an empire without a religious establishment cannot stand forever,) by leaving the dispositions and prejudices of the people in their present state, than by any change that Christian knowledge and an improved state of civil society, would produce in them?And would not Christianity, more effectually than any thing else, disunite and segregate our subjects from the neighboring states, who are now of the same religion with themselves; and between whom there must ever be, as there ever has been, a constant disposition to confederacy and to the support of a common interest? At present there is no natural bond of union between us and them There is nothing common in laws, language, or religion, in interest, colour or country. And what is chiefly worthy of notice, we can approach them in no other way than by the means of our religion.*

6. The moral state of the Hindoos is represented as being still worse than that of the Mahometans.Those who have had the best opportunities of knowing them and who have known them for the longest time, concur in declaring that neither truth nor honesty, honour, gratitude, nor charity, is to be found pure in the breast of a Hindoo. How can it be otherwise? The Hindoo children have no moral instruction. If the inhabitants of the British Isles had no moral instruction, would they be moral? The Hindoos have no moral books. What branch of their mythology has not more of falsehood and vice in it, than of truth and virtue? They have no moral gods.

"The newly converted Christians on the coast of Malabar are the chief support of the Dutch East India Company at Cochin; and are always ready to take up arms in their defence. The Pagans and Mahometans are naturally enemies to the Europeans, because they have no similarity to them either in their external appearance, or in regard to their manners, their religion, or their inerest. If the English therefore do not endeavour to secure the friendship of the Christians in India, on whom can they depend? How can they hope to preserve their possessions'in that remote country?-In the above observations may be found one of the reasons why neither Hyder Ali nor Tippo Sultan could maintain their ground against the English and the king of Travancore on the coast of Malabar. The great number of Christians residing there, whom Hyder and his son every where persecuted, always took part with the English " -See Bartolomeo's Voyage, page 207, and note.

Ten thousand native Christians lost their lives during that war." Ibid, 149.

The robber and the prostitute lift up their hands with the infant and the priest, before an horrible idol of clay painted red, deformed and disgusting as the vices which are practised before it.*

7. You will sometimes hear it said that the Hindoos are a mild and passive people. They have apathy rather than mildness; their hebetude of mind is perhaps the 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 passive enough to receive any vicious impression. The English government found it necessary lately to enact a law against parents sacrificing their own children. In the course of the last six months, one hundred and sixteen 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 superstitious practices, they are described by competent judges as being of a spirit vindictive and merciless; exhibiting itself at times in a rage and infatuation, which is without example among any other people.* But it is not necessary to enter into any

The Hindoo superstition has been denominated lascivious and bloody.That it is bloody, is manifest from the daily instances of the female sacrifice The ground of the forand of the commission of sanguinary or painful rites. mer epithet may be discovered in the description of their religious ceremonies, "There is in most sects a right-handed or decent path; and a left-handed os indecent mode of worship."

See essay on the religious ceremonies of the Brahmins, by II. T. Colebrooke, Esq. Asiat Res. Vol. VII p. 281. That such a principle should have been admitted as systematic in any religion on earth, may be considered as the last effort of mental depravity in the invention of a superstition to blind the understanding, and to corrupt the heart.

+From April to October, 1804.

See Appendix D.

Lord Teignmouth, while President of the Asiatic Society in Bengal, delivered a discourse in which he illustrated the revengeful and pitiless spirit of the Hindoos, by instances which had come within his own knowlede while resident at Banares.

To intimi. In 1791, Soodishter Meer, a Brahmin, having refused to obey a summons issued by a civil officer, a force was sent to compel obedience. date them, or to satiate a spirit of revenge in himself, he sacrificed one of his own family. On their approaching his house, he cut off the head of his deceased son's widow, and threw it out."

