particularly the Suevi and Scandinavians, held it as a fixed principle that their happiness and security could not be obtained, but at the expence of "the lives of others. Their chief Gods were Thor and Woden, whom they thought they could never sufficiently glut with blood. The most re❝verend and most frequented of their places of worship was at Upsal, where there was every year, a grand celebration, which continued nine days. During this term they sacrificed animals of all sorts; but the most acceptable victims, and the most numerous, were men.' They did not spare their own children.' The awful grove at Upsal is described as not having a single tree, but what was reverenced as if it were gifted with some por tion of divinity: and all this because they were stained with gore, and * foul with human putrefaction.' Adam Bremensis who wrote in the tenth century, mentions, that in his time, seventy carcases of this sort were found in a wood of the Suevi. Another author, of nearly the same age, speaks of a place called Ledur in Zealand, where every year there were ninety and nine persons sacrificed to the god Swantowite. During these bloody festivals a general joy prevailed, and banquets were most royally served.' When all was ended they washed the image of the deity in a pool, on account of its being stained with blood. Many servants attended, who partook of the banquet; at the close of which they were smothered in the same pool, or otherwise made. away with.' The like custom prevailed to a great de gree in Mexico, and even under the mild government of the Peruvians. In Africa it is still kept up.'- Among the nations of Canaan the victims were peculiarly chosen. Their own children, and whatever was nearest and dearest to them, were deemed the most worthy offering to their god.' The Carthaginians adored several deities, but particularly Kronus, to whom they offered human sacrifices, and especially the blood of children. If the parents were not at hand to make an immediate offer, the magistrates did not fail to make choice of what was most fair and promising.' On one occasion, seeing the enemy at their gates, they seized at once two hundred children of the prime nobility, and offered them in public for a sacrifice. Three hundred more, who were somehow obnoxious, yielded themselves voluntarily, and were put to death with the others. "There were particular children brought up for the altar, as sheep are fattened for the shambles; and they were bought and butchered in the same manner.'

Such illustrations, from former ages, of the aptitude of the human nature to yield itself in alliance and servitude to a diabolical power, and of the rites performed in recognition and celebration of that league and devotement, have left to the explorers of lands lately or still but imperfectly known, very slender means, either from fact or invention, of trying the strength of our faith. Tell us that there are idols there, and then they may tell us just whatever they please besides, that is odious and hideous, We know perfectly that is an established law of the divine justice that what was harmless metal, or wood, or stone before, can no sooner be shaped and promoted into an object of worship than it becomes, in effect, a dreadful reposi tory of malignant power, an emitter of diffusive and blasting curses, as if it were actually inhabited by a mighty fiend,

Mankind will most certainly be made to suffer the effectual agency of hell from that in which they shall choose to recognize the arrogated attributes of heaven. The moral effect of idolatry, indeed, is so infallibly evinced, and is so intensely impious, that the imagination of a good man, would with difficulty avoid associating, literally, the presence of an unseen malignant intelligence with the insensible idol; insomuch that we are persuaded it would have required, in such a man, no ordinary firmness of nerves to have passed, without some oppressive sensations, a day or a night alone in the temple, and the immediate presence of the hideous god of the Mexicans, and would now require it to maintain a perfect composure in such a retired interview even with Jaggernaut-an entire security the while from any mischievous human agency being supposed.

Much fewer words, we confess, might have sufficed on this obvious point, that superstition has shewn itself of sufficient power for any imaginable atrocity, and that therefore the destruction of Indian children by their parents, has nothing at all of the marvellous in it, when the gods are concerned. But the view of this ready obedience to the demands of the gods, would not have prepared us to hear of whole tribes or nations destroying, systematically, almost all their female children, without any direct intervention of superstition, and merely as a matter of convenience and custom; and this too without any of that difficulty of procuring subsistence which is, among the savages of North America and New Holland, and also among the Chinese, the cause, and the plea alledged, for the frequent destruction of their offspring. Such however is the Infanticide which the present work exposes, with a very unnecessary prolixity, and in a very inartificial method.

