The church is under the charge of a diocesan with £5,000 a year, and three archdeacons with £2,000 a year each; but great efforts have been recently made to appoint an archbishop for India, with two suffragan bishops.

It would be a strange anomaly to increase the episcopal establishment in India, at a moment when the Roman Catholics in Ireland and the Dissenters in England are protesting against being called on to support a church establishment whose services they do not require. Would Mr. Poynder and the Church Missionary Society, or the Christian Knowledge Society, defray the expense attendant on the nomination of more bishops in India? If not, their philanthropy does not keep pace with their religious zeal, when they would require the Hindoo population to pay yet more than they now do for Protestant Church dignitaries moreover, can Christianity be alone promoted by means of bishops? Look at the discipline of the Scotch Church, a pattern in itself for every Christian persuasion ; look at the numerous establishments of the dissenters, where are their bishops and archbishops? Mr. Poynder would have a church militant something like the king's army, with nearly as many officers as privates, or at least a far greater proportion of field marshals and generals than of subalterns.

Mr. Poynder, however, in his motion before the Court of Proprietors, has betrayed his motives; he says, My great object is to get the bishops appointed, let the income be an after consideration!"+ Fortunately for the

Bengal 38; Madras 23; Bombay 15.

+ Mr. Poynder alleges, that the bishops of India died from excessive work; now, it is evident that Bishop Middleton died after

eight

people of India, the Court of Directors think the income ought to be a prior consideration, unless Mr. Poynder will provide bishops who will work without hire.* The whole business smacks of dirty pounds, shillings, and pence feeling. Mr. Poynder appears to me to be an amiable but mistaken enthusiast, who is made the cat's paw of, to drag the nuts out of the fire, by the monkeys who stand by to share in the spoil. Who is it that asks for an increase of the established church in India? Is it the members thereof resident in Bengal, Madras and Bombay ?-No! Is it the Presbyterians, Wesleyans, &c. ? No! Is it the Roman Catholic or Syriac christians?-No! Is it the Hindoos and Mussulmans, from the sweat of whose brows the "income" is to be derived ?-No! But it is, as Mr. Hume justly observed, "the members of the Christian Knowledge Society, &c., who would gladly add to the number and importance of the clergy (of which so many of its members consisted). But the addition to the establishment was not called for by the House of Commons, or by the Company; it was not desired by any of our European population; it was unnecessary, and it would at the same time be a most injudicious course, that we should increase our church establishment, at the very time when we were declaring to the world that the state of our finances ren

eight years' residence in India by imprudent exposure to the sun; and that Bishop Heber perished of apoplexy, the attack being superinduced by plunging when heated into a cold bath. Bishop James told me himself, when I saw him a short time after his arrival, that he landed in India with a severe dysentery on him; and Bishop Turner laboured, I believe, under an incurable malady previous to leaving England; yet, says Mr. Poynder, the bishops died from being overworked!-R. M. M.

• Vide Mr. Poynder's speech, Asiatic Journal Register, p. 60, for January 1832.

The additional sum Mr. Poynder wants for the bishops is £10,000 a year; that, however, is not a quarter of the sum which the fulfilment of his motion would cost.

dered it necessary that we should reduce the allowances to our army."*

So able and conclusive is the speech of Mr. Hume on this occasion, that I am tempted to give the greater part of it, the more so because I understand Mr. Poynder and his friends have not abandoned hopes of carrying their point.

