references would have been rendered quite needless. The public attention would soon have been summoned to a mass of concurring testimony (not anonymous slander) from a great number of persons in India, some of them conscientiously moved by the duty of exposing imposture, and some of them. exulting in the disgrace of the pretended Christian apostles, and in the consequent frustration of an undertaking, which, however unsound the motives, had evidently been directed to the propagation of Christian truth. And the missionaries knew they were thus watched by both this honesty and this malice; and this alone had been ample security, however devoid they might have been of integrity, for the veracity of their statements. The proof of their truth may therefore stand independent of all consideration of their character; but we will take their character independently of all other evidence; and on the ground of this character we must think, that a more profound humiliation can hardly be preparing in the malice of ill fortune for any man, than that he should be betrayed to commit his name and character in a charge of falshood on such an association of men as Carey, Marshman, and the other persons who usually sign the accounts of the mis

...sion.

We have adverted to the vigilant observation under which the missionaries have carried on all their operations. How much of this vigilance would be of a friendly kind may be conjectured, from the fact which Mr. Carey noticed without the slightest idea that any well-informed person would undertake to deny it, that 'India swarms with deists, and that deists are the most intolerant of men.' The major, however, is unbelieving about this swarm of deists. But it is difficult to determine the amount, to say nothing of the worth, of the negation, unless we could ascertain the sense put upon the word 'deist' by a man who insists to be himself taken for a Christian on the strength of such things as the following.

When Mr. Carey and Mr. Moore are at Dacca, they write on the Lord's day," what an awful sight have we witnessed this day! a large and populous city wholly given to idolatry, and not an individual to warn them to flee from the wrath to come. As soon as we rose in the morning our attention was unavoidably excited by scenes the most absurd, disgusting, and degrading to human nature." Could men possessing common sense have written such nonsense as this is, unless blinded by enthusiasm ? -Had they discovered that a single Englishman was a convert to the Hindoo or to the Mahomedan religion, they would have been justified in giving their sentiments to him as to his apostacy from the true to a false and idolatrous religion; but to pour out such unmeaning and useless abuse on an immense population which merely observed those forms and ceremonies which had been used throughout Hindostan for above two thousand years, is folly and arrogance in the extreme.' Preface to Observations, p. 65.

A copy of one of the pamphlets, as the missionaries call the papers they gave away, is in England. In that paper the people are exhorted to abandon their idolatrous Shastah, and to embrace the religion of the true Shastah, the holy bible. Should we be surprised, if, instead of abuse, the people had thrown such madmen into the Ganges? Ibid.

What city, town, or village in Hindostan is not filled with ・ bigots,' if the true meaning of the word bigotry is, that every man who thinks differently from these missionaries is a bigot? The fair way to `state the fact is, that the whole population of Hindostan is invincibly attached to their religion and local customs:' p. 67.

I cannot believe that Lord Wellesley, who evinced a laudable anxiety to extend the religious foundations of India, could have encouraged men, whose object it is to overturn all the ancient institutions of the country.' Preface, p. 69.

After quoting Marquis Wellesley's orders to the resident at Lucknow, containing the following words, 'I desire you will furnish me with a statement of such public endowments of both the Hindoo and Mahomedan religion as you may propose to confirm or extend,' the Major says, 'these instructions do infinite credit to Marquis Wellesley.' Observations, p. 12. At page 21, he says, But hitherto they have remarked, that we have not only left to them the free exercise of their religion, but with a wise and liberal policy we have continued, and in many instances extended, their religious foundations, whether Mahomedan, or of the Hindoos.' Obs. p. 21.—In various places he is loud in repeating his applause of this Christian plan of extending the foundations of the pagan religion.'

There are numberless passages of the same colour. The unfortunate person is uniformly careful to employ a respectful language when adverting to the detestable superstitions of India. When those superstitions are spoken of in strong terms of reprobation in the discourses and tracts addressed by the missionaries to the people, he is extremely angry at this abusive and ruffianly attack on the national religions of Hindostan.' (Preface to Observations, p. lx.) Referring to the enmity which the converts to Christianity will have to encounter in their heathen countrymen, he says, 'it appears to me inhuman to entail sufferings and persecutions on any of our native subjects.' He cannot avoid shewing some signs of irritation, when Christian compassion speaks of the idolaters as miserable heathens.' In naming the bible, instead of the holy scriptures, he systematically says our holy scriptures; and to make this phrase significant, applies, as a counterpart, the denomination their holy scriptures' to the sastras. And he refers with unqualified approbation to a production, which was a direct vindication" of heathenism, almost in the lump. Considering all this, (and other characteristic and indicative circumstances might be added,) we think the Major is much too mo

derate in his acknowledgement of obligation to the 'candour of Lord Teignmouth, who, he says, neither supposes me to be an advocate for paganism, nor hostile to religion and its interests. Considering all this, it is obvious that our ill-fated author is not the man to be cited in evidence to the religious principles of the gentlemen in India.' For notwithstanding all this he holds himself forth for a Christian, and therefore could have no hesitation to attribute Christian principles to other men, who might evince the same veneration for paganism, and the same rancour against those who abhor it and commiserate its slaves. No surmise of deism could have entered his mind relative to any man, who had broken out in angry and vulgar reproaches against a Christian teacher for repeating, with the addition of a few emphatical expressions, the words uttered by St. Paul while beholding the idolatry of Athens, in viewing a city in this respect parallel to Athens, except as being in a state of still deeper abasement. His testimony on this head, therefore, is of no use.

