just as proud. It attains one of its great ends if it make man think himself much purer, loftier, and more spiritual than God ever intended he should be." 1

The law permitting the re-marriage of widows has been carried into effect. "Pundit Greeschunder Surma, a Koolin of Koolins, a man of the very highest sacerdotal rank, has married the widow of a pundit of equal birth. The ceremony was attended by hundreds of Brahmins, and created a profound sensation.

“There has been some talk of excommunicating all concerned; but so extreme a step is improbable ; for this reason amongst others: if the orthodox excommunicate the guilty couple, they must excommunicate every Hindoo who attended the wedding. They will do nothing so dangerous; and the prohibition may be considered finally abolished. I am told that some degree of coercion was exercised on the bridegroom; but Hindoos invariably account for their defeats in that fashion. Even if true, the fact will make no difference.

"A Koolin has married a Koolin widow: he has not been excommunicated. Anybody, then, may marry a widow without fear of consequences. This result is admitted by the most bigoted opponents of the reform; so there is an end of one of the oldest social evils that ever afflicted a community. The bride in this case was a girl of about twelve. Under the ancient system, she must have remained single all her life, an object of perpetual anxiety to her family." 2

"In

Nor is the king-priest a less tyrannous and presumptuous caste. In the Sandwich Isles, the king, personating the god, uttered the responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame of wickerwork. The god frequently entered the priest, who, inflated as it were with the Divinity, ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent; but moved and spoke as acting under supernatural influences. this respect there was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of Polynesia and those of the celebrated nation of ancient Greece. As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became violently agitated, and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy; the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, and the eyes wild and strained. The priests who were attending, and versed in the mysteries, received and reported to the people the declarations which had been thus received. When the priest had uttered the response of the oracle, the violent paroxysms gradually subsided. Like the oracles among the nations of antiquity, which gradually declined after the propa

16 "Times."

* Calcutta Correspondent of the "Times."

gation of Chistianity, the divinities and the spells of the South-Sea Islanders have been laid aside since the receipt of the Gospel. The only oracle which they now consult is the sacred volume." 1

In Otaheite the same regal godship prevailed. Here the king was also the priest of the god; and the highest sacerdotal dignity was possessed by some members of the reigning family. The intimate connection between their false religion and political despotism is, however, most distinctly shown in the fact of the king's personifying the god, and receiving the offerings brought to the temple, and the prayers of the supplicants, which have frequently been presented to Tamatoa, the present king of Raitea.

The only motives by which they were influenced in this religious homage were, with very few exceptions, superstition, fear, revenge towards their enemies, desire to avert the dreadful consequences of the anger of the gods, and to receive their sanction and aid in the commission of the grossest crimes. In Madagascar, it is very singular that the principle of the supremacy of kings, a maxim of the most polished nations of ancient and modern times, should be actually embodied in the designation of the chief national idol. Here, then, we see a king-god of wood; while in despotic Europe we observe a king-god of flesh aud blood. The name of the idol kept at the capital is Raman-jaka-tse-roa, i.e., “there are not two sovereigns," or, "the king is supreme;" a motto not unworthy a despotic government. The idol is kept in the court-yard, and is strictly the national idol.

It was to liberate mankind from the dark superstition in which the selfish views of the priesthood of those days had kept the world, that Moses received his grand and important mission. "All were

by him taught to offer their prayers directly to the Deity, without the necessity of depending upon a frail mortal like themselves, for his pretended intercession with ONE equally accessible to all; and they learned that heaven was not to be purchased by money paid to the cupidity of a privileged class, whose assumed right of pronouncing against a man his exclusion from future happiness was an unwarrantable assumption of divine authority, and an attempt to fabricate a judgment in this world which alone belonged to the Deity. Privilege and power the priests of Egypt certainly did enjoy, when they could rule a man after his death, by refusing him a passport to eternal happiness, and could still force his family to pay them for pretended prayers for their deceased relative. Nothing could be better devised to force obedience to their will.

"The priests enjoyed great privileges. They were exempt from

1 Ellis, p. 235.

HOLY LOCOMOTION.

LLBRARY

O THE

25

taxes; they consumed no part of their income in any of their
necessary expenses; and they had one of those portions into which
the land of Egypt was divided, free from all deductions. They
were provided for out of the public stores, out of which they
received a stated allowance of corn, and all the other necessaries
of life; and we find that when Pharaoh, by the advice of Joseph,
took all the land of the Egyptians in lieu of corn, the priests were
not obliged to make the same sacrifice of their landed property;
nor was the tax of the fifth part of the produce entailed upon it
1
that of the people."
upon

as

In the Sandwich Islands the despotic principle was grandly maintained. The sovereign and his consort always attended in public on men's shoulders, and travelled in this manner, whenever they journeyed by land. The king and queen were always accompanied by several pairs of sacred men; and the transition from the shoulders of one to those of another, at the termination of an ordinary stage, was accompanied with much greater despatch than the horses of a mail-coach were changed. The men selected for this duty, which was considered the most honourable post, next to that of bearer of the gods, were exempted from labour; and as they seldom did anything else, were not, perhaps, much incommoded by the office.2 It is most remarkable, that the pope, the emperor of Austria, and the despotic sovereigns of Europe generally, should actually be carried, at the present time, on the shoulders of holy men, precisely as in the case of their Sandwich majesties. Whether their sacerdotal bearers will be able to post along with them much longer, is very problematical.

