miscreants, whoever they may be, that attempt to alarm them by false information. If they have not thus much sense, the case is bad indeed; for it will always be easy for the native princes, or any discontented or malignant individual of lower rank, or for the emissaries of a hostile European power, to employ the vagabond Saniassis or Fakeers, and numberless other fit instruments of mischief, or even for any of this worthless tribe to employ themselves, in propagating reports in the native army that the government means to force them vi et armis out of their superstition; nor can this be at all prevented, by this writer's proposed "silencing for ever" of the missionaries. It will only be necessary to im prove the falsehood, by saying that the silencing was a mere temporary trick of government, that the missionaries have been suffered to open again, and have received a whole ship's cargo of auxiliaries from England,

We might here remark, that the Hindoos are, by this Vindicator, made exceedingly good or exceedingly bad, just as suits the immediate purpose. First, they need none of the moral improvements which Christianity would pretend to bring them; when he is maintaining this, there is not a good quality under heaven in which these people do not excel :---but next, it is dangerous to attempt the introduction of Christianity among them; when this is to be proved, then they are perfect devils of rage and revenge, prompt to every atrocity, and certain to repay the good wishes and kind efforts of their instructors with "extermination." The same may be said of his representations of the character of their "religion"; when it is to be proved such, that Christianity is unworthy to become its substitute, then it is sublime, beneficent, and of the best moral tendency; but when he is to shew the dire hazards attendant on permitting a mission, then the spirit of this same religion is described in the following terms.

With despotic influence, and mounted on the pinnacle of superstition, it attracts within its vortex all the discordant atoms of civil feuds, and rival animosities; and stands, like the genius of Punishment, "with a black hue and a red eye," menacing desolation;-or like the demon of Distrust, with dark, suspicious, and cautious step, it silently approaches the mansions of peace, with the contracted brow of sullen discontent; till, urged by the congenial assimilation of universal dissatisfaction, like the fell tyrant of the forest, it springs, unsuspected, on the foe, and devotes him to destruction.' p. 155.

What immediately follows deserves also to be introduced.

• Shall we appeal to the Crusades? shall we appeal to St. Bartholo. mew? shall we appeal to our own blood-stained annals, for a confirmation of this sentiment? Yes, we may confidently appeal; and, unhappily, we shall find that of all the evils with which the vengeance of Heaven

hath ever afflicted a devoted land, that of religious fury, is the most contagious, destructive, outrageous and ungovernable. We should therefore pause, before we erect the standard of reformation on the plains of Hindostan.

Hitherto missionaries have been suffered to reside in India, neither publicly sanctioned by government, nor yet absolutely discountenanced; and so long as they confined themselves to the modest limits of their vocation, converting distressed orphans, or outcast Hindoos, who sought refuge, in despair, for the loss of respectability, no material evil could arise from the exercise of their functions in so limited a degree; but now that they have presumed, without permission of Government, to circulate addresses among our subjects, of a manifest tendency to disturb the peace and order of society, by exciting distrust in the public mind, to the manifest danger of our dearest interests in that country; however great, therefore, my respect for their sacred character, eminent talents, or individual respectability, I have no hesitation in declaring the dread moment to be arrived, when the absolute safety of the state requires that they should be for ever silenced.' pp 155, 156, 157.

This passage we quote, for the sake of pointing out to notice the first sentences, in which the deadly quality of a super. stition is made precisely the reason for leaving it in an inviolable and eternal possession of the human mind, since the attempt to displace it may excite it to destructive fury. We cannot be sure how far this may not be very proper reasoning, for a person who has no belief in the existence and superintendance of an Almighty Power.

We should sooner have proceeded to what certainly forms the most prominent feature of this publication, the explicit assertion and illustration of the excellence of the Hindoo theology and morality, as placed in competition with Christianity, if we could really have attached any particular importance to such a phenomenon in literature. As appearing in print in England, such a thing may undoubtedly be called a phenomenon, even notwithstanding the gradation by which we have come to the show, through the respectable exhibitions of Messrs. Twining and Scott Waring: but we apprehend that such things are common enough in the coffee-houses, and at the mess, in Calcutta; and therefore any of our friends that may have been there, would be apt to divert themselves at our simplicity, if we continued long in the attitude of wonder. The singularity of the thing consists, in the heroic impudence of bringing such an importation from the camps and taverns of India, to be obtruded on the attention of people here, whose curiosity has been tolerably saturated by this writer's two predecessors. But we suspect that something depended on his performance or non-performance of this feat: the piece has a good deal the appearance which might be

