and we can add of our own knowledge, if Dr. Parr is a faithful interpreter of his friend's habitual modes of thinking, that he wholly disapproved of the coalition-war against France, on the ground of policy as well as of justice, uniformly adhering, though with the modifications suggested and sanctioned by successive events, to those grand swelling sentiments of liberty, which animated his early years, and the attachment to those master-principles in the civil governments and policies of mankind, which study and contemplation had fixed in his mind.

On the 4th April 1807, Lord Teignmouth was appointed a Commissioner for the Affairs of India, and was sworn one of the Privy Council a few days afterwards. His activity and zeal in the formation of the Bible Society, in 1804, are prominent features of his life, and strong indications of his sincere convictions and warmth of piety as a Christian believer. He had the honour of being fixed upon as the fittest person to preside over that well-meaning, though, in many particulars, mistaken institution; the high names of Porteus, Fisher, Burgess, Gambier, Charles Grant, and Wilberforce being associated with his own. Lord Teignmouth presided over the society in a catholic and amiable spirit of good-will and benevolence towards all sects and

communities of Christianity. He conducted it through many difficulties and controversies, some of which were unusually stormy and contentious.

We must not forget to observe, that Lord Teignmouth was earnestly bent on converting the natives of India to Christianity, and in 1811 he published a tract on that subject, entitled “Considerations on communicating to the Inhabitants of India the knowledge of Christianity." His recorded opinions concerning the moral character of the Hindus approached the lowest possible estimate that has yet been framed of it. It is probable, therefore, that his earnestness in that important though difficult aim, was strengthened by the notions he had imbibed of the Hindu character. They are recorded in a paper he presented to the Governor-general in 1794, and printed in the minutes of evidence on the trial of Mr. Hastings. One of the data assumed, somewhat too undistinguishingly, is this: "Cunning and artifice is wisdom with them; to deceive and over-reach, is to acquire the character of a wise man." Mr. Mill relies on this testimony with the most implicit acquiescence; and in the debate on the missionary clause, in 1813, it was the basis of the reasonings of Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Charles Grant. Lord Teignmouth's estimate, however, of the Hindu character, in which

he emphatically declared that the utmost ethical excellence of their moral system consisted in the greatest dexterity of mutual fraud and circumvention, must be taken with considerable restrictions; for he himself most candidly admits that it was framed exclusively from considerations of the moral condition of the Bengal provinces. Yet how strikingly does it stand contrasted with the beautiful attestation of Mr. Hastings in the House of Commons, on the 14th July 1813,-and the still more emphatic declarations of Colonel Munro on the same occasion! There is no doubt, therefore, allowing the utmost possible weight to the opinions of so correct an observer as Lord Teignmouth, that his religious opinions, which were uniformly of the high evangelical class, must have had, unconsciously perhaps, no slight influence in convincing him of the depraved condition of the people to whom he was so benevolently solicitous to impart the blessings of Christianity.

Lord Teignmouth died at the advanced age of eighty-two, 14th February 1834: his widow did not long survive him. He lived surrounded by every thing that ministers comfort to life, the attachment of a large circle of friends, and the affections of an amiable family; and his death was rendered cheerful and easy by the consolations of religion. Few

men have been more eminently useful in their destined spheres of action; few have more amply merited the honours bestowed on them, or better vindicated their rightful claim to elevated rank by their talent and integrity, than Lord Teignmouth. We might enlarge upon his personal and private virtues, but we restrain ourselves, in the language of Tacitus: "Abstinentiam et integritatem hujusce viri referre, injuria fuerit virtutum.”

RAM MOHUN ROY.

BETWIXT Asiatics and the nations which belong to our system of civilisation, there is a line of separation so broadly marked, that they seem superficially, in respect to moral as well as physical properties, almost to be of distinct species. When the Siamese ambassadors visited Paris, in the seventeenth century, La Bruyère tells us,* that the inhabitants of that city were as much surprised that their oriental guests could discourse rationally, and even sensibly, as if they had been monkies endowed with speech and human action: "forgetting," he observes, "that reason is confined to no particular climate, and that correct thinking may be found in all the branches of the great family of man." The surprise of the Parisians would have been more natural and excusable, had its object been a brahmin of Hindustan-a solitary example amongst

Tome ii. ch. 12.