The spirit of Caste, which is found so strongly developed in many English establishments, where there is a numerous train of servants, is still more sovereign in its sway in India. There, the man who sweeps your room would resolutely refuse to take an

empty cup from your hand; he whose business it is to groom your

steed, would feel himself aggrieved if requested to mow a little
grass for it.
"The majority of the people of Bengal and Orissa
will not eat meat, though all eat fish. In Bikanere, fish is held in
the utmost abhorrence. The Hindoos rigorously abstain from
animal food, yet all of them will eat deer and wild boars, if not
killed by their own hands. In Kumaon, all will eat the short-
tailed sheep of the hills, but none will touch one with a long tail;
those who would shrink from the pollution of domestic poultry,
eagerly eat the jungle-fowl. All Hindoos are defiled by contact
with feathers, excepting those at the foot of the Himalaya. An
2 Ellis, ut antè.

1 Egypt, by Sir G. Wilkinson,

earthen pot is polluted beyond redemption, by being touched by one of inferior caste, while a metal one experiences no such deterioration. Coolies will carry any load, however offensive, upon their heads; bid them carry a man a few paces, and though it be a matter of life and death, they will answer you, it is the business of another caste. The Rohillas will submit to be flogged within an inch of their lives with a leathern martingale, but to be struck with a whip, or cane, would be an indelible disgrace. The Brah min is polluted by drinking from the same cup with a Sudra. In Mysore is a caste, in which the mother amputates the middle finger up to the middle joint, on the marriage of the eldest daughter. Caste, in one form or another, existed from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya-from the Ganges to the Indus,-its spirit penetrated every institution."

" 1

"It is an impropriety," says Irving, "for a Brahmin to use the same cup as a Sudra. Sooner than this should be an obstacle to his partaking of this mystery, we would gratify his prejudice." So would not Christianity: for this would be singularly enough to forget, that if the Brahmin is become really a Christian, he is no longer a Brahmin. As a Christian, he has already learned to "call no man common or unclean." Such a Brahmin is not yet worthy to take the sacrament; for he has not, in that case, learned the very first principle of Christianity, viz., humility; and his heart has been totally untouched by its vital power. This is the effect of confounding the intellectual knowledge of Christianity with its spiritual results. Formality says, "Compromise!" Christianity, with the beaming eyes of love, says, "First go and be reconciled to thy brother;" or, "Thy heart is not right in the sight of God!"

"As a

The bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Wilson, spoke boldly and with authority, and other churches came round to his views. system," says Ward, "it will henceforth find no favour with the promoters of Christianity in that land. He who would become a Christian, must renounce Caste heartily and practically. He will not regard himself as, by right of birth, the superior of Sudras and Pariahs in moral excellence, or entitled by a divine decree to immunities and prerogatives which they are for ever denied. He must be willing to say, with conscious honesty, 'YE ARE MY BRETHREN ALL.""

Sometimes, however, even in our own country, the principle of Caste is evinced in a manner little less absurd than in some of these instances. There can be scarcely a doubt, that the peculiar fixity of social manners and opinions which is found to prevail with us,

Irving, Influence of Caste, p. 18.

is an effect of the powerful groove of medieval institutes, which have been but partially effaced. Singularities do not seem to be much more shocking to the layman, than pluralities to the clergyman; and some of the former are so peculiar, as to remind us of the Cambridge freshman, who, on seeing a man drowning, felt it very irregular to assist him, and exclaimed, "Oh, that I had had the honour of being introduced to that gentleman!" This peculiarity, indeed, of the introductory ordeal, is perpetually recurring at every turn in the social road to happiness.

Nor the less, in commerce, did this prohibitory, banning, and exclusive spirit extensively prevail in the middle ages; to the abolition of which, nothing has tended so much as the introduction of machinery. Our ancestors felt this species of obstructiveness in all its force. Certain employments were confined to certain classes of society, and something like CASTE prevailed. The boy who laboured at the plough till he was twelve years of age, was doomed so to labour for life. And no man or woman was allowed to put son or daughter as apprentice to any craft, in any borough, who had not land to the value of twenty shillings. The punishment of such an offence was one year's imprisonment; and the cause assigned for the restriction was, the security of agricultural labourers. The number of lawyers was determined by legislative wisdom. "It is remarked, that in the preamble to an act passed in 1455, that before there were so many attorneys, great tranquillity reigned, and there was little trouble and vexation. But now," it goes on to say, "they come to every market, fair, and other place where there is any assembly of people, exhorting, procuring, moving, and inviting people to attempt untrue and foreign suits for small trespasses, little offences, and small sums of debt. It was enacted, that in the whole county of Norfolk there should be only six; and in Norwich, only two." I In one enactment, we find the following:

"If any of the people of Kent buy anything in the city of London, he must have two or three honest men, or the king's port-reeve, present at the bargain. Let none exchange one thing for another, except in the presence of the sheriff, the mass-priest, the lord of the manor, or some other person of undoubted veracity. If they do otherwise, they shall pay a fine of thirty shillings, besides forfeiting the goods so exchanged to the lord of the manor."

In the eighteenth century, a law was passed prohibiting an Englishman from selling any articles to a foreigner, except for ready money; and certain foreign goods were altogether excluded. In connection with all these, repeated prohibitions occur of the

The Dark Ages.