IN 1853-54, owing to changes in the higher
appointments of the Civil Service, Grant officiated for some months
in the Foreign Office, and subsequently was confirmed as Secretary
to the Government of India in the Home Department. Mr Halliday, who
had proceeded to England on sick-leave in the year 1852, and had
given most valuable evidence before the House of Lords with regard
to the renewal of the Company’s Charter, returned to India, after an
absence of some eighteen months, to fill a vacancy in the Supreme
Council. His tenure of this high office was brief, seeing that in
May 1854 he was called on to fill the still more important office of
the newly-created Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal. With the
general approbation of all parties Grant was, by the Court of
Directors, appointed to the vacancy in Lord Dalhousie’s Council
caused by Mr Halliday’s promotion. And here the Governor-General, at
that time in the very fulness and maturity of his powers and
experience, found a colleague who, if he differed on some important
questions from a statesman somewhat apt to carry all before him by
forcible writing and by personal influence, did not at other times
content himself with a brief minute of concurrence, but supported
his chief by State papers, in which cogent arguments were set forth
in a style of peculiar dignity and clearness. Mr Disraeli spoke of
Grant’s Minute on the Annexation of Oudh as one of the ablest papers
in the whole Blue Book. And Lord Dalhousie acknowledged that
opposition on some points was almost welcomed by the powerful
support brought to bear on the discussion of others on which the
Governor-General had set his heart, and in which his colleague
concurred.
In 1854, a new body was called into existence for the
work of legislation. Previously, the draft of every proposed
legislative enactment was published in the Gazette, “plain for all
folk to see.” The Home Department was charged with the drafting and
the discussion, on paper, of all new laws and all changes in
existing statutes. Opinions were invited from the subordinate
Governments and from Heads of Departments and district officers
whose duties were in any way affected by the new measures of
progress and reform. Remonstrances and petitions from individuals,
or bodies, or institutions, European or native, were always
welcomed, and never hastily dismissed. But, like administrative
measures, the proposed legislation was attacked or defended by
written Minutes and their counter-blasts. There was no such thing as
oral discussion or debate in an assembly to which reporters and the
public could be admitted. There had been, since 1835, a high
official known as the Legislative Member of the Supreme Council,
specially charged with the preparation and revision of statutes;
and, not to mention others, these functions were admirably
discharged, for twenty years, by such eminent authorities as
Macaulay, Charles Cameron, and Barnes Peacock. But, as already said,
before 1854 no councillor had got on his legs in an Indian
Legislative Assembly to influence his colleagues and public opinion
by reason and logic.
The time, however, had now arrived when Lord
Brougham’s sarcasm, that India was a country in which men did not
debate or write, and where “eloquence evaporated in scores of
paragraphs," was to lose whatever point or application it may ever
have had. Lord Dalhousie, on the 20th of May 1854, presided at the
first open meeting of a Legislative Assembly, composed of the four
members of his own Executive Council, the Chief Justice and one
Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature, and four civil
servants, representing, respectively, the Presidencies of Madras,
Bombay, and Bengal, and the North West Provinces. It does not fall
within the scope of this memoir to explain when, and from what
causes, this Legislative Council was abolished, or, to speak
correctly, was replaced by an Assembly differently constituted and
composed. But it endured for just seven years, and in that period it
dealt with measures of the highest importance, affecting the revenue
in all its branches—Land, Customs, and Excise ; the Civil and
Criminal Codes of Law and Procedure ; and more or less every
executive department in the length and breadth of India.
Ergo ipsos quamvis angusti terminus aevi
excipiat; neque enim plus septima ducitur xstas;
At genus immortale manet; multosque per annos
stat fortuna domfis, et avi numerantur avorum.
