stances to divest his connexion with Madame Imhoff of some of its ugliest features; and even the greatest and best of men may fall into temptation. But his determination not to regard the evil he had done as a social offence, to be hidden as much as possible from the eyes of his countrymen, had nothing to justify or to excuse it. He was Governor-General of India, and as such he could not openly offend against morality without offending as a ruler no less than as a man. Evil example in high place is a deadly evil, for vice, always infectious, diffuses itself with virulence a hundredfold when the disease breaks out on an eminence. In no place, perhaps, in the world, is bad example more pernicious than in India; for in no place is personal character more mighty an agent for evil or for good. By the force of that personal character, every European who embarks for India must do either harm or good, not merely to himself and to his brother exiles, but to the nation which he represents. The higher his position the greater the amount of good or of harm; but for the Englishman in India, whatsoever his position, there is no such thing as the harmlessness of obscurity. PROGRESS OF MORALITY AND RELIGION. 117 CHAPTER V. Progress of Morality and Religion-The Administration of Lord CornwallisCharles Grant and John Shore-The Malda Mission-The Clapham Sect -The War of Pamphlets. LORD CORNWALLIS entered upon his administration in 1786; and a considerable improvement in the tone of society very soon began to be apparent. He was a high-minded English nobleman; the first who had ever carried out to our Eastern settlements the conventionalities and the moralities of aristocratic English life. I am inclined to think that he carried out something still better-the sterling integrity of a thoroughly honest man, and the pure example of a blameless way of life, not reflecting the common morality of his countrymen at home, but greatly outshining it. Such an example was much wanted in India. It is impossible to turn over the Indian journals of 1788, and the few following years, immediately after laying down those of 1780-81, without being struck with the very different kind of reading which the society had begun to relish. The journals of 1788 are highly decorous and respectable. They contain no private slander; no scurrilous invective; no gross obscenity. There appears, at that time, to have been more than enough of worldliness; but it was much better regulated than it had been a few years before. The papers abound in descriptions of balls and plays; but in these there is nothing offensive. They bespeak far greater decorum and sobriety than those of the Hastings' administration. There are extant detailed accounts of two grand balls-one given in 1781, the other in 1788. In the former, we are told that the ladies took their departure, “accompanied by the danglers, at about half-past 12;" whilst the "jolly bucks remained behind to seek for charms in the sparkling juice of the grape, who, like the true sons of Bacchus and Comus, kept it up until four; and in all probability their happiness had continued until Sol in his journey towards the West had bid them good morning, had they not been disturbed by two carping sons of Mars, who began to quarrel.” Then comes an account of an altercation, a pugilistic encounter, and a dénouement, as offensively gross in description as anything I have ever seen in print. In the other, we are told that "the ball opened about half-past nine in the evening, which was graced with a numerous assemblage of ladies. The dances continued till near twelve, when his lordship (Cornwallis) and the company adjourned to supper. The pleasures of the dance are always preferred by the ladies, and the repast afforded but a short interruption to their renewing them, which consequently attracted their partners and left the solitary swains to the enoyment of the bottle, though to the praise of their SOCIAL IMPROVEMENTS. 119 moderation it must be observed that the dancing-room seemed to engage the most of their attention." This was no small improvement; for only a few years before, dancing was not thought to be possible after supper. There was room, doubtless, for a great deal more improvement, for even in these comparatively decorous accounts we see somewhat too much of "choice spirits" and "votaries of Bacchus ;" but the change which I have indicated must have been considerable, for I find a public journal-the India Gazette (1788) commenting editorially upon the palpable improvement in the state of society, and congratulating the settlement upon it:-"We are not surprised at the various changes of fashion, as they arise from fancy or caprice, but the alteration of manners must be derived from a superior source; and when we find that the pleasures of the bottle, and the too prevailing enticements of play, are now almost universally sacrificed to the far superior attractions of female society, can we fail to ascribe the pleasing and rational distinction to that more general diffusion of taste and politeness which the company and conversation of ladies must ever inspire? this was the sentiment of the all-accomplished Chesterfield, and there are few who were better acquainted with the science of attaining the graces." This may be accepted as a very fair indication of the period at which a palpable improvement in the social morality of the English in India first began to be discernible. It will be gathered, from the above extract, that before the close of 1788 gambling and drinking had gone out of fashion.* But at this time, although the English in India were emerging from that absolute slough of profligacy and corruption in which they had so long been disgracefully sunk; though great social changes had supervened; though knavery and extortion were no longer dominant in their offices, and rioting and drunkenness in their homes; though men walked more decently before their fellows, making outward show at least of honesty and sobriety, and living as though it were no longer incumbent upon them, habitually and unreservedly, to break all the commandments of the decalogue, there was little real Christianity in India. Few were the altars erected to the true God; few the ministers of the true religion. Living in a heathen land, they were still contented to live as heathens. Of anything like a state religion there was but the faintest shadow. Here and there a solitary chaplain, if he chanced to be at his post, and off the bed of sickness, ministered to an *I do not know the precise date at which the first regular race-meeting came off at Calcutta, or at the other presidencies. Mr. Stocqueler, in his "Handbook," says: "The first record of the existence of racing in Calcutta may be dated from the origin of the Bengal Jockey Club, in 1803"-but in the volume of "Hickey's Gazette" for 1780 there are accounts both of races and of race-balls. A few years later they appear to have fallen into desuetude in Calcutta, though carried on with great éclat at Madras. "We have continued scenes of gaiety," writes a newspaper correspondent from that presidency, in 1788; "and may boast a competition even with your more |