Another difficult and dangerous question, in which considerations of humanity and justice were on one side, and old-established religious custom was on the other, was the question of inheritance. By the Mohammedan and the Hindu laws of inheritance apostacy was equivalent to civil death, and the convert lost all rights of heritage. This law had, in the eyes of the believers, a religious character; and the Hindu law of inheritance had an especially close connection with the Hindu religion, as property descended conditionally on the performance of religious rites, which were believed to be of transcendent importance for the benefit of the dead. Lord William Bentinck, who had already immortalised himself by the suppression of the suttee, resolved, if possible, to abolish the penalty which the native laws imposed on conversion, and in 1832 he introduced a regulation to that effect into Bengal. After long discussion and much opposition this policy at last triumphed, and an Act of Parliament of 1850 abolished through the whole of India every law and usage inflicting forfeiture of property on account of apostacy or exclusion from any faith. Another measure conceived in the same spirit, and directed against some peculiar Hindu superstitions, punished with imprisonment anyone who tried to intimidate another by threatening to make him the object of divine displeasure. The marriage of Hindu widows also was legalised. Native converts to Christianity were enabled to obtain a divorce from husbands or wives who had deserted them on account of their conversion. The rights of succession and the power of bequest of natives who did not belong to any native religious community were fully recognised.1

Stephen's History of Criminal Law, iii. 321; Kaye's Chris

tianity in India; Leslie Stephen's Life of Sir James Stephen,

These facts show sufficiently that, while the general principle of protecting the worship, revenues, and usages of native religions is fully recognised, there has been an increasing tendency in Indian legislation to allow considerations of humanity, justice, and individual liberty to override religious considerations. The great sepoy mutiny of 1857, which was mainly due to religious fanaticism, sufficiently disclosed the extreme dangers of the subject. After the suppression of the mutiny, also, there was a moment of great peril. A powerful party, supported by the high authority of Colonel Herbert Edwardes, one of the most distinguished of Indian soldiers, attributed the mutiny to the British Government having neglected their duty of bringing home Christian truths to the native population, and Colonel Edwardes issued a memorandum urging that the true policy to be pursued was the elimination of all unchristian principles from the government of India.' To carry out this policy he desired that the Bible should be compulsorily taught in all Government schools; that all endowments of native religions from public money, and all legal recognition of caste, should cease; that the English should cease to administer Hindu and Mohammedan law, and to countenance Hindu and Mohammedan processions. This memorandum received a considerable amount of partial or unqualified support, but wiser counsels ultimately prevailed. In the Queen's proclamation of October 1858 there is a remarkable paragraph, which is said to have been due to the direct action of the Queen herself, and which did very much to establish permanent quiet in India. We do strictly charge and enjoin,' it said, 'on

pp. 259-60. See, too, an admirable chapter on Our Reli

gious Policy in India' in Sir Alfred Lyall's Asiatic Studies.

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.'1

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

1 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

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.''

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.