Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/350

 be that his line will be extinct; that he and his ancestors will have none to perform the usual funeral ceremonies prescribed by the Hindu religion; and that, whatever property he may have left, will go to his next of kin, who by the proposed law, will find it to their interest to induce the widow to marry, and thus defeat the intentions of her first husband; for their own benefit.

"6. Your Petitioners can, to an unlimited extent, multiply instances in which the proposed law for marriage of Hindu Widows will operate against the civil rights of others who may prefer to follow the laws and usages of their country—a consequence which had, no doubt, been anticipated by the Judges of the several Sadar Courts, when they gave it as their opinion that the legalization of such marriages would amount to an interference with the customs and laws of the Hindus, and would at once upset their present system of jurisprudence. If the Petitioners in favour of widow Marriage be disposed to adopt "a different custom in accordance with the dictates of their own consciences," as it is stated in the preamble to the Bill, your Petitioners have no objection whatever to their doing so; but when the law which they have asked for interferes with the rights of others, who entertain different opinions and are not inclined to follow their example, their demand is manifestly unjust and unreasonable. The Petitioners at whose instance the proposed law has been brought in, form a very small and insignificant portion of the vast masses of the people whom your Petitioners represent. It would, therefore, be scarcely just and reasonable, or even expedient, to enact a law for the minority which shall interfere with the rights of the majority. As far as your Petitioners have been able to communicate with the people of the interior, during the short space of two months, which has elapsed between the first and second reading of the Bill, they have found but one opinion exist among all classes of men, and that opi-