danger of loss or interruption, he is obliged to send several conveyances of every important commu. nication. A similar aggravation also presents itself in regard to lawpapers, and other important do cuments, which are at once voluminous, and therefore expensive for a single postage, and of which, for the reason already given, several copies must be sent, and therefore several heavy postages incurred. I But, beside these, there is another description of correspondence which yields in nothing in its claims on every well-wisher of the best interests of society, and on which the regulations make a serious attack. This is the correspondence between friends and families. need not suggest to your reflections, Sir, what is the value, in a private or a social view, of preserving, during absence, this species of intercourse. I need not point out to you, how often its interruption leads to cessation, and its cessation to the most serious effects on the fortunes, the fates, and the happiness of individuals. Still less, need I call upon you to remember, how often natural indolence, in a great many minds, renders such an intercourse, under the best encouragement, that is, amid the greatest facility, slow, unsteady, and difficult of continuance; and how little, in general, there is need of any artificial let to assist this neglect, subsidence, and obliteration of former attachments and affections. And how much will it not be assisted, by a cause which must so often be accepted as an apology, and so often operate as a serious motive, for an omission to write! It appears, that the third part of the packet-rates authorized to be taken on each sheet of a letter intended for India, is fixed at one shilling and two pence. Now, family letters are seldom comprized within less than two sheets and an envelope, and are thus taxed at nearly four shillings, previously to receiving the post-mark. If to this is added the ship-postage levied by the local governments in India, every letter is charged with a postage of five shillings, over and above the inland postage, both in India and in England, before it reaches the hand of the person to whom it is addressed. This tax increases with the size of the packet; and it must not be omitted to remark, that even restraint upon the size is a private and social evil, scarcely less than the total suppression of correspondence. How often are not those interests, to which I have before alluded, promoted by the very garrulity of familiar intercourse; by the practice of saying every thing which can be said, rather than the attempt to say the least that may answer the immediate purpose. In the resolution to save a sheet of paper, how many things may be omitted, dear to the heart, and of influence on our future lives! In looking, as in few words I shall now do, to the political considerations which belong to the subject, these private interests will be seen to constitute not the least important among those of the public. The provocation to evade so severe a law, the facilities it in itself affords to smuggling, and the loss to the revenue from the necessary aiminution of the number of letters passing through the London PostOffice, are obvious mischiefs, attached to, and inseparable from the innovation: But even these are East-Indies, and from the East-Indies to Great-Britain, and that all such letters so transmitted have in consequence become subject to a new and heavy impost, tofore in use. things of small account, in the estimate of a measure, which, as I have just insisted, tends to break, in our fellow subjects, the habit of in addition to the rates of postage hereattachment to home; to deny the indulgence, and therefore to palsy the existence, of the feelings which bind them to their connections in this country, and not less to estrange those in this country from them. Absence and silence deaden the memory; but it is memory which feeds and sustains the affections: friends, duties, loves and country, are alike exposed in the common forgetfulness or separation; and, where the parent loses a child, the youth a patron, and the maid a husband, there, also, from the like cause, the state loses a subject. But all, or nearly all the topics I have touched upon, are introduced into a petition which, in May last, in support of the prayer of the London Memorial, received the signatures of the Public at Calcutta ; a copy of which petition, not finding that it has yet been reprinted in England, I have taken the liberty to enclose, at the same time begging your excuse for the length at which I have written.- I am, &c. PUBLICUS. To the Hon. the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled ; The humble Petition of the undersigned Merchants, Agents, and others, Inhabitants of the town of Calcutta and other places, subject to the Presidency of Fort William, in the East-Indies. Sheweth;-That your petitioners have learned with great concern, that the provisions of an act of parliament of the 54th George III, cap. 169, entitled, "An "Act for making certain Regulations re"specting the Postage of Ship Letters "and of Letters in Great-Britain," have been construed to apply to private letters transmitted from Great-Britain to the That, ever since the first incorporation of the East-India Company, the Directors of that Company in Great-Britain and their Governments abroad have been in the custom of receiving all letters which individuals might be desirous of transmitting to or from their several Presidencies in the East, and of forwarding the same in their public packets by every opportunity of conveyance, whether by their own or by private ships. That this arrangement has