or fragmentary portions of scripture in the native languages, circulated among a hundred millions of Asiatics, would infallibly lead to the overthrow of the British power in the Easteagerly seized upon by others, who wrote bulky volumes of inconceivable trash in praise of the beauties of Hinduism, and contended, with a plentiful lack of sense, that the introduction of Christianity would corrupt the moral purity of the immaculate followers of Brahma and Shiva-as a proof that the Natives of India were ready to resent, to the death, every symptom of a design to convert them to the religion of the stranger. This fallacy was ably exposed and fully refuted at the time, when it was first launched into circulation, but it was too congenial to the feelings of men to be suffered very readily to slide into nothingness, and we are not therefore surprised to find it again put forward-and that, too, with a show of dispassionate candour, calculated to delude the unwary reader into a belief that the sifting of two score years had tended only to exhibit its unmistakeable truth. Among others, Mr. H. H. Wilson, in the first volume of his recently published continuation of Mill's History of India,* has declared that "there can be no reason to seek for any other origin of the mutiny than dread of religious change inspired by the military orders." He asserts, The causes of this alarming occurrence necessarily engaged the attention of the public both in India and in Europe, and an acrimonious controversy ensued, which can scarcely be said even yet to be at rest. Not that there was any sufficient reason for difference of opinion. To an impartial judgment the real cause was liable to no misconception; but its admission involved inferences which were pressed by one party, beyond their due limits, and of which the grounds were therefore denied altogether by the other. The question of converting the natives of India to the Christian religion was supposed to depend for its solution upon the origin of the massacre at Vellore. By those who were unfriendly to missionary efforts as well as those who were apprehensive of these efforts upon native feeling, the transaction was appealed to as decisive of the reasonableness of their fears, and as justifying their opposition. No better reply could be desired, by the friends and supporters of Missions than a denial that the Vellore mutiny had any connexion with the propagation of Christianity, a denial in which they were undoubtedly wide of the truth. † The essential and main We have great respect for Mr. Wilson's abilities; though we have often occasion to dissent from his opinions. It is a source to us of deep regret that so much talent should be so often employed upon the wrong side. The Rev. Dr. Buchanan thus writes to the Government of Bengal: "I understand that the massacre of Vellore has been unaccountably adduced, as some sanction to the principle of opposing the progress of the Christian religion in Bengal. I had opportunities of judging of the causes of that event, which were peculiar. I was in the vicinity of the place at the time. I travelled for two months immediately afterwards in the province adjacent, with the sanction of Government, and I heard the evidence of Christians, Mohammedans, and Hindus, on the subject. That the T spring of the mutiny was religious principle, although its occurrence was influenced in the manner and season of its development by incidental and local excitement. And again, making a faint show of candour and impartiality, he observes: Here however in fairness to the question of the conversion of the natives of India to Christianity, the nature of the panic which spread among the Sipahis requires to be candidly appreciated. It is a great error to suppose that the people of India are so sensitive upon the subject of their religion, either Hindu or Mahommedan, as to suffer no approach of controversy, or to encounter adverse opinions with no other arguments than insurrection or murder. On the contrary great latitude of belief and practice has always prevailed amongst them, and especially amongst the troops in whose ranks will be found seceders of various denominations from the orthodox systems. It was not therefore the dissemination of Christian doctrines that excited the angry apprehensions of the Sipahis, on the melancholy occasion which has called for these observations; nor does it appear that any unusual activity in the propagation of those doctrines was exercised by Christian Missionaries at the period of its occurrence. It was not conversion which the troops dreaded but compulsion, it was not the reasoning or the persuasion of the Missionary which they feared, but the arbitrary interposition of authority. They believed of course erroneously that the Government was about to compel them to become Christians, and they resisted compulsory conversion by violence and bloodshed. The lesson is one of great seriousness, and should never be lost sight of as long as the relative position of the British government and its Indian subjects remains unaltered. It is not enough that the authority of the ruling power should never interpose in matters of religious belief, it should carefully avoid furnishing grounds of suspicion that it intends to interfere. We must go a little out of our way to make a few remarks insurrection at Vellore had no connexion with the Christian religion directly or indirectly, immediately or remotely, is a truth which is capable of demonstration."Letter from the Rev. C. Buchanan to the Governor-General, 7th Nov. 1807; Parliamentary Papers relating to Missionaries, &c., 14th April 1813. Dr. Buchanan undoubtedly believed in what he asserted so roundly, but he was strangely mis-informed. The most zealous and able defenders of the cause, Lord Teignmouth, in his considerations on the duty of diffusing Christianity in India, and Mr. Wilberforce in his speeches in 1813, afterwards published by himself, do not go to the same length: they only deny that the Vellore mutiny was connected with any unusual extension or activity of Missionary proceedings. The opinion that the Government had some such project in view was not confined to the Sipahis. Mir Alim, the veteran minister of the Nizam, and as has been seen, the staunch friend of the English, expressed his surprise that the British government should think it just or safe, to compel the troops to wear the semblance of Christians; and a like astonishment was manifested by the ministers of Nagpur.— Letters from the Residents; M. S. Records. Of the universality of the feeling, there is also published an impartial testimony. Purnia, the Dewan of Mysore, gave it as his opinion that the Hindus were more alarmed and dissatisfied than the Mahommedans.-Lord William Bentinck's Memorial, 45. And Sir Thomas Munroe writes: "however strange it may appear to Europeans, I know that the general opinion of the most intelligent natives in this part of the counry is, that it was intended to make the sepoys Christians."