LETTER XI - CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA

Summary

Dear Simkins,–On my return from a visit to Chandernagore, I found two letters full of your reflections on the questions of the advisability of our keeping India. One had come through Bombay, and the other by Point de Galle, and I am anxiously expecting another round the Cape. The problems which you select for discussion are certainly rather antiquated. Some three months ago you gave me your opinion about the annexation of Oude, in a treatise that displayed profound political wisdom, which more than compensated for a slight want of familiarity with the details of your subject. At first I was surprised and gratified to find that you had turned your attention to an event so recent; but it gradually began to dawn upon me that the annexation of Oude, which you had undertaken to justify in the sight of God and man, was not that accomplished by Lord Dalhousie, in 1856, but the arrangement which was effected by Lord Wellesley, as far back as 1801. While reading your letters I seem to resemble the traveller, who, during a tour in Southern Russia, in the year 1819, came to a Cossack village, somewhere between the Don and the Volga. He found the population in a state of wild excitement and exhilaration. Bonfires were blazing, and oxen roasting whole. The gutters ran with raki and train-oil. Peasants who had never tasted anything daintier than a rushlight now had their fill of long sixes.