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358 CHAPTER VII. HE hate and cruelty of these fearful scenes have now to be accounted for. To what cause are we to ascribe them? Next to the facts of the great Rebellion, men have sought for the explanation of its origin.

I. The earliest reason to account for it was that put forward by certain members of the British civil service—venerable men, who had long administered the rule of the East India Company, and reflected so exclusively its merely commercial and worldly spirit that they seemed to forget they were Christians, or from a Christian land. They so fully vindicated and illustrated their master's doctrine of “neutrality,” as in effect to discountenance Christianity and favor idolatry. Of such men the slang used to be that they “had left their religion at the Cape of Good Hope, to be resumed there on their return to England.”

Such men had become Hindooized from long contact with idolatrous usages and ceremonies, almost verifying in regard to heathenism the reality of the lines,

They paid a certain deference to idol shrines, to caste prejudices, and heathenish customs; and very decidedly discountenanced all attempts at Bible or tract distribution, or legislation which aimed at abolishing even the cruel rites of Hindooism. They discouraged the incoming of missionaries or their preaching, and, if public sentiment would have permitted it, they would have persecuted and expelled them, as they once actually expelled Judson, and tried to