Page:The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy Vol 2.djvu/341





With hearts filled with the deepest gratitute, and impressed with the utmost reverence, we, the undersigned native inhabitants of Calcutta and its vicinity, beg to be permitted to approach your Lordship, to offer personally our humble but warmest acknowledgments for the invaluable protection which your Lordship’s government has recently afforded to the lives of the Hindoo female part of your subjects, and for your humane and successful exertions in rescuing us for ever, from the gross stigma hitherto attached to our character as wilful murderers of females, and zealous promoters of the practice of suicide.

Excessive jealousy of their female connexions, operating on the breasts of Hindu princes, rendered those despots regardless of the common bonds of society, and of their incumbent duty as protectors of the weaker sex, insomuch that, with a view to prevent every possibility of their widows forming subsequent attachments, they availed themselvsthemselves [sic] of their arbitrary power, and under the