The National Register.
London, England, 1821-01-07 00:00:00

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.I.o' I

.164,.

LETTER FROM THE REV. W. W.
WISSIONADY IX INDIA. TO THE LADIES OT
AAA> *.H.: ILITODOH.

There are Hi olostsan 78,000,090 of your sex who
can .zither read nor write; and 30,01xywei of these are
British suojects. In every country out ameliorated by
Christianity toe state of woman has always been ccccc st
dell mode; but the Hiodou legislators have absoluteiy
made I ten. acquisition of the knowledge of letters a
curse, and they are by a positive prohibition denied all
access to their Scriptures. Wing Live; degraded even
by their sacred writings, women in India are in a state
of ignorance and superstition, wine' has no parallel in
the hist my of tribes the most savage and harba .
A liaise is despised as soon as site is she conies
into the world amidst the frowns of her parents and
friends, disappointed that the child is not a boy. Every
mother aoiong the tribe of Bajpoots puts her female
child to death as soon as burn. While I was in Beoml
I was i.lftollieti of the case of a itajpoot who had spared
one of li•s daughters, and she lived till die attained the
age when India girls are marriageable. A girl in the
house of a Rajpoot was, but ,so extraordinary a
circumstance that no parent chose to permit his son to
marry her. The father then became alarmed for her
chastity and the honour of his family, and he, there-
fore, took her aside one day, and with a hatchet cut her
to pieces! These are the circumstances into which your
sex enter into life in British
In childhood and youth they have ro education, no
cultivation of any kind wh•itever. There is not a single
girrsachoul all India; and the mother being herself
entirely milettered, and being the devoted victim of a
dark and cruel superstition, is utterly incapable or int.
praying her chili'. The first days of the girl are, there-
fore, spent id an inanity which prepares her for a life
doomed to be town in stye 11l i l hes and vice.
In the age or compsrative childhood she is united
marriage without soy knowledge of or having ever seen
her husband: when they meet together for the first
time.they are but id together for life. Thousands who
are thus married in a state of childhood, lose their hus-
bands without having ever lived with them, sod are
doomed to a life of widowhodd; for the law forbids
them to re-marry. Parents in sonic cases marry 50 or
60 daughters to one Brandiun, dial the family may be
raised to honour by a marriage relation to this walk
These females never live with the husband, but in the
houses of their own parents, or they leave the houses
in which they have been thus sacrificed for the surposed
honour of the family, and enter the abodes of infamy
and ruin.
Supp sing the female, however, to hate been united
to a person who really becomes attached to her; what
a mother without the knowledge of the alphabet!--.
wholly unacquainted with mankind, and with all the
emplopitems -,f females in a civilized country; linable
either o• make, to mend, or to wash the clothes of her
household! She never SOS to eat with her husband,
but prep. res is food, waits upon him, aril partakes .4
what ti: 'cites. If a friend of the other sex calls upon
her hi slia•!tl, she retires. She is veiled, or I:9Cs in a
covered Pala (min if site leaves the house. never
mixesin public companies. She derives nn knowledge
from toe other sex, except from the stories C. which she
may Es en from he ;notch of a religious inetidicant.
She is, i • fact, a were animal kept for burden or for
slang ier n the !souse of her husband. A case lately
occuoed in Caleitia of a girl being horn alive on the
funeral pile with the dead body of the youth with whom
she was that day to have been married. You will be
prepared now, Ladies, to expect that sue:. a system of
mental dark••ess will have rendered the sex in tes.lia the
devoted vie aof idolatry: and such victims no other
country, !i•rw ver savage, now-ver bedighted,caie boast.
What must .•e the state of the female mind Vso`2,, Mil.
lions are found throwing the children of their vows into
the sea, w;teti a guard of Hinduo soldiers are occessary
to prevent trios ICIS throwing their living ehild.t• into
the jaws of the alligators these mothers statalitig and
vratc'..i.,g the au ineal while it crushes the lades, tears
the flesh, and drinks the blood of their own offspring!
How deplorable the condition of your sex, when super-
sti.ion tints extinguishes every sensibility of the female,
and every feeling of the mother, and makes her more
savage than the tiger which howls in the forest, which
always spares and cherishes its own offspring.
At the calls of superstition, many females immolate
themselves by a voluntary death in the *acted rivers of
India. A friend of mine, at the junction of the Jumna
and the (kluges, at Allahabad, in one morning, saw,
Irons his own window, 16 females, with pans tit water
fastened to their sides, sink themselves in the river, a few
bubbles of air arising only to the surface of the water
after they were gone down. The drow • gof so many
kittens in England would excite more horror here than
the drowning of 16 of your own sex in India!
But horrors still deeper are connected with the state of
female society in India. The English magistrates in
the presidency of Bengal, in their annual olhcial returns
to the Calcutta peer ttttt ern, state, that in the year 1817
(three years ago) 706 women, widows, were either burnt
alive or buried alive with the dead bodies of their bus-
bands, w that part of Britian India. is there any thing
like tins in the whole records of tittle? Hate firs like
these, and so numerous, ever facets kindled any where
else on earth—or graves like these ever beets opened
Two females roasted ahivecvery day its one part of British
India alone! At non-day, and in the presence of
ti •rous spectators, the poor widow, ensnared and
drawn to the Nueva pile, is tied to the dead body,
• fagots by • levers, and burnt
• .fisted by
her own
set fire to
• which
mother
on her
ipport of

