so yet; and, until they become
Christianized, we cannot hope or wish that they should forget the
only faith which they have to raise them above the earth they tread.
Their religion is corrupted to the core; but in its primitive type,
after which its worshippers will sometimes even yet aspire, it is
not destitute of a high spirituality that would seek to assimilate
and unite men's souls to the Great Being, whom they reverence as the
maker, maintainer, and changer of the universe. Hindooism is more
fantastic, and less pleasingly endeared to us, than the paganism of
Greece, but it is scarcely more lax or licentious; yet if Fortune,
in its caprices, had ordained our Indian subjects to be heathen
Greeks, with a Whig Governor-General bringing them back in triumph
to their homes, Lord Palmerston, who now, in a mingled rant of
mythology, and methodism, talks of "Dii and Jupiter hostis," would
himself have penned a paragraph about the restored temple of Mars or
Venus, and would have held up the scruples of Sir Robert Inglis and
Mr. Plumptre to classical ridicule.

But it is plain that here no religious triumph was, or could have
been, contemplated by Lord Ellenborough. On this point we need no
other evidence than that of Joseph Hume, who, combining the
properties of Balaam and his ass, often brays out a blessing when he
intends a curse. He tells us that--

A Hindoo of high caste, now in this country, the Vakeel of the Rajah
of Sattara, had written to him a letter, in which he stated--
"It appears to me that the restoration of the gates of Somnauth
could have no reference either to the support or degradation of any
religious faith. To restore the gates to their original purpose is
impracticable by the tenets of the Hindoo religion. Their doctrine is,
that any thing, when in contact with a dead body, or any thing
belonging to it, whether tomb or garment, is utterly contaminated and
unfit for religious purposes. In my opinion, therefore, the
proclamation must have been intended to gratify the feelings of the
Hindoo portion of our army, by removing a stain which the western
portion of India had long felt oppressive. In fact, he believed that
the Governor-General, by this means, conciliated the feelings of the
Hindoo soldiery in their return from those scenes of death and
disaster in which they had behaved so well, and where thousands of
their fellow-countrymen had fallen. I hope that this intention of
Lord Ellenborough to concili