notion of the institution of the Purdah. In the East, even the most apathetic will fight for it, and die for it. What we did to tear down the Purdah was not much. But even the little was a source of inquietude and a weapon of offence. And when, moreover, they found us endeavouring to accomplish another great social innovation, by legalising the remarriage of Hindoo widows, the indignation of the grey-beards waxed stronger, and in anger and astonishment they asked, What next? It was very right that the Hindoo widow, often a child-widow, should not be condemned to a life of solitude, perhaps of sin; but the old-school Hindoos looked upon such condemnation as one of their most venerable social usages, and to legislate against it was in their estimation to invade the sanctity of the Zenana, and to obtrude ourselves into the most delicate concerns of their domestic life. We were talking, We were talking, too, of some day prohibiting infantine marriages, polygamy, especially in its worst form of Kulinism, and other kindred institutions; when suddenly the Great Rebellion of 1857 burst upon us and calamitously arrested our

progress.

Retrospect-Recapitulation-Success the result of caution-The question as affected by the Rebellion of 1857-Our future policy-Proposed demonstrations-Duty of the Government-Duty of individuals-Conclusion.

LOOKING back at what I have written, I think I have made it clear that the progress of Christianity in India has been such as any reasonable person, viewing it with due regard to the exigencies of time and circumstance, would be inclined to predicate from his knowledge of predisposing causes. That this progress has been slow is admitted; but it would be a mistake to assume that, therefore, any great national sin is to be laid at the door of the English in India, either as a state or as a people. It is not strange that Christianity advanced so slowly in India. It would have been strange if it had not advanced slowly. Nay, I do not see how, without a special interposition of Providence, it could possibly have advanced in any other way.

We have seen how, at the commencement of their career in India, the English in India were licentious and irreligious; and that the un-Christian lives of those early settlers wrought mightily to the prejudice

of Christianity, by blackening its face in the eyes of the natives of the country. But the lax habits and coarse manners of those exiles were importations from the mother country; and if they cared nothing about the souls of the heathen, they were in that respect only on a level with their brethren at home.

The missionary spirit infused itself but slowly into the British nation; and if we wonder that, at any particular time in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, there were no English missionaries in India, we shall in all probability find that there were no English missionaries anywhere. The progress of Christian missions in India, during the present century, has been only one of many practical emanations of the general revival of evangelical religion in Great Britain. The English in India have always kept pace with their brethren in the parent country. It is only within very recent times that the aggregate contributions of the English nation towards missionary objects has been otherwise than most contemptible in proportion to the general wealth of the country; and within these times the contributions of the English in India, considering their numbers and their means, have borne an honourable proportion to the aggregate national amount. It can be no special reproach to the English in India that they were not better than their countrymen at home. I have no hesitation in saying that they have never at any time

been worse.

But, if the people who have gone from our shores to the Eastern Indies be not deserving of rebuke

for their active sins, or their scarcely less sinful negligences, is not, many have asked, the AngloIndian Government to be rebuked for its impiety, or for its remissness? The answer to this question is, I hope, to be found in the foregoing pages. It has been seen that, at the outset of the career of the East India Company, they had no thought of empire, no system of policy, and no intercourse with the people, except of a purely mercantile character. Of the Moors, and of the Gentoos, they took no account, except as buyers and as sellers. If they bought and sold honestly, which, as a Company, they desired to do, whatever may have been the overreachings of individual merchants, they did their duty as a society of Christian men. When time and circumstance compelled them, in spite of themselves, to possess territory, and, therefore, as the rulers of a people, to inaugurate a political system, it appeared to them that justice and expediency alike demanded that they should govern, as their predecessors had governed before them, and that, above all things, they should abstain from asserting their national faith in such a manner as to offend the prejudices of the people. As time advanced, and their empire extended, it appeared to them to be more and more necessary to adhere to that system. The English in India were so few in numbers, their means of defence were altogether so feeble, that it seemed absolutely necessary by every means to conciliate the people of the country, lest they should suddenly be swept into the sea. It is possible that they may have over-estimated the

importance of this non-assertion of the national faith as a means of conciliation, but it was, at least, a reasonable hypothesis that the less they obtruded their Christianity upon the Hindoos and Mahomedans, the less likely they were to offend the prejudices of the people of the soil.

Indian government was, in those days, merely an experiment, and the continuance of our empire a problem of very uncertain solution. Political power had been thrust upon the Company, and very unwillingly accepted; and it was, perhaps, because they never thought of theorising, but accommodated themselves to surrounding circumstances, that they were enabled to hold possession of the territory which, province by province, had been committed to their care. We know now that with perfect safety our Christian Government may assert its national faith without offence either to Mahomedan or to Hindoo. But we do not know how far this happy state of things has resulted from the discretion which we exhibited at the outset of our career. do not know how greatly we are indebted to the confidence established by that very forbearance which is often branded as unseemly timidity, if not as un-Christian indifference. We have no right to assume, because we can now demonstrably adopt a particular course with safety, that we might have safely adopted it fifty years before. Everybody knows, in the daily concerns of life, what liberties he may take with his neighbours, so long as he does not take them too soon. Moreover, if it were

We