A seat in this Assembly displayed Grant’s capacity in
a new light. Hitherto he had been known in official circles as a
forcible and luminous writer. He was now to show that he could
debate. He had to meet colleagues who had the advantage of legal
training and forensic experience; and in a very short time he showed
himself the equal of such disputants as Lawrence Peel, James Colvile,
and Barnes Peacock. Many of the legislative projects discussed and
passed between 1854 and 1859, or the five years of Grant’s service
in Council, though much needed, are technical, departmental, or
local. Such, for instance, were the following subjects : Riots,
affrays, and unlawful assemblies; embankments on rivers in Bengal;
desertions from the Indian Navy; the law of evidence; Municipal laws
in the interior; the Copper Currency in the Straits Settlements ;
Municipal taxes in Bombay ; the sale of landed estates for arrears
of Government Revenue in Bengal; conservancy in the Presidency
towns; outrages perpetrated in Malabar by a set of fanatics known as
Moplahs; disturbances in the Santal districts, in the year 1855 ;
the registration of under tenures; patents, adjournments, and points
of order. It is not necessary nor advisable to notice these
multifarious topics in detail. But the law for the re-marriage of
Hindu widows ought to have a considerable space in this memoir,
affecting, as it did, the whole Hindu community from Peshawar to
Cape Comorin, and illustrating the course pursued by a Government
that, on the one hand, sanctioned or tacitly overlooked practices
somewhat repugnant to Western ideas, and, on the other, dealt
vigorously with customs opposed to morality, to the best interests
of society, and to natural religion itself.
In 1829 Lord William Bentinck, as Governor-General,
passed a law declaring that the rite of Suttee, or Sati, could no
longer be tolerated by a British Government, and that persons
convicted of aiding and abetting should be deemed guilty of culpable
homicide. This rite had been reported on, discussed, explained away,
tolerated, and petted for nearly fifteen years, till the cases of
widow-burning, instead of diminishing, increased in number,
especially in the Metropolitan districts of Lower Bengal. Bentinck,
disregarding opposition, conscientious or other, passed a law
abolishing the cruel custom, when he had only been a year and a half
in India. The statute excited neither rebellion nor emeute, and no
discontent was shown even in the holy city of Benares. But the Hindu
widow, if no longer encouraged or allowed to burn on the funeral
pile of her husband, was yet condemned to a widowhood of
degradation, insult, and wretchedness for the rest of her life.
In the year 1855 a native gentleman, Ishwar Chandra
Vidya Sagar began to agitate “for the removal of all legal obstacles
to the re-marriage of Hindu.widows.” Vidya Sagar was a man of high
caste, unquestionable integrity, and profound learning. He was at
that time Principal of the Sanscrit College at Calcutta, and then
and afterwards was known to bring his influence and his talents to
bear on the moral elevation of his countrymen. The re-marriage of
Hindu widows was truly described as “a question which affected the
most important social institution of the people, and went home to
the heart of every man and every woman of the Hindu persuasion in
this immense Empire." The community in every Presidency was
profoundly moved. The local Governments were asked for their
opinions. The Press entered fully into the subject Petitions for and
against the measure poured in from every quarter. Hindu text books,
the deliberate opinions of English Judges, and the reports of
Residents and Commissioners intimately acquainted with the social
peculiarities of the people, were laid before the Legislative
Council. It was shown that, twenty years before, the Law Commission,
with Macaulay as President, had remarked that the prevalence of
child-murder in several provinces might be owing to the “cruel law
which prevented Hindu widows from contracting a second legal
marriage.” From the voluminous correspondence on Suttee, reaching
from 1814 to 1829, it was proved beyond a doubt that the hardships
to which widows were subject when prevented from following their
husbands to the funeral pile were so intense and so heart-rending,
that many were forced to sacrifice themselves, after an interval of
many years, with a fiddle, a cushion, or an ornament, or even the
slippers, which had been the property of the deceased. Learned
pandits showed conclusively that the Shastras contemplated a state
of widowhood, and that the prohibition to re-marry was not supported
by any sacred texts. Centuries before our time, attempts had been
made by native reformers, uninfluenced by Englishmen, to end the
degrading practice; notably by Raghanandan in Bengal, by a Raja in
Dacca, by the Rajput Chief of Kotah or Harauti, by Brahmans at
Nagpur, and by pandits at Poona. All these praiseworthy attempts had
failed from one cause or other—from the fierce opposition of bigots;
from the greed of the interested reversioners to landed estates;
from the apathy of large portions of the community; from the want of
that timely and effective support from the English administrator
without which, for at least a century, no Indian reform, legal or
social, has ever attained a lasting success.
Non hsec sine numine Divfim
eveniunt.
