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566 not sufficient to do away with the necessity of legislation. His opinion also was that a Declaratory Law might be passed without interfering with that liberty which the Hindus possessed in the matter of marriage. Sir C. Beadon regarded the report of the Committee as showing the impossibility of legislating under the conditions imposed by the Government of India, while it gave a deplorable picture of the state of the Hindu marriage law, to which sooner or later a remedy must be applied. He did not share the sanguine anticipations entertained by the native members of the Committee that the Kulin Brahmins would settle into a monogamous habit only by the force of education and social opinion. He received with satisfaction their testimony that the opinion of Hindus had undergone a remarkable change within the last few years, and that the custom of taking a plurality of wives as a means of subsistence had come to be marked with strong disapprobation, and he hoped that, with the further progress of these enlightened ideas, the necessity for legislation as the effectual means of giving them full effect would at no distant time be realized.

"In the meantime a despatch was received from the Secretary of State in which he objected to any measure of a legislative character being adopted at present, as it did not appear that a large majority of people even in Bengal were