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all those who may be in authority under us, that they abstain from all interference with the religious beliefs and worship of any of our subjects, on pain of our highest displeasure.'

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The policy indicated in these words has been, on the whole, carried out with signal sagacity and success, and the large introduction of natives into high offices under the Crown has had a reassuring influence on the native mind. Before the mutiny there were no natives on the bench of any supreme court of India, or in the Legislative Council, or in the higher branches of the Civil Service. Since the mutiny all these great departments have been thrown open to them. British law protects carefully the moral and social types that grow out of the native religions, and especially the Hindu conception of the family, which is widely different from that of Christian nations; and it is mainly through respect for native ideas that the Indian penal code treats adultery as a criminal offence, and punishes it with imprisonment that may extend to five years.2 At the same time, the prohibition of the suttee and of infanticide has introduced grave changes even into this sphere. The law already violates Hindu notions by permitting the remarriage of widows and modifying the rules of succession, and it is not likely that many years will pass before the pressure of philanthropic European opinion leads to a prohibition of the horrible custom of child marriage, under which girls of ten or twelve years are assigned as wives to old, worn-out, and perhaps dying men. In the protected native States the British Government has repeatedly intervened for the purpose of putting down infanticide, suttee, sla

Bosworth Smith's Life of Lawrence, ii. 325-26.

2 Stephen's Criminal Law, iii. 318.

very, the punishment of alleged witches, and punishment by torture or mutilation.1

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The educational policy of the Government also, which was chiefly adopted at the instigation of Sir Charles Wood in 1854, and which has since then been energetically and successfully pursued, cannot fail to have a real, though indirect and unintended, influence on religious belief. The first principle, it is true, of that policy is that the ruling power is bound to hold itself aloof from all questions of religion.' The universities, in which the educational system culminates, are purely secular examining bodies, modelled after the London University; and while grants in aid are accorded to all private educational establishments which impart a good secular education, are under competent management, and are open to inspection by Government officers, the State proclaims and steadily acts upon the principle of rigidly abstaining from all interference with the religious teaching of these establishments. But many of the schools and colleges that have earned grants in aid are missionary establishments. Pure secular education, which the Government especially encourages, is as repugnant to Mohammedan as to Catholic ideas; the mixture of classes and creeds, which the new system fosters, breaks down social divisions that are closely connected with religious beliefs; and the mere spread of scientific conceptions of the universe, of European habits of thought and standards of proof, must do much to shatter the fantastic cosmogonies of the Hindu creeds, and produce a moral and intellectual type profoundly different from that of the old believers. Education as yet touches only a small fraction of the great Indian people; but in this,

1 Warner's Protected Princes of India, pp. 292-95.

as in other ways, contrary to its own wishes, the influence of the Government is opposed to the religion of the natives. It is not probable that it is preparing the way for Christian theology, but it is tending to undermine or attenuate old beliefs and to introduce Western types of thought and morals. Few attentive observers of Indian history,' writes Sir Henry Maine, can fail to see that the morality of modern indigenous literature tends to become Christian morality, which has penetrated further than Christian belief.'

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Another case in which the principles of religious liberty have come into collision with principles of morality and public expediency may be found in Mormonism in America. Polygamy was not an original doctrine of the Mormon faith: it was not until 1843, thirteen years after the publication of the Book of Mormon, that Joseph Smith professed to have a revelation authorising it, and it was not until 1852 that it was openly acknowledged to the Gentile world. Long before this period, however, the Mormons had experienced a large amount of severe and illegal mob persecution. The rise and rapid progress of a new religion combining to an extraordinary degree the element of fraud with the elements of fanaticism soon aroused a fierce resistance, which was entirely unrestrained by the provisions of the Constitution giving unrestricted right of religious belief and profession.

In its first form Mormonism was simply a society of men believing in the divine mission and revelations of Joseph Smith, baptised for the dead in a Church

1 Ward's Reign of Queen Victoria, i. 462. There is an excellent chapter on Indian Education in Sir John Strachey's India. See, too, an interesting

Blue Book on 'The Results of Indian Administration during the past Thirty Years' (1889), pp. 16-18.

which he founded and ruled, placing their property at his disposal, holding some very materialistic views about the nature of the Divinity, and also a strange notion that Christ had preached in America, after His crucifixion, to Children of Israel who already peopled that continent. However eccentric might be these opinions, Mormonism in its general aspect was a sect not wholly differing from many others, and it could move freely within the wide limits which the American Constitution accorded to religious developments. The Mormons were first concentrated in considerable numbers in the town of Kirtland, in Ohio, but they soon migrated to the thinly populated district called Jackson County, in Missouri, where about 1,200 were established. In obedience to a revelation of Joseph Smith, they purchased a large tract of land, and streams of fanatics poured in, boasting loudly that the land was to be given to them as an inheritance.

The old settlers, however, resented bitterly the intrusion of this sinister element, and after a long series of acts of violence and several vicissitudes, the Saints, now numbering about 12,000, were compelled to cross the Mississippi into Illinois, where they built the town of Nauvoo. They soon organised a powerful militia, established a regular government, and displayed to an extraordinary degree those industrial qualities for which they have always been remarkable. For a few years their progress was uninterrupted. A vast temple consecrated to their worship was erected, and they grew every month in numbers, power, and wealth; but the same causes that aroused hostility in Missouri made them unpopular in Illinois, and it was strengthened by a well-founded belief that the sect was moving in the

1 This is stated in the Book of Mormon.

direction of sexual license. Internal dissension also appeared; riots broke out, and the State authorities. intervened. Joseph Smith and his brother surrendered to stand their trial on the charge of having instigated an attack on the office of a hostile newspaper, and were placed in prison. Then followed one of those tragedies which have always been peculiarly common in America: the prison was stormed and captured by a hostile mob, and Joseph Smith was shot dead. This last event took place in June 1844.

But the new Church survived its founder, and the election of Brigham Young placed at its head a man of very superior powers, who exercised an almost undisputed authority till his death in 1877. It was surrounded by numerous and bitter enemies, who were utterly unrestrained by any considerations of law, and after many months of trouble and violence, after the loss of many lives and the endurance of terrible sufferings, the Mormons who had not already fled from Nauvoo were driven forcibly across the Mississippi. They had, however, before this time taken measures for a migration which is one of the most remarkable incidents in modern history. Inspired by a passionate fanaticism that seems strangely out of place in the nineteenth century and in an intensely industrial society, they resolved to cross the Rocky Mountains, to traverse a space of no less than 1,000 miles, and to establish their Church far beyond the limits of the United States, in a wild and desert country, inhabited only by roving bands of savage Indians. This daring scheme was executed with extraordinary skill, resolution and perseverance, and in 1847 and 1848 several thousands of fugitives planted the nucleus of a great State on the borders of the Salt Lake.

There is no other instance in history in which a re

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