386 jlsiatic College. 



are not Christians must live separately, and of course without the 

 walls of the College, in order to preserve inviolable their own 

 ideas of cast, which it is not the design of this institution to con- 

 strain them to violate in any degree. But without being thus 

 supported, a youth of the brightest talents might be wholly de- 

 barred those advantages which might hereafter render him a 

 blessing to his country ; and to lay this as an additional burden 

 on his generous European patron*, who, after subscribing to the 

 College, may have sent thither from the most distant parts of 

 India an ingenious native youth for education, from regard to 

 the faithful services of his parent, perhaps a trusty and valued 

 domestic, would be placing a barrier in the way of his obtaining 

 knowledge of the highest kind, which in most instances would 

 scarcely be surmounted. An institution which ought to combine 

 within itself every advantage for instruction, ought to be as free 

 as the air; and no native youth ought to be deprived of its be- 

 nefits, for having the misfortune to be born and brought up with- 

 in any particular circle ; the barrier to admission ought to be 

 none, beyond the inability of its funds to support and instruct 

 more. 



'* They are equally convinced, that no native youth should be 

 constrained to do a single act as the condition of his enjr.ying 

 the lenefits of this institution^ to the doing of which he attaches 

 a?iy idea of moral evil. As it can be no crime in any youth that 

 he did not regulate the circumstances of his birth and of his first 

 reception of ideas,~to make it the condition of his receiving cer- 

 tain important literary advantages, that he shall be constrained 

 to do what he himself deems it wrong, or to hear books read 

 which he deems it wrong to hear, is the ready way to corrupt 

 the moral principle implanted in his mind by nature. While 

 therefore the Committee are aware of the necessity of guarding 

 against the omission of College duties from mere idleness, under 

 the pretence of conscience, they are firmly convinced, that to 

 compel any native youth to violate his sense of right and wrong, 

 would be to teach him to act against his conscience for the sake 

 of advantage ; — and that to deprive him in the least degree of 

 the benefits of the institution for refusing it, would be, to turn a 

 desire to act rightly into a crime, and to be guilty of the most 



* In the Prospectus, publlsiicd in Aiijiiist 1818, it was mentioned, that 

 any gentleman who might send to the College a native youth not a Christian, 

 would have to suppoi't him while there, in atldition to his donation or sub- 

 scription. This has been since weighed by Ihe Committee for managing 

 the College; and, on more mature consideration, it appears to them, that 

 the donation or subscription which entitles any gentleman to send a youth 

 to the College, ought to support him while there, whetlicr he be a Christian 

 youth or not. Hence the above article. 



flagrant 



