prevailed a sort of ambition of martyrdom, which the Fathers of the Church condemned as the fruit of misguided zeal, but which was considered by the people with reverence, as an honourable proof of a more sincere and intrepid attachment to religion than that which was shown by the cautious prudence of lukewarm brethren. Dying men deplored the natural death which robbed them of the honours of martyrdom. Many who were present at the trial and condemnation of their fellow Christians, cried out, We too are Christians,' that they might follow their brethren to the stake. Those who fled from persecution were stigmatized by the more severe Fathers; and those who purchased an indemnity from the magistrate, were thought little inferior in guilt to those who sacrificed to idols. So great was the rage for this species of suicide, though evidently unjustifiable, that the Roman magistrates sometimes (though too seldom and too late) discovered their best policy, even for their own purposes, to consist in mortifying and repelling the crowds of candidates for martyrdom.

Another sort of suicide was allowed by the most illustrious of the early Doctors of Christianity. Led probably by that fanatical and ascetic spirit which tainted their moral doctrines respecting the intercourse between the sexes, they allowed a woman to kill herself, in order to prevent an involuntary, and therefore imaginary, pollution of the body, where the mind was to remain perfectly spotless. They did not, indeed, with Lucretia, claim this privilege, from the shame of past violation; but they permitted it, for the prevention of that which was to come. It is unnecessary to observe, that this opinion can be justified by no principle; but it is evidently an excrescence from the principle of a suicide of duty, and proceeds partly from the confusion of guilt with disgrace, and partly also from the abusive application of moral terms to physical things. Though actions not immoral seldom continue long to be thought dishonourable among a civilized people, yet the degree of disgrace is often by no means proportioned to that of immorality. Thus, mercenary prostitution, when it arises from poverty, extenuates the vice, but renders the degradation deeper. Every outward mark of a disgraceful act is itself disgraceful. Though nothing can be immoral which is not voluntary, yet it may be ignominious to have involuntarily suffered from the brutality of others. A Bramin forfeits his civil rank and sacred character by what only the utmost cruelty could have compelled him to endure. The case of a virtuous man, discredited by calumnies, of which refutation does not repair the injurious effect, must be owned to be attended with considerable perplexity. But the more sound casuistry must forbid him to take refuge in volun

1

tary death. The possibility of escaping from dishonour is a temptation to undervalue honour. A good man ought not to murmur at that necessity which compels him to confute calumny by his life. But though it be not a justifiable case of suicide, it seems to be one of the most excuseable which can be imagined; and when a mind, stung by unmerited dishonour, determines on this dreadful remedy, and resolves on leaving an example which may deter some from calumny, and others from the imprudence which supplies the calumniator with weapons, though the action must be blamed as a deviation from the most elevated morality, yet the man may be pitied, and even loved, for a purity and ardour of moral fueling, of which the rigorous censors of his conduct were probably incapable.

Opposed to these voluntary deaths, which are enjoined or applauded, are two classes of culpable suicide, which may be termed the criminal and the vicious. A criminal suicide is that by which a man, under the influence of selfish impatience or apprehension, withdraws himself from the performance of evident, urgent, and important duties. Every duty imposes the secondary obligation to preserve the means of performing it, and consequently to preserve life, which comprehends all these means. The most homely instances are the best illustrations. A man on whose labour a family depended for bread, could not disable himself from earning it by mutilating his limbs, without a great crime:-but in destroying his life, he commits a greater crime of the same nature To escape from his difficulties to America or China, while he left a family destitute in England, would be a crime of great magnitude:--but to commit suicide, in like circumstances, would be to abscond without the possibility of return. Men are so linked together, that this plain consideration is sufficient in most cases of blameable suicide. Where a man is so insulated, that his duties become faint and general, all se fish suicide argues at least the vicious purpose of withdrawing from the practice of virtue, and destroying the power of rendering service to mankind. For these purposes, life is to be endured when it is miserabic, as well as sacrificed when it is most happy; and though the speculator may assign the boundaries of the obligation, they will not be discovered by a ge nerous man when he is called to make the effort. It is a fact, which must be equally acknowleged by the followers of all moral theories, that it is a more excellent habit to regard life as an instrument of serving others, than as a source of gratification to ourselves. It is also equally true, that this habitual disposition renders him who feels it more happy, as well as more virtuous, than if his mind were more constantly directed

towards his own enjoyments. Whether this last circumstance be the motive which does, or the reason which ought to make good men applaud and cultivate benevolence, is a question disputed by moral theorists, but wholly foreign to the present purpose. All systems agree in what is essential to the regulation of moral judgement or moral conduct. According to all principles, it is evident, that it is never praiseworthy, or even lawful, to sacrifice life, but in the observance of duty, or in the practice of virtue; that suicide, to be moral, must be for others; and that if there be a few beings so eminently useless, as well as miserable, that their case approaches to an exception, they are to be viewed with that mercy which is the first virtue of frail creatures, and without which we are unable to contemplate perfection.

