It is needless to enter more minutely into these details; we shall, therefore, conclude with a summary of the state of the Roman Church in India at the commencement of the nineteenth century.

There were at that time two titular Archbishops, Goa and Cranganore: two Bishops, St. Thomé and Cochin and three Apostolic Vicars, or Bishops in partibus, Bombay, Verapoly, and Pondicherry.

The Archbishop of Goa is the romish metropolitan of India; who also takes the title of primate of the East. He has under his jurisdiction the largest number of Christians of all descriptions. Their aggregate number is given at 300,000 souls; and when it is considered that two-thirds at least of the population in the Portuguese establishments are Christians, and that out of 160,000 to be found in the island of Ceylon, two-thirds are said to be of the romish persuasion, under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Goa, it is believed that this number is not exaggerated.

This Archbishop has a native clergy, educated in the seminaries at Goa, and composed, it is stated, of about 1,500 priests, monks, and friars.

The Archbishopric of Cranganore contains about 67,000 souls. About the middle of the last century this mission was in a flourishing state, extending eastward to Madura, and northward to the very shores of the Krishna, and containing above 200,000 native Christians. At present, for reasons already assigned in this Chapter, the total is reduced to about one-third of that number.

This Bishopric of Cochin contains little more than 60,000 Christians.

A. D.

1815.

CHAP.

IV.

The Bishopric of St. Thomé, near Madras, has under its jurisdiction about 50,000 Christians, natives and country-born.

The Apostolic Vicar of Bombay has the smallest number, all the Christians under his jurisdiction not exceeding ten or twelve thousand, chiefly country-born. This mission is attended by Italian Carmelite friars.

The jurisdiction of the Apostolic Vicar at Pondicherry, who is a Frenchman, extends over the Carnatic and Mysore, in which countries are to be found about 35,000 Christians.

The mission under the Apostolic Vicar at Verapoly, which is also attended by Italian Carmelites, chiefly extends in the Travancore country. It reckons 120,000 native Christians, attended by about one hundred native priests, educated by the Carmelites in their seminary at Verapoly. It has under its jurisdiction both Syriac and Latin priests, to officiate in the congregations of both rites; nearly the half of the ancient Syriac community being in connexion with the Roman Church, but retaining their own ecclesiastical language.*

Besides these three Bishops in partibus, a fourth has subsequently been mentioned by the 5 same authority, whose mission is at Agra; but no account is given of the number under his jurisdiction. He also is an Italian.

Here, then, we have the sum total, amounting to 644,000, of Romish Chistians in all India in the year 1815, and we have no data to show that they have since increased. The presumption indeed is, that they have not for the intelligent Jesuit from whom these details are

4 Abbé Dubois' Letters, pp. 52-56.

5 In the Abbé's examination before a committee of the House of Commons already referred to.

taken, acknowledges, that Verapoly was the
only mission in which converts were made, at
the time he wrote, amongst the heathen inhabi-
tants and the character that he gives of the
converts, and of their motives for joining the
church, is such, that he thought them a reproach
rather than an acquisition to the cause.
"I
have it from good authority," he writes,
"that
between three and four hundred pagans are
yearly christened in it, and that this number
might be increased, were the missionaries to
possess adequate means for the purpose. The
principal cause of such extraordinary success,
which is not to be met with elsewhere in India,
is the following."-

"The Travancore country is chiefly inhabited by the tribe of Nairs, who are of all Hindoos the most particular and severe in the observation of their usages and domestic regulations, and who, for the most trifling transgressions of these, expel the offenders from the caste. These outlawed persons being left without help in society after their expulsion, and shunned by all as degraded men, are under the necessity of forming new connexion, and have no other resource left for the purpose, than that of becoming converts to Christianity or Mahometanism. The greater part prefer the latter, the Mahometan religion holding out to them greater temporal advantages, and not imposing on them so many restraints as Christianity."6

Such is the statement made by this author from information on which, he says, he can confidently rely. And we cannot be surprised at his reliance on its accuracy, seeing

6 Letters of the Abbé Dubois, pp. 56, 57.

A. D. 1815.

CHAP.

IV.

that it corresponds with his own experience in Mysore, after thirty years' labour, and with the information he received from his brother missionaries in all other parts of India. He writes - 7

"For my part, I cannot boast of my successes in this holy career during a period of twenty-five years that I have laboured to promote the interests of the Christian religion. The restraints and privations under which I have lived, by conforming myself to the usages of the country; embracing, in many respects, the prejudices of the natives; living like them, and becoming almost a Hindoo myself; in short, by being made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some,'-all this has proved of no avail to me to make proselytes."

66

During the long period I have lived in India, in the capacity of a missionary, I have made, with the assistance of a native missionary, in all between two and three hundred converts of both sexes. Of this number two-thirds were pariahs or beggars; and the rest were composed of sudras, vagrants, and outcasts of several tribes, who, being without resource, turned Christians, in order to form connexions, chiefly for the purpose of marriage, or with some other interested views. Among them are to be found some also who believed themselves to be possessed by the devil, and who turned Christians, after having been assured that on their receiving baptism the unclean spirits would leave them, never to return; and I will declare it, with shame and confusion, that I do not remember any one who may be said to have embraced

7 Ibid, pp. 133-135.

Christianity from conviction, and through quite disinterested motives. Among these new converts many apostatised, and relapsed into paganism, finding that the Christian religion did not afford them the temporal advantages they had looked for in embracing it; and I am verily ashamed, that the resolution I have taken to declare the whole truth on this subject forces me to make the humiliating avowal, that those who continued Christians are the very worst among my flock."

"I know that my brother missionaries in other parts of the country, although more active, and more zealous, perhaps, than myself, have not been more fortunate, either in the number or the quality of their proselytes.'

998

Testimony like this to the prejudice of a cause which the witness himself had so much at heart, must be deemed unquestionable. It is due, however, to many native Christians in India to declare, that the degrading terms in which he describes them are too unqualified. We may be expected to believe what he gives as the result of his own and his brethren's experience of the Jesuit missions: but in the missions of other orders are to be found honourable exceptions to this sweeping condemnation. It is well known, that there are native Christians of the Roman church in India, especially of the Carmelite mission at Madras, whose character is unexceptionable, who occupy stations of responsibility in the public service, and discharge their duties with as much probity and ability as any other class of natives in similar employments. Some have given satisfactory

B

Reference was made to this testimony in Book ii. ch. 3.

sec. 35.

A. D.

1815.