We are accustomed to govern India—a country which God never gave us, by means which God will never justify.

Lord Erskine—Speech on Stockdale’s Trial.

We have traced something of the misery which a long course of avarice and despotism has inflicted on the natives of India, but we have not taken into the account its moral effect upon them. Generation after generation of Englishmen flocked over to Indostan, to gather a harvest of wealth, and to return and enjoy it at home. Generation after generation of Indians arose to create this wealth for their temporary visitors, and to sink deeper and deeper themselves into poverty. Happy had it been for them, had poverty and physical wretchedness come alone. But the inevitable concomitant of slavery and destitution appeared with them, and to every succeeding generation in a more appalling form—demoralization, vast as their multitude and dreadful as their condition. They were not more unhappy than they were degraded in spirit and debased in feeling. Ages of virtual though not nominal slavery, beneath Mahomedan and Christian masters, had necessarily done their usual work on the Hindus. They had long ceased to be the gentle, the pure-minded, the merciful Hindus. They had become cruel, thievish, murderous, licentious, as well as blindly superstitious. They had seen no religious purity, no moral integrity practised—how were they to become pure and honest? They had felt only cruelty and injustice—how were they to be anything but cruel and unjust? They had seen from age to age, from day to day, from hour to hour, every sacred tie of blood or honour, every moral obligation, every great and eternal principle of human action violated around them—how were they to reverence such things? How were they to regard them but as solemn and unprofitable mockeries? They were accordingly corrupted into a mean, lying, depraved, and perfidious generation—could the abject tools of a money-scraping race of conquerors be anything else?—was it probable? was it possible? Philosophers and poetical minds, when such, now and then, reached India, were astonished to find, instead of those delicate and spiritual children of Brahma, of whom they had read such delightful accounts—a people so sordid, and in many instances so savage and cruel. They had not calculated, as they might have done, the certain consequences of long years of slavery’s most fatal inflictions. What an eternal debt of generous and Christian retribution do we owe India for all this! What, indeed, are the pangs we have occasioned, the poverty we have created, the evils of all kinds that we have perpetrated, to the moral degradation we have induced, and the gross darkness, gross superstition, the gross sensuality we have thus, in fact, fostered and perpetuated? Had we appeared in India as Christians instead of conquerors; as just merchants instead of subtle plotters, shunning the name of tyrants while we aimed at the most absolute tyranny; had we been as conspicuous for our diffusion of knowledge as for our keen, ceaseless, and insatiable gathering of coin; long ago that work would have been done which is but now beginning, and our power would have acquired the most profound stability in the affections and the knowledge of the people.

At the period of which I have been speaking—the end of the last and the opening of the present century, the character of the Hindus, as drawn by eye witnesses of the highest authority, was most deplorable. Even Sir William Jones, than whom there never lived a man more enthusiastic in his admiration of the Hindu literature and antiquities, and none more ready to see all that concerned this people in sunny hues—even he, when he had had time to observe their character, was compelled to express his surprise and disappointment. He speaks of their cruelties with abhorrence: in his charge to the grand jury at Calcutta, June 10th, 1787, he observed, “Perjury seems to be committed by the meanest, and encouraged by some of the better sort of the Hindus and Mussulmans with as little remorse as if it were a proof of ingenuity, or even of merit”—that he had “no doubt that affidavits of any imaginary fact might be purchased in the markets of Calcutta as readily as any other article—and that, could the most binding form of religious obligation be hit upon, there would be found few consciences to bind.”

All the travellers and historians of the time, Orme, Buchanan, Forster, Forbes, Scott Waring, etc., unite in bearing testimony to their grossness, filth, and disregard of their words; their treachery, cowardice, and thievishness; their avarice, equal to that of the whites, and their cunning and duplicity more than European; their foul language and quarrelsome habits—all the features of a people depraved by hereditary oppression and moral neglect. Their horrid and barbarous superstitions, by which thousands of victims are destroyed every year, are now familiar to all Europe. Every particular of these evil lineaments of character were most strikingly attested by the Indian judges, in their answers to the circular of interrogatories put to them in 1801, already alluded to. They all coincided in describing the general moral character of the inhabitants as at the lowest pitch of infamy; that very few exceptions to that character were to be found; that there was no species of fraud or villany that the higher classes would not be guilty of; and that, in the lower classes, were to be added, murder, robbery, adultery, perjury, etc., on the slightest occasion. One of them, the magistrate of Juanpore, added, “I have observed, among the inhabitants of this country, some possessed of abilities qualified to rise to eminence in other countries, but a moral, virtuous man, I have never met amongst them.”