But the time had now arrived, under Providence, for
the English statesman to take occasion by the hand. Not, however,
that the reform was a matter of simplicity and ease. The agitation
lasted during the Sessions of 1855 and 1856. Against the proposal
there were forty petitions signed by 50,000 to 60,000 persons. Some
of the local Governments were silent. Some memorialists petitioned
against the Bill, on the ground, mainly, that it would interfere
with the Hindu religion, or that, though in outward appearance
permissive, it was, in reality, a coercive law. On the other hand,
in Bengal, where the Hindu mind is most alert and active, petitions
in favour of the Bill had come from the districts of Nadiya, Bankura,
Midnapur, Murshidabad, Rangpur, and others. Mr John Russell Colvin,
one of the most eminent of civil servants, selected by Lord
Dalhousie for the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-West
Provinces, gave the reform his hearty support. The history and the
arguments for the measure are so clearly set forth in Grant’s speech
on the introduction of the Bill, that they must be given at length
in his own language. On 17th November 1855 mover rose and spoke as
follows:
“The petition on which the Bill was founded made
certain allegations of fact. It is said that, by a long established
custom, the marriage of Hindu widows is prohibited; that the civil
law of this country, as administered both by Her Majesty's and the
Company's Courts, incapacitates Hindu widows from contracting second
marriages by pronouncing such marriages to be invalid, and making
their issue illegitimate. It proceeded to say that this compels
Hindu widows, whatever their own opinions, or the opinions of their
families in this matter may be, to continue widows all their
lives—in some cases from the age of five years. It further said that
this state of the law inflicts great cruelty upon the widows, who,
being now unable to burn as Suttees with their deceased husbands,
have no alternative left, and must lead a life of severe
mortification—in fact, a life of the most painful asceticism. It is
said that this custom, cruel and unnatural in itself, is highly
injurious to the interests of morals, and is otherwise most
mischievous to society. From these premises it argued that a law
having such effects ought not to be forced upon any one who
disapproves of it; and it prayed that, as the petitioners are of
opinion that the custom is not in accordance with a true
interpretation of the Hindu Shastras, they, and those who agree with
them, might be relieved from the legal restriction of which they
complain.
"Now, if the premises could be proved, this argument
was conclusive. The Legislative Council could not stand in the way
of the removal of a municipal law enforcing upon unwilling people a
prohibition which, so far from being for the public interests, was
in the highest degree mischievous. He would speak of these premises
in their order. He believed there was no legal decision affording a
precedent which positively established the point that the marriage
of Hindu widows is invalid, under the law as it is how administered,
in British India; and an intelligent native gentleman, who had
spoken to him on the subject of this measure, had expressed an
opinion that, in the absence of such a precedent, it would be
premature to legislate, because we do not know whether the Courts
will enforce the interpretation of the Hindu doctrine which the
petitioners presume that they will. But even if this question of law
were really a doubtful point, he could not think the objection
valid. He could not think that it would be right to sacrifice even a
single Hindu family to such an objection. But it appeared to him
that it was very certain that the Courts would decide in the manner
alleged by the petitioners. The custom of the country was
universally against the marriage of Hindu widows amongst the higher
castes, and all modern English text-books affirmed that the law was
as the petitioners allege. Indeed, the text-writers spoke on this
point with less qualification perhaps than they might have done if
they had given more attention to it. But the custom prohibiting
re-marriage was followed so universally in practice, that the point
did not appear to have been very deeply studied by any of the
English writers on Hindu law. However that might be, he would quote
enough from received authorities to show that the petitioners were
correct in saying that our Courts would disallow the marriage of a
Hindu widow. Sir Thomas Strange, a former Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court at Madras, in his work on ‘ Elements of Hindu Law
Referable to British Judicature in India,’ in a chapter on ‘
Widowhood,1 wrote thus:—
“‘To this tyrannic instance of marital selfishness
must be added the prohibition, to women, of second marriages ; and
that this should apply, as it does, even to virgin widows, is an
abomination surpassed only, if at all, by the custom that has just
been denounced,’— the custom, namely, of Suttee. That was a
statement of a learned Judge of a Supreme Court who was most
sensible of the evil of the custom ; of whose wish, therefore, to
open the law for the benefit of widows we might be sure; but who
entertained no doubt of the existence of the prohibition as a legal
impediment He would now quote a high authority of the Company’s
Courts, Sir W. Macnaghten, from a work written when he was Registrar
of the Calcutta Sudder Court Sir W. Macnaghten, in his 'Principles
of Hindu Law,’ writes :—
“It is well known that women are betrothed at a very
early period of life, and it is this betrothment, in fact, which
constitutes marriage. The contract is then valid and binding to all
intents and purposes. It is complete and irrevocable immediately on
the performance of certain ceremonies, without consummation. Second
marriages, after the death of the husband first espoused, are wholly
unknown to the Hindu law, though in practice, among the inferior
castes, nothing is so common.’
