The character of the religion serves, in like manner, as an index to that of the government. A licentious religion cannot be adopted by a people who are so moderate in their passions as to be able to govern themselves. One would not look for a display of meats offered to idols in the Capitol of the American Congress. An ascetic religion, too, inflicts personal and mutual wrongs which could never be endured among a people who agree to govern one another. There is no power which could induce such to submit to privations and sufferings which can be tolerable to none but devotees,--a small fraction of every society. Absolutism is commonly the character of the government of any country where either of these religions prevails;--a despotism more or less tempered by a variety of influences. It is the observer's business to bring the religion and the government into comparison, and to see how the latter is modified by the coexistence of the former. The friendly, no less than the domestic and political relations of society, are dependent upon the prevailing religion. Under the licentious, the manners will be made up of the conventional and the gross. A Burmese minister was sitting on the poop of a steam-vessel when a squall came on. "I suggested to his Excellency," says Mr. Crawford, "the convenience of going below, which he long resisted, under the apprehension of committing his dignity by placing himself in a situation where persons might tread over his head; for this singular antipathy is common both to the Burmese and Siamese. The prejudice is more especially directed against the fair sex,--a pretty conclusive proof of the estimation in which they are held. His Excellency seriously demanded to know whether any woman had ever trod upon the poop; and, being assured in the negative, he consented at length to enter the cabin." The house fixed for the residence of an American missionary was not allowed to be fitted up, as it stood on ground which was higher than the king's barge as it lay in the river; and such a spectacle would not become the king's dignity. The prime minister of this same king was one day, for absence from his post at a fire, "spread out in the hot sun." He was extended on his back in the public road for some hours in the most sultry part of the day, with a heavy weight upon his chest,--the public executioners being employed to administer the punishment. Nor is the king alone authorized to perpetrate such barbarisms. A creditor is permitted to seize the wife, children, and slaves of a debtor, and bind them at his door to broil in the sun of Ava. Here we see in perfection the union of the conventional and the gross in manners; and such manners cannot be conceived to coexist with any religion of a higher character than Buddhism.