Mr. Grant described the Bengalese as depraved and dishonest to a degree to which Europe could furnish no parallel; that they were “cunning, servile, intriguing, false, and hypocritically obsequious; that they, however, indemnified themselves for their passiveness to their superiors by their tyranny, cruelty, and violence to those in their power.” Amongst themselves he says, “discord, hatred, abuse, slanders, injuries, complaints, and litigations prevail to a surprising degree. No stranger can sit down among them without being struck with the temper of malevolent contention and animosity as a prominent feature in the character of the society. It is seen in every village: the inhabitants live amongst each other in a sort of repulsive state. Nay, it enters into almost every family: seldom is there a household without its internal divisions and lasting enmities, most commonly, too, on the score of interest. The women, too, partake of this spirit of discord. Held in slavish subjection by the men, they rise in furious passions against each other, which vent themselves in such loud, virulent, and indecent railings, as are hardly to be heard in any other part of the world.... Benevolence has been represented as a leading principle in the minds of the Hindus; but those who make this assertion know little of their character. Though a Hindu would shrink with horror from the idea of directly slaying a cow, which is a sacred animal amongst them, yet he who drives one in his cart, galled and excoriated as she is by the yoke, beats her unmercifully from hour to hour, without any care or consideration of the consequence.” Mr. Fraser Tytler, Lord Teignmouth, Sir James Mackintosh, and others, only expand the dark features of this melancholy picture; we need not therefore dwell largely upon it. The French missionary, the AbbÉ Dubois, and Mr. Ward, the English one, bear a like testimony. The latter, on the subject of Hindu humanity, asks—“Are these men and women, too, who drag their dying relations to the banks of rivers, at all seasons, day and night, and expose them to the heat and cold in the last agonies of death, without remorse; who assist men to commit self-murder, encouraging them to swing with hooks in their backs, to pierce their tongues and sides—to cast themselves on naked knives or bury themselves alive—throw themselves in rivers, from precipices, and under the cars of their idols;—who murder their own children—burying them alive, throwing them to the alligators, or hanging them up alive in trees, for the ants and crows, before their own doors, or by sacrificing them to the Ganges;—who burn alive, amidst savage shouts, the heart-broken widow, by the hands of her own son, and with the corpse of a deceased father;—who every year butcher thousands of animals, at the call of superstition, covering themselves with blood, consigning their carcases to the dogs, and carrying their heads in triumph through the streets? are these the benignant Hindus.”

It may be said that these cruelties are the natural growth of their superstitions. True; but, up to the period in question, who had endeavoured to correct, or who cared for their superstitions so that they paid their taxes? To this hour, or, at least, till but yesterday, many of these bloody superstitions have had the actual sanction of the British countenance! To this hour the dreadful indications of their cruel and treacherous character, apart from their superstitions, from time to time affright Europe. We have latterly heard much of the horrible deeds of the Thugs and Phasingars. Where such dreadful associations and habits are prevalent to the extent described, there must be a most monstrous corruption of morals, shocking neglect of the people, and consequent annihilation of everything like social security and civilization. In what, indeed, does the practice and temper of the Thugs differ from those of the Decoits, who abounded at the period in question? These were gangs of robbers who associated for their purposes, and practised by subtle subterfuge or open violence, as best suited the occasion. They went in troops, and made a common assault on houses and property, or dispersed themselves under various disguises, to inveigle their victims into their power. Mr. Dowdeswell, in a report to government, in 1809, says, “robbery, rape, and murder itself are not the worst figures in this horrid and disgusting picture. An expedient of common occurrence with the Decoits, merely to induce a confession of property supposed to be concealed, is to burn the proprietor with straws or torches until he discloses the property or perishes in the flames.” He mentions one man who was convicted of having committed fifteen murders in nineteen days, and adds that, “volumes might be filled with the atrocities of the Decoits, every line of which would make the blood run cold with horror.” He does, indeed, give some details of them of the most amazing and harrowing description.

