man fell from a stage thirty cubits bigh, and broke his back; and another fell from the swinging-post, but was not much hurt. Some days after the first swinging, certain natives revived the ceremomonies: as Brother Ward was passing through Calcutta, at this last period, he saw several Hindoos hanging by the heels over a slow fire, as an act of › devotion. Several Hindoos employed in the printing-office applied this year to Brother Ward for protection to escape being dragged into these pretendedly voluntary practices: this brought before us facts which we were not aware of. It seems that the landlords of the poor, and other men of property, insist upon certain of their tenants and dependants engaging in these practices; and that they expect, and compel by actual force, multitudes every year to join the companies of sunyasees in parading the streets, piercing their sides, tongues, &c. To avoid this compulsion, many poor young men

leave their houses and hide themselves; but they are sure of being beaten if caught, or of having their huts pulled down. The influence and power of the rich have a great effect on the multitude in most of the idolatrons festivals: when the lands and riches of the country were in few hands, this influence carried all before it; but it is still very widely felt in compelling dependants to assist in public shows, and to contribute towards the expense of splendid ceremonies. Through Divine goodness, however, the influence of commerce, the more general diffusion of wealth, and the intercourse of Europeans, are raising the Hindoos from this state of abject dependence on their spiritual tyrants; and thus, providen. tial events are operating with the Gospel to produce a happy change on the great mass of the population, especially in the more enlightened parts of Bengal."

THE Treaty of Peace between the allied powers and France has been at length happily concluded. It was sign ed at Paris on the 20th instant, and arrived in London on the morning of the 23d. We reserve our observations upon it until its stipulations shall have been made public, At present they are only subjects of conjecture.

We are happy to observe that the French government has begun to act with a degree of firmness and vigour which affords the best security for the maintenance not only of its own internal tranquillity, but of what every considerate man must feel to be deeply involved in it, the general repose of Europe. The harmony which seems to subsist between the king's ministers, and the chambers, and the disposition shewn by both to omit no means which may be necessary to repress the turbulence of those revolutionary spirits, whose proper aliment is civil commotion and foreign rapine, tend to generate in the friends of order that confideuce which is not only favourable but indispensably necessary to the stability of the Bourbon throne. The enemies of that throne will doubtless be indefatigable in their endeavours to effect its

subversion. Every art of misrepre sentation will be employed to render the possessors of it odions in the eyes of their own people and of other na tions. We know by experience how skilful in the use of this weapon is that jacobin party, still so numerous both in France and England: for so success. fully has this country been assailed by their misrepresentations and calumnies, and so inefficacious have been our efforts to repel them, that the name of England is, even at this moment, most strangely associated, by the general population of France-we may even say, of the continent at large-with whatever is insincere and hypocritical in profession, and selfish and base in policy.

It was to have been expected that the partizans of jacobinism would leave no means untried to bring the Bourbon race into general discredit. They have accordingly laboured, and in this effort they have been but too successful, to connect the atrocities which have recently, taken place in the South of France with the Bourbons, and to ascribe them to the persecuting spirit of the French government, as their origin. So effectually, indeed, have they sue.

ceeded in filling the public mind with the persuasion that these acts of violence and blood have emanated from the bigotry of the Bourbons, that it has become unsafe to question the truth of the position. We, however, shall not be deterred by any degree of popular clamour-even though that claInour should be heightened by the voices of many whom we love and venerate from declaring, that, after having examined with impartiality much that has been said, and we believe all that has been published, on the subject, we remain of the opinion not only that there is no evidence to prove that the Bourbons have had the remotest share in exciting or encou raging the atrocities in question, but that even the evidence produced by their adversaries, as far as it has any weight at all, goes directly to their exculpation.

The work which appears to have made the strongest impression on the public, to the disadvantage of the French government, is one to which the name of the Rev. J. Cobbin is prefixed. But we must say, with all due deference to those whom that work may have influenced, that the effect produced on our minds by its perusal has been to remove every latent apprehension which lurked there of the participation of the Bourbons in the enormities which it describes. Had the case been as clear as that writer pretends it is, why should he have swelled his pamphlet with a history of all the persecutions which have ever taken place in France, in order that the accumulated odium of them might fall on the devoted head of Louis XVIII.? Is not this a striking exemplification of the usual artifices of the jacobin school-of those artifices by which they *succeeded in persuading the French nation that Louis XVI., the mildest of monarchs, was a cruel and bloody tyrant, whose crimes the national justice required him to expiate on the scaffold?