••••••••
• +l.
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• . :AO m•

THE NATIONAL REGISTER

have witnessed many such spectacles, had they not
beets too much (or my feelings. Otter widows are
buried alive : here the female takes the dead body 1111011
her knee, as she sits in the centre of a .Ice;• grave, and
her children and relations, who have prepared the grave,
throw in the earth aru►nmhlter: two of these desceatl
into the grave and trample the earth with their feet
around the body of the widow. She sits an unremon-
strating spectator of the process : the earth rises higher
and higher around her; at length it reaches the head,
when the remaining earth is thtown with haste upon
her, and those children and relations mount the grave,
and tran►tde upon the head of the expiring victim!
0 ye British mothers, ye British widows! to whom
shall these desolate beings look? In whose ears shall
these thousands of orphans cry—loosing lather and mo-
ther in one day—if not to you? Where shall we Rol—
lo what corner of this miserable world, full of the in-
habitants .if cruelty, shall we find female society like
this ?—widows and orphans like these ? Seventy-five
millions in this state of ignorance! Say how long, ye
who never saw a tear hut ye wiped away—a wound,
but ye attempted to heal it—a human sufferer, but ye
poured consolation into his heart—how long shall these
fires burn? these graves be opened ? The appeal my fair
countrywomen, is to you, to every female in Britain.—
Government may do much to put an end to these immo-
lations; but, without the co ication of knowledge,
these fires can never be wholly quenched, rust can your
sex in India ever rise to that state to which Ovine 'Pro'
V idence has destined them.

Don't despair. The victims are nittneruus : hut on
that account shall the life-blmt not leave the shore,—
There can hardly be a ih,sery, connected with human
existence, which the pity and the zeal of British females,
under the blessing of ProVidence, is not able to remove;
and if this dreadful case be properly felt in every town of
the united kingdom, these lama must shortly cease
for ever.

Schools must be commenced; k nowledge must be
communicated: and then the Hindoo female will lie
behind none of her sex in the charms which adorn the
female character; in no mental elevation to which the
highest rank of British females have attained. Other
triumphs of humanity may have been gained by our
Howard., our Clarksons. our Wilberforees ; but this
emancipation of the females arid widows of British In-
dia mug be the work of the British fair.

