The Hukeem and the missionary hear native opinion spoken out with much greater freedom than the political agent, the judge, or commandant. 'Were there many more of the _Sahibean Ungez_ (the English gentlemen) in character like the Padre Sahibs (Corrie and Martyn), Christianity would make more progress here,' was the unvaried testimony of the natives in their favour.... I cannot help mentioning the results of various conversations I had with two natives of Eastern rank and family employed by the Venerable Mr. Corrie, afterwards Bishop of Madras, and the Rev. Henry Martyn, in Scripture translation, and whose assistance I had used in the study of the languages, as they quite coincide with much which I had the opportunity of hearing among men of still higher position in the native educated community, when attached to the staff of the Governor-General: 'By the decrees of God,' said the Mohammedan noble, 'and the ubiquity of their fleets, armaments, and commerce, it appears plainly that the European nations have become the arbiters of the destinies of the nations of Asia. Yet this seems to us strange in the followers of Him who taught that His true disciples must be ready to give their cloaks also to him who took from them their coats.' To which I had no better reply than this, that the progress of events in the world's history seems to us to give evidence that undoubtedly a Divine message had been sent, both to governments and their subjects, to which, at their peril, both must give attention. But that, as a question of public national policy, it seemed generally admitted and understood that the civil rulers of no nation, Christian, Mohammedan, or Heathen, were laid under an obligation, by their individual beliefs, to allow a country, unable to govern itself by reason of its interminable divisions and subjects of deadly internal strife, to be occupied and made use of by their European or other enemies, as a means for their own injury or destruction, for any criminal or sinful acts, done in the building up of a nation or government. I may add that I never heard a native of India attempt directly to impugn the perfect justice of the British possession of India on this ground. 'The Padre Sahib has put the subject in its true light' (said the same Mohammedan authority) 'when he said that Christianity had higher objects in view, in its influence on human character, than to enforce absolute rules about meats and drinks; for should he even induce me (which is unlikely) to become more of a Christian than I am, believing, as I do, in the authority of the Old Testament prophets, and in Jesus Christ as a prophet sent by God, he will never persuade me to look upon many articles of diet used by Christians with anything but the