that India for the last half-century has been absorbing about two millions sterling of bullion, per annum. These are astounding facts, and I need not ask your active minds whether they tell well or ill for British administration. And even when we pass on to higher attributes of government, and ask what England and her sons have done to civilize those dusky millions, we still shall find she has done much. Races of Aborigines, who probably were driven into the fastnesses and jungles of India, by the Hindoos, 3000 years The Madras figures we have been compelled to take from an imperfect return in a local journal. Thus while the value of the trade of Bombay exceeds that of Calcutta by Rs. 28,454,664, or nearly three millions sterling, the yield in duty to the revenue from Bombay is less by Rs. 6,298, 229, or nearly three-fourths of a million. This striking difference may be partly accounted for by the greater quantity of salt imported into Calcutta and the higher excise levied on it. But there must be some other reason besides this. Is it in the accounts? "We have thus, for the trade of the three capitals, a total of nearly seventy-nine millions sterling. If to this we add four millions for the Pegu coast, four for Kurrachee, and one for Aden, we have a total for the trade of all India of eighty-eight millions annually, yielding a Customs revenue of nearly four millions sterling on merchandise alone. In 1813, when the Company's monopoly was broken up, the trade was under one million. These eighty-eight millions are the work of European capital, of 'interloping' energy." ago, and to whom the Moslem conquerors brought nothing but a keener sword, have been won into the light, and weaned from murder, robbery, and devil-worship. To all races alike the broadest and sincerest religious toleration has been extended. In one part we have lifted the Hindoo, and another the Mahommedan, out of the dust; and I have myself, often, in the city of Lahore, heard the priests of Juggernâth endeavouring, by frantic blasts on their shelltrumpets, to drown the triumphant call with which the emancipated muezzin,* on his minaret, was summoning the faithful Moslem to their prayers. A day before the English came, that call would have been silenced with the sword; and the muezzin's head have rolled into the street. Indirectly, the whole Western life and civilization of the English rulers has been an educating influence constantly at work, revolutionising Eastern ideas, and breaking down that ignorance of the outer world, which is the very rampart of error. Take a few instances. The English magistrate, * The Muezzin is the priest who chants out the Azân, or call to prayers, five times a day. It is a most musical cry, and can be heard a great distance. The Sikhs prohibited it throughout their dominions. +I do not wish to blink the ever-ready taunt that much of the "indirect teaching" of Englishmen in India has been an acquiescence in Oriental immorality. No doubt it has. No doubt it has been one among the obstacles to missionary effort; but not more so than in England. My own impression is the other way. In an Indian cantonment everybody sees or hears everything. All characters, good or bad, lie open; and a man is known from one end of his Presidency to the other by report. In England few people know their next-door neighbours; and many families do not know the real characters of their own members. The open daylight profligacy of India is less mischievous than the concealed and gas-light vice of England. If we wait till all Englishmen in India lead Christian lives, no native will ever be converted. As well might St. Paul's Cathedral or Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle be closed till every minister in Great Britain be a perfect example to his flock. alone and uncontrolled, in a district 100 miles square, doing justice earnestly and laboriously between rich and poor alike, and so hopelessly above corruption that not two bribes are offered him in all his life, is a living daily marvel of principle and duty. The native ponders and ponders it, and feels there is something in it,-a difference greater than the colour of the skin. The English soldier who pledges his word to an enemy in arms, and keeps his word to that enemy when in his power, is another wonder to the Indian; whose first impulse is to ridicule his folly, and his last to admire his goodness and his truth. Still more wonderful to the native is the English woman's position in society; free, and worthy of her freedom. It opens out an entirely new world to him, and tells of a purer morality than is to be found in the Vedas or the Korân,-a morality that is still possible for the daughters of his country. Rough and practical and ludicrous, too, is the teaching of the Railway. It is an iron-minded thing; a horrid infidel and leveller; believing in no heaven-born castes, but dividing all mankind into first and second class, according to the tickets that they pay for-Brahmins, Sweepers, grandsons of the Prophet; in they must all bundle together, or be left behind. The engine snorts at all their pride, and whistles at their scruples. It is so abominably cheap, too, that it undermines all nonsense. The very High Priest of Humbug would rather be whisked a mile for a halfpenny, than trudge it under an Indian sun. But to come to direct teaching. Much, it must be admitted, has been done by our English rulers in the great cause of education. Scientific and historic truth has been clothed in the languages of the country, and has shaken Hindooism to its base. But, alas! it must be admitted also that our English Government in India, even in its schools and colleges, has withheld the Bible, and kept back Chris tianity. It has, indeed, made many infidels and deists; but it may be doubted whether it ever made a single Christian. On the other hand, it is recorded by a distinguished Hindoo Prince and scholar,* that "if Christianity were true, the British would have communicated a knowledge of it to their Hindoo subjects." Precisely the same sentiment is also recorded by an eminent native mathematician,† who was educated to be a Deist in the Government College at Delhi, and converted afterwards to be a Christian through private teaching. The conclusions which these two native gentlemen have avowed and published, cannot fail to have been the secret conviction of all their thoughtful countrymen; for they saw the same Government which excluded the Bible from its Colleges and Schools, admitting the Shasters and the Korân; fostering caste in its native army; expelling a Sepoy from the ranks because he became a Christian; preventing missionaries from coming to India as long as it could; sharing the pilgrim taxes of Juggernâth till England interfered; and, even so late as 1857, disbursing £200,000 a year from its treasury to Heathen and Mahommedan temples.§ It is a remarkable thing, but only too consonant with human nature in all situations, that in the poor and humble days of the East India Company, when it came to India literally as an adventurer, it came, nevertheless, as a Christian. The Charter of 1698 actually enacted that the Company should provide ministers, who were "to apply themselves to learn the native language of the country where they shall reside, the better to enable them to instruct * Rajah Jay Narain, of Benâres. Ram Chundra. See his "Treatise on Maxima and Minima." Edited by Professor De Morgan. Prubhu Deen, A.D. 1819. § See Parliamentary Return. the Gentoos, that shall be servants or slaves of the said Company, in the Protestant religion." And the early records of the Company show them at one* time sending out Bibles in several languages; at another catechisms, ordering that "when any shall be able to repeat the catechism by heart, you may give to each of them two rupees for their encouragement." And whatever were the faults of Robert Clive, who founded the Imperial era of the Company, he was no coward. In governing Heathens and Mahonmedans he was minded, like Sir John Lawrence in our day, to "be bound by our conscience, not by theirs;" and he boldly welcomed the great missionary Kiernander to Calcutta in 1758. What was it, then, that so entirely changed the policy of the East India Company? Prosperity, greatness, increase of territory, and goods; want of faith in their own destiny, and in the God that shaped it! They first dropped the desire to convert "the Gentoos;" then took the patronage of Juggernâth; and in their last days may be described as barely tolerant of native Christianity. Well was it for India, and well for England too, that the Christian duty which the British India Government neglected, private Englishmen (and not only Englishmen, but Americans and Germans) came forward to perform; and the result of this missionary labour is from 150,000 to 200,000 Protestant native Christians in the present generation. The number is small in comparison with the population; but I consider it large in comparison with the obstacles that had to be overcome. The Bible has now been translated into many dialects. A Christian literature is slowly springing up. And, above all, the Native Church has reached that stage when it can * February, 1659. † A.D. 1677. Corruption of a Portuguese word signifying Gentiles. |