FROM TUESDAY NIGLIT'S G.IZETTE.
BANKIItiPTS.
G. A. T. Itraggenkate, Little Eattcheap. merchant. Solicitor.
Mr. Wilton. Devonshire Street. Ilishopegate Street.
R. Reynolds, Shobrooke. Devonshire, tanner. Sofa. Meow.
Ilurd and Johnson. Temple.
R. Hardin:A. Liverpool, meiv.diant. So'a. /leers. Atllingtos
and Gregory. Bedford Row.
W. Fwrin. Shiffnal. Salop. tailor. Solt. Memo. William
and Willie, Lioadn's
J. Jr;•iginun, grocer. Solt. Me- a. Long and Co.
G: aj'a
J. and .1. t.ii.ntliat. Hamrick upon Tweid, mereln.nts. Solo.
deltic td Co. Temple.
W. El:,;e. 1-oekthire. ewn merchant. Soh. Mann.
t'. y, Tz wide.
It. • 7'. i'ltl V. •Pr l.t at:Nubs and M'ideomba.
So—..• ^ .ru. • vit. Sol. Mr. Sergi ant's Inn.
W. s• • - Cur-;zl.l.l'e.ta orks'•ire, dealer in cattle. Sul.
Mr. V. +7-• e e litlion Garden.
U. t ewith Not .1 ""ca iltsper. Vs. Meant Bell
11.,ti.:ek, Dors Clitevi. 1 a ti
G. Welh. 'i*". oak . M. liey:!rl and Ogle.
Lord Mayor's Cum,
itIeNIIS.
Jan. 27, C. Edwards, G.su:,+ Square. furrier-27. T. Moto.
field, IC:7gann upon Thames, violater-27. G. Hadley.
Greenwich, draper-27. A. F. Kemp. Austinfriars. merchant-
-27. R. and IL Townend. Mitre Court. Fenchurch Street, mer-
chants-2', B. Snowden, Harrow on the Hill, grocer-2/. J.
Woods, jun. Forties. baker-24, J. Welch, Atmsworth, Lan:
ratilre, axton cloth manufacturer-IM, J. Hockey, Llangtun.
Alonmoathalii .e, fanner-30, T. Damon. Manchester, victualler
J. Holt, Manchester, dyer—Feb. UU, W. Thomas, Great
St. Tho.nev Anostle, agent.
CERTIFICATES to be grated Jan. 2S.
H. Hay. Newcastle Street, Strand, printer—J. Lovell. Yea
Wharf, Lambeth, stuns merchant—W. Fretnow. Great Yu-
mouth, chytnitt—J. Imbrie, Ilucklersbury, wat.thOuseman.

HOMEWARD BOUND Slum—The following let-
tar has been addressed to Mr. John Bennett, the
Secretary at Lloyd's by onler of the At!iniralty:—

(COPY.)
" Admiralty Office, Jan. I.
" Sll,—liating laid before my Lords Commissioners of
the Admiralty your letter of this day's date, stating, that in
consequence of the cut and north-east gales, which bare
prevailed daring the last week, many homeward bound ves-
sels are prevented from getting into port, amid having been at
sea some time may he in want of water and provisions, and
assistance from the severity of the weather, mind expressing
the request of the Cmansittee for inamigilig the nth tors of
Lloyd's that some ships of oar may ise ordered out with sop-
plies for the relief of the trade; lam commanded by their
Lordships to acquaint roe, fur the inforianilion of the Com-
mittee, that directions are given to the Admirals command.
ing at Portienout:i, Plymouth, and Cork, to send oat any of
their cruisers that they tan get at for the above impose.
" I am, etc. (Signed) J. W. CItOKEIL
" Mr. John Bennett, jun., Lloyd's."
A most respectable meeting was held on Thursday
at Lambeth, for the purpose of congeatulating the
Queen, addressing thz King, and petitioning the
House of Commons. It appears from the speech of
Mr. Schultes that the act of striking her Majesty's
name out the Liturgy will shortly become cogniza-
ble before a jury of Englishmen ; such an intention
hail been hinted at some time ago, and we are glad
to find it true. We shall not repeat our former ar-
guments on this subject, or quote the legs' authori-
ties advanced by this gentleman in support of his
opinion, that every clergyman who so omits her Ma.
jesty's name is liable to a prosecution.


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pressed down on the fagots by strong levers, and
alive, her se:remits among the flames being drown
shouts and music. Amidst the speciaitors is lieu
a so. her first born, who, tremendous idea! has set
lily ',regress of the flames
• it sue 10 Collblllike il.e tit ing mother to ashes, the n
woo led hum nom her breast, and dantlled hint
knees, and who ..itee looked top to I as the sup'
the .1C169111/44 fla.ss of hert•elf awl his (Ales.
Not: sects Limt: widows this, b alive, and