We admit that great atrocities have been committed at Nismes; and we are disposed to believe that religious rancour has had a great share in instigat ing them. The Protestants, indeed, are anxious to prove that their sufferings have been in no degree connected with their political delinquencies. But by the very attempts they have made to

account for it, their advocates have admitted the fact that they were generally favourabe to the cause of the Usurper, and averse to the return of the Bourbons. Even Mr. Cobbin says, "The Protestants expected this persecution, and the restoration of the Bourbons was a matter of dread to them for some time before it occurred, as the Catholics had shewn such a disposition to persecute on their first return." But when, or where, had this disposition manifested itself? We call for evidence. Every part of France was tra versed during the summer and autumn of 1814, by English travellers, many of them deeply interested in the religions state of France. As far as our information has gone, not one of them ever intimated that any such disposition had shewn itself This charge was first heard of when it became necessary for certain persons to blacken the characracter of the reigning family in France, in order to extenuate their own dis loyalty. But it is said the Protestants expected persecution, and the return of the Bourbons was therefore a matter of dread to them. This fact is important. We all know that Protestants, as well as Papists, are susceptible of unreasonable prejudices; and to what lengths of opposition such expectations and apprehensions as it is admitted the Protestants generally entertained, were likely to excite them, is sufficiently obvious.

The truth, in this instance, seems to be, that the animosities which were first excited by political events assumed, in their progress, a religious cha racter; and that the bigotted Catholics of the Sonth availed themselves of the favourable opportunity which the convulsed and agitated state of the country gave them, for gratifying their religious no less than their political hatred. But we might with as much fairness attribute the riots at Birmingham, in 1790, to George III. and Mr. Pitt, as the atrocities perpetrated at Nismes to Louis XVIII. and his ministers.

But we are asked, why did not the French government reply to certain memorialists and pamphleteers, who acensed them of favouring persécution? They did what was much more becoming their dignity,-they sent a military force to restore quiet, and ordered their courts to bring to justice the actors in these tragedies. What can be

a more convincing proof of the earnest desire of the French government to vindicate the right of the Protestants to the fullest toleration, than that their own commander was shot by a iniscreant while carrying into execution their orders to that effect?

It will be argued, however, that more prompt and summary measures should have been taken to protect the Protestants. It may be so: but the assertion remains to be proved. It would, perhaps, be even more just to attribute to our government a favourable leaning towards the London rioters of 1780, or the Nottinghamshire rioters of 1813, on account of the tardiness with which their progress was arrested, than to accuse Louis XVIII, of favouring the insurrections of Nismes, because, in the then distracted state of his country and of his councils, they were not instantly suppressed. Indeed, the same feebleness and languor were shewn in all the public measures of that period; and in this case the king's jacobin ministry might possibly not wish to deprive their adherents of a popular topic of declamation against the royalists.

But it is asserted, as a strong collateral proof of the alarming bigotry of the Bourbons, that they have shewn themselves adverse to the scheme of national education, which was commenced by the short-lived government of Bonaparte, and which is still proceeding in France under the superin tendance of a Protestant clergyman.

If Roman Catholics had felt some dislike to a plan which confided the national education to a Protestant, it was no more than we had a right to expect. Should we like to see a Catholic clergy. man at the head of the central school of our National School Society? We can remember the alarm (an alarm even now in active operation) which the idea even of Quaker superintendance diffused over the whole kingdom.-But, is there any ground for the insinuation which has been so invidiously brought for ward of hostility to this scheme of education on the part of the Bourbons? On the very forenoon of the day on which we write, it was announced in the Freemasons' Hall, by the Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, that the king himself, and the duke of Berry, had liberally contributed to the support and extension of the system, that it had been expressly sanctioned by

the government, and was zealously pro. moted by the prefect of the Seine.

It is undoubtedly true that Bonaparte's government introduced the new plan of education; but they wished to make it subservient to their anti-christian views. The commissioners under whose direction it was placed, most peremptorily interdicted the use of the Scriptures, or even of any extracts from the Scriptures, in any of their schools. The Bible, they pronounced to be a mischievous book, fit only to make monks of the people.-Since the return of the Bourbons, however, a new commission has been appointed, who have not only entered with zeal into the scheme of extending the benefits of elementary education throughout France, but have restored the Bible to its just rank in the institution of youth. The Bible is now read in all the schools. Nay, the very same pious Protestant clergyman, M. Martin, who filled the situation of superintendant under Bonaparte's com missioners, retains that situation still, and daily receives from the royal commissioners the most unequivocal marks of their approbation and esteem.

