Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/371

Rh and no place is more appropriate to institute that inquiry than Hindustan, nor any assembly more competent to decide upon that subject than the one I have the honor to address. First, let us then inquire whether the present rebellion has arisen from any attacks, made or intended, against the religious feelings of the people by the administration of Lord Canning? Secondly, What are the real circumstances that have caused this rebellion? “Speaking, as I am, from the place which is the center of the scenes of those mutinies that have drawn forth the remarks of Lord Ellenborough, and possessing, as we do, the advantages of being identified in race, language, manners, customs, and religion with the majority of those misguided wretches who have taken part in this rebellion, and thereby disgraced their manhood by drawing their arms against the very dynasty whose salt they have eaten, to whose paternal rule they and their ancestors have, for the last one hundred years, owed the security of their lives and properties, and which is the best ruling power that we had the good fortune to have within the last ten centuries—and addressing, as I am, a society, the individual members of which are fully familiar with the thoughts and sentiments of their countrymen, and who represent the feelings and interests of the great bulk of her Majesty's native subjects—I but give utterance to a fact patent to us all, that the Government have done nothing to interfere with our religion, and thereby to afford argument to its enemies to weaken their allegiance.

“The abolition of the diabolical practice of infanticide by drowning children in the Ganges, by the Marquis of Hastings, of the criminal rite of Suttee suicide, by Lord Bentinck, and the passing of other laws for the discontinuance of similar cruel and barbarous usages, equally called for by justice and humanity, by Governors General, (though they existed among us for ages,) never for a moment led us to suspect that our British rulers would interfere with our religion, or weaken the allegiance of any class of subjects in India. And is it to be supposed that Lord Canning's subscription to the Missionary Societies has ignited and fanned the awful fire, the flame of which now surrounds the fair provinces of