really think that while you are throwing away all other reputation, you might as well keep that of courage."

We can casily conceive, that the accession of this hero will not give an unmingled satisfaction to the band. Though his views, his spirit, and his object, are but the same as theirs, his ingenuous boldness makes a more perfect disclosure, than they would probably have wished till some more favourable season. It is not indeed any very refined artifice of management that they could have comprehended, or therefore applauded; Mr. Twining's understanding, especially, might not have been able to distinguish the new ally from a Christian, had he written with any thing like the delicate subtlety and finesse of such an author as Hume. A tolerably broad style of expression was quite necessary to meet the perceptions of the junto; but still they could have recognized the marks of fraternity in our author, without his absolutely going the length of chaunting psalms to the loathsome Doorga, and celebrating the sublime theology of that passage in the Institutes of Menu, which contains a clause relating to the EXCRETIONS of the divinity! Not that they might have had any objection to all this in itself, and in its proper place, that is in Bengal; but in England there is a certain remainder of the fashion of decency, which imposes the necessity of a sinall measure of policy; and therefore they would have been much more glad of his assistance, if he had not rushed so furiously forward, in the costume of the gymnosophists, to beat the gong of the idol's temple, and summon the people to the mass of Seeva. Such as he is, however, the party must have him for an associate; in compassion they must have him, for he is fit for no other company; he has lost cast in the civilized society of Christendom; this irretrievable sacrifice made for the cause, is evidence of his merit, and will secure. his fidelity. And though it would have been, in the party, an extremely moderate and humble petition, to have asked of the Indian gods to send them a co-operator much better versed in rules of art and discretion, and very much better capable of constructing sentences, than this unfortunate imp, yet we think they may make good service of him in a cause, in which they will not be able every day to find creatures of sufficient vice and stupidity to be employed. He is quite the Caliban for their drudgery, their curses, and their incantations; admirably fitted to fetch wood for baking their idols and burning their women; the genuine "hagseed," whose very dialect betrays the descent from Doorga or Sycorax. He is exactly for their purpose, if they want an organ through which they may eructate and disgorge the vilest slanders against blameless missionaries, profane every thing that is

sacred, assert every thing that is false, and deify every thing that is abominable.

The chief part and object of the production before us, is the direct assertion, extended and illustrated to great length, of the excellence of the Hindoo "religion," which is represented as so firmly fixed in the minds of the people, that it is madness to presume the possibility of displacing it by Christianity; and so adequate to all their spiritual and moral interests, that if Christianity could be substituted, it would be no advantage to them. Collateral topics are treated in a rambling way, several of them in a sort of attack on Dr. Buchanan. The subject of the missions is of the essence of the business. Most of what he has to say directly on this subject, seems to have been set down previously to the appearance of Major Scott Waring's pamphlet, but is so perfectly in the same strain, that each might be taken as an echo of the other. The commencing paragraph will tell what set him a-going, and exemplify the singular correctness of his composition.

Having recently been favoured with the perusal of a manuscript professing to be a "Translation of an Address to the Inhabitants of India, from the Missionaries of Serampore, in Bengal, inviting them to become Christians ;" and having been, at all times, deeply impressed with a strong sense of the impolicy, the inutility, and danger of all attempts to convert to Christianity the natives of Hindostan : no sooner, therefore, did I peruse the indicated missionary paper, than I threw together the few remarks that will be found in the subsequent pages of this pamphlet.'

His flimsy observations, relating to the missions, having been answered and exploded by anticipation, in the various publications that have been called forth by the two former writers, a very slight additional notice will suffice. It is needless to cite notorious facts, in contradiction to his assertion of the impracticability of converting the Hindoos. But it may be remarked here, and might have been remarked before, that these men let themselves talk, as if nothing were effected where prodigies are not effected, and as if a thing could never be done which cannot be done in an instant. What do they suppose the missionaries expected to effect, and in what time? Do they imagine that Mr. Carey, for instance, landed in India with the notion that all who came to worship the Ganges, or to burn their mothers or expose their children on its banks, one season, were to come there the next to be baptized? Or that the want of moon-light the half of each month would be supplied by the light of Hindoo temples, set on fire over the heads of their gods by their recent worshippers all through Hindostán? The missionaries were painfully instructed, before they went, in the obduracy of human mature; in the fatal resistance which truth has every where

to expect from ignorance and prejudice, and a pure religion from desperate moral depravity. They had found too much of this, even in a country like England, to indulge for one moment the dream that they were to transform and illuminate crowds of miserable pagan barbarians, by just touching them with a testament or a tract. As they could not pre. sume to promise themselves, for the present, that extraordinary exertion of divine power which their confidence in prophetic declarations foresaw as the felicity of some future age, they formed their calculation nearly on the recorded and usual effect of human labours for the promotion of religion. They could not need to be told, in order to keep their imagination sober, that a handful of men commencing hostility, on such a calculation, against a most comprehensive and inveterate superstition, must expect so slow a success, that only their setting as high a value as ever benevolent apostle, or if possible as ever the still more benevolent angels of heaven did, on one pagan delivered from the abhorred den of idolatrous superstition, would console them on a numerical view of their acquisitions. Almost such a value they do set, in the slow progress of their success, on each individual; and therefore their animation is sustained, notwithstanding their cause does not obtain multitudes and princes, the only standard by which these officers and merchants are capable of estimating success.

