Madison times. (Tallulah, Madison Parish, La.) 1884-1???, 1884-04-26
THE HIND00 PROBLEM.
The Misery of Over-Populaticn Increased
by English Rule and Christianity.

NJ. d. Conway on India.
Every rough method by which nature
was wont to relieve herself Of a surplus
population has been abolished by the
benefcence of. the English government.
The population grows thicker and ever
thicker upon the soil, increasing by mil
lions the number of paupers-fcr they
are all more or less paupers-festering
and squalid in their misery. Ofpruden-
Dental check upon population there is
none.
There is, on the contrary, the most ae-
tive stimulant to over-population in the
religion of the people. With them the
nope of salvation in the. future life for
any individual depends upon the pray
ers, the ceremonies, the incantations.
which are performed for him by his off
spring. To have. many sons, and for
them in turn to have many sons, is es-
sential to the happiness Of the Hindoo.
1t is their prayers which buoy up the.
SOtl lllOf hcdNtH. D.. b..
The soul of him who has no sons nat
urally gravitates into perdition. There
fore in India the first duty of man is to
breed. The women are mere child pro-
ducing machines. Children are not born
in. India; they are spawned. What
the end is to be no man can tell. Before
this increase of population swelling
more and more day by day, year by year
our best and wisest officials recoil in
blank dismay.
They have not even much hope that
some terrible famine will sweep off in
one year more millions than the smaller
famines have killed in the course of a
generation, for famines have been got
under. The only prospect that some
seem to see is that a great war would
break out, in which the surplus popula
ton would get itself massacred out of
existence. But how the natives were to
get killed without the English sharing
their fate never could understand. Yet
they are cheerful in the midst of it all.
DR.. w. w. Hunter, from whom / expe-
rienced the utmost kindness at Calcutta
displays CHEEKY optimism, and faith in
difficulty being solved somehow, which,
contrasted very strangely with the grim
reality. r.. ... &.
Yet what can be done? So far as we
are introducing any moral or religious
faith into India we are introducing a
faith which directly confirms the most
pernicuous doctrine of the native relig-
ion. The Old Testament, written in
time when the Jews required many men
for the defense of their frontiers against
their neighbors, made a supreme felicity
of man the possession of numerous off
spring. Blessed is the man that has
CULVER full OF Them" was the sentiment
of the Old Testament in relation to
large families, and that a mans seed
should be as the stars of heaven for
number, or as the sands of the sea-shore
was the supreme blessing.
Hence, instead of checking over-popu-
latien by our Christianity, we are direct
ly increasingly. Protestant Christianity
is more to blame that Roman, for Pro-
testantism re-established the Old Testa-
ment, which the Roman church had
gradually sided into obscurity. Protes-
tanism restored Jehovah to the throne
from which he had fallen, and reasserted
in the modern world the doctrines that
had their origin in a far different stage
of human evolution. ..r- t- .'