Under these circumstances, we cannot but deeply regret the unjust clamour against the Bourbons which has been excited in this country at the present moment,—a clamour tending to weaken the hands of the French government, to diminish the just influence to which the voice of the British public is entitled, and to serve the cause of jacobins and revolutionists. Let us at least not assume the Bourbons to be guilty of a profligate departure from every pledge they have given, until their guilt is proved. And certainly that proof ought to be very clear and unequivocal before we venture to interfere, by means of popular meetings, between a government situated as that of France now is and its subjects.

We were on the point of sending to the press what we have written above, when the newspapers of this morning (Nov. 27) brought us an ordinance of the king of France, dated the 21st inst. "An atrocious crime," says his majesty, "has stained our city of Nismes. In contempt of the constitutional charter, which acknowledges the Catholic religion for the religion of the state, but which guarantees protection and liberty to other forms of worship, seditions assemblages have dared to oppose

themselves to the opening of the Protestant church. Our military commander, in endeavouring to disperse them by persuasion, before he resorted to force, has been assassinated, and his assassin has sought an asylum against the pursuit of justice. If such an attempt should remain unpunished, there would no longer be public order nor government, and our ministers would be guilty of the non-execution of the laws." It then directs measures both civil and military to be taken against the disturbers of the public peace.

We need not point out how strongly this document corroborates all our previous reasonings on the subject.

Having thus fully expressed our opinion, as indeed it was our bounden duty as Christians Observers to do, we are anxious to deprecate its injurious application to those benevolent individuals who have seen it to be their duty to publish to the world a series of strong resolutions on this delicate subject. The only charge we feel in the slightest degree disposed to prefer against them, is that of precipitation. They have lent themselves, as we think, without due consideration, to the designs of those who have only factions and party purposes to serve, by implicating the French government in the guilt of persecution; and while we are persuaded they have been actuated by the purest motives and most upright intentions in the steps they have taken, we confess that we regard those steps as at least prema ture. Had they privately made their application to his majesty's ministers in the first instance, and ascertained from them the facts of the case; had they even urged them to exert their powerful influence with the court of France, to give full efficacy to the liberal principles of the constitutional charter, they would have had our best thanks.

The course they have pursued, (supposing the Bourbons to be entirely innocent of the weighty charge which those resolutions imply, and from our hearts we believe them to be so,) is certainly calculated to alienate their minds from their Protestant subjects, rather than to conciliate their favour towards them.

Let it be considered for one moment what would be the effect, on the govern ment and population of this country, of a similar proceeding, on the part of foreign nations, with respect to our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects. We know, it is true, that these are not now the sub.

jects of persecution, in any legitimate sense of that term. But this is by no means the prevailing sentiment on the continent. There is scarcely an individual in France who does not believe that the Roman Catholics, especially those of Ireland, are a persecuted people. Even so enlightened a man as the Abbé Gregoire, in a pamphlet lately reprinted in this country, stigmatizes our conduct towards the Irish Catholics, as finding its parallel only in the enor mities of the African slave trade. If, acting on this impression, meetings should be called in France and Italy, in Spain, Portugal, and Austria, in order to urge their respective governments to remonstrate with England on her con duct; wonld the effect be salutary? Should we not be disposed to say, that' the Irish Catholics had vilified their own government, and, insensible of the favours conferred on them, had, by their misrepresentations and unfounded clamours, excited the unwarranted interference of foreign nations? And should we be the more disposed on that ac count to shew them fresh favour?

But we have heard the case of the slave trade adduced as a precedent in point. But what was that case? Besides that the slave trade is properly an inter-national question, a subject belonging of right to the great community of nations, England had given back to France several valuable colonies in which she herself had abolished the slave trade, not only without stipulating for the continuance of that abolition, but with an express agreement that the slave trade should be permitted for five years. Here, it was our own conduct chiefly which was the subject of com. plaint.

The cases would have been parallel had England given its sanction by treaty to the oppression and persecution of the Protestants. But what is the fact? It is this, that the constitutional charter, promulged with the privity, and sanction ed by the express approbation, of all the allies, makes it, in the most explicit manner, a fundamental law of the state, that all Frenchmen, of whatever faith, should be equal in their civil rights; that perfect liberty of religious worship should be enjoyed by all denominations; and that not only the Catholic ministers, but the ministers of other churches, should receive salaries from the state. What more could be desired than this? And, this is the law of France, solemnly insti