tion was conveyed to him that these dark measures had passed into law, as he would not have failed to foresee, that they would drive away every English planter from India. The injuries inflicted on British and Christian interests by these acts, are innumerable. The advance of intellectual and moral improvement is interrupted. Those grand designs of the friends of the human race, the introduction of English law into India, or a legislative code grounded chiefly on that law, the advance of education, and the propagation of the pure truths of Christianity, have received a quietusa knock-down blow. Let the half-Hindoo-halfMahomedan officers, the abstainers from meat and pork, to whom we have before alluded, let them, now laugh and scoff with reason, at the abortive efforts of the unaided missionaries! The natives will exclaim, if the English, of their own free will, adopt the maxims of Mahomedan law as their moral guide, they must surely regard them as more conducive to the welfare of society than their own. Mark you! many of the natives will not distinguish between the Government and the English community.

If the Clergy of England were to take up the subject, and denounce these acts from the pulpit as a death-blow to the prospects of Indian mis. sionary societies-if they were to protest against the ears of Christians being assailed with Maho

H

medan curses and quotations from the Koran,they would display a lively sense of their own obligations, and establish a claim to great admiration. Though it is sometimes the duty of an Administration to sacrifice spiritual or the secondary ends of Government to those primary ends, the maintenance of order and security of life and property, where both cannot be at the same time secured, yet where the primary ends are not endangered, the sacrifice of the spiritual becomes a national sin. That the Indian Government has not lent its sanction, in some degree, to the diffusion of Christianity among the natives, is a dark spot on its fame. It might have afforded pecuniary and other assistance to the persons engaged in this work, without giving offence to the natives. We are opposed to the imposition of the Christian religion by force, but would shew the natives that we set a proper value on the excellency of its moral precepts.

To sum up that a conquered race, inflamed with a more than natural hatred of their conquerors, should stand on as equal footing with an Englishman, or rather on a more advantageous one, before a judicial tribunal, is a foul shame. We protest against unenlightened Hindoos, believers in a multiplicity of gods, and in the divinity of stone images, being exclusively placed on a jury, empanelled to ascertain the guilt of EnglishThat the Indian Government should be em.

men.

powered to annul privileges granted by Acts of Parliament, is a monstrous anomaly. That men devoid of legal experience and knowledge should be competent to transport Englishmen for life, without benefit of jury, and that they should not be answerable for any acts done out of the proper limits of their jurisdiction, is an unconstitutional enormity. The assertion that this abolition of the exemption of British-born subjects, from the Native Courts, is necessary, is an atrocious, unmitigated falsehood.

We will briefly review the arguments employed to vindicate these measures. The cost and inconvenience of sending prisoners from such a distance as from Meerut, for instance, to Calcutta,―then the outrages inflicted on natives by British planters in the interior, and a wish to demonstrate to the black community that they have masters who will secure to them justice. Now, as to the first, the cost is trifling, and nothing compared to the expense which must be incurred in furnishing the Native Courts with interpreters, &c. The annoyance of removing prisoners such a distance, may he remedied by the establishment of a Supreme Court at Meerut or Agra. The expense of such a tribunal sinks into insignificance before the mighty interests endangered by these measures. Let the Company have a care lest they lose millions, whilst they affect to be solicitous about thousands. The abolition of that useless office, the Deputy-Go

vernorship of Agra, would supply ample funds for the erection of a Supreme Court of Judicature in the North-West Provinces, on a plan of the most effective organization.

Under the old system the native Christians, after their renunciation of the errors of Mahomet or Bramah, still remained amenable to the native Courts. We hold, that they became entitled to be summoned before a Christian Court alone, and should have been made superior to the Heathen Courts. This would have placed native converts on a comfortable footing, and have afforded them that protection, of which they stand in such urgent need. Had not the Rulers of India just made British-born subjects amenable to the Company's Courts, we should have expressed surprise that they had never relieved native Christians from such a jurisdiction. The native Christian, despised and persecuted by his nearest relatives, who spurn him as if he were a skink, unfriended by the officers of the service, becomes a wretched outcast, the butt of two hostile creeds.

If our end, which is nothing less than the repeal of these atrocious Acts, be attained, we should not be satisfied with this triumph, but should also demand from the Indian Government the emancipation of all native Christians from the Mahomedan Courts. Then the work of the missionaries would once more flourish. For God's sake! let some inducement be held out to natives to embrace

Christianity; do not throw discouragement in

their

way.

As to the other argument, the oppressive demeanour of the planters to the natives, we have allowed that many outrageous acts have been perpetrated by the former; but we have suggested easy and feasible remedies. The country magistrates taking informations and sending up charges to the Supreme Court to be established at Meerut, presents the solution of this difficulty.

This and many other plans might have been followed, had the Government entertained any wish to enjoy the goodwill of the British-born residents. No, they are eternally talking about the necessity of respecting native customs and prejudices, but bestow no thought on the feelings and opinions of their fellow-countrymen. It behoved a paternal Government to lend some attention to the entreaties of so many of its dependants. If these assemblies had demanded the repeal of any particular tax or impost, it would have been a different thing; but where they merely remonstrated against their long established laws and institutions being wrested from them for no earthly reason, the Government should have been better disposed to take their demands under consideration. Neither their revenue nor their dignity would have been sacrificed.

In the event of any revolt of the natives against the Company's Government, it would be of vast