Sir Henry Strachey in his Report already quoted, says, “the crime of decoity, in the district of Calcutta, has, I believe, greatly increased since the British administration of justice. The number of convicts confined at the six stations of this division (independent of Zillah twenty-four pergunnahs) is about 4000. Of them probably nine-tenths are decoits. Besides these, some hundreds of late years have been transported. The number of persons convicted of decoity, however great it may appear, is certainly small in proportion to those who are guilty of the crime. At Midnapore I find, by the reports of the police darogars, that in the year 1802, a period of peace and tranquillity, they sent intelligence of no less than ninety-three robberies, most of them, as usual, committed by large gangs. With respect to fifty-one of these robberies, not a man was taken, and for the remaining forty-two, very few, frequently only one or two in each gang.” Other judges describe the extent to which decoity existed, as being much vaster than was generally known, and calculated to excite the most general terror throughout the country.

This is an awful picture of a people approaching to one hundred millions, and of a great and splendid country, which has been for the most part in our hands for more than a century. It only remains now to inquire what has been done since the opening of the nineteenth century for the instruction and general amelioration of the condition of this vast multitude of human beings, and thereby for our own justification as a Christian nation. Warren Hastings said most truly, that throwing aside all pretences of any other kind that many were disposed to set up, the simple truth was that “by the sword India had been acquired, and by the sword it must be maintained.” If the forcible conquest of a country be, therefore, a crime against the rights of nations and the principles of religion, what retribution can we make for our national offences, except by employing our power to make the subjected people happy and virtuous? But if we do not even hold conquest to be a crime, or war to be unchristian, where is the man that will not deem that we have assumed an awful responsibility on the plainest principles of the gospel, by taking into our hands the fate of so many millions of human creatures, thus degraded, thus ignorant and unhappy? It is impossible either to “do justice, to love mercy, or to walk humbly before God,” without as zealously seeking the social and eternal benefit of so great a people, as we have sought, and still seek, our own advantage, in the possession of their wealth. Over this important subject I am unfortunately bound to pass, by my circumscribed limits, in a hasty manner. The subject would require a volume. It is with pleasure, however, that we can point to certain great features in the modern history of improvement in India. It is with pleasure that we can say that some of the most barbarous rites of the Hindu superstitions have been removed. That infanticide, and the burning of widows have been abolished by the British influence; and that though the horrible immolations of Juggernaut are not terminated, they are no longer so unblushingly sanctioned, and even encouraged by British interference. These are great steps in the right path. To Colonel Walker, and Mr. Duncan, the governor of Bombay, immortal thanks and honour are due, for first leading the way in this track of great reforms, by at once discouraging, dissuading from, and finally abolishing infanticide in Guzerat. One of the most beneficial acts of the Marquis Wellesley’s government, was to put this horrible custom down in Saugur. How little anything, however, but the extraction of revenue had throughout all the course of our dominion in India been regarded till the present century, the Christian Researches of Mr. Buchanan made manifest. The publication of that book, coming as it did from a gentleman most friendly to our authorities there, was the commencement of a new era in our Indian history. It at once turned, by the strangeness of its details, the eyes of all the religious world on our Indian territories, and excited a feeling which more than any other cause has led to the changes which have hitherto been effected. At that period (1806), in making a tour through the peninsula of Indostan, he discovered that everything like attention to the moral or religious condition of either natives or colonists was totally neglected. That all the atrocious superstitions of the Hindus were not merely tolerated, but even sanctioned, and some of them patronized by our government. That though there were above twenty English regiments in India at that time, not one of them had a chaplain, (p. 80). That in Ceylon, where the Dutch had once thirty-two Protestant churches, we had then but two English clergymen in the whole island! (p. 93). That there were in it by computation 500,000 natives professing Christianity; who, however, “had not one complete copy of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue,” and consequently, they were fast receding into paganism, (p. 95). That the very English were more notorious for their infidelity than for anything else, and by their presence did infinite evil to the natives. That, in that very year, when the governor of Bombay announced to the supreme government at Calcutta, his determination to attempt to extirpate infanticide from Guzerat—a practice, be it remembered, which in that province alone destroyed annually 3000 children!23—this cool commercial body warned him, not “even for the speculative success of that benevolent project, to hazard the essential interests of the state!” (p. 52). That all the horrors of burning widows were perpetrated to the amount of from seven hundred to one thousand of such diabolical scenes annually. That the disgusting and gory worship of Juggernaut was not merely practised, but was actually licensed and patronized by the English government. That very year it had imposed a tax on all pilgrims going to the temples in Orissa and Bengal, had appointed British officers, British gentlemen to superintend the management of this hideous worship and the receipt of its proceeds. That the internal rites of the temple consisted in one loathsome scene of prostitution, hired bands of women being kept for the purpose; its outward rites the crushing of human victims under the car of the idol.