Dr. Buchanan and others have strongly represented the causes which operate toward irreligion in the minds of the European residents in India; and the Major will not obtain from Lord T., to whom he confidently appeals on this subject, any denial that there is a melancholy multiplicity of instances of the efficacy of those causes, One of the most unequivocal evidences before the English public, relative to this point, is in the writings of our oriental literati. No terms of admiration can be too strong in applause of the indefatigable exertion and the attainments of those men; and there are some of them that have not published any thing for which they owe an atonement to Christianity. But in the writings of more than a few of them, we fear, the student will find a sort of language which appears to insinuate or assume that all religions are of the same authority; that authority being, of course, in no case absolute and divine. And yet even this principle of infidel equity he shall find violated, by levity, not to say malice, of allusion to the Jewish and Christian religion, while a manner of respect and almost of veneration is maintained toward the mythologies, the institutions, and the impostors, of eastern superstition. He shall see these philosophers affecting to accept the diction and the delusion of the pagans, and gravely writing about the sacred books' and the awful doctrines,' about this inspired sage,' and the other divine legislator. There appears often a studied, and in some instances a palpably malignant endeavour, to transfer to these subjects the language in which Christians have been accustomed to speak of the Bible, its religion, its prophets, and its Messiah. Any thing, in the wild fabulous records of India, that appears capa

ble of being turned into a plausible contradiction of the scripture history, is sedulously and ostentatiously elaborated into an authentic document. There is a show of discovering wonders of recondite and inestimable wisdom in that deplorable depôt of phantasies and abominations, the mythology. And in adverting to the pretended antiquity of the Hindoo literature, some of these gentlemen have given signs of a credulity, which fairly disqualifies their understandings for admitting any thing so sober and strict as the evidences of the Christian religion. On the whole, and with exceptions in favour of particular individuals, the Anglo-Indian literature will but very indifferently contribute to support the claim to the character of believers in revelation, which the Major pretends to make in behalf of gentlemen in India;' some of whom would probably be the less grateful for such a vindication the more successful it might appear. He adduces, however, a more satisfactory kind of evidence; he brings testimony to prove, that, where their situation allows it, they go to church. (Remarks. p. 40.) We confess this is strong; especially as no one ever heard of such a thing, as that a number of these gentlemen, after attending divine service at church in the morning, (suppose on a thanksgiving day), should in the afternoon publicly go in procession, with offerings to a temple. of Gonga in the neighbourhood of Calcutta. The Major, no doubt, is quite sure that such a thing never happened.

The author of the Considerations,' in deploring that so large a proportion of our subjects should be idolaters, was naturally led to reflect on the deep malignity of idolatry in the sight of the Supreme Being; and cited, as one of the many illustrations of the divine abhorrence, that command in the Mosaic law which enjoined the Jews to the Jews to stone to death even the nearest relative or friend that should be guilty of enticing to the worship of the heathen gods. Every reader but one instantaneously apprehended the design and the pertinency of this citation. The palpable object was to urge, that, the Almighty having by this and a multitude of other denunciations declared idolatry to be so detestable a crime, we ought to dread giving it such a sanction in the conduct of our eastern government as to involve ourselves in any degree in the guilt. But the quotation of this passage from the Bible, with the very plain and solemn inference from it, (an inference which it is melancholy and alarming to find a necessity of pressing on the conscience of a Christian nation and government) confounds the understanding of the Major. He returns to its veral times; and it strikes him,' he says, with astonishment;' and not without reason, for

with his utmost efforts he cannot comprehend what the noble writer means by it, unless that we ought forthwith to kill all idolaters, which, as he very truly conceives, would be a strange thing for the writer to recommend, and not strictly consistent either with justice or policy to attempt in India. He has not thought it safe, however, to trust the matter to the public and the government without some reasoning to prove the injustice of such a measure. One of his arguments is, that on this principle of its being our duty to slay all idolaters, the protestants, to be consistent with the opinion they profess to entertain of the popish image-worship, will be obliged to kill all the papists of the United Kingdom. Another is, that the Hindoos having, as he says, the same right to condemn our religion as false, that we have to condemn theirs, will be authorised, on this principle of the noble writer, to adopt toward us what may be called a preventive retaliation. He will probably take to himself some credit for having prevented, by his timely remonstrance, the general admission of so dangerous a doctrine.

Toward the conclusion of this important argumentation, there is a most notable proof of the advantage derived by the Major from his twenty years' hard study of our Holy Scriptures' and their commentators. Having explained that the immediate object of the Jewish economy was to preserve one people in the knowledge and worship of the true God, he goes on to inform us, why they were to be preserved in that knowledge and worship, which formed so grand a distinction between them and the surrounding nations.

And the reason of this distinction is explained, to preserve the inte grity of that tribe as a nation, and the line of generation pure which was to produce the Saviour of mankind; and this evidently appears to be the primary cause of God's vengeance on idolatry and every other species of apostacy from his precepts.' (Remarks, p. 101.)

Which is exactly saying, that if the matter could have been so managed, that the delinquency should not have endangered the integrity of that tribe as a nation,' the Divine Being would have regarded idolatry, considered in itself, as quite a secondary kind of guilt, and not a proper subject for any such severity of punishment.-We have not singled out this short extract in a way to give any turn to its meaning different from what it fairly bears as it stands in the pamphlet.

With respect to the old story of the Vellore mutiny, though the quality of this unfortunate person's mind was too obvious for any one to expect he would retract one word of what he had been so often affirming about the number of missionaries in India being a chief cause of that event, it might perhaps have been imagined he would willingly leave the subject in