This is an awful picture of a people approaching to one hundred millions, and of a great and splendid country, which has been for the most part in our hands for more than a century. It only remains now to inquire what has been done since the opening of the nineteenth century for the instruction and general amelioration of the condition of this vast multitude of human beings, and thereby for our own justification as a Christian nation. Warren Hastings said most truly, that throwing aside all pretences of any other kind that many were disposed to set up, the simple truth was that “by the sword India had been acquired, and by the sword it must be maintained.” If the forcible conquest of a country be, therefore, a crime against the rights of nations and the principles of religion, what retribution can we make for our national offences, except by employing our power to make the subjected people happy and virtuous? But if we do not even hold conquest to be a crime, or war to be unchristian, where is the man that will not deem that we have assumed an awful responsibility on the plainest principles of the gospel, by taking into our hands the fate of so many millions of human creatures, thus degraded, thus ignorant and unhappy? It is impossible either to “do justice, to love mercy, or to walk humbly before God,” without as zealously seeking the social and eternal benefit of so great a people, as we have sought, and still seek, our own advantage, in the possession of their wealth. Over this important subject I am unfortunately bound to pass, by my circumscribed limits, in a hasty manner. The subject would require a volume. It is with pleasure, however, that we can point to certain great features in the modern history of improvement in India. It is with pleasure that we can say that some of the most barbarous rites of the Hindu superstitions have been removed. That infanticide, and the burning of widows have been abolished by the British influence; and that though the horrible immolations of Juggernaut are not terminated, they are no longer so unblushingly sanctioned, and even encouraged by British interference. These are great steps in the right path. To Colonel Walker, and Mr. Duncan, the governor of Bombay, immortal thanks and honour are due, for first leading the way in this track of great reforms, by at once discouraging, dissuading from, and finally abolishing infanticide in Guzerat. One of the most beneficial acts of the Marquis Wellesley’s government, was to put this horrible custom down in Saugur. How little anything, however, but the extraction of revenue had throughout all the course of our dominion in India been regarded till the present century, the Christian Researches of Mr. Buchanan made manifest. The publication of that book, coming as it did from a gentleman most friendly to our authorities there, was the commencement of a new era in our Indian history. It at once turned, by the strangeness of its details, the eyes