minister at Stirling, Mr. Bogue of Gosport, and Greville Ewing, at that time a licentiate of the Church of Scotland, were to go out as missionaries. These were to be accompanied by an efficient staff of catechists, city missionaries, and schoolmasters; and a printing-press, with its necessary establishment of printers and bookbinders. The whole mission, thus completely equipped, was to be conveyed to India, and, when there, to be salaried and supported entirely at the expense of Mr. Haldane; and, to provide a fund for the purpose, he was prepared to bring to the hammer his rich and beautiful estate of Airthrey, for which he had already done so much. Well might such a man say, as he did, "Christianity is everything or nothing. If it be true, it warrants and commands every sacrifice to promote its influence. If it be not, then let us lay aside the hypocrisy of professing to believe it."
All being thus in readiness, it appeared as if nothing more was necessary than that the mission should hoist sail and be gone. It was a great national undertaking, of which our government should reap the fruits, and that, too, with the unwonted advantage of having to pay nothing in return. Still, however, permission had to be obtained from the directors of the East India Company and the Board of Control, without which the mission would have been treated as an unauthorized intrusion. It was not forgotten, also, that Carey had been obliged to commence his labours, not in British India, from which he would have been excluded, but in the Danish settlement of Serampore. But it was thought that a better spirit, the result of a more matured experience, had descended upon our Indian legislators; and that so extensive and liberal an enterprise, superintended by one of Haldane's rank, character, and high connections, would scarcely be met by a refusal. Thus also hoped Robert Haldane, and he applied accordingly, but was rejected. Politicians, who had not yet recovered from their astonishment at the facility with which our Indian empire of twenty millions of subjects had been won by a few British bayonets, and who feared that such a sovereignty might be lost as rapidly as it had been gained, could at present see no better mode of retaining their conquest than by keeping the natives in profound ignorance. If Christianity was introduced, the Hindoos would become as knowing as ourselves, and where, then, would be our superiority ? It was alleged, also, that an attack upon Brahminism, like that which a Christian mission implied, would kindle such resentment throughout the whole of Hindoostan, that instant revolt would ensue, and end in the expulsion of the British from the country. To these political motives in behalf of such a selfish forbearance, religious ones were also added. It was asserted that Brahminism was a religion the best of all fitted for India; that it was a mild, innocent, and virtuous system; and that, by disturbing the faith of its worshippers, we could at best only translate them from good, pious Hindoos, into very questionable Christians. These motives prevailed, notwithstanding the powerful influence with which Haldane's application was supported, and the persevering urgency with which it was reiterated.
In this way was quenched one of the noblest and most comprehensive schemes of Christian philanthropy that distinguished the religious history of the eighteenth century. Of the proceedings of its originator, in consequence of this heavy disappointment, he has himself given the following account:—"For some time after this (1797) I did not lay aside my endeavours to go out to Bengal; and, in the meanwhile, was busied in selling my estate, that there might be no delay on my part, if obstructions from without should be removed
