Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/163

 fession of the faith that is in me, I must in justice to the great national cause, which we both aUke have at heart, say distinctly, what — rightly or wrongly — I really think about the matter.

In the first place I must say I think you somewhat exaggerate the evil results of these traditional institutions. I quite admit that there is full warrant for everything you advance — the terrible evils you refer to are real ; but they are not, to my idea, by any means so universal as the ordinary reader of your Notes would, I think, be led to infer. Moreover, though I admit that the evil does, on the whole, outweigh the good, it is not fair to our people to allow it to be supposed, that they are so hopelessly blind as to cling to institutions which are utterly and unmitigatedly bad. In the existing state of the Native social problem, no really impartial competent judge will, I believe, deny that in many cases these institutions even yet work fairly well. There are millions of cases in which early marriages are believed to be daily proving happy ones, and in which consummation having been deferred by the parents (and this, my friends say, is the usual case) till a reasonable age (I mean for Asiatic girls) the progeny are, so far as we can judge, perfectly healthy, physically and mentally.

A Native friend writes to me, '* The wife, transplanted to her husband's home at a tender age, forgets the ties that bound her to the parental hearth, and by the time she comes of age is perfectly naturalized in her adopted family ; and though she is allowed no wifely intercourse with her husband until she attains a fitting age, still the husband and wife have constant opportunities of assimilating each other's natures and growing, as it were, into one, so that when the real marriage takes place the love they feel for each other is not merely passion, but is mingled with far higher and purer feeUngs. Misfortunes cannot alienate our wives, they have no frowns for us, even though we commit the most heinous crimes or ill-treat or sin against themselves. Those ignorant of our inner life call this a vile subjugation and say that we have made our wives our slaves, but those who live