Page:Nil Durpan.djvu/196

 a few days ago from Benares—one Robinson Crusoe in Hindi, the other a Choral Book in Urdu. Almost every week I receive new Vernacular books, and I make a point of bringing them to the notice of Europeans on various grounds. Sir F. Halliday honored my "Reports on the Vernacular Press" by publishing them; so did the present Government in the case of publishing my Sketch of Vernacular Literature; so did the Vernacular Literature, Religious Tract Society, Christian Tract and Book Society, shew their confidence in publishing various works of mine.

I will now state the grounds why as a clergyman opposed to war I published the Nil Durpan. My Lord, four years only have elapsed since Calcutta was waiting in trembling anxiety for the result of the mutiny. Few could look with calmness on the future, while watch and ward were kept all night by the citizens. Many felt then, as I had long felt before, how unsafe it was for the English to reside in India in ignorance of and indifference to the current of Native feeling. The mutiny, in common with the Afghan war, has showed that the English in India were generally unacquainted with it, so a short time previous to the mutiny the Sonthal war burst but unexpectedly to the public. For along period Thuggee and torture were prevailing in India, without the English knowing anything of them. Had I, as a missionary, previous to the mutiny, been able to submit to men of influence a Native drama which would have thrown light on the views of sepoys and Native chiefs, how valuable might the circulation of such a drama have proved, although it might have censured severely the treatment of Natives by Europeans; the indifference of sepoy officers generally towards their men; and the policy of Government to Native States. Such a drama might have helped to save millions of money and torrents of human blood. In Cabul, the authorities, through a false security founded on ignorance of Native opinion, entailed a loss of fifteen millions sterling on the State and the damage of England's prestige. Has Calcutta forgot the lessons taught by the mutiny? I ask was it very malicious to reveal to the governing race the latent current of Native thought and feeling on the subject of Indigo, which was convulsing the whole country, and threatening it with anarchy, incendiarism, and assassination? Would I have been justified to withhold contributing my mite at such a crisis to the great object of rousing men of influence by shewing them, from a Native source, that the dissatisfaction