If the missionaries really did go to India with hopes somewhat too elated, it was in a great measure from the fallacious accounts which a former set of infidel reporters had concurred in giving to Europe of the innocence, mildness, and civilization of the Hindoos; a fallacy which this Vindicator is silly enough to attempt imposing on the now better informed public once more, and without the smallest aid of elegance, ingenuity, or learning. The missionaries knew they should find idols almost as plentiful as stumps of trees, and millions of unhappy mortals prostrate before them; they were prepared for this, but they had perhaps trusted these deceivers rather too far, to make, in its full extent, the infallible inference as to the moral depravity of the people; the consequence was, a feeling of no little surprise to find them almost all cheats, liars, and adulterers. However, they have had the courage to labour against both the idolatry and the moral depravity; they confide in the ultimate benignity of Heaven to the unhappy nations of the East; and this Bengal Officer may be assured, that they look on the yet little company of first converts with as much delight,-whether considering the intrinsic value of -so many Christianized minds, or regarding them as the precursors of an infinite multitude to become the disciples and -VOL. VI. U

agents of the Christian cause long perhaps after they shall have retired from their mission to their reward,-as he ever did, in the day of victory, on ten times as many of the same race of people lying dead on the field.

One paragraph relating to the motives of the missionaries may be taken from among many others of a kindred quality, in which we are inclined to give the writer credit for the sincerity of his expressions, to show how much of something like fatuity, in judging of even very plain things, a certain degree of irreligion will induce upon an understanding, that naturally might perhaps have had considerably more than wherewithal to save the nose from encountering a post.

If men, thus labouring for subsistence in their vocation, and under the necessity of making converts, at any rate, in order to ensure the continuance of their allowances, and the permanency of their mission, rashly venture to hurl the bigot anathema of intolerance at the head of the "Barbarian Hindoos," and, unadvisedly, to vilify the revered repositories of their faith; we may find some colour of excuse in the seeming necessity under which they act but, that a member of the English church, a public servant of the Company, &c. &c. &c.' p. 3.

To attempt explaining to him the elevated religious nature of the motives by which they are actuated, would undoubtedly be much the same thing as to accost the faculties of the post aforesaid, or even those of Mr. Twining; but we may hope to make it intelligible to him by what motives they are not actuated, when we state, that these missionaries in a great measure, if not entirely, support themselves by their secular employments, which they undertook, in order that the contributions from England might be applied to the purposes of the mission in a stricter sense than that of supporting themselves and their families, and with a generous unanimous determination to devote to the same exclusive purpose whatever surplus might arise to any or all of them from such employments. This is the first calumniator that has made it necessary to say one word respecting the motives of the missionaries in India.

If it will please him better, we will impute it to malignity rather than to a hopeless eclipse of understanding, that in talking about interference and toleration, he, like the rest of the party, deprecates the use of the methods of mere persuasion, and represents their consequences in terms which identify them with methods of force. Take a sample.

• At such a moment, I say, teeming with an accumulation of evils, that menace our very existence in the East, is it wise, is it politic, is it even safe, to institute a war of sentiment against the only friends of any im portance we seem to have yet left in India,our faithful subjects of the

Ganges, by suffering Missionaries, or our own Clergy, to preach among them the errors of idolatry and superstition; and thus, disseminating throughout the public mind, the seeds of distrust and disaffection, to the imminent danger of every energy of the State? Hitherto this result has been happily obviated by the tolerant conduct of our Governors in the East, judiciously seconded by the executive servants of the Company; in due attention and indulgence to the customs, the prejudices, and religious rites, of the natives of every description.' p. 7.

I would by no means have it understood that I consider the proposed indulgence to the Hindoos, in not interfering with their religion, as a matter of mere expediency, unconnected with the claims of justice; or that forbearance is to be conceded only on the principle of reciprocity, by exchanging toleration for consequent security.' p. 8.

As the missionaries will necessarily be regarded as acting under the sanction of Government, the Hindoos will view, with jealousy and dissatisfaction, this European interference with the venerated system of their ancestors; will consequently relax in that respect and apparent cordiality that has hitherto been cherished by our liberal toleration and judicious indulgence in all matters regarding the celebration of their worship. This tie once loosened, that binds them to our interest,' farewell that mutual confidence that can no longer be reciprocal while distrust is engendered by a sense of injury and oppression. In such a disposition they would be ready to join the first Holcar among them, that should raise the standard of revolt. To secure therefore their fidelity, we must merit it by liberality;-by a total forbearance from all religious restraint ;-and by due attention and indulgence to their manners, their customs, and their prejudices, which are inseparably united with the rites of their religion." pp. 20, 21.

In the name of peace then, and of that blessed spirit of toleration which happily pervades the British Empire, let us leave the Hindoos in the undisturbed possession of their altars and their Gods.' p. 58.

Now, what is it exactly that these terms justice, forbearance, indulgence, liberality, and toleration, are opposed to, in relation to our conduct toward the Hindoos? The new doctors of philanthropy take great pains to shift and complicate the answer to this question. They feel how strikingly rational it would look to answer directly and precisely, that the injustice, the injury, the restraint, the illiberality, the interference, and the intolerance, against which they so zealously remonstrate in behalf of the Hindoos, is actually neither more nor less than a permission, on the part of our government, to a number of Christian teachers, of exemplary-virtue and literary acquirements, to visit the towns and villages, trusting their personal safety entirely to the inhabitants while they inform them what their own Sastras say of their gods, to infer from these testimonies that they cannot be right objects of worship, and to tell them of another Being, to them yet unknown, that exclusively claims their devotion. But what then are the interference and intolerance, which

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