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rls, especially if an English collector in a heathen town has forbidden it to be done. If any thing could make this disclosure of character more execrably fetid, it would be the baffled attempts at hypocrisy, where he professes to "be convinced of the sacred truths of our religion," talks of "the good old church of England," pretends to applaud the zeal and liberality of the various missionary societies," and even has the effrontery to "trust" that his vulgar and malignant opposition to the diffusion of Christianity, "will not be imputed to indifference to the eternal welfare of the people of India." However, setting aside the nausea with which one looks at such a book and thinks of such a man, we are not sorry that the Company and the legislature have had their conduct prescribed to them in such a broad and unequivocal a manner, in the hearing of the nation and the Christian world. He has rendered a material service, by exhibiting, with exceeding clearness, the principle which must be assumed, in any plan for the prevention of the religious illuminotion of the East. There will be no subterfuge for veiling the atheism or polytheism which must be avowed by implication, if ever such a plan is adopted.

This pamphlet abounds with the grossest misrepresentations and inconsistency. In several places the writer expresses his perfect conviction, that the friends of Christianity have never had the remotest wish for the excrcise of any kind of force in the extension of their religion; in several other places he talks with affected anxiety of "the right of the Hindoos to the free enjoyment of theit religion, laws, and customs," in a way to imply that this right is in danger of being abrogated. In one place, referring to the innovation which caused the Vellore mutiny, he says it was "so important a change in their dress that it was by no means irrational in them to believe that the British government was determined to compel them to embrace Christianity;" in another place he says, "It is impossible, impolitic as the measures was, that the mere change in dress of the sepoys could have induced a general belief, that the British government was resolved to compel them to embrace Christianity." In the Observations he represents, that the missionaries will do no harm in India, while they continue to proceed in the same manner as they have done; in this Preface, as we have seen, he describes the very same men and proceedings as most mad, pernicious, and destructive. The author of the "Candid Thoughts" has placed this curious contradiction at once before the eye, in parallel columns. If the apology should prove to be, that the Preface was written after the Ober ations were printed off, it would be idle to deny there was plenty of time to have cancelled the passages

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in the Observations; and this glaring contradiction stands as an instance of our remark, that a total neglect of the most common literary proprieties is deemed quite allowable, when the object is to revile Christianity and its advocates. The flat denial of well-known matters of fact, is also fair enough in the pursuit of the same purpose. Thus our author makes not the slightest difficulty of affirming, just as if nobody could contradict him, that "scarcely a native speaks one word of English!" A rhetorical expedient in frequent use with him is, an affectation of extreme concern and alarm for some moral punctilio, lest it should not be preserved as inviolate as every refinement of moral principle has always been by our countrymen in India. There is a ludicrous instance of this in his conscientious remarks on a suggestion of Dr. Kerr, who pro poses the institution of numerous schools, in the expectation that Brahmins will be disposed to send their children to learn English, as the key to fortune," and the hope that "the liberal knowledge" which “ a Christian can instill into the minds of youth, and fix there by means of English books," during the process of learning the language," may shake their ridiculous principles to the foundation, and all this without making any alarming attack directly on the religion of the Hindoos." Our moralist might well be struck with horror at such a wicked contrivance, when it was proposed by a clergyman, and to be carried into effect by Englishmen, whose consciences in India tremble with apprehensive pain at the lightest touch of culpability. Conscience however depends on the principles held by the judgement; and a Hindoo will with self-complacency give his babe to the vultures, sharks, or alligators, while he would shudder at the unpardonable sin of eating a dish of rice at the table of a missionary. Our author's conscience has benefited by his acquaintance with these enlightened saints. With him it is no harm, it is even a laudable measure, to "extend" by a special provision the establishments for idol-worship, but it is a flagrant piece of immorality to give the children of ignorant and most miserable pagans the benefit of understanding the English language, if in the course of teaching them that language there should be any design or attempt to impart to them also the liberal principles contained in our books, and the inestimable felicity of knowing the true God. A mighty mischief, to be sure, we should be doing them, and with a very villainous design. But hear the moralist.

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The whole of this passage must I think attract the serious attention of the India Company and the Legislature.' We are by a deception of the basest kind, to allure the children of these Brahmins to our schools, that we may shake their ridiculous ill-founded principles, but still to keep up the mask of friendly regard to their temporal interests by merely

offering to teach them a language which would be the key to fortune. No disciple of Loyala ever proposed a scheme more repugnant to every principle of justice and true morality. I am confident that the British nation possesses too just a sense of honour, and is too attached to the true Christian principle of not doing evil that good may come, to sanction so foul a fraud as Dr. Kerr recommends." p. xxxviii.

It is time to shut up this farrago of depravity and absurdity. It is the most loathsome production, we think, that has ever come under our view. We repeat it, we are very glad the government have had their lesson from such a teacher, who may possibly have taken the office out of the hands of some much more polished philosopher and artful instructor, who might have insinuated, in the form of eloquence and refined sophistry, what this inferior performer throws direct at the heads of the Company and the Legislature in the palpable grossness of impiety and dirt. It will now be impossible for them not to see, and the nation also will see, with what sort of men they must consent to identify themselves and their reputation, and on what principles they must proceed, if they should ever be inclined to forbid the exertions of Christian missionaries.

