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by and see a struggling and imploring victim , whose health mi g ht be restored by a few hours' care , placed breast-high in the advancing tide , and overwhelmed with slime and water till his feeble cries are silenced for ever ? Such scenes are daily witnessed by those who pass the Ghauts , or flights of steps which lead down to the Ganges . We are told that
" The Brahmuns can , as may serve their interest , devote any sick branch of a family to death ; and incredible numbers are destroyed by this bloody superstition . A gentleman told me , as he passed a place called Culna , a little above Calcutta , that he saw a set of Brahmuns pushing a youth , of ubout eighteen years of age , into the water ; and as they were performing their work of suffocation with mud , he called on them to desist . They answered calmly , ' It is our custom—It is our custom . He cannot live ; our god says he must die . '"—Ghaut Murders , p . 7-
To detail the facts of these Ghaut murders , and to remonstrate against the apathy which allows their perpetration , is the object of Mr . Peggs' third pamphlet . We hope that the dreadful truth of his statements , and the force of his remonstrances , will awaken a multitude of readers to consider what ought to be done , and how much it is in the power of individuals to effect . It is clear that , however scrupulous the British Government in India may be about interfering with native laws and ceremonies , it is bound to protect
the lives and property which are not declared to be forfeited by those laws and ceremonies . If widows are sacrificed otherwise than voluntarily , if the ignorant worshipers of Juggernaut are seduced to suffering and death by artifice which is authorized instead of prevented ; if religious rites afford a pretext only for foul murders on the banks of the Ganges , the blood of all these victims is on the head of those who have broken their promises of justice and protection . The native subjects have as strong a claim on the
Government for the protection of life as the Europeans ; and their being unable to urge their claim , renders it the duty of their happier brethren to do it for them . It should be done without delay ; and it should be done efficiently . Of individual protests and solitary remonstrances there have been many ; and they have proved nearly useless . It is time to try what can be done by the united voices of thousands ; by protests from the whole community ; by remonstrances from Christians of every denomination .
That miihons of our brethren of mankind should be sunk in a barbarous superstition , addicted to rites of impurity , degraded to the lowest rank of rational beings , is an evil which may be borne , because it must be borne , till time and benevolent exertions have wrought those intellectual and moral changes which legislation can never effect . But the sacrifice of life and the accumulation of misery which might be prevented by law , are not to be tolerated by any who can assist in abolishing " the evil . Juggernaut must still be a god , nig temple must yet be thronged , the Ganges must still be esteemed holy , till the darkness which can be suddenly dispelled by no human fiat , shall have fled away : but the law of temporal life and liberty is in our hands ; and how shall we answer for our negligence in delaying to administer its blessings ? When we repose in the sanctity of our Sabbaths ,
and feel what are the peculiar privileges of our Christian faith , we can do little more than pray lor the extension of those privileges to our heathen brethren , and look forward hopefully to the hour when the light which is yet scarcely dawning shall stream afar over their lands . Our utmost exertions to hasten that hour are due , but should be used with as much patience as zeal . But when we look on the institutions of our happier country , and
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842 India ' s Cries to British Humanity .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1829, page 842, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2579/page/26/
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