“The practice among the inferior classes had, of
course, nothing whatever to do with the practice amongst Brahmans
and other higher castes of Hindus. He thought he had said enough to
convince the Council that if they wished to make it possible for a
Hjndu widow to marry, with the reasonable expectation of having her
marriage held valid, and her children pronounced legitimate, they
must pass some such law as that which he had the honour to propose.
“The next point to which the petitioners referred was
the extreme cruelty to widows of the prohibition against remarriage.
He would not trouble the Council with quotations of what the
Shastras required of widows who may not bum with their deceased
husbands, because all that they did require was not strictly
practised, and his object in introducing this Bill was entirely
practical. Of the mortifications which the Shastras enjoined, it was
difficult to say whether they were more remarkable for their cruelty
or for their fantastic absurdity. But he would read to the Council a
paper which had been partly supplied to him by a Hindu gentleman of
great knowledge, and partly taken down from that gentleman’s mouth,
which described the mode of life which a Hindu widow of
respectability is now actually required to adopt until the latest
day of her life:—
“A widow is required to live a life of austerity, the
only alternative being to ascend the funeral pile of her husband.
Her manner of life is minutely prescribed. Not only must she see no
man, she must also avoid every approach to ease, luxury, or
pleasure; she must neglect the care of her person; she must wear no
ornaments; her hair must be shaved, or at least worn dishevelled;
she must not see her face in a mirror, nor use perfumes or flowers;
she must not freely anoint her body; and her dress must be plain,
coarse, and dirty. The use of any kind of conveyance is prohibited,
and she must not rest on a bed. Her food is limited as to quantity
as well as quality. She must not take more than a single coarse meal
a day, and the betel leaf, which terminates every repast in India,
and is often substituted for a meal, is denied her. Besides other
fasts, perhaps a dozen in the year, the Hindu widow is required to
abstain absolutely from food and drink twice a month, one day and
one night, during every bright and dark period of the moon, on the
nth and 26th day of its age, from which fast not even severe
sickness can give her a dispensation.’
“Sometimes, he believed, if one of the moveable
fasts, of which there were, he understood, about a dozen in the
year, happened to fall the day before or the day after the eleventh
day of the waxing or the waning moon, this state of strict fasting
lasted for forty-eight hours. During these fasts these unhappy
victims, although a fever might be consuming them, and the hot winds
might be blowing, were allowed not one drop of water, not one drop
of medicine, though it should be necessary to save their lives. The
paper from which he was quoting proceeded to say:—
“All amusements are strictly prohibited to her. She
is not to be present where there is singing or dancing, or at any
family rejoicing: she is not even to witness any festive
procession.’
“This was the life to which a little prattling girl
of five years old, taken from her dolls and her toys, and pronounced
to be a widow, was condemned for the whole remainder of her
existence upon earth.
“He now came to the immorality which the petition
stated the prohibition engendered. He did not wish to dwell on this
point longer than was absolutely necessary, for it was one which
could be agreeable to nobody, and must be peculiarly distasteful to
those for whose benefit this Bill was intended. But it was
impossible to shirk the point altogether, for, in truth, it was the
strongest argument in support of the Bill. The Hindu practice of Bramacharta was
an attempt to struggle against Nature, and, like all other attempts
against Nature, was entirely unsuccessful. Every candid Hindu would
admit that, in the majority of cases, young Hindu widows fall into
vice; that in comparatively few cases are these severe rules for a
life of mortification virtuously observed; that, in many cases, a
licentious and profligate life is entered upon in secret; and that,
in many other cases, the wretched widows are impelled to desert
their homes, and to live a life that brings open disgrace upon their
families. He would read to the Council a very short passage on this
subject from Ward’s description of the manners and customs of the
Hindus:—
“‘Early marriages give rise to another dreadful evil.
Almost all these girls after marriage remain at home one, two, or
three years, and during this time numbers are left widows, without
hsfring enjoyed the company of their husbands a single day. These
young widows, being forbidden to marry, almost without exception
become prostitutes.’
