The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-03 00:00:00

LORD CANNING ON MISSIONARY
PREACRING IN GAOLS. ,

We take the following important despatch of
Lord Canning to the Punjab Gocrnment from the
Bombay Standard of August 5 :

TO R. H. DAVIS, ESQ., SECRETARY TO THE GOVERN-

MENT or THE PUNJAB AND ITS DEPENDENCIES.
" Sir, —I am directed by the Governor-General in
Council to acknowledge the receipt of your letter,
No. 174, dated the 28th of February last, submit-
ting for an expression of the views of the Govern-
ment of India a correspondence relative to the ad-
mission of missionaries to gaols.
" 2. It appears that in August, 1858, Mr. E. H.
Stevenson, on behalf of the American missionaries
at Sealkote, inquired of the deputy-commissioner
there, Mr. Prinsep, whether there was any objec-
tion to their visiting the Government gaols for the
purpose of talking with the prisoners and extending
among them the knowledge of Christianity ?' Mr.
Stevenson stated his belief that in the central gaol
at Lahore the gospel had in some instances .been
conveyed to. the prisoners by oral teaching and by

the aid of Christian books rind tracts, and that the
Bible had recently been placed within the reach of
the prisoners at Goojranwallah. He asked, there-
fore, whether the missionaries might have access at
fixed hours to the Sealkote Gaol,' and expressed
their readiness, if permitted, to embrace so ' good an
opportunity of proclaiming the gospel among men
who from their circumstances might be disposed to
listen and profit by it.'
" 3. Mr. Stevenson also asked whether the mis-
sionaries could have permission either to raise a
chabooral (or masonry platform) near the Cut-
cherry, for the purp9se of preaching to the hun-
dreds of idle men who are daily congregated
there;' or' to preach within the Government en-
closure without a platform P
" 4. On the Bth of November Mr. Prinsep for-
warded Mr. Stevenson's letter to the commissioner
(Mr. Cust) for orders, stating that he saw no ob-
jection in either case to give the permission asked
for ; but the commissioner on the 16th of November
promptly refused permission, observing that the
practice of admitting missionaries to preach to the
convicts had been interdicted in the Lahore Central
Gaol and in other parts of the Lahore division.
" 5. On the 20th of January, however, Mr. Cust
submitted the correspondence for the perusal of the
Judicial Commissioner, observing that when em-
ployed as a'district officer in the North-West Pro-
vinces he (Mr. Cust) had been in the habit of ad-
mitting missionaries to his gaol, but that after late
events he now thought the practice one which could
no longer be permitted.
" 6. On the 26th of January the judicial commis-
sioner (Mr. Thornton) submitted the papers to the
Lieutenant-Governor, observing that though he
condemned the compulsory attendance of a Moha-
medan or Hindoo convict at the preaching of a
Christian clergyman, yet be questioned the justice
of entirely excluding missionaries from the gaol,
and so preventing the convict from receiving reli-
gious advantages which he might be willing to
accept. Mr. Thornton recommended that mis-
sionaries should be allowed to visit the gaols and to
preach to such, and such only of the convicts as
might wish to hear them.
"7. The subject was then referred by the late
Lieutenant - Governor to the Financial Commis-
sioner (Mr. Macleod), who on the 21st of February
reported that, so far as other gentlemen ffte allowed
to enter the gaols and converse with the prisoners,
missionaries might be allowed to do so, but that
under the existing orders of Government no special
opportunities could be afforded to missionaries, as
this would commit the officers of Government in
their official character to a recognition and facilita-
tion of missionary efforts. Mr. Macleod, however,
expressed his opinion that in declining to afford a
missionary the opportunity of communicating re-
ligious instruction to a convict, especially a life
convict, the Government is responsible for with-
holding the gospel from him, and took the oppor-
tunity of proceeding to discuss the question whether
neutrality in religious matters is a position which
a Christian Government can maintain in India or
not, and to declare his opinion, that while carefully
abstaining from everything like force, constraint,
or inducement by way of reward, with a view to
proselytism, the Government should avow and
evince a preference for the Christian religion.
" In your letter under reply the late Lieutenant-
Governor has expressed his opinion that the exclu-
sion of missionaries from gaols would not be an act
of neutrality, but rather the creation of a disability ;
that missionaries should be allowed to visit gaols
like other persons; that prisoners should not be
' exempted' any more than free natives from the
liability to hear the gospel preached; and that the
fear which the natives entertain is not of missionary
persuasion, but of forcible or fraudulent conversion.
His Honour, therefore, proposes that missionaries
should be allowed, as they have been occasionally
