caste, and becoming
forsaken and despised of every creature, even the nearest kindred. The
mere eating from a vessel used to contain food for a person of a
different caste is enough to produce contamination; the separation is
complete, and the whole constitution of body and mind have become so
inured to the distinction, that the cost of becoming a convert is
infinitely severer in India than ever it could have been even in Greece
or Rome, where, though the Christian might be persecuted even to the
death, he was not thrust out of the pale of humanity like a Hindoo
convert who transgresses caste.

The Christians of Malabar are a people living to themselves, and the
great Bengalee nations never appear to have had the Gospel carried to
them. The Mahometan conquest filled India with professors of the faith
of the Koran; but these were a dominant race, proud and separate from the
mass of people, whom they did not win to their faith, and thus the Hindoo
idolatry had prevailed untouched for almost the whole duration of the
world, when the wealth of India in the early days of naval enterprise
first began to tempt small mercantile companies of Europeans to form
factories on the coast merely for purposes of traffic, without at first
any idea that these would lead to possession or conquest, and, in
general, without any sense of the responsibility of coming as Christians
into a heathen world.

The Portuguese did indeed strive earnestly to Christianize their
territory at Goa; and they promoted by all means in their power the
labours of Francisco Xavier and his Jesuit companions, so effectually
that the fruits of their teaching have remained to the present day.

Neither were the Dutch, who then held Ceylon, entirely careless of the
duty of instructing their subjects; and the Danes, who had obtained the
town of Tranquebar on the Coromandel coast, in 1746, sent out a mission
which was vigorously conducted, and met with good success. Hitherto,
however, the English at Madras and Calcutta had been almost wholly
indifferent, and it must be remembered that theirs was not a Government
undertaking. The East India Company was still only a struggling
corporation of merchants and traders, who only wanted to secure the
warehouses and dwellings of those who conducted their traffic, and had as
yet no thought of anything but the security of their trade; often,
indeed, considering themselves pledged to no interference with the
religion of the pe