Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/58

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LORD AMHERST

told, inclining to Whiggism; and one of their leading men gave a great dinner not long since in honour of the Spanish revolution.'

Christian sentiment also was getting into the air; it was the time, we must remember, not only of Henry Martyn and of Marshman, but of Horace Hayman Wilson and of Rám Mohan Rái. If the latter did not quite satisfy the description given of him, that he was essentially a Christian, he represented the movement of rationalizing reform in Hinduism. Protestants and Puritans, Mystics and Rationalists there have been from the first in that vast community, but with Rám Mohan Rái began the phase which has the closest affinities with the thought of the West.

By the 'pious clauses' of the Charter Act of 1813 an English Church establishment had been created for India, that is to say a bishop of Calcutta and three archdeacons were appointed to superintend the chaplains who were already scattered throughout the country as servants of the Company. It is possible to smile now at the earnestness with which this recognition of an English State religion was denounced when it was proposed by Mr. Charles Grant in the House of Commons. Hindus and Musalmáns, instead of rising in protest against this recognition of a foreign faith, were well pleased to see that the new masters were not after all without a creed and a form of worship. Had there been any discontent or ill-will, the journeys which Bishop Heber made throughout British India while Lord Amherst was Governor-