Madame de Stael calls the suicides of duty and virtue by the names of devotion and sacrifice; and perhaps thus to distinguish them from the suicides of selfishness, may have an useful effect on the feelings. But to arrange the various sorts of suicide according to their motives and tendency-as criminal codes distinguish homicides-into justifiable, excuseable, and culpable -seems to us a manner of considering the subject which is not without its use, and which we have accordingly followed, without pretending that it is universally the best. It is impossible not to concur with Madame de Stael in rejecting that very vulgar commonplace, which represents suicide to be a proof of cowardice. To suffer well, is a proof of patience, of fortitude, or of firmness; but boldly to seek the means of deliverance from suffering, is the office of courage. Patience endures the gangrened limb,-courage encounters the terrors of the amputation. It is a distortion of words from their natural sense, to call that man a coward, who has completely conquered the fear of death.

Among the most remarkable persons who have contended for the innocence, and even for the merit of some suicides, are two eminent English Divines of the seventeenth century, whose writings are now little read. The first was the celebrated Dr Donne, who was probably driven to the contemplation of this question by his own sufferings. While he was secretary to Lord Chancellor Egerton, he married a young lady of rank superior to his own, which gave such offence to his patron, that he was dismissed from his office. He suffered extreme poverty with his wife and children; and in a letter, in which he adverts to the illness of a daughter whom he tenderly loved, he says, that he dares not expect relief, even from death, as he cannot afford the expense of the funeral! He afterwards took orders, and was promoted to the Deanery of St Paul's. In the early

part of his life, and probably during the period of his sufferings, he wrote a book, entitled Babaratos, A declaration of that paradox, or thesis, that self-homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise.' He did not publish it, but, on the contrary, forbade it both the press and the fire. He desired it to be remembered, that it was written by Jack Donne, not by Dr Donne;' and it was published many years after his death, by his son, a dissipated young man, tempted by his necessities to forget his father's prohibition. It is a very ingenious book, and in substance correct; but written in that paradoxical temper which thrusts forward whatever truth is averse to common opinion, and slightly acknowledges whatever agrees with it. His margin, crowded with references, is a curious proof of the great revolution which a century and a half have produced in the reading of Europe. Of the innumerable multitude of canonists, jurists, and schoolmen whom he has cited, there are not a dozen names now known to the most curious inquirer. Henry Dodwell, the learned Nonjuror, had that propensity towards singular speculations, in which ingenious men, who profess slavish principles of government, not unfrequently give vent to the native independence of their understanding. He maintained the innocence of suicide in some cases, in an apology for the philosophical writings of Cicero, prefixed to a translation of Cicero de Finibus,' by his brother non-juror, the noted Jeremy Collier, a writer remarkable for vulgar shrewdness and coarse vigour, who, by a fatality not unparalleled among translators of a higher order, chose an original the most dissimilar to himself, and attempted an English version of the most elegant and majestic of prose writers.

ART. IX. Sketch of the Sikhs; a singular Nation, who inhabit the Provinces of the Penjab, situated between the Rivers Jumna and indus. By Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm, Author of the Political Sketch of India. London, 1812.

THE HE description of the Sikhs, who now form a great nation in India, and occupy a grand division of its territory, merits peculiar attention, not merely as a leading chapter in the statistical account of the country, but as throwing the greatest light upon the moral and political state of the principal portion of its inhabitants.

As the measures which we adopt with regard to India affect not only their interests but our own, it is very important that

that we should possess as accurate a knowledge as possible respecting the character and civilization of the men whom we govern. Our proceedings must necessarily be wise or foolish, beneficent or prejudicial, according as they are well or ill adapted to the intellectual and moral condition of the people upon whom they are to operate. Many very fantastic and absurd notions are current with regard to that people; and as this account of the Sikhs is calculated to dispel at least one great class of those prejudices, there are few works to which we turn with greater satisfaction, than the little volume before us.

The information which we formerly possessed concerning this extraordinary people, was scanty indeed; although some important notices were scattered about in the Seer Mutakhareen, a very few copies, of a very imperfect translation of which had made their way to Europe. Even the statements which Colonel Malcolm has been able to collect, are far from complete. But they relate to some of the most important points; and authorise us to draw an outline, which a general knowledge of the Indian character will enable the intelligent reader pretty well to fill up.

The Sikhs are, in fact, Hindus; with certain important differences, introduced by a recent and extraordinary change in their religious and civil institutions. With the exception of these differences, they are merely Hindus; and it is therefore to the differences that the judicious inquiries of the author before us have been chiefly directed.

Sir John Malcolm accompanied the army which followed Holkar into the Penjab in 1805, and enjoyed opportunities both of observing the outward manners of the Sikhs, and of acquiring some of their sacred and historical books. The information which these advantages enabled him to collect, is embodied in the work which he has here given to the public. The details of their history, which in truth are the meaner part of the subject, exhibiting the disgusting uniformity of sanguinary feuds and struggles among a rude people, his avocations have induced him to defer; and he describes his object in the present work as having solely been, to give a short and hasty sketch of their history, customs, and religion.'

The Sikhs now occupy by far the most valuable part of that extensive territory which constituted the Mogul empire in its proudest days. From latitude 28° 40' to 32° N., and even farther, they inhabit the whole of that extensive and fertile country which is watered by the five branches of the Indus, a part of the province of Multau, and almost all that tract of country which lyes between the Jumna and the Sutlej, touching the ter