Schools: an involuntary attachment necessarily takes place between the person who bestows knowledge and the recipient. Every person who has read Park's travels, must have perceived the amazing effects of the Mahomedan schools in Africa, in drawing the hearts of the natives thus taught to their superiors. It is a singular fact, that in all the conquests which they have been able to retain, the Mahomedans have moulded the conquered into their own disposition: the difference in temper and character between the Musulman and the Hindoo in Bengal, though both were once Hindoos, is quite astonishing, and can only be attributed to education : it is the same change of character which is so visible in the native Africans after receiving instruction in the Mahomedan schools.

At some future time, these native schools may also be expected to supply a superior race of men for all the inferior offices of government and police, who will also form the uniting link between the population and their beneficient government. These fruits cannot be expected till years have elapsed after schools shall have been generally established, and therefore the author refrains from enlarging; but, as this horde of rapacious oppressors, dressed in a little brief authority,' is, and has always been, the greatest scourge of the country, so, a greater good can scarcely be found for it, than upright and benevolent men to fill up all the subordinate offices of government and police. Something of the hunger and rapacity of these men would be removed, perhaps, if a fine of twenty-times the amount of the sum given as a douceur for obtaining a place were levied on every offender, half of it to go to the informer.

The SECOND CHAPTER of this work contains an account of the different casts or orders of Hindoos, which, including what may be called the trading casts, amount in number to more than forty. To this is added, a description of the arts, the manufactures, and the agriculture of the Hindoos, and of the climate, soil, and produce of Bengal, comprising a general view of the social order of this people as far as affected by the cast.

The writer has not spared the authors of this iniquitous system of social misrule, but has endeavoured to shew its flagrant injustice, its shocking inhumanity, and its fatal impolicy in paralizing the genius and industry of the country. The instances given of the dreadful consequences following the loss of cast, which might be multiplied into a large volume, filled with cases of unparalleled cruelty and injustice, will no doubt fill the mind of the reader with the deepest horror. And yet this detestable system, which cuts up by the roots every tender

and generous feeling, and, for the most innocent and even praise-worthy actions, inflicts a punishment worse than death itself,-has found apologists even amongst enlightened Britons.

Never was there any thing invented by the deep policy of man, so well calculated to rivet the chains of superstition, as the cast. By this institution, all the Hindoos are divided into distinct classes, and their civil, domestic and religious duties defined. The rules for the practice of these duties are so minutely arranged, and rendered so binding, that a Hindoo can never embrace any thing new, however wise, or necessary, or profitable; nor transgress the bounds of his prison-house. The mere circumstance of eating even the purest food, with persons not of the same order, however enlightened, or virtuous, or venerable for age, exposes a man to excision from his wife, children, father, mother, and every other tender relation; but what is still worse, the very reception of such a persecuted individual involves the receiver, though a mother or a wife, (Oh! these mild and humane Hindoos!!) in the same dreadful sentence. Yet all these horrors must be braved by a person perishing with thirst, who should, to save his life, dare to receive, even the sacred water of the Ganges, from one of inferior cast;—all this misery must be endured by the person, who, to secure his eternal salvation, should dare to embrace a new religion. Had the cast continued to be what it was under the Hindoo monarchs, and what the framers of its rules wished it to be; all that is terrible in becoming an outcast, and "a vagabond on the face of the earth;" all that is revolting to human nature in losing the esteem of connections, in contempt and persecution, in the fear of perishing through want, and in being excluded from the most distant hope of returning to home and friends on this side death, -all these terrors must have been welcomed by every Christian convert, who must thus have become a martyr the very moment he declared himself on the side of the new religion.

But let us rejoice that the rast of these fetters has nearly eaten them through: there are indications in the present state of Hindoo society, which evince that, on account of the number of transgressors, these barbarous laws cannot be much longer enforced :-

1. The social impulse is evidently felt as strongly by the Hindoos as by other nations; and this leads those who have formed friendships in the same neighbourhood to join in offering mutual pledges of hospitality: hence, in numerous instances, we find that groups of Hindoos, of different casts, actually meet in secret, to eat and smoke together, rejoicing in this opportunity of indulging their social feelings. There is also a strong propensity in human nature to pass the bounds prescribed by partial and short-sighted legislators; and in these private meet

ings, the parties enjoy a kind of triumph in having leapt the fence, and in being able to do it repeatedly with impunity.

2. Early marriages being necessarily acts of compulsion, and against nature, it too frequently happens, that the affections, instead of fixing upon the law-given wife, become placed upon some one not of the same cast, who is preferred as the darling object of uncontrouled choice: here again the cast is sacrificed and detested in secret.

3. The love of proscribed food in many instances becomes a temptation to trespass against the laws of cast: many Hindoos of the highest as well as of the lowest cast eat flesh and other forbidden food; and, should detection follow, the offenders avail themselves of the plea, "These are the remains of the offerings presented to my guardian deity."

4. The yoke of the cast becomes still more intolerable through the boundless license which a Hindoo gives to his sensual desires; and these temptations to promiscuous intercourse with all casts of females, are greatly strengthened by absence from home for months and years together, which is the case with thousands, especially in Calcutta and other large towns, as well as throughout the native army: hence cohabiting, eating and smoking with women of other casts is so common, that it is generally connived at, especially as it is chiefly done at a distance from the offender's relations.

