Captain Seely's Voice from India. 
generally possess great influence in their 
distticts, and their public situations give 
them a command and weight that we in 
this” country, where nothing of caste, and 
still less of the usages of India, are known, 
can have no just conception of.” —‘ There 
is also a respectable but inferior class of 
natiye public officers. They are intimately, 
by caste and religious feeling, identified 
with the body of people mentioned in the 
last chapter ; and without their assistance, 
I do not hesitate to say, that the gov emn- 
ment could not conduct its operations.” 
“Another portion of our Indian sub- 
jects, is the fine and well disciplined native 
army of nearly 200,000 men, all bound 
together uy ties of caste. These men have 
always looked upon us with notions almost 
bordering on veneration; they are high- 
minded but obedient, strongly attached, 
because they are well treated and their 
religious prejudices respected; loyal, be- 
cause they believe us to be humane, just, 
and powerful ; and they have not been told 
otherwise.”’ 
‘Capt. Seely seems to make but a 
very low estimate of the Christian civili- 
zation, which colonization and free 
intercourse between Europeans and the 
native Indians would produce; and it 
is evident that, by a side wind, through- 
out, he alludes, also, to the enlighten- 
ing influence of Christian missionary- 
ship.* 
“What an addition it. will be to the 
rural economy of the now happy Hindoo 
age, where a crime or riot does not 
happen once in half a century, to see a 
tread-mill with half a dozen enlightened 
and reformed Hindoo females, performing 
their lazy evolutions! Happy, thrice 
happy. change .”—“ The plenteousness and 
cheapness of the ardent spirits made in 
India, and those of an inferior kind being 
»*® In page 156, indeed, the author speaks | 
outplainly upon this subject. “ Make the 
Hindoos as enlightened as ourselves, and 
make them half or imperfect converts to 
Christianity, our expulsion must follow.” 
And again, in page 161: “ It is a melan- 
choly and undeniable fact, that, although 
the Hindoos are heathens, and are daily 
bespattered. by hyper-cant with false 
charges and foul appellations, they are more 
sober, chaste, and kind-hearted than the 
like orders of people in England. There is 
less crime and vice in Calcutta, containing 
350,000 inhabitants, than will be found to 
exist among 350,000 people in this coun- 
‘try ; a people, too, who are educated, and 
boast of their morality. 1 will take upon 
myself to say, that upon a reference to tlie 
calendar and police, there shall be found 
‘more. atrocious actions and conyictions 
recorded in London, than in the whole 
kingdom of Bengal, including the city of 
"Caleuttas” 
Monrury Maa. No, 405. 
609 
procurable in abundance by merely tapping 
the date, the cocoa nut, and other trees, 
would furnish the dissclute European with 
the greatest seduction to vice and, erime 
ready at his hands; and the attractive qua- 
lities of the pretty Hindoo female (a far 
different creature in manners, morals, and 
temper to the heavy, uncouth, and mascu- 
line female peasant of Europe) would cause 
unspeakable horrors; for rather than they’ 
would submit to pollution, they would 
destroy themselves by hundreds, and their 
daughters would cheerfully follow their ex- 
ample.” —‘‘ What are the natives to gain 
by being newly fashioned? — Are they 
only to receive our very few virtues, and 
reject our numerous vices? At present 
they have few, very | few evil propensities, 
and still fewer vices.’ 
“* There is a class of society in India to 
whom I haye not at all alluded, because, . 
during the present century, neither their 
numerical strength nor importance gives 
them a preponderating weight in the com- 
munity. I need hardly say I alludeto Indo- 
Britons, or half-castes, the offspring . of 
European fathers, and native mothers,”’— 
“* Some attention has of late been bestowed 
upon them, and no one more than myself 
applauds the wisdom and liberality of a late 
act of government, by which they may pos- 
sess land in any part of our territories, 
Most of these persons receive a good, edu- 
cation, are intelligent, and inherit from 
their fathers some portion of the energy 
and enterprise of the English character. I 
am by no means unwilling to admit but 
that there are many who have a keen sense 
of the disregard with which they are 
treated, and are impatient and dissatisfied 
with their station ir society.” —“ They are 
high-minded from their accomplishments ; 
proud, because their progenitors, probably, 
have filled high situations; confident of 
their powers, from the English blood that 
flows in their veins. With these qualities 
‘tltey possess in the admixture of blood the 
address, industry, and acuteness of the 
native ; the latter qualities are sharpened 
and improved by their English education 
and habits ; altogether it may be supposed 
that they are vastly superior to the natives, 
and many of them but little inferior to their 
European ancestors; in short, there is 
much to admire in their character, and 
much to be lamented in their political 
situation,” —-“* They are rapidly increas- 
ing.” 
The following are subjects fit for the 
satyric, and the tragic drama. 
“ There are monsters that I have known, 
who, after begetting native children, and 
accumulating large fortunes, haye qunitted 
India for ever, leaving their offspring tatally 
unprovided for; have arrived in England, 
have married an Englishwoman, bought a 
large estate, and dashed away’ splendidly, 
quite forgetting that their children in Tadia, 
4] 
to 
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