ny a long year
they will not understand, our policy were right or wrong--may admit of
much debate. Often-times, but not always, it is wise and long-sighted
policy to presume in nations higher qualities than they have, and
developments beyond what really exist. But as to religion, there can be no
doubt, and no debate at all. To exterminate their filthy and bloody
abominations of creed and of ritual practice, is the first step to any
serious improvement of the Kandyan people: it is the _conditio sine qua
non_ of all regeneration for this demoralized race. And what we ought to
have promised, all that in mere civil equity we had the right to promise;
was--that we would _tolerate_ such follies, would make no war upon such
superstitions as should not be openly immoral. One word more than this
covenant was equally beyond the powers of one party to that covenant, and
the highest interests of all parties.

Philosophically speaking, this great revolution may not close perhaps for
centuries: historically, it closed about the opening of the Hundred Days
in the _annus mirabilis_ of Waterloo. On the 13th of February 1815, Kandy,
the town, was occupied by the British troops, never again to be resigned.
In March, followed the solemn treaty by which all parties assumed their
constitutional stations. In April, occurred the ceremonial part of the
revolution, its public notification and celebration, by means of a grand
processional entry into the capital, stretching for upwards of a mile; and
in January 1816, the late king, now formally deposed, "a stout,
good-looking Malabar, with a peculiarly keen and roving eye, and a
restlessness of manner, marking unbridled passions," was conveyed in the
governor's carriage to the jetty at Trincomalee, from which port H.M.S.
Mexico conveyed him to the Indian continent: he was there confined in the
fortress of Vellore, famous for the bloody mutiny amongst the Company's
sepoy troops, so bloodily suppressed. In Vellore, this cruel prince, whose
name was Sree Wickreme Rajah Singha, died some years after; and one son
whom he left behind him, born during his father's captivity, may still be
living. But his ambitious instincts, if any such are working within him,
are likely to be seriously baffled in the very outset by the precautions
of our diplomacy; for one article of the treaty proscribes the descendants
of this prince as enemies of Ceylon, if found within its precincts. In
this exclusion, pointed against