We have dwelt on this particular performance, and the spirit of its author, so long, as to leave ourselves no room for a consideration of the general topics which the subject involves; but we could not have perceived any necessity for enlarging on them. The two general positions maintained by this writer, and by those who are not ashamed to have him for their representative in the business, are, that it is impossible to convert the Hindoos, and, that the prosecution of the attempt will infallibly produce a commotion and final ruin of our Indian empire. The first of these assertions is directly contradicted by facts. Many thousand Hindoos have been converted by the Danish mission during the last century. The able and most indefatigable missionaries in Bengal have found their progress slower, than their own zeal, and that of their Christian supporters in England, had been willing, at first, to anticipate; but they too have proved, that the most obdurate and well-fortified paganism is not invincible. They do not think 80 converts to Christianity a mean reward of their labours, though such men as this writer would necessarily despise to waste one week for such a purpose. But the translation of the bible into so many languages, is the work from which the Christian world are delighted to anticipate, after a while, the most happy and sublime results. This is in the train for being the noblest achievement that India ever witnessed; and the British government are placed in the option of protecting its progress, or incurring the maledition of

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Heaven by attempting to crush it. With regard to the quality of the converts in Bengal, this writer avers, with a certain air of coarse exultation, that "they are all from the very dregs of the people." He is not able to comprehend that this would not have lessened the gratitude and delight of the missionaries, if it had been true; it is several degrees above the reach of his understanding, that the emissaries of Jesus Christ should, like him that has sent them, deem the souls of Sooders and Mallachores of equal value with those of Brahmins, or rajahs, or emperors. The assertion is however, in point of truth, worthy of the cause and the author; for among the 80 baptized converts we have noticed the names of eight or nine of the Brahmin cast.

As to the second position, that the attempt to convert the natives will produce commotion, and the loss of our Indian empire, it is supported by no shadow of proof or plausibility. The writer before us has cited, from the Periodical Accounts of the Baptist Mission, two or three passages expressive of the alarm and animosity apparent sometimes among the people, in the places where the missionaries travel and preach. Yes, there is just the same measure of hostility against the Christian cause, which it has always excited and encountered on its entrance among heathens, and there is no more. Those accounts abound with notices of this opposition and insult; they abound also with descriptions of the curiosity, the eagerness for books and tracts, the conviction of the futility of their superstitions, which many of the natives exhibit at the very same times and places. In numerous instances, the threatenings of the Brahmins have failed to deter the people from continuing to hear the addresses of the missionaries; and in the hostility of the Brahmins there is not the smallest trace of any thing like plan or systematic operation. This total want of all general social combination, is a striking circumstance in the character of the Hindoos, as has been noticed by Dr. Buchanan, and the Baptist Missionary Society. The individual is angry, and he scolds; but nobody else cares at all about him, or asks what has vexed him. The predictions of Brothers were not more ridiculous, than the talk of fifty millions of such people rising up, men, women, and children, to resent our distribution of bibles, and drive our army, and all that belongs to us, into the sea.

Since this article was written, we understand that Major Scott Waring is the author; the disclosure excites our sincerest pity for those who feel interested in his reputation

The second pamphlet placed in the title of this article, professes to feel, in some small degree, the apprehensions of Mr. Twining, but deprecates the expulsion of the missionaries

and suppression of bibles. It suggests some good advice to the societies who send missionaries to the East.

The "Candid Thoughts" contain a very excellent concise reply to the Observations, and Mr. Twining's Letter.

The "Statement" is a short, but luminous and masterly Vindication of the Baptist Missionary Society.

Art. X. A Portraiture of Methodism; being an impartial View of the Rise, Progress, Doctrines, Discipline, and Manners of the Wesleyan Methodists. In a Series of Letters, addressed to a Lady. 8vo. pp. 490. Price 10s. 6d. Longman and Co. 1807.

A Just and copious description of any religious society, especially of one that comprizes so large a proportion of British population as the Methodists, would evidently be an acquisition to those who estimate character, and search for truth. The qualifications, however, for executing this task, are either so rare or so uncongenial, that they will rarely be found combined in any individual. The historian of the Methodists should excel ordinary men in the faculties of attention and discrimination; he should be capable of understanding their creed, and watching the manner of its operation on their minds. To be adequately versed in all their institutions, and acquainted with their individual characters, he must not only have been a member of the society, but have passed through nearly all its gradations and offices. Yet a person thus qualified can scarcely be expected to judge with fairness, or to relate with fidelity; should he have quitted the society, he may indeed have liberated himself in a great measure from prepossessions, and from the fear of giving offence; but unless he secede conscientiously, on some important change of sentiment, and on terms the most honourable and friendly, he will excite clamours, and retaliate with calumnies; the malignant passions of his nature will be called into action, and his candour and veracity will be lost in the shame and revenge of an outcast or a renegado.

Mr. Nightingale, it is evident, is not entirely destitute of the qualifications to which we have alluded; he was once a "local preacher" among the Methodists; and he is now, we believe (for it is not explicitly announced in the book) an apostle of Unitarianism; his pretensions, in other respects, will be ascertained in the course of our critique.

There are two principles, it may be thought, which would secure Mr. N. from any disposition to undervalue the Methodists, or might even bias him insensibly in their favour. It is impossible for any man of tolerable information, and right feelings, to treat the memory of Mr. Wesley, or the society to which he has given a constitution and a name, with deliberate disrespect; if their usefulness had become utterly extinct, and

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