“This was the evidence of an English witness. He
would now quote the evidence of a native witness, a learned Mahratta
Brahman, who, it may be presumed, was also a man of the world, as he
was the son of the minister of a late Raja of Nagpur. Eighteen or
twenty years ago this Brahman wrote an essay on the second marriages
of widows, in which he argued that the prohibition of such marriages
was contrary to the Shastras, and urged the general adoption of a
contrary custom. Major Wilkinson, when Resident at Nagpur, published
the essay, with an introduction by himself, in which he gave this
abstract on the Brahman’s statements upon this point:—
“To revert to our author, he maintains that the
present prohibition against the second marriage of widows,
especially these infant widows, is highly impolitic and unwise,
because, in the first place, it disappoints the palpable purpose of
the Creator in having sent them into the world; secondly, because it
inevitably leads to great moral depravity and vice on the part of
these widows; thirdly, because it inevitably causes a frightful
amount of infanticide and of abortions; fourthly, because the
maintenance of these widows in an honourable and virtuous course of
life causes a ceaseless, though fruitless, anxiety to their parents,
and parents-in-law, &c.; fifthly, because those widows are
inevitably rendered corrupt and vicious themselves by the hard and
unnatural laws operating on them, and cannot be prevented from
corrupting and destroying the honour and virtue of all other females
with whom they associate.
“It was a Brahman who was speaking. To show that
there was no exaggeration of the forms of evil which resulted from
the system, Major Wilkinson specified several cases that had come
within his own official knowledge within a very few months between
the receipt by him of the Brahman’s essay and the publication of his
own work. Major Wilkinson specified no less than nine cases, of
which three had occurred in ten days. He (Mr Grant) would not
trouble the Council by going through the cases —they were of
considerable length ; but Major Wilkinson’s work was at the service
of any honourable member who might desire to refer to it He would
only say that these cases were proved instances of frightful
murders, incests, and, in short, of every abomination which it was
possible to conceive, caused by the prohibition of the re-marriage
of widows.
“He thought he had proved the premises set out in the
petition; and he was sure that, being convinced of their truth, it
was the bounden duty of the Legislature to abolish a law which could
force this cruel and demoralising prohibition upon one single human
being who disbelieved the doctrine upon which it proceeded. The
Legislature had no more right to prevent a single Hindu who believed
that the existing prohibition was not in accordance with a true
interpretation of the Shastras, and who, from a wish to preserve his
widow daughter from life-long misery or vice, desired that she
should marry again, from acting in accordance with his humane
motive, than it had to force a Muhammadan or a Christian, because he
happened to live amongst people of another creed, to sacrifice his
daughter in the same manner. But this the Council would do if it
refused to pass some such law as that which he held in his hand.
This was a law which, while it would set the petitioners, and all
who concurred with ‘them, free to follow the dictates of their own
consciences, would leave all other Hindus precisely as they were
now. It did not pretend to say what was the right interpretation of
the directions for conduct in respect to marriage in the textbooks,
or which of the conflicting authorities ought to be followed by a
Hindu. It would interfere with the tenets of no class of people, it
would offend the religious feelings of no human being.”
Again, further on, the speaker said :
“He had said before that the Act, as framed, did not
pronounce any opinion whatever as to what should be the proper
interpretation of the Shastras on the question of marriage. Of the
conflicting^ authorities who had written on the subject, it did not
say which authority ought to be followed. It left every Hindu to be
guided in his conduct by the direction of any text-book to which his
own judgment and conscience inclined. He denied, therefore, that
there could be the slightest colour of reason for saying that the
Act would be an interference with the religious opinions or feelings
of any one Hindu. He said that this Bill would interfere with the
religious feeling of no Hindu. He was not sure that it might not
interfere with the sports of some Hindus. In every country there
were too many who made it their sport to tyrannise over the conduct
and the consciences of others. He could not be sure that his Bill
might not be displeasing to some upon this ground. He did not know
whether any remonstrance would be actually submitted to the Council
against this measure, though he understood that the question of
submitting such a remonstrance had been agitated. But of this he was
quite sure, that whatever remonstrances against this just law might
be laid upon the table, this feeling would be at the bottom of them;
and remonstrances springing from such a feeling, this Council might
well disregard.
