nion, unless the prohibition to sell slaves for arrears of revenue due to them, contained in my letter as Secretary to the Board of Revenue of the 23d December 1819, be considered of that description. The existence of British rule, the principles of which are hostile to all restraint on liberty, and the maintenance of such principles in the local code of laws passed since 1802, by the Government of Madras, for the internal rule of their provinces, without any enactment on the subject of slavery itself, have no doubt, tended to check many gross abuses, previously practised under the native governments, by masters towards their slaves. The vicinity of some of the Tamil slaves to the Presidency itself, where the existence of the British code, renders slavery altogether unknown, and the facility with which some have taken refuge there, and entered into the service of Europeans, and even into the native army, combined with the circumstance of most of the Tamil slaves belonging to a village community, rather than to individuals, and with the ancient usage or common law against their removal from their native village, have perhaps raised them above their brethren on the other coast; but much remains still to be done, to improve the condition of both.

In

my replies to the foregoing queries, I have given all the information I possess with respect to facts connected with slavery in India.

I have ever been of opinion that British policy ought to be directed, not only to the immediate practical amelioration of East India slavery, but to its ultimate, though gradual abolition.

In drawing up the Minute of the Board of Revenue of the 5th January 1818, whilst I pointed out the injustice of interfering with the private property which masters possess in their slaves, and the danger of too suddenly disturbing the long-established relations in society subsisting between these two orders, I induced the Board to call for information, from the several provinces, for the purpose of defining by a legislative enactment the power to be exercised by masters over their slaves, and thus preventing abuse or oppression; and with respect to those on the western coast in particular, a legislative enactment was suggested, to prevent their being removed against their will from the place of their nativity, or being exposed to sale by auction, in execution of decrees of court or in realization of arrears of revenue. In my subsequent letter of the 23d December 1819, the practice of selling slaves for arrears of revenue was directed, by the Board of Revenue, to be discontinued, in the only district under the Madras Presidency where the practice had occurred; and in laying before the Government, on the 13th December,

their proceedings of the 25th November 1819, with the information which had been received from the provinces, that Board, at my suggestion, proposed that, by an enactment of the Madras Government, it should be declared, first, that the purchase of free persons as slaves should be illegal, and of course subject to penalties; secondly, that the children of all slaves, born after a certain date, should be free, contemplating of course a registry of slaves, and of their children born previously to such date; thirdly, that voluntary contracts to labour for a term of years, or for life, should bind the individual alone, and not his wife, nor children after the years of discretion; fourthly, that, slaves should be competent to possess, and dispose of their property, independently of their master; fifthly, that the purchase of children to be brought up as prostitutes, should be subjected to special penalties; sixthly, that the local civil officers should by a summary proceeding, have power to cause masters to provide wholesome food and decent clothing for their slaves, and to prevent their neglecting them in sickness, age or infirmity seventhly, that the power of corporal punishment should be transferred from the masters of slaves to the local civil officers; eighthly, that slaves bought by their masters should, by repayment of the purchase money, recover their liberty; ninthly, that all slaves attached to lands or estates escheating to Government should be declared free; and tenthly, that slaves, on being ill-treated by their masters, should be allowed to claim the privilege of being sold to another; and that the breach of any of these rules by the master, should, at the option of the slave, entitle him to liberty. It was also recommended, that the share of the harvest granted to the agrestic slaves in the Tamil country, should be augmented at the expense, not of their masters, but of the Government itself.

Having soon afterwards left Madras for duties in the provinces, the fate of these suggestions remained unknown to me, until my attention was recalled to the subject by the receipt of your letter, enclosing the queries under reply; when, on reference to the papers on Indian slavery, printed by order of the House of Commons, I perceived that, by the Madras Government, they were merely "ordered to be recorded."

A vis inertiæ, hostile to all change, seems inherent on the local Governments of India, imbibed perhaps from the people subject to their rule, whose characteristic peculiarity is a tenacity of long-established customs. Even when improvements are suggested by the constituted authorities, the voice of their servants has little weight in favour of new measures. Responsibility is avoided by following

the beaten track, and silence is the safest reply to those who propose a deviation from it, even for the sake of humanity. The outcry raised in India against the suttee was long powerless, until it returned reverberated from the British shore; and that against slavery will continue disregarded, unless it receives support from all the energy of the Home Government.

I am unable to suggest any measures for the amelioration and eventual abolition of slavery in India, less free from objection than those above stated. Subsequent occurrences have since induced, from the highest Court of Judicature, a proposal similar to the first; from Mr. Græme, when a member of the Government at Madras, a proposal similar to the eighth; and from him and Mr. Baber (than whom no one possesses a better knowledge of the western coast) proposals similar to the latter part of the tenth of my suggestions. Whilst Mr. Baber himself also advocates one similar to the sixth rule proposed by me. The late Mr. Munro likewise submitted a proposal similar to the fifth of my suggestions, which is the only one of the whole against which I am aware of any objections having been stated. The arguments against it will be found in Mr. M'Leod's letter of the 13th January 1826; but they appear inapplicable, inasmuch as "preventing parents or guardians from assigning children in the customary modes," to be brought up as dancing women, is quite distinct from "the purchase of children" on that account.

