130 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
having established. The Brahmins, he says, have 
no longer the power and popularity which they had 
when he first remembers India, and among the laity 
many powerful and wealthy persons agree, and pub- 
licly express their agreement, with Rammohun Roy, 
in reprobating the custom, which is now well known 
not to be commanded by any of the Hindoo sacred 
books, though some of them speak of it as a meri- 
torious sacrifice. 
“ A similar opinion to that of Dr. Marshman I have 
heard expressed by the senior judge of the Sudder 
Dewannee Adawlut. Others, however, of the mem- 
bers of the government think differently. They con- 
ceive that the likeliest method to make the custom 
more popular than it is, would be to forbid and make 
it a point of honour with the natives ; that, at pre- 
sent, no woman is supposed to be burnt without her 
own wish certified to the magistrate ; that there are 
other and less public ways to die, on that account 
more liable to abuse than the suttees, which might 
be resorted to if this were forbidden ; and that if we 
desire to convert the Hindoos, we should above all 
things be careful to keep Government entirely out of 
sight in all the means which we employ ; and to be 
ev$n, if possible, over scrupulous in not meddling with 
or impeding those customs which, however horrid, are 
become sacred in their estimation, and are only to 
be destroyed by convincing and changing the popular 
mind. When Christian schools have become uni- 
versal, the suttee will fall of itself; but to forbid it by 
any legislative enactment, would, in their opinion, only 
give currency to the notion that we mean to impose 