This practice was found prevailing among the Raj-kumar and other tribes, in and near the province of Benares, and in the peninsula of Guzerat, and the country of Kutch, forming a considerable portion of territory toward the mouths of the Indus. The first part of the work is a report made in 1789 by the late Mr. Duncan, then resident at Benares, the first person who gave clear information of the existence of the custom. On ascertaining the prevalence of the crime among the Raj-kumars, he lost no time in making representations to them on the subject; and not without hopes of effecting its abolition; since, he says, all the Raj-kumars with whom I conversed did, while they admitted the fact, fully acknowledge its atrocity; in extenuation of which, they pleaded the great expence of procuring suitable matches for their daughters, if allowed to grow up.' The limitation he is careful to state, with respect to the comprehensiveness of the guilt, strongly tends to shew its extent.

It appears, and ought in vindication of humanity to be here noticed' that in several cases, natural affection has induced the fathers of Rajkumar families to rear one more of their female issue; though the instances where more than one daughter has been spared are (as far as I can judge from sundry questions put to these people during my few days halt among them) but very rare; and I heard only of one general exception of a whole village, the inhabitants of which, who are all of this tribe, had, as my Rajkumar informant observed, sworn, as he supposed, or at least solemnly pledged themselves to each other, to bring up their females as a proof of which, he added, that there were now to be seen several Raj-kumar old maids in the village in question; since, from the great expence hitherto usually incurred by this tribe in their marriages, the parents had been unable to dispose of the women in that way.'

The tribe were admonished that one of their own sacred books condemns the practice, threatening the destroyers of females with the punishments of one of the hells, during a period of prodigious length. The Brehma, Bywant Purana, with its prohibitions, and its threatenings of the Naraka, or Hell, called Kat Shutala,' had been in the hands of their Brahmins, and its contents properly reported to the other principal persons of the tribe, a sufficient number of centuries, without having the smallest efficacy against the crime. It was the quality of the preacher, rather than the text, that now at last effected the reformation. The good doctrine was inculcated on their consciences by the agent and representative of a Power, the sound of whose cannon had been heard over India, and whose battalions they knew to have dispersed, wherever they had encountered, the greatest armed crowds of the believers both of the Puranas and of the Koran. Not that they could have any direct apprehension of being subjected to the operation of violence in case of refusing to discontinue the practice; but it is a well known fact in human nature, that great physical power in the instructor, mightily assists the intellectual faculties of the instructed, even when there are no eminent signs of the coercive or vindictive exertion of that power.

It is not exactly stated in what force this pacific logical emanation of our cast iron and combustible ammunition passed the limit of our own territory, to convey persuasive influence into the minds of that more numerous proportion of the tribe of Raj-kumars that were under the government of the Nawaub Visier of Oude, at that time a sort of independent sovereign; but it could not fail with that division of thein that knew themselves to be directly subjects of the English government. At the same time, we really may wonder that the innovation was accomplished so speedily. For it appears to have been at most but very few weeks between Mr. Duncan's first conversing and remonstrating with them on the barbarous practice, and his obtaining the signature of all the principal persons among them to a solemn written covenant, in which, in consi

deration of the wickedness of the custom, the future punishment threatened in the sacred books, and the displeasure of the British government, they bound themselves to renounce the. practice of infanticide, and to expel from their tribe any one who should in future be guilty of it.

The question anticipated and answered by Lord Teignmouth, in adverting to this tribe and this monstrous barbarity, in a communication to the Asiatic Society, will have suggested itself to every reader.

'It will naturally occur to the Society to ask, by what mode a race of men could be continued under the existence of the horrid custom which I have described. To this my documents enable me to reply, partly from the exceptions to the general custom, which were occasionally admitted by the more wealthy Raj-kumars; more particularly those who happened to have no male issue; but chiefly by intermarriages with other Raj-put fanulies, to which the Raj-kumars were compelled by necessity.'