5. The very minuteness and intricacy of the rules connected with cast also tend powerfully to induce a forfeiture of the privileges it bestows: social intercourse among Hindoos is always through a path of thorns. Cast is destroyed by teaching religious rules to persons of inferior rank, by eating, or by intimate friendship, with such persons, by following certain trades, by forbidden matrimonial alliances, by neglecting the customs of the cast, by the faults of near relations, &c. &c. And where the cast is not forfeited, in many cases persons are tormented and persecuted to the greatest excess.

From hence it will appear, that an institution, the rules of which are at war with every passion of the human mind, good as well as evil, must, sooner or later, especially if the government itself ceases to enforce these rules, fall into utter disuse and contempt. The present state of Hindoo society respecting the cast, therefore, will cease to be a matter of wonder. No one will be surprised to hear, that, although the Hindoos give one another credit, as a matter of convenience, for being in possession of cast, and though there may be an outward, and, in the

higher orders, an insolent show of reverence for its rules, if the matter were to be searched into, and the laws of the cast were allowed to decide, scarcely a single family of Hindoos would be found in the whole of Bengal whose cast is not forfeited: this is well known and generally acknowledged.

The author has devoted one hundred pages, making the THIRD CHAPTER of this volume, to

a description of the Manners and Customs of the Hindoos; and upon these he here offers a few remarks in addition to those which close the chapter.

Some have professed to doubt, whether a state of civilization be preferable to a savage state or not; but would it not be the same question in other words, if it were asked whether is to be preferred, the state of man or that of the irrational animals? What is the precise boundary which marks the distinction between the civilized and the savage state? Is it not, that in the former the improvement of the mind is recognized as the highest end of existence, but not in the latter? The Hindoo manners strongly remind us of this distinction :

The Hindoos are said to exercise much tenderness towards women in a state of pregnancy; not, however, from any high sensibility in reference to the sex, but from an anxious concern to secure the safe birth of a child, hoping it will be a son, to whom they may commit the charge of releasing them after death from a state similar to purgatory. The rejection, with a degree of horror, of the services of a skilful surgeon, even where the life of the mother is exposed, is another proof that the mind is in a state of great imbecility; while the terrors felt by all parties on these occasions strongly demonstrate the deplorable state of medical science among the Hindoos. The appearance of piety in a family after the birth of a child however, though blended with the grossest ignorance and superstition, may become an instructive lesson to Christians, as well as an excitement to gratitude for better knowledge. In giving names to their children, the Hindoos shew a marked preference for the names of the gods, hereby expressing their veneration for the deity, and their hope that the god whose name the child bears may honour it with his favour.

Parents who have been afflicted by the loss of several children in infancy not unfrequently attribute their misfortunes to the prayers of envious persons. If they are afterward blessed

with another child, they give it an unpleasant name, that no one may envy their happiness.* In the same spirit, these poor people place on the end of a stick a black rejected cooking pot streaked with white, and set it up in the midst of a garden of vegetables, that the evil eyes of malicious persons may not destroy the crop. How effectually would the reception of one passage of scripture eradicate all these fears: "The prayers of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord."+ How absent from the minds of this people are all ideas of the essential necessity of holy dispositions in our approaches to the Almighty.

Hindoo mothers display an excessive attachment to their offspring: but this fondness, confining its cares to the body, leads them to feed their children to excess; to indulge them with per. nicious food, which brings on early diseases; and to permit evil tempers to grow without correction and thus maternal affection is converted into the greatest possible bane.

The exercises of the village school exhibit an exclusive concern for secular interests, with out the least reference to the enlargement of the mind. A Hindoo has not the most distant idea that schools ought to inculcate morals and the first principles of religion. It is by mere accident that the names of the gods, mingled with other names, form a spelling lesson: a schoolmaster, in the same manner as a head servant, is termed a sirkar ; he teaches a certain art useful in obtaining a livelihood. That this is the only idea the Hindoos have of schools, is further proved by the disgraceful fact, that all India does not supply a single school for girls! Their ideas are, that the employments of a woman do not require the assistance of education; she can sweep the house, cook, collect cow-dung for fuel, wait on her lord, and feed her children without it, and having discharged these offices with fidelity, the whole work of life is accomplished. The use of the needle, knitting, and imparting knowledge to her children, are duties to which she has no call, and for which she is wholly incapacitated. No wonder that Hindoo society is so degraded, when those who might become the best part of it are treated as irrational, and converted into beasts of burden.

The Hindoos never appear to have considered the subject of marriage as having any thing to do with moral or intellectual advantages. Their laws recognize nothing as the proper ends of marriage but that of perpetuating the species, and leaving a son to perform the funeral rites. A woman is never considered as the companion of her husband, but as his slave, or as a crea

* Three kourecs ❀ not unfrequently given (Teen Kouree).

+ How supremely important it is, that the works received by a whole nation as divine, should contain only those sentiments that are capable of imparting a system of perfect morals!