands with the infant and the priest, before an horrible idol of clay painted red, deformed and difgufting as the vices which are practised before it *.

You will fometimes hear it faid that the Hindoos are a mild and paffive people. They have apathy rather than mildness; ; their hebetude of mind is, perhaps, their chief negative virtue. They are a race of men of weak bodily frame, and they have a mind conformed to it, timid and abject in the extreme. They are paffive enough to receive any vicious impreffion. The Englifh government found it neceffary lately to enact a law against parents facrificing their own children. In the course of the last fix months, one hundred and fixteen women were burnt alive with the bodies of their deceased husbands within thirty miles round Calcutta, the most civilized quarter of Bengal +. But, independently of their fuperftitious practices, they are defcribed by competent judges as being of a fpirit vindictive and mercilefs; exhibiting itself at times in a rage and infatuation, which is without example among any other people ‡." P. 32.

*

It

"The Hindoo fuperftition has been denominated lafcivious and bloody. That it is bloody, is manifeft from the daily inftances of the female facrifice, and of the commiffion of fanguinary or painful rites. The ground of the former epithet may be difcovered in the defcription of their religious ceremonies: There is in most fects a right-handed or decent path; and a left-handed or indecent mode of worship.'

That

"See Effay on the Religious Ceremonies of the Brahmins, by H. T. Colebrooke, Efq. Afiat. Ref. Vol. VII. p. 281. fuch a principle fhould have been admitted as fyftematic into any religion on earth, may be confidered as the laft effort of mental depravity in the invention of a fuperftition to blind the under. ftanding, and to corrupt the heart.

+From April to October, 1804. See Appendix D.

+ "Lord Teignmouth, while Prefident of the Afiatic Society in Bengal, delivered a difcourfe, in which he illuftrated the revengeful and pitilefs fpirit of the Hindoos, by inftances which had come within his own knowledge while refident at Benares. "In 1791, Soodifhter Meer, a Brahmin, having refused to

obey

It is certain, fays Mr. B. that the morals of this people, though they fhould remain fubject to the British government for a thoufand years, will never be improved. by any other means than by the principles of the Chriftian religion. Shall we not liften then to the following remonftrances ?

"Can any one believe that our Indian fubjects are to remain for ever under our government involved in their prefent barbarifm, and fubject to the fame inhuman fuperftition? And if there be a hope that they will be civilized, when is it to begin, and by whom is it to be effected?

"No Chriftian nation ever poffeffed fuch an extenfive field for the propagation of the Chriftian faith, as that afforded to us by our influence over the hundred million natives of Hindoostan. No other nation ever poffeffed fuch facilities for the extenfion of its faith as we now have in the government of a paffive people; who yield fubmiffively to our mild fway, reverence our principles, and acknowledge our dominion to be a bleffing. Why fhould it be thought incredible that Providence hath been pleafed, in a courfe of years to fubjugate this Eaftern empire to the moft civilized na tion in the world, FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE?" P. 39.

obey a fummons iffued by a civil officer, a force was fent to compel obedience. To intimidate them, or to fatiate a fpirit of revenge in himself, he facrificed one of his own family. On their approaching his houfe, he cut off the head of his deceased fon's widow, and threw it out.

"In 1793, a Brahmin, named Balloo, had a quarrel with a man about a field, and, by way of revenging himfelf on this man, he killed his own daughter. I became angry, faid he, and enraged at his forbidding me to plough the field, and bringing my own little daughter Apmunya, who was only a year and a half old, I killed her with my fword

"About the fame time, an act of matricide was perpetrated by two Brahmins, Beechuk and Adher. Thefe two men conceiving themselves to have been injured by fome perfons in a certain vil Jage, they brought their mother to an adjacent rivulet, and calling aloud to the people of the village, Beechuck drew his fcymetar, and, at one ftroke, fevered his mother's head from the body; with the profeffed view, as avowed both by parent and fon, that the mother's fpirit might for ever haunt those who had injured them.' Aftat. Ref. Vol. IV. p. 337.

"Would not the principles of the Chriftian religion be a good fubftitute for the principles of thefe Brahmins of the province of Benares ?

"It will, perhaps, be obferved, that thefe are but individual inftances. True: but they prove all that is required. Is there any other barbarous nation on earth which can exhibit fuch inftances?":

The concluding paragraph of this chapter is full of virtuous animation.

"No truth has been more clearly demonftrated than this, that the communication of Chriftian inftruction to the natives of India is easy; and that the benefits of that inftruction, civil as well as moral, will be ineftimable; whether we confider the happiness diffused among fo many millions, or their confequent attachment to our government, or the advantages refulting from the introduction of the civilized arts. Every thing that can brighten the hope or animate the policy of a virtuous people organizing a new empire, and feeking the most rational means, under the favour of heaven, to enfure its perpetuity; every confideration, we aver, would perfuade us to diffuse the bleffings of Chriftian knowledge among our Indian fubjects." P. 40.

The third chapter confiders the impediments to the civilization of the natives of India. In this chapter, however, what we are chiefly defirous to point out, is a note refpecting the moft unwarrantable liberty taken in republishing the fifth volume of the Afiatic Refearches in this country, by introducing a preface completely hoftile to the views and fentiments of the fociety. When we reviewed that volume we noticed this fcandalous preface as a manifeft interpolation *; but it is ftill more fatisfactory to fee it thus indignantly dif avowed by authority.

"The editors of the Afiatic Refearches in London have availed themselves of the occafion of that work's being republished at home, to prefix a preface to the fifth volume, containing fentiments directly contrary to thofe profeffed and pub. lished by the most learned members of the Afiatic Society. They will be much obliged to the London editors of that work to take no fuch liberty in future; but to allow the Society to write its own prefaces, and to speak for itself. We are far off from France here. The Society profeffes no fuch philofophy."P. 46.

In Chap. 4. the fanguinary fuperftitions of the natives of India are further confidered, as an impediment to their ci vilization. The following ftatement will appear extraordinary to moft English readers.

"An event has juft occurred, which feems, with others, to mark the present time, as favourable to our endeavour to qualify the rigour of the Hindoo fuperftition.

"In the courfe of the Mahratta war, the great temple of

See British Critic, Vol. xvi. p. 148.

Jaggernaut