allowed heretofore, free entry to the gaols at certain
hours, and the free exercise of their proper func-
tions, subject to any precautionary rules it may be
advisable to make.
" 9. The Lieutenant-Governor would not allow
the missionaries to erect a platform for preaching
near the Cutcherry, thinking it sufficient that they
are at liberty, there or elsewhere, to preach to the
people.
"The Governor-General in Council cannot con-
cur in the view taken of this question by Sir J.
Lawrence and by the Judicial and Financial Com-
missioners of the Punjab.
" 11. The chief arguments by which the admis-
sion of missionaries to preach in gaols is supported
seem to be—first, that as all gentlemen are allowed
to visit gaols, missionaries ought not to be shut out.
On this his Excellency in Council observes, that
there is no right On the part of any stranger to
visit a gaol, and that although in practice all gen-
tlemen are let in, this is done, not in order that
they may there exercise their calling, whatever
that may be, but that they may see for themselves
how the gaol is conducted. The gaol, too, benefits
by each public inspection. To the entrance of a
missionary upon this footing there is no objection ;
anal, if it be allowed to him, no !injustice will be
done to him as compared with others.
" 12. It is next contended that, as all natives,
when free, are liable to hear the gospel preached, it
it is not fair to exclude them from this advantage
because they are in gaol. On this lam desired to
remark, that if a man is free he hears the preacher
only when it pleases him, and that, if being in gaol
he should desire to do so, it would be quite right
to admit a preacher to him individually. In the
case of a Christian prisoner this would be done, as
a matter of course, under such rules as prison dis-
cipline may prescribe ; and should the case occur of
a prisoner who is not a Christian desiring to hold
intercourse with a Christian teacher, his wish
should not be refused. But this is a very different
thing from giving to missionaries access to gaols
and allowing them to preach to whomsoever they
choose.
" 13. In the opinion of the Governor-General in
Council it is idle to talk of prisoners as free agents,
even in the matter of listening, and even though
(as is conceded in your letter under reply) they are
not to be collected together by guards to hear the
preaching, or to have assent to the preacher's doc-
trine forced upon them, an earnest missionary,
whose zeal would deserve nothing but praise and
admiration if exercised upon men as free as him-
self, could not be trusted so to measure his action
as to abstain from forcing himself upon those who
might desire to escape from him, but who would be
tuhntaobulehtoandy oso ; and to watch his proceedings
g
officer
of competent authority would
be impossible.
" 14. His Excellency in Council cannot easily
imagine a step more likely to be understood by na-
tives as belying our profesSICMS of neutrality in
matters of religion than the sanctioning of the
practice which is here recommended. It would be
impossible to deny that, in adopting that practice,
we were turning the machinery of Justice and civil
government to religious purposes. It is still firmly
believed that we have made men soldiers and have
ordered them to bite cartridges in order to convert
them. It will not do to give a handle to the sup-
position that we sentence them to imprisonment in
our gaols for the same purpose, under the pretence
of a.lministering justice.
"15- I am, therefore, directed to state, for the
information of the Lieutenant-Governor and for
general guidance, that the admission of a missionary
to a gaol for the purpose of preaching is not to be
permitted unless when a prisoner makes a request
for the presence of one. I am to add that the prac-
tice advocated in these papers ;s not in accordance
with the principle of neutrality in matters of reli-
gion, which the Government will observe in all its
measures, and which it will require its-servants to
observe in all their official acts.
" 16. The Governer-General in Council approves
the late Lieutenant-Goversior's intention to pro-
hibit the missionaries from erecting a platform for
preaching in the Cutcherry premises.
" 17. Iu conclusion I am desired to annex a copy
of a despatch on this subject, addressed by the
Honourable Court of Directors to the Govern-
ment of Madras, No. 6, dated the 2d of April,
1845, and to remark that the question relatifs,.
to the policy of Government in matters connected
with religion has been very unnecessarily raised in
connection with the subject in hand, and that it is
singularly unbecoming in officers in the position or
some of the writers who have taken part in the
correspondence to advocate and maintain views on
this important and delicate subject so directly op-
posed to the strong and lately reiterated commands
of her Majesty's Government. The Governor-
General in Council desires that the practice of ori-
ginating remarks and raising and prolonging dis-
cussiona on subjects of general policy, a practice