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Rh are told officially that, at the present date, there are no less than 9,000,000 girl-wives between the ages of one and fifteen, of whom 2,500,000 are under eleven years of age. Also, there are 4,000,000 girl-widows who may not re-marry. Where an Englishman cannot tread without indiscretion, a distinguished Indian has recently come forward to denounce "this baneful custom" of child-marriage in all its aspects, and to declare, besides, that "enforced widowhood has hung like a heavy millstone round the neck of India." In fact, the female, as an infant, is less cared for, as a girl, is less educated, even than the male; as a betrothed, is engaged to marry in ignorance; as married, is in a backwater of life; and as a widow, is little more than an outcast. All this must work in two opposite ways. In the breasts of a minority infinitesimally small, it must excite a determination to escape from such dire bondage, and to embrace the outstretched hands of western civilisation and freedom. But upon the huge overwhelming mass it must work conversely, weakening the fibre of the mind and the sinews of the will, so that they welcome their trammels, and stand at cross purposes with their own enlightenment. And they excite their men against us. They recapture the native reformer, making western culture and science look cold and comfortless, and even impious, to their husbands returning hot with reform from some congress of the Arya Samaj. As one of the most eminent of modern native reformers has said, "the women are not with us."