of the great mass of the population. The
British rulers of India had been, with sufficient reason, exceedingly
cautious in such matters. Their power might crumble to pieces, if it
were once believed that we intended to assail directly the great
religions of the country, and in India law, custom, and religion are
only different aspects of the same thing. In certain cases we had at
last resolved to suppress practices which offended the European code of
morals. Under the Bengal regulations, the practice of burning widows had
been forbidden. Another series of Acts began by the passage of an Act in
1850 which provided that no one should suffer any legal forfeiture of
rights for having ceased to belong to any religious community. This Act
was passed in face of vehement opposition and petitions signed by 60,000
natives in and around Calcutta. It practically pledged us to maintain
freedom of conscience in matters of religion. It was followed by other
measures involving the same principle. In 1856, the re-marriage of
Hindoo widows was legalised, and in 1866, native converts to
Christianity were enabled to obtain a divorce from wives or husbands who
abandoned them in consequence of their religious change. Another Act of
1865, drawn by the Indian Law Commission, regulated the law as to
succession to property and the testamentary powers of persons who were
not members of any of the native religious communities, and thus
recognised that such people had a legitimate legal status. From another
application of the same principles arose a proposal in regard to which
Fitzjames had to take a conspicuous part. It formed the subject of a
very warm debate in the Council, the only debate, indeed, which faintly
recalls English parliamentary discussions. Fitzjames, in particular,
made two speeches which suggest that he might have been an effective
party-leader, and are, in various ways, so characteristic that I must
notice them at some length.

The sect of Brahmos, founded by Ram Mohun Roy, was one result of the
influence of European ideas on India. It had come to be the most
important movement of the kind. It roughly corresponds, I imagine, to
English Unitarianism, being an attempt to found a pure theistic religion
without the old dogmatic system. Like almost all religious movements, it
might be considered either as an innovation or as an attempt to return
to a primitive creed by throwing off the corrupt accretions. The sect,
like others, had