^48 CALCUTTA. 
analogy is there between these countries and India? There was no 
loss of cast, no civil disqualifications, no dread of future punishment, 
to prevent the Chinese, the Japanese, or the inhabitants of the 
Philippine Islands from becoming Christians ; yet all these impedi- 
ments are in the way of the Hindoo ; and I confess I believe them 
unconquerable. 
The conversions made by the Mahommedan sovereigns of India 
have also been quoted ; but as these are admitted to have been 
merely the effect of the utmost violence and oppression, they can 
hardly be used as an argument of the practicability of conversion 
by any other means ; and I trust they are not brought forward as 
an indirect recommendation of the coercive system of the Rev. 
Dr. Buchanan. 
The conversion of the Christians of St. Thome has also been 
mentioned; but the remote date of the period when it occurred, 
leaves us obscurely informed of the circumstances by which it was 
attended : we learn, however, that the Missionaries appeared in an 
humble condition, not likely to excite alarm or jealousy in the ruling 
powers of the country, who were then Hindoos. With respect to 
the later conversions by the Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries, 
besides their employing artifices which, it is presumed, would not 
be adopted by Protestants, the accounts of their extraordinary suc- 
cess cannot be credited, without admitting, on the same authority» 
the miracles of St. Francis Xavier and others, by which it is said to 
have been promoted. 
The advocates for conversion seem to dread the force of the 
argument that maybe brought against them from the former failure 
of the Mussulmauns to convert their Hindoo subjects, and the more 
