en, who existed
only for the general degradation of their own Hindoo race in humbler
stations, have themselves severed the links which connected them with
the glory (so unmerited for _them_) of a nobler Western nationality.
Bought though it is by earthly ruin, by torment, many times by
indignities past utterance inflicted upon our dear massacred sisters,
and upon their unoffending infants, yet for that very reason we must
now maintain the great conquest so obtained. There is no man living so
base--no, there is not a felon living amongst us, who could be
persuaded to repeat the act of the Grecian leader Agamemnon--namely,
to sacrifice his innocent daughter, just entering the portals of life
in its most golden stage, on the miserable pretence of winning a
_public_ benefit; masking a diabolical selfishness by the ostentation
of public spirit. Yet if some calamity, or even some atrocity, _had_
carried off the innocent creature under circumstances which involved
an advantage to her country, or to coming generations, the most loving
father might gradually allow himself to draw consolation from the
happy consequences of a crime which he would have died to prevent.
Even such a mixed necessity of feeling presses upon ourselves at
present. From the bloody graves of our dear martyred sisters,
scattered over the vast plains of India, rises a solemn adjuration to
the spiritual ear of Him that listens with understanding. Audibly this
spiritual voice says: O dear distant England! mighty to save, were it
not that in the dreadful hour of our trial thou wert far away, and
heardest not the screams of thy dying daughters and of their perishing
infants. Behold! for us all is finished! We from our bloody graves, in
which all of us are sleeping to the resurrection, send up united
prayers to thee, that upon the everlasting memory of our hell-born
wrongs, thou, beloved mother, wouldst engraft a counter-memory of
everlasting retribution, inflicted upon the Moloch idolatries of
India. Upon the pride of _caste_ rests for its ultimate root all this
towering tragedy, which now hides the very heavens from India. Grant,
therefore, O distant, avenging England--grant the sole commensurate
return which to us _can_ be granted--us women and children that trod
the fields of carnage alone--grant to our sufferings the virtue and
lasting efficacy of a _lutron_ ([Greek: lutron]), or ransom paid down
on behalf of every creature groaning under the foul idol of cas