afforded ample satisfaction to all persons interested by their pursuits or connexions in the maintenance of a regular intercourse between Great-Britain and India, and has been proved by the experience of a long series of years to be adequate to every purpose of convenience, dispatch and punctuality. That the Governments of the Company in India have been accustomed to levy certain rates of ship postage, on all letters so received for transmission to Great-Britain in their public packets, as well as on all letters transmitted to India by the Hon. the Court of Directors, for distribution at those Presidencies respectively. And that your petitioners have at all times cheerfully submitted to pay the rates of postage so established, regarding them as a fair and just compensation for the expence incurred, and the important accommodation afforded. That the same rates of ship postage still continue to be levied as heretofore by the Governments of the Company abroad, in addition to the heavy rates now imposed by the legislature, and to the established charges of inland postage, both in Great Britain and in India. That, while the office of receiving, transmitting and distributing the contents of all packets of ship letters continues to be exercised by the servants of the Company abroad, it were unreasonable to expect a relinquishment on the part of the Company, of this charge of ship postage. And that, so long, therefore, as the act above cited shall remain in force, the intercourse by letter between Great-Britain and these her remote dependencies must eontinue subject to a double impost, unknown to his Majesty's subjects in any other quarter of the world. That this aggravated charge bears with peculiar hardship on many of your petitioners, who are accustomed to carry on a voluminous commercial correspondence with Great-Britain, subject to the accidents and perils of a longer voyage than that between any of his Majesty's colonies and the mother country, and requiring therefore for its security that a greater number of copies of each dispatch should be transmitted ;-a precaution more particularly necessary in the case of those packets which are in general the most bulky, and consequently subject to the heaviest rates of postage, such as, law papers, invoices, bills of parcels, policies of insurance, and other important mercantile documents. That for the charges of postage to which the correspondence between his Majesty's colonies and Great-Britain has long been subject, the inhabitants of those colonies are well compensated by the accommodation which they derive from a regular establishment of packets, maintained at great expense by his Majesty's Government. But that the same observation does not at all apply to the situation of your petitioners, who are not in the enjoyment of any such benefit, to whose correspondence no aid or facility has hitherto been afforded by his Majesty's Government, and who cannot therefore but feel a charge of this nature as a tax on the transmission of their own letters by their own conveyances. That, far from considering the provisions of the act of the 54th George III, as likely to facilitate or secure the more regular transmission of packets by private ships trading between this country and Great-Britain, your petitioners are not without apprehension, lest the severe penalties, with which by the terms of that act, every irregularity on the part of those entrusted with the care of shipletters is liable to be visited, may be the means of altogether deterring respectable persons from undertaking such a charge, or from permitting any letters whatever to be received on board their ships; an apprehension in which your petitioners are confirmed, by the almost unprecedented circumstance, of no packets whatsoever having been transmitted to this country by the only private ship which has completed her voyage from England, since the regulations prescribed by the new act have been carried into effect. That the largest possible accession which the public revenues could be expected to derive from the ship-postage on Indian letters, must be so perfectly insignificant, that it were disrespectful in your petitioners to presume, that such an object could have any weight in reconciling your Hon. House to the continued sanction of means questionable in principle and vexatious in their operation: And your petitioners would further, with all humility, suggest, that even this trivial accession, if any such has ever been contemplated, will in all likelihood be at least counterbalanced, by a corresponding reduction of the receipts heretofore derived from the inland postage on Indian letters, a reduction which must be the necessary consequence of the general curtailment of private correspondence, the diminished bulk and number of commer cial dispatches, the rejection by persons residing in England of the duplicates and triplicates of letters of which the originals may have previously come to hand, and other means of counteraction or evasion to which those who must feel the pressure of the law, will naturally be induced to resort. Your petitioners beg leave in conclusion humbly to represent, that the moral influence of an impost of this nature may not be altogether unworthy of the attention of your Hon. House ;-an impost, which, in many instances, must prove a bar to frequent communication between members of the same family,-which, to the extent of its operation, is in truth a tax on the indulgence of the best feelings of our nature, tending to restrain and discourage that habitual intercourse between his Majesty's subjects in the East and the objects of their early attachment, which serves to cherish and keep alive their social affections, and to strengthen the bonds which unite them to the country of their birth and their allegiance. