If Government
schools and schoolmasters taught Christianity, whatever pledges
might be given of teaching it only to those who spontaneously sought
it, no amount of evidence would ever persuade the parents that
improper means were not used to make their children Christians, or
at all events, outcasts from Hindooism. If they could, in the end,
be convinced of the contrary, it would only be by the entire failure
of the schools, so conducted, to make any converts. If the teaching
had the smallest effect in promoting its object it would compromise
not only the utility and even existence of the government education,
but perhaps the safety of the government itself. An English Protestant
would not be easily induced, by disclaimers of proselytism, to place
his children in a Roman Catholic seminary: Irish Catholics will not
send their children to schools in which they can be made
Protestants: and we expect that Hindoos, who believe that the
privileges of Hindooism can be forfeited by a merely physical act,
will expose theirs to the danger of being made Christians!
Such is one of the modes in which the opinion of the dominant
country tends to act more injuriously than beneficially on the conduct
of its deputed governors. In other respects, its interference is
likely to be oftenest exercised where it will be most pertinaciously
demanded, and that is on behalf of some interest of the English
settlers.
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