“If the law which was now proposed were fairly looked
at he believed it would be seen to be the natural and necessary
complement of the law for the abolition of the rite of Suttee. The
object of the law for the abolition of the rite of Suttee was to
save innocent Hindu widows from a cruel death; the object of the law
which he now proposed was to save innocent Hindu widows from a life
which, in his conscience, he believed to be worse than death. He did
not mean to say that, taking a general view of the case, the custom
of Bramacharia was as dreadful as the custom of Suttee. An innocent
young girl taken to a funeral pile, and there, in the broad light of
day, burnt to death, according to law, before the eyes of a
multitude—the officers of the law, armed with all the powers of the
law, standing by calm witnesses of the spectacle—was such a horrible
and demoralising practice as was never exceeded in any country. In a
general or national view he could not, of course, compare this Bill
with the law which abolished that open abomination. But, confining
the view merely to the unfortunate widow who is the victim in either
case; when he considered the personal consequences which the custom
of Bramacharia forced on the unfortunate females who were made its
victims; when he considered the misery—the certain life-long
misery—the probable profligacy and sin which it caused, he did
believe that it would be better for a woman to ascend the funeral
pile of her husband, and bum with him as a Suttee, than to be
condemned to the slow torment of such a life as he had described.
“The law prohibiting Suttee was a compulsory law.
From the day it was passed every Hindu, whatever his own feelings on
the subject might be, was compelled to obey it. All the glory,
therefore, of that law belonged to Lord William Bentinck and his
Council who passed it. But the present law would afford Hindu
gentlemen of station and influence a rare opportunity of
illustrating their own names. The present was not a compulsory law,
and could not be made a compulsory law. It was merely a permissive
law, which could have effect only when those for whose benefit it
was intended, should choose to avail themselves of 4t Under this
law, Hindu gentlemen who, from their rank and their education, may
stand forward as the leaders of their nation, have it in their power
to register their names in history as the names of those who shall
have effected the greatest social reform ever effected in their
country. The Legislative Council will have done all it can do, when
it shall have struck the shackles from their limbs. It will be for
them, when they shall gain their freedom, to make use of it like
men.”
The discussion was ably continued by other Members in
support of the Mover.
"In the month of July following, that is in 1856,
Grant carried the third reading. Referring to Mr Colvin's support,
he concluded as follows:—
“Mr Colvin, in recording his cordial approval, had
said that he did not expect that the measure would have much early
and large practical effect; and this, he (Mr Grant) was aware, was
also the opinion of many other European gentlemen with whom he was
acquainted. But he was happy to say that, amongst the 5000 native
petitioners who had given their support to the Bill, he did not
think there was one who had taken this discouraging view. His own
expectations were certainly more sanguine. The measure, as was
alleged on one side, and admitted on the other, was a measure of
innovation. When he remembered what a creature of habit the Hindu
was—what a willing slave he made himself to the society to which he
belonged —the fact of 5000 Hindoos, acting independently, and
scattered over many different parts of India, coming forward to ask
for such a measure, was, to his mind, of strong moral significance.
And then, when he remembered how often before, the same attempt had
been made by Hindoos themselves at various times and in various
places, and how nearly some of those attempts had succeeded, wanting
only something like what this Council was, to give them success, he
saw no reason to doubt that the pressure of t^e same evils which had
induced large parties of Hindoos to make the struggle, would induce
them to use their victory now that it was won. But, although he
considered this to be a matter of very interesting speculation, he
maintained that it was not, practically, an argument for the.Council
to consider now. If he knew, certainly, that but one little girl
would be saved from the horrors of Bramacharia by the passing of
this Act, he would pass it for her sake. If he believed the
contrary, that the Act would be wholly a dead letter, he would pass
it for the sake of the English name."
Lord Canning, who had succeeded Lord Dalhousie in
March 1856, gave his assent to the Bill on the 26th of July. The Act
has by no means been a dead letter. Every now and then a paragraph
in the native newspapers records the interesting fact of the
re-marriage of a widow, not merely at the Presidency Towns, but at
remote villages in the interior. The result, however, is not to be
measured or gauged by the mere number of conversions in any one
year. They will no doubt gradually increase in number. The agitation
and its consequences bring out the true Statesman who knows when to
abstain from action and when to act The existence of the prohibition
was a disgrace to Hindu Society, while it reflected no credit on the
British administration and the English name. That the new law of
freedom had the smallest effect on the Sepoy Mutiny of the following
year, is not the belief of any official with any experience or
knowledge of the people. It is one of those bold and wholesome
measures which justify our retention of a great Dependency. The
credit, in the main, is due to John Peter Grant and to Ishwar
Chandra Vidya Sagar, and it connects both with the Bentinck who, a
generation before, had “ effaced humiliating distinctions and
abolished cruel rites.” |