“I conclude the above intelligence will plead my excuse for writing to you without previous introduction, and I was anxious it should reach you through the nearest channel. Your brother in Calcutta has told me several times of your welfare; and during beloved Martyn’s life I used to hear of you sometimes. Your person, whilst a student at King’s College, was well known to me, and your character admired, though I had not steadiness of principle sufficient at that time to imitate you; and consequently had no pretensions to an acquaintance with you, though I often greatly desired it. To that ‘Father in Israel,’ Mr. Simeon, I owe all my comfort on earth and all my hopes respecting eternity: for through his instrumentality the seeds of grace, I trust, were, during my residence at Cambridge, especially during the latter part of my stay, implanted in my heart, and have influenced, though alas! unsteadily, my after days. “From this far country you will however desire other tidings, if any. The discussions in Parliament respecting the religious part of the Company’s charter, give me much pain, as both friends and opposers evidently view the subject imperfectly. The opposers know full well, or might know, that if every servant of the Company in India were a clergyman, so long as we go on as heretofore, it would not excite an enquiry scarcely from any native; he would conclude it was the English _caste_, and there his reflections would end. On the other hand, it seems premature to connect the conversion of the natives with an ecclesiastical establishment, for unless our Bishops should be men, not only of learning and sobriety, but of zeal, they will never hold out against the discouragements a residence in this country presents. Indeed, in this work, a man must engage with the spirit of those words--“Though the fig-tree should not blossom;” &c. It is not that the evangelization of India is a hopeless project, or that to attempt it is attended with political danger; for the story General Kyd produced in the House of Commons, to shew the danger of interfering with the natives, is both erroneously stated and ridiculously applied. The idea of grave ministers of religion going out to shoot monkeys, would not have been entertained in any other connexion but as supplying an objection to Missions. But the young men were not destroyed by the natives; the elephant on which they rode took fright at the clamour of lamentation and displeasure raised by the people on the monkey being killed, and plunged into a deep place of the river Jumna, when the Howdah on which they sat getting loose from the elephant’s back, the young men were drowned. General Kyd would perhaps say, he had seen Chaplains in India