FREQUENCY OF SUTTEES. 
129 
authority not reasonably to be questioned, that the 
prevalence of suttees has been lately encreasing 
throughout the province of Bengal, where they have 
always most abounded. 
“ In speaking of the suttee of yesterday,” says 
Bishop Heber,* “ Dr. Marshman said that these 
horrors are of more frequent occurrence within these 
last few years than when he first knew Bengal ; an 
increase which he imputes to the encreasing luxury 
of the higher and middling classes, and to their 
expensive imitation of European habits, which make 
many families needy, and anxious to get rid, by any 
means, of the necessity of supporting their mothers 
or the widows of their relations.f Another frequent 
cause is, he thinks, the jealousy of old men, who, 
having married young wives, still cling to their ex- 
clusive possession even in death, and leave injunctions 
either with their wives themselves to make the offer- 
ing, or with their heirs to urge them to it. He is 
strongly of opinion that the practice might be forbid- 
den in Bengal, where it is of most frequent occurrence, 
without exciting any serious murmurs. The women, 
he is convinced, would all be loud in their praises 
of such a measure ; and even of the men, so few 
would have an immediate interest in burning their 
wives, mothers, or sisters-in-law, that they would 
set themselves against what those who had most in- 
fluence with them would be so much interested in 
* See Journal, vol. i. pp. 72, 3, 4. 
t What a revolting picture of society ! Will there be found 
a greater degree of moral turpitude and social enormity even 
among the most degraded savages 1 
