o 



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of eternal salvation? And shall we not hold him to be a driveller 

 in politics and morals, a fanatic in religion, and a pretender to huma- 

 nity, who would forcibly wrest this hope from the Hindoo widow? 

 To return to the question of caste. To equalize them is impos- 

 sible; to attempt it, offensive beyond all endurance to those whom 

 we would exalt, as well as to those whom we would debase; and if 

 we possessed the power, to exercise it would be a gross and into- 

 lerable oppression. That our regulations, where they do extend, 

 and where they have not yet reached, are considered with terror 

 as the instruments of a foreign rule, and that the Hindoos neither 

 do nor can feel that they are governed by their own laws, seems 

 to have been distinctly foreseen by that able and learned officer, 

 major Leith, judge advocate general, who aided in the first com- 

 pilation of the judicial regulations of Fort St. George. In a pre- 

 liminary report he deprecates the idea of sudden innovation, and 

 observes, " that the system ought rather to grow out of the first 

 germ, than start at once, full grown, like Minerva from the head of 

 Jupiter, shaking a lance and aegis at the astonished native. They 

 will arise gradually, as the best laws ever have done, out of the 

 manners and habits of the people, meliorating, and reflecting back, 

 the principles they have derived from them." 



"If Anglo-Indian legislators would throw off a little of that, 

 which they somewhat too largely ascribe to the natives of India, 

 namely, the prejudice of education, they would find the rules of 

 the proceeding prescribed by the Hindoo code (with all its numer- 

 ous imperfections on its head), combined with the local customs, 

 or common law of India, not ill adapted to the state of society to 

 which it is intended to apply; and in the panchaiet, or Indian jury, 



