the sacrifice of children at Sagar and other places on the
Ganges:--"It has been represented to the Governor-General in Council
that a criminal and inhuman practice of sacrificing children, by
exposing them to be drowned or devoured by sharks, prevails...Children
thrown into the sea at Sagar have not been generally rescued...but the
sacrifice has been effected with circumstances of peculiar atrocity in
some instances. This practice is not sanctioned by the Hindoo law, nor
countenanced by the religious orders." It was accordingly declared to
be murder, punishable with death. At each pilgrim gathering sepoys
were stationed to check the priests and the police, greedy of bribes,
and to prevent fanatical suicides as well as superstitious murders.

The practice of infanticide was really based on the recommendation of
Sati, literally the "method of purity" which the Hindoo shastras
require when they recommend the bereaved wife to burn with her husband.
Surely, reasoned the Rajpoots, we may destroy a daughter by abortion,
starvation, suffocation, strangulation, or neglect, of whose marriage
in the line of caste and dignity of family there is little prospect, if
a widow may be burned to preserve her chastity!

In answer to Carey's third memorial Lord Wellesley took the first step,
on 5th February 1805, in the history of British India, two centuries
after Queen Elizabeth had given the Company its mercantile charter, and
half a century after Plassey had given it political power, to protect
from murder the widows who had been burned alive, at least since the
time of Alexander the Great. This was the first step in the history of
British but not of Mohammedan India, for our predecessors had by decree
forbidden and in practice discouraged the crime. Lord Wellesley's
colleagues were still the good Udny, the great soldier Lord Lake and
Sir George Barlow. The magistrate of Bihar had on his own authority
prevented a child-widow of twelve, when drugged by the Brahmans, from
being burned alive, after which, he wrote, "the girl and her friends
were extremely grateful for my interposition." Taking advantage of
this case, the Government asked the appellate judges, all Company's
servants, to "ascertain how far the practice is founded on the
religious opinions of the Hindoos. If not founded on any precept of
their law, the Governor-General in Council hopes that the custom may
gradually, if not immediately, be altogether abolished. If, h