Thus the Indian government had, in fact, instead of discouraging such practices in the natives, taken up the trade of public murderers, and keepers of houses of ill fame, and that under the sacred name of religious tolerance! A more awful state of things it is impossible to conceive; nor one which more forcibly demonstrates what the whole of this history proclaims, that there is no state of crime, corruption, or villany, which by being familiarized to them, and coming to regard them as customary, educated men, and men of originally good hearts and pure consciences, will not eventually practise with composure, and even defend as right. What defences have we not heard in England of these very practices? It was not till recently that public opinion was able to put down the immolation of widows,24 nor till this very moment that the Indian government has been shamed out of trading in murder and prostitution in the temples of Juggernaut. Thus, for more than thirty years has this infamous trade at Juggernaut been persisted in, from the startling exposure of it by Buchanan, and in the face of all the abhorrence and remonstrances of England—for more than a century and a half it has been tolerated. The plea on which it has been defended is that of delicacy towards the opinions of the natives. That delicacy thus delicately extended where money was to be made, has not in a single case been practised for a single instant where our interest prompted a different conduct. We have seized on the lands of the natives; on their revenues; degraded their persons by the lash, or put them to death without any scruple. But this plea has been so strongly rebutted by one well acquainted with India, in the Oriental Herald, that before quitting this subject it will be well to quote it here. “The assumption that our empire is an empire of opinion in India, and that it would be endangered by restraining the bloody and abominable rites of the natives, is as false as the inference is unwarranted. Our empire is not an empire of opinion, it is not even an empire of law: it has been acquired; it is still governed; and can only be retained, unless the whole system of its government is altered, by the direct influence of force. No portion of the country has been voluntarily ceded, from the love borne to us by the original possessors. We were first permitted to land on the sea coast to sell our wares, as humble and solicitous traders, till by degrees, sometimes by force and sometimes by fraud, we have possessed ourselves of an extent of territory containing nearly a hundred millions of human beings. We have put down the ancient sovereigns of the land, we have stripped the nobles of all their power; and by continual drains on the industry and resources of the people, we take from them all their surplus and disposable wealth. There is not a single province of that country that we have ever acquired but by the direct influence which our strength and commanding influence could enforce, or by the direct agency of warlike operations and superior skill in arms. There is not a spot throughout the whole of this vast region whereon we rule by any other medium than that by which we first gained our footing there—simple force. There is not a district in which the natives would not gladly see our places as rulers supplied by men of their own nation, faith, and manners, so that they might have a share in their own affairs; nor is there an individual, out of all the millions subject to our rule in Asia, whose opinion is ever asked as to the policy or impolicy of any law or regulation about to be made by our government, however it may press on the interests of those subject by its operation. It is a delusion which can never be too frequently exposed, to believe that our empire in India is an empire of opinion, or to imagine that we have any security for our possession of that country, except the superiority of our means for maintaining the dominion of force.”—vol. ii. p. 174.