ion
to the wishes of any section of the native community; but it is also a
grave, a very grave thing for the Government of India deliberately to
abstain from doing that which it has declared to be just and right.' If
you help the Brahmos alone, what will you say to the 'radical league,'
which repudiates all religious belief? When they ask to have their
marriages legalised, will you reply, 'You are a small body, and
therefore we will do you an injustice'? This is one of the ultimate
points which we are forced to decide upon our own convictions. Religious
liberty and equality can be no more reconciled with Hindoo and
Mohammedan orthodoxy than with some forms of Catholicism. But it is
impossible to say that we will not do that which we admit to be urgent
because we are afraid of orthodox Mohammedans and Hindoos. And here is
the answer to one member who made light of telling a converted young man
of enlightened mind that, unless he saw his way to being a Christian, he
might be ordered to conform to the customs of his forefathers. It was
better that he should make the sacrifice, than that the minds of the
masses should be disquieted. Was there, he asked, any real hardship in
that? Yes, replies Fitzjames, there would be the greatest and most cruel
injustice. 'It would be a disgrace to the English name and nation.' A
young man goes to England and wins a place in the Civil Service. He
learns from an English education to disbelieve in his old creeds; and
when he goes back you tell him that he shall not be capable of marriage
unless he will either falsely pretend to be a Christian, or consent to
have his tongue burned with a red-hot iron and drink cow's urine in
order to regain his caste. One of the native correspondents had
complained rather naively that the law would be used to enable a man to
escape these 'humiliating expiations.' Would they not be far more
humiliating for English legislation? What did you mean, it would be
asked, by your former profession that you would enforce religious
equality? What of the acts passed to secure the immunity of all converts
from legal penalties? Were they all hypocritical? I would rather submit
to the displeasure of orthodox Hindoos, says Fitzjames, than have to
submit to such taunts as that. 'The master objection against the bill,
of which the rest are but shadows, and which unites in opposition to it
men who mutually denounce each other's creeds, and men who despise those
who care enough a