expected in a thing done for a wager, unwarily offered, in a convivial hour, by some good companion, who imagined that no man had effrontery enough to write such a pamphlet, and was also of opinion that this author had not faculties to make a pamphlet at all. On this latter account especially, it might have been thought the safest challenge possible; for it might be very well known that he could not read one line of the sacred books of the Hindoos, though he has passed so many years in their country; it might not be difficult to guess, what he somewhere acknowledges, that the slight smattering of Hindoo mythology in his possession, was bestowed on him by the most illuminated wandering rabble of holy beggars; and it would be tolerably evident, that his dialect, his ingenuity, and his logic were-perfectly on a level indeed with the merits of the cause, but a small matter deficient for the task of its advocate. But his courage was up to the "sticking-place," and as, according to the good homely adage, "where there is a will, there will be a way," he had the good fortune to learn that a few books had been translated by Sir W. Jones, Mr. Wilkins, and one or two more scholars. He eagerly possessed himself of the Institutes of Menu, the Ayeen Ackbary, the Heetopades, and the Geeta; and went to work on this immense mass of learning, which he might get through in a fortnight, without refusing himself the entertainment of many a lounge at Christie's, and many a saunter in the Park. It would seem as if his time had been fixed for him; or it may possibly have been from a sort of slashing soldiery impetuosity, that he goes directly to the cutting of large pieces out of Menu, and serves them up at his repast," as he pleasantly calls it, without the smallest dressing or garnish. It would generally have been supposed, that when Christianity was to be in effect exploded, and another religion declared the legitimate regent of the human mind throughout a vast empire, no little was to be done in the way of introduction and preparation, by an array of general principles, by deep historical research, by a statement of evidence on each cause, respectively, and by a careful comparison of the principles and tendencies of two immensely different systems. The renowned Mr. Thomas Taylor would take us through leagues and leagues of dissertation, historical, metaphysical, and mathematical, previously to introducing us, to his pantheon, and putting the censer into our hands. But this was not to the taste, nor according to the habits of our mythological soldier ; who, even in the operations of his martial profession, we dare surmise, was never detached by his commander from the downright point-blank business in which he conld be of some service, to the execution of designs requiring skilful manage

ment, ingenuity, and combination, in which he could be of none. He begins his illustration of the excellence of the moral and religious system of the Hindoos, by just saying, that the missionaries scandalize their Sastras, as being filled with childish fables; and he then falls directly on the grand substance of his undertaking, that of transcribing several dozen of pages from the Sastras, for he really knows no better than to suppose, that the Heetopades and the Geeta are of that class of books! He pauses one moment, here and there, to ask whether these are mere fables for children, as the missionaries had profanely asserted; and at length concludes the achievement with this paragraph.

If the Sastras of Barbarians!" thus manifest an exalted idea of God; a comprehensive sense of moral duties; a belief in the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments ;—what is it, then, that the missionaries propose teaching to the Hindoos?" P. 44.

To this question, put at the end of an assortment of passages, selected carefully from the above-mentioned Indian books, of which passages a considerable number convey positions which must, even in the selector's own opinion, be absurd and false-no believer in Christianity, we suppose, will hold himself called upon to reply in behalf of that divine system. The man who, together with some good and some indifferent moral maxims, can select sentences about the study of the Veda being the highest mean of felicity both in this world and the other, about the Divine Spirit being the whole assemblage of gods, about the composition of the body of that Divine Spirit, the solar and igneous light being his digestive heat and visual organs, water being his corporeal fluid, the earth being the terrene parts of his fabric, his heart being the moon, the guardians of eight regions being his auditory nerves, his progressive motion being Vishnu, his muscular force Hara, his organs of speech Agni, his EXCRETION Mitra, his procreation Brahma; about the punishments of the wicked in Asipatravana the sword-leaved forest, their being mangled by ravens and owls, swallowing cakes boiling hot, assuming the form of beasts, and suffering successive agonising births; about the certain destruction which will fall on any family which a woman, not duly honoured, may choose to curse; about the tre mendous guilt and punishment of tasting spirituous liquors, with grave information (for the benefit of distillers) of the several substances from which these liquors may be made; about the punishment of a false witness by being bound under water, with snaky cords, by Varuna, the lord of Ocean, during a hundred transmigrations, the man who can bring an assemblage of such follies, and, by implication, the collective mass

of mythological fooleries and preposterous morals, of filthy rites and human sacrifices, of which these selections are but an infinitesimal part, and set them in the face of Christianity, as a triumphant challenge of comparison, is not a creature to be reasoned with by a Christian. He is an absolute Pariar of morality and sense; and it would be a profanation of Christianity to talk to him about it. That saered system must not be invited, by its friends, to stoop for one moment to the ignominy of being compared with a superstition which combines every monstrosity which could result from priestcraft, poetry, and madness; it would be the same thing as to solicit an angel from heaven to come and stand in comparison with a Saniassi, or with a Bengal officer. In making a brief remark or two, we wish, therefore, to place Christianity as much as possible out of the question.

The leading remark is, that there is no talking rationally about religions, and their respective properties and merits, without a reference to the grand question whether they are true or false; that is, whether, as professing to be a divine communication, any given system brings evidence of that origin, or does not. If a professed religion is destitute of this evidence, it is bad in its very radix: it is a wicked contrivance to impose, and assuredly for a bad purpose too, on the human mind; and this being the very basis of its character, it is idle and odious trifling to descant, in its favour, on a few things good in themselves, which it was impossible for even a system of falsehood to be framed without involving. The good maxims or sublime sentiments, occasionally found in a pagan religion, are but like the minor virtues which it is possible an impostor or murderer may possess, if the system as a whole is essentially founded in fraud, and maintains its existence by deceiving the understandings of its believers. And this is the demonstrable character of all religions on earth, but one *: that one brings with it a prodigious force of evidence that it is what it professes to be, a direct communication from the Almighty; in other words, that it is authentic as a whole : there is therefore no longer any kind of competition or comparison between that one, and any other systems assuming the name of religion. Set in contrast with them, it is not to be considered as differing from them in degree, but in the very essence of its institution. It comes authoritatively from the Omnipotent; they blaspheme him by falsely proclaiming that they do so. To put down, then, the impious jargon in favour of the Hindoo "religion," we have only to say that that re

* The Jewish is of course considered as included with the Christian religion.