The second chapter contains a much more ample account of this practice as prevailing in Kutch, a maritime tract near the eastern mouths of the Indus, and in Kattywar, which is the country name for the peninsula of Guzerat. The full evidence of its existence then was first obtained by Mr. Duncan, when at Surat and Bombay, in 1800, and several following years. The first unquestionable testimony from natives was given by a man of consequence in Guzerat; and the fact was confirmed in communications from Capt. Seton, who was on a political mission at the principal port of Kutch, and afterwards, with still more ample statements, by Major Walker, the Resident at the court of the Gaikawar, a potentate of considerable, but not very defined dimensions,* in Guzerat. Capt. Seton wrote, in answer to Mr. Duncan's inquiries, that in the family of the Raja of Kutch, 'every female infant born of a Ranni, or lawful wife, was immediately dropped into a hole dug in the earth, and filled with milk, where it was drowned. The law was not extended to those of the Rajah's female children whose mothers were slaves. Captain S. added, that the whole tribe or cast to which the Rajah belonged also destroyed their daughters, except two persons, who saved each a daughter, through fear of not having heirs of any sex.'? He then enumerated other tribes who were in the same practice, but specified one tribe, the Soda Raj-puts, who turned its prevalence among the rest to most excellent account, by rear

There is, however, a large portion of writing allotted to the explana tion of his titles, and the detail of the plots, assassinations and petty revo lutions, that form the history of the dynasty, or rather state, since the time of Aurengzebe. His titles import that he is, among other qualities, the staunch, magnanimous, brave Prince, like unto Indra, a warrior of prowess in the use of arms.'

ing their daughters to sell for wives to these other tribes. When these preserved females become mothers, it might be sup-' posed,' says he, that they would be averse to the destruction of their daughters; but from all accounts it is the reverse, as they not only assist in destroying them, but when the Mussulman prejudices occasionally preserve them, they hold their daughters in the greatest contempt, calling them majer, thereby insinuating that their fathers have derogated from their military cast, and become pedlars.' This last par of the statement he confirms in a communication made after a progress through Kutch, in 1808. Such,' he says, is the barbarous inveteracy of these women,' (the daughters of the Soda tribe),' that when married to Mahommedans, they continue the same practice, against the inclination and religion of their husbands; destroying their own progeny without remorse, in view of the advantage of the tribe from which they are descended, whose riches are their daughters.'

6

The prevalence of such a practice was thought so monstrous an anomaly, that it seemed desirable to accumulate, for the assurance of persons remote from the place, evidences of the fact in greater number than would have at all been necessary in any other case; and the testimonies of several natives of Guzerat, of some distinction, are put on record, along with that of Capt. Seton. They thus express themselves, relatively to the Jarejahs, the chief tribe in point of dignity in Guzerat,

The established practice is, that when a child is born, if it be a son, every observance of joy and gratulation is attended to; but if it be a daughter, she is immediately put to death, on the plea, that if they bring up a daughter, it behoves them, when she has attained a fit age, to give her in marriage to some one; a concession which they consider as the incurring the highest reproach: though, if it should happen, as an extraordinary exception, that any one should preserve his daughter, and rear her to maturity, her father becomes anxiously solicitous to procure her a husband of unexceptionable rank and character; but in that case, the parents of the maiden thus exempted from the common fate, become the scorn of all others, young and old, who hold them in the greatest contempt: neither do such occasions occur but rarely.

'Being asked how the infants are destroyed, Damaji Kutcheraz said, that, as he has heard, when a woman is in labour, a pot of milk is placed, in the room; and if an unfortunate female is produced, the nurse immediately drowns it therein. He has frequently, he says, asked poor persons of this tribe, how they put their female children to death; and they have always answered, by making them drink milk. The midwives are the only persons accessary to this horrid deed; and this is their language.'

The chiefs of Kaltywar are tributary to the Gaikawar, the chief personage in Guzerat, with which personage the Honourable Company (the Kampry Saheb Behadur,or Mighty Lord Company, as Mr. Moor says it is often called in India) is on such