--Letter to Lord William Bentinck, 11th August, 1806. This letter also shows, that, in a part of the Peninsula where the adherents of the family of Hyder were most numerous, there were no reasons for believing that any intrigues had been at work in their favour.-Life of Sir J. Munroe, I.-363. on these passages. We give Professor Wilson all possible credit for a desire to treat this question fairly and ingenuously; but he deceives himself, if he thinks that he has succeeded in bringing to the task an amount of historical impartiality sufficient for the candid consideration of such a question. He has not, in truth, divested himself of those oriental prejudices and partialities, which led him to deliver a strong testimony against the propriety of abolishing the beautiful system of Suttee. The lapse of twenty years would seem to have detracted nothing from the conservative tendency of Mr. Wilson's opinions. He appears to be as little of a reformer in 1845, as in 1825. His mind has seemingly made no progress, during the interval, although had he been open to such influences, every year must have afforded him a fresh proof of the little danger arising from a judicious interference with the so-called religious feelings of the natives of India-every year must have presented him with a new catalogue of reasons for mistrusting his own judgment, for acknowledging the utter causelessness of the apprehensions, which he has so long entertained. The concluding sentence of the last extract, which we have made from Mr. Wilson's history is eminently characteristic of the writer. How far it serves to establish his claims to be considered as a fit person to undertake the continuation of Mill's history we leave it to the admirers of that eminent writer to determine. It has been said that in India all politicians are, more or less, reformers-a truth undeniable, we believe, when uttered with reference to those who read the book of the world with open eyes and clear faculties, looking abroad on men, studying the national character by means of intercourse with all classes of the community; watching closely the effects of legislative interferences, and duly considering the inevitable tendency of every new reform to prepare the soil for the introduction of still more extensive innovations. No Indian statesman, indeed, can be other than a Reformer. But there has existed a band of dry students, looking through the dusty spectacles of orientalism on ornate manuscripts, instead of on the wide country; conversing with bigoted pundits, who live upon the ignorance and superstition of their fellows, instead of deducing the opinions and probing the feelings of all classes of the populationa crew of hard, disputatious book-men, enamoured of eastern learning and thence of eastern customs and eastern errorsalmost we may say of eastern filth-who were wont to raise a voice against every benevolent effort made by a Christian government to purge this immense stye of its dense layers of impurity; who were wont to cry out against "dangerous inno can vations," to predict indeed the overthrow of our Anglo- To stay the lusty manhood of the child It appears to be Mr. Wilson's doctrine that the Government of India should exert itself not to avoid the appearance of evil; but to avoid the appearance of good. They ought, according to this authority, not only to abstain from doing good, but to be careful lest any one should suspect them of wishing to do good. It is not without a feeling of lively gratitude that we consider how very few participate in Mr. Wilson's sentiments-that the obstructives of which he is the facile princeps are fast ceasing to exist; and that the stream of Reform, to which we may well apply the fine descriptive line of the Roman poet, Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis ævum, is rolling on, in a strong, voluminous, irresistible tide. We are no advocates for the exercise of blind unregulated zeal in the obtrusion upon the people of India of legislative reforms or in private interference with their religious prejudices or social customs. We have sometimes seen reason to deplore the want of judgment exhibited in the well-intended efforts of men, the purity of whose motives and the sincerity of whose conduct, are, in spite of the sneers and the questionings of those, who ridicule failures in which they rejoice, and are sceptical of a piety which they do not understand, entitled to the sympathy and admiration of all good men. It is a subject of deep regret that the most enthusiastic and the most devoted are not always the most prudent-the most judicious. It is necessary that every reformer should not only feel strongly but think deeply-that he should not only desire to do good, but that he should patiently study how to do it. The errors of devoted men, whose impulses are always in the right direction-whose souls are animated with the most earnest aspirations after the happiness of their fellow creatures-who pursue the grand objects of their lives, with toil and tribulation utterly regardless of self-are indeed most painful to contemplate; for, whilst we love such laborers for their zeal and self-devotion, we can not but be sensible that their labors are not mere labors in vain, since every failure in the right direction, resulting from a want of wisdom in the agent, becomes, in the hands of its enemies, a reproach to the cause itself. And that the cause suffers greatly by such failures no reasonable man can deny. Constituted as is the great majority of mankind we can not expect that a due distinction should be drawn between the excellence of the thing to be done and the wisdom of the agent attempting to do it. It is one of the tritest of trite common-places, that the short-comings of the latter are no indications of the unworthines of the former; but, obvious as is this truth, there is nothing so often overlooked, in heedlessness or in wilfulness, by the world. Fortunate, indeed, is it that there are men amongst us, in whom untiring energy, devoted zeal, and the most ardent philanthropy are united with brilliant talents, sound judgment, and an abundant fertility of resource-conspicuous in their successful employment of varied legitimate means of working towards the same great end. It is gratifying indeed to reflect that such men exist among us, for never was there a period in the history of British connexion with the east, in which a greater amount of good can be achieved by laborers of this class. The season is most propitious. The signs of the times are most encouraging. A great Reformation is developing itself; and at such an epoch, the skilful handling of dexterous men-men neither rash nor timid-may rapidly bring it to perfection. The danger of such interference exists, but in the imaginations of the Obstructives, who conjure up difficulties which they would fain see in real, insurmountable existence. This is not the place to demonstrate, by a reference to detailed facts-facts |