Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/336

Rh a petition presented to it, asking for a law to shut up all taverns on Sundays with a view to check the open desecration of the Lord's day and the increasing vice of drunkenness, as if it were a greater crime to get drunk on the Sabbath than on any other day in the week! The legislature prohibited the open desecration of every day, by acts injurious to Society. If a man, in a state of drunkenness, commits on any day an offence which is an injury to Society, the Law will punish him for his offence. But the Legislature does not follow every man into his private home to restrain him from drunkenness or other immoral conduct not affecting Society. It leaves that to his own conscience and his own sense of moral duty. A man's conscience is beyond the powers of Law, and it has been truly said that conscience is God's province." Such were the views of a right-minded Englishman. But he too was led on by the ideas of his own society to ultimately vote for the Bill.

Colvile went on to say;—"It may prevent the monstrous fact of a virgin widow condemned against her will to a life of mortification, by way of showing duty and respect to a deceased husband whose face she might never have seen,' except at the hour of betrothal. It may prevent a vast deal of immorality, which, admitting the passages cited from Ward and others by my Honourable friend (Grant) to be highly coloured, every reason-