In 1793, a Brahmin named Ballo, had a quarrel with a man about a field, and, by way of revenging himself on this man, he killed his own daughter. "I be"came angry, said he, and enraged at his forbidding me to plough the field, and "bringing my one little Apmunya, who was only a year and a half old, I killed her with my sword."

detail to prove the degraded state of the Hindoos; for if it were demonstrated that their moral depravity, their personal wretchedness, and their mental slavery were greater than imagination can conceive, the fact would have no influence on those who now oppose their Christian instruction. For, on the same principle that they withhold instruction from them in their present state, they would deny it, if they were worse. Were the books of the Brahmins to sanction the eating of human flesh, as they do the burning of women alive, the practice would be respected. It would be considered as a solemn rite consecrated by the ancient and sacred prejudices of the people, and the cannibal would be esteemed holy.* 8. During the last thirty years there have been many plans suggested for the better administration of the government of this country; but no system which has not the reformation of the morals of the people for its basis, can ever be effective. The people are destitute of those principles of honesty, truth and justice, which respond to the spirit of British administration; they have not a disposition which is accordant with the tenor of Christian principles. No virtues, therefore, no talents, or local qualification of their governors can apply the most perfect system of government with full advantage to such subjects. Something may be done by civil institution to ameliorate their condition, but the spirit of

About the same time, an act of matricide was perpetrated by two Brahmins, Beechuck and Abher. These two men conceiving themselves to have been injured by some persons in a certain village, they brought their mother to an adjacent rivulet, and calling aloud to the people of the village, "Beechuck drew "his scymetar, and, at one stroke, severed his mother's head from the body; "with the professed view, as avowed by both parent and son, that the mother's "spirit might forever haunt those who had injured them." Asiat. Res. Vol. IV p. 337.

Would not the principles of the Christian religion be a good substitute for the principles of these Brahmins of the province of Benares?

It will, perhaps, be observed, that these are but individual instances. True: but they prove all that is required. Is there any other babarous nation on earth ean exhibit such instances?

It is a fact that human sacrifices were formerly offered by the Hindoos: and as it would appear, at that period which is fixed by some authors for the era of their civilization and refinement.

their superstition has a continual tendency to deterioration.

9. The European who has been long resident in India, looks on the civilization of the Hindoos with a hopeless eye. Despairing, therefore, of intellectual or moral improvement, he is content with an obsequious spirit and manual service. These he calls the virtues of the Hindoo; and, after twenty year's service, praises his domestic for his virtues.

10. It has been remarked, that those learned men who are in the habit of investigating the mythology of the Hindoos, seldom prosecute their studies with any view to the moral or religious improvement of the people. Why do they not? It is because they think their improvement hardly practicable. Indeed the present circumstances of the people seldom become a subject of their investigation. Though such a number of women sacrifice themselves every year in the vicinity of Calcutta, yet it is rare that a European witnesses the scéne, or even hears of the event. At the time that government passed the law which prohibited the drowning of children, or exposing them to sharks and crocodiles at Saugor, there were many intelligent persons in Calcutta, who had never heard that such enormities existed. Who cares about the Hindoos, or ever thinks of visiting a village to enquire about their state, or to improve their condition! When a boat oversets in the Ganges, and twenty or thirty of them are drowned, is the event noticed as of any consequence, or recorded in a newspaper, as in England? or when their dead bodies float down the river, are they viewed with other emotions than those with which we behold the bodies of other animals?

11. A few notices of this kind will at once discover to the accurate observer of manners in Europe, the degraded character of the Hindoos in our estimation, whatever may be the cause. What then is the cause of this disregard of the persons and cir

cumstances of the Hindoos? the cause is to be found in the superstition, ignorance, and vices of the Hindoo character, and in nothing else.*

12. Now it is certain that the morals of this people, though they should remain subject to the British government for a thousand years, will never be improved by any other means than by the principles of the Christian religion. The moral example of the few English in India cannot pervade the mass of the population. What then is to be expected as the utmost felicity of British administration for ages to come? It is this, that we shall protect the country from invasion, and grant to the inhabitants to manufacture our investments in solemn stillness, buried in personal vice, and in a senseless idolatry.

13. Providence hath been pleased to grant to us this great empire, on a continent where, a few years ago, we had not a foot of land. From it we export annually an immense wealth to enrich our own country. What do we give in return? Is it said that we give protection to the inhabitants, and administer equal laws? This is necessary for obtaining our wealth. But what do we give in return? What acknowledgment to Providence for its goodness has our nation ever made? What benefit hath the Englishman ever conferred on the Hindoo, as on a brother? Every argument brought in support of the policy of not instructing the natives our subjects, when traced to its source, will be found to flow from principles of Deism, or of Atheism, or of Polytheism, and not from the principles of the Christian religion.

14. Is there any one duty incumbent on us as conquerors, toward a conquered people, resulting from our being a Christian nation, which is not common to the ancient Romans or the modern French? If there be, what is it? The Romans and the French