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray, that your Hon. House will be pleased to take the premises into consideration, and will grant to your petitioners such relief, as to your wisdom shall seem meet. And your petitioners will ever pray, &c. To the Editor of the Asiatic Journal. SIR, The opportunity your is from this impression that I tremProspectus has promised of an impartial discussion of East-Indian topics, induces me to offer you the following remarks on the important subject of introducing Christianity among the natives of the East. That man is the agent of an overruling Providence in the accomplishment of its designs, is not to be doubted; nor can it be questioned that he is an accountable agent. Our nature, however, is so liable to err, and our best feelings so subject to mis-direction, that much mischief may be done, even at the time when we are most conscious of the purity of our intentions to perform the will of that Providence; and when I contemplate the excessive veneration of the natives of India to a religion which from the remotest periods of antiquity has been that of their forefathers, and the lively jealousy they have constantly exhibited on the slightest innovation, added to the imminent dangers arising from an imprudent zeal, 1 must confess that however I may be satisfied with the expediency or necessity of evangelising India, yet I am by no means convinced that the time for that great work has yet arrived. This consideration, coupled with the idea of the possibility of the design being pushed to the risk of losing our Indian dominions, has not, I fear, sufficiently struck some of the most enthusiastic supporters of missions. I trust, Sir, I am as much alive as any man to the high value of immortal interests; and it ble to think that the time may come, when precipitate and misguided zeal may for ever put it out of our power of being the honoured instruments of imparting the light of Christianity to that benighted people. It must, however, be recollected that the duty of legislation is not fully accomplished in providing merely for the temporary wants of the subject. It has to do with rational, accountable, and immortal beings. The rulers of the earth are the stewards of the interests of its inhabitants, and their account must one day be rendered before a tribunal, supreme in power and in justice, a power whose dispensation of mercy was not intended for any favoured part of the world, and who has not promised in vain that "his name shall be known among all nations." I have heard much, Sir, of the sublimity of the Hindoo religion, and the amiable disposition of its gentle votaries; and on reference to some of the opinions of our AngloIndians given at the bar of the House of Commons, it would appear, that the moral standard of the native character is equal, if not superior, to that of our own nation.* As to the religion of Brahma, however comparatively pure it may have been in its earliest stages, it is now, according to the testimony of modern writers, the most wretched system of craft, tyranny, absurdity, Vide Minutes of Evidence before Select Committee of the House of Commons, and gross idolatry, that ever debased the understanding of rational creatures. Surely, Sir, it can only arise from a morbid state of feeling when a man can, after reading of the horrors of Juggernauth, and of the strewed bones of a million of its devotees, still expatiate on the happiness of the natives of India, and gravely conjure us to let them continue to enjoy the benefits of the Hindoo religion. In regard to their character, it is well known the favourable prejudices the excellent Sir William Jones imbibed in his studies, and carried with him to India, as to the morality of the native Indian, as well as the complete change which practical experience so quickly wrought in his opinion. lation is wholly inseparable from the native character, and that to work a reformation or even a check, would be both an ungracious as well as hopeless task. The perni cious tendency of this mode of reasoning is forcibly noticed by Sir James M'Intosh, as appears by the following citation from his charge to the jury at Bombay in 1805. He thus expresses himself: "But as long as the scandalous "acquiescence, I had almost said " connivance, of the English in"habitants lasts, as long as our "houses are filled with servants who "have been detected in fraud and theft, so long ought we to con⚫ "sider ourselves as corrupters of our servants, and through them The frightful features of moral "the body of the natives, and so turpitude also, which the judicial" long will, I fear, the efforts of our proceedings in India so invariably present, must ever be at variance with the high colouring so often given to the native character. The truth is, the European is struck with the patient submission and yielding gentleness of his native servants, especially when contrasted with the independent character of those he has left at home; his harshest commands are obeyed with alacrity and smiles, and he cannot but remember with complacency, those whose every exertion were so wholly devoted to his pleasures and caprice. He is, it is true, generally aware that more than half of this is mere masquerade, and that beneath a service so flattering to the eye, is concealed a continual plot to defraud and deceive. This is overlooked with a supineness, probably arising from the idea, that dissimu * Vide Dr. Buchanan's Christian Researches. |