Mr. Hume said that he had always regretted the erecting of a church establishment in India, and should regret it with still greater reason if the principle of it should be carried to the extent sought by the honourable proprietor's motion. That motion he considered much fitter for a meeting of a missionary society, or any other association whose object was to make proselytes, than for a meeting of the Company of Merchants trading to the East-Indies. If there was one part of the policy of the Company which had his most unqualified approbation, it was that principle on which it had acted, and seemed disposed still to act, of not interfering with the religion of the natives of the territory in its possession. (Hear, hear!) Whatever we might think of the state in which these people were, he was glad to know that there was no governor of India who would venture to use his authority so as in any way to interfere with their religion, for such interference would not, for an instant, be tolerated at home. The notion of any attempt at proselytism was one which he rejoiced to think was not likely to obtain many supporters in the members of that court, at either side of the bar, at any time, but the more particularly at the present, when we were on the eve of the renewal of the Company's charter. The establishment of societies having that object would be considered the most impolitic and most detrimental to the Company's interests in India; but it would be also injurious to the natives themselves, as it would inevitably tend to protract, if not wholly defeat, the object which it had in view. The conversion of the natives to our faith, if it ever was to take place, must be the result, not of coercion of any kind, but their own gradual and spontaneous act, founded upon a comparison of their opinions with ours, and that arising from an improved system of education. As to the object of the honourable proprietor, as far as that was to obtain increased moral and religious instruction, no man was a more sincere friend to moral and religious instruction than he was, and no man had done more to promote such instruction in his own humble sphere

Vide Asiatic Journal Register, for January 1832, p. 62.

than he had. But he thought it perfectly possible that means for promoting both might be adopted in our Indian possessions, without increasing our church establishment there in the way pointed out by the honourable and learned proprietor. He did not see why a greater establishment of bishops, or indeed any bishop at all, was necessary to the promotion of moral and religious education in India. An extension of our church establishment in India was not necessary for the spiritual wants of our own population, it was not required by the natives, and at the present time it would tend only to alarm their prejudices and jealousies. For the spiritual instruction of the small christian population in India, he certainly thought that one bishop and three archdeacons were abundantly sufficient.

The opinion of Sir Charles Forbes on the subject is also deserving of the utmost attention; not less on account of his strong religious principles, than from his intense anxiety to benefit the natives of India by every possible means;—indeed, I believe that thoughts for promoting or ameliorating their condition occupy the greater part of the honourable Baronet's waking moments :—

Sir C. Forbes objected to the motion on very different grounds from Mr. Hume. It appeared to him, that the adoption of a proposition for increasing our church establishment in India, coming immediately after the measures taken by the Governor-general for putting a stop to suttees, would be an act of most injudicious policy, as it would very naturally tend to create in the minds of the natives the apprehension that it was intended to interfere by force with their religion.

Mr. Poynder and his well-meaning associates would do well to recollect, in their proselytizing zeal, that the religion of the Hindoos, as well as that of the Mahomedans, is essentially Unitarianism. The Almighty is worshipped under the definitions of the "infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, selfexistent being; who sees every thing, but is never seen; he who is not to be compassed by description, who is beyond the limits of human conception; he from whom the universal world proceeds; who is the lord of the universe, and whose work is the universe; he who is the light

of all lights; whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too infinite to be imagined; the one, unknown, true being, the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of the universe."*

It is true, that the original religion of the Hindoos has been corrupted, and with the majority it is an extravagant polytheism, replete with mythological allusion to every circumstance or ceremonial of life however minute. But has Mr. Poynder ever heard of one Hindoo becoming a genuine convert to christianity? Neither Mr. P. nor any other person has ever heard of an instance;-the reason is obvious,―a Hindoo is desired to reject the worship of one million or so of deities, but he is at the same time called on to adopt the incomprehensible idea of the Trinity ;-his reason is appealed to for the rejection of idolatry, but its exercise is denied him on the assumption of his new creed, which he is told must be adopted by means of "faith" alone, and that reason must slumber while the doctrines of revelation are being unfolded to him.

The result of such absurd attempts at conversion is easily foreseen; the Hindoo becomes either a confirmed deist, or an arch hypocrite, detested by the sect which he has forsaken, distrusted by the community whose opinions he has pretended to adopt. † Besides, unless education and moral precepts have been extensively and firmly inculcated in the individual previous to his renunciation of the system on which he built his hopes of futurity, as well as regulated

* Vide Coleman's Mythology of the Hindoos, a splendid work, which Mr. Poynder would do well immediately to order from the publishers, as it would in some degree moderate his conduct.

For the truth of this picture I would appeal to Rajah Rammchun Roy, now in England, who, if he told Mr. Poynder that "had it not been for some christians sent to India, christianity would have made more rapid progress," must have wandered far from his previous opinions, as well as conferred a very slight honour on all other Anglo-Indian christians.