But setting the fifth suggestion aside, the absence of any objection against the other enactments proposed by me, and recommended by the Board of Revenue at Madras for adoption by the Government, confirmed as the expediency of several of them has been, by the other authorities I have mentioned, will, I trust, under the moderate caution and attention to vested rights which I hope will be found to pervade the proposal of the whole, find, for some of them at least, a more able and successful, though not a more zealous advocate.

III.—An Historical account of the Christians on the Malabar Coast, by the Venerable Archdeacon Robinson. a. M.

PART 3D.

(Continued from the 104th page of our 2d Number.) We have now arrived at the most memorable event in the history of the Church of Malabar, the forcible intrusion of a foreign jurisdiction, and the bold and persevering measures employed by the

Archbishop of Goa for reducing this foreign diocese to the dominion of the See of Rome. Other expedients had now failed, and Menezes, impatient of delay, resolved on the decisive step of assembling a general synod in Malabar, overawing their deliberations by personally presiding in their counsels, and thus adding a shew of legal sanction to the constitution he was determined to force upon their acceptance.

The remarkable person who undertook the enterprize was in every way fitted for its execution. Bold, uncompromising, and fierce in his natural disposition, shrinking from no personal labour in the great cause of Papal supremacy to which he had devoted himself, and prepared to crush every opposing difficulty by the combined forces of temporal power and spiritual intimidation; such a man was an admirable instrument of Papal ambition in the subjugation of a distant province, and his conduct fully justified the wisdom of Clement in his selection. The simplicity of the people with whom he had to contend was no match for the Archbishop and his Jesuits; and it might have been expected that their characteristic timidity would quickly have been overborne by the power that was arrayed against them. But there was a principle, the strength of which he did not calculate, of deep and unalterable attachment to the antient Church from which they derived their faith; and, though they were too feeble for direct resistance, his purposes were baffled by perpetual delays. They yielded to the storm, but remained still unconquered, and the history of the synod while it brands with infamy the agents of such unprincipled aggression, has opened to us one of the most interesting pictures of suffering Christianity. In the rough but nervous language of Geddes,--“ in the doing of this, though the Archbishop was instrumental in letting the world know "more of the orthodoxy of that apostolical church, that it's like they would ever have known of it otherwise, we have reason to "bless Providence, but none at all to thank him for it, who intend"ed nothing less than the making such a happy discovery.

* The Archbishop, sailed from Goa on the 17th of September 1598, and after spending some time at Cannanore in some political arrangements entrusted to him by the Vice Roy, arrived at Cochin on the 1st of February 1599. He was received with great ceremony by the Bishop and the Governor; and communicating his design to the principal ecclesiastical and civil authorities, he summoned the

*The present narrative is slightly abridged from La Croze and Geddes, the authorities which I have followed in the former part of this Sketch.

Archdeacon of Malabar to repair to Cochin. This summons being repeated a second time and with the fullest assurances of personal safety, the Archdeacon, with the advice of the Catanars and the principal laymen, determined to admit the foreign Prelate into their Churches, if he came there, but without prejudice to their own jurisdiction. This resolution was registered, and they vowed to maintain it inviolable until the arrival of the Prelate they expected from Mosul.

The Archdeacon took the precaution to secure his person by the attendance of two christian chiefs and three thousand of their followers armed with swords and shields. These chiefs were sworn to defend him to the last extremity, even to the indiscriminate massacre of all that should oppose them-an oath which was not discovered before the diocese had submitted to the authority of the Archbishop.

With this guard he arrived at Cochin, where he was introduced by the governor to the Archbishop who received him with every show of friendship. He kneeled and kissed the hand of the Prelate, and all the Catanars who attended him paid him the same respect. This homage is always paid by them to bishops of other Churches as well as their own. The Archbishop, the Governor and the Archdeacon then retired to an inner apartment, and the two chiefs of Malabar took their station, with their drawn swords, behind: the chair of Menezes. In the mean time the Syrians who had crowded in great numbers to the outer apartment, became alarmed for the safety of their Archdeacon and declared that the time was come to die for their religion. They were restrained from violence by a Catanar who persuaded them to wait in silence till their aid should be called for by their chiefs.

This interview terminated in a resolution to visit the Church of Vaipicotta which the Archbishop announced to the Archdeacon, who promised to meet him there with a considerable number of Catanars. At that place was the Jesuits' College for the education of the youth of the Diocese of Angamale. The Prelate arriving there with a numerous retinue, preached to the people in Portuguese, on those words of our Lord (John x. 1.) He that entereth not by the door of the sheepfold but climbeth up some other way, is a thief and a robber. The whole object of his sermon was to prove that no one entered the true gate of the Church but those were sent by the Pope, the only Vicar of Jesus Christ. The folowing day he administered the sacrament of confirmation, which