A small and temporary improvement may really be the worst enemy of a great and permanent improvement, unless the first is made on the lines and in the direction of the second. And so it may, if it be successfully palmed off upon a society as actually being the second. In such a case as this-and our legislation presents instances of the kind-the small reform, if it be not made with reference to some large progressive principle, and with a view to further extension of its scope, makes it all the more difficult to return to the right line and direction when improvement is again demanded. To take an example which is now very familiar to us all: the Education Act of 1870 was of the nature of a small reform. No one pretends that it is anything approaching to a final solution of a complex problem. But the Government insisted, whether rightly or wrongly, that their Act was as large a measure as public opinion was at that moment ready to support. At the same time it was clearly agreed among the Government and the whole of the party at their backs, that at some time or other, near or remote, if public instruction was to be made genuinely effective, the private, voluntary, or denominational system would have to be replaced by a national system. To prepare for this ultimate replacement was one of the points to be most steadily borne in mind, however slowly and tentatively the process might be conducted. Instead of that, the authors of the Act deliberately introduced provisions for extending and strengthening the very system which will have eventually to be superseded. They thus, by their small reform, made the future great reform the more difficult of achievement.*

These words seem to me to be especially worthy of being deeply pondered. Much might be said upon them. All I shall say at present is, that I have reason to think Mr. Morley illinformed as to that clear agreement of which he speaks. I have myself been assured by the two statesmen chiefly responsible for the Education Act of 1870, that it was not designed as a step towards the supersession of voluntary and denominational schools; that neither of them had the least intention to bring about the "future great reform" which Mr. Morley so earnestly desires, and desires naturally enough, because he is well aware that it would supply the most effective means of undermining the Christianity of England, and of making straight the paths of the new religion. W. S. LILLY.

"Compromise," p. 230.

ART. II.-PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN SOUTHERN INDIA-TANJORE.

MOST

OST of the Protestant missions in India are of recent origin. Very few of them date back farther than the beginning of the present century. Among the oldest, if not the oldest of all, is the mission of Tanjore. Here Protestant missionaries have been at work for more than a hundred years. Here, if anywhere, we might expect to see at the best advantage the results of their labours.

Tanjore is a district in Southern India. The city which gives it a name stands on the lower course of the Cauvery, and the district includes the rich delta of that river. Its fertility has won it the title of the garden of Southern India. In the last century Tanjore was one of the States of the Mahratta league, but in 1799, its Rajah Sharabhoji placed his territory under British protection, and practically ceded it to the Company. On the death of his son Sivaji in 1855, the ruling family became extinct, and the annexation of the district was completed.

Early in the 17th century the Rajah of Tanjore had ceded to an enterprising Danish captain the seacoast town of Tranquebar. The place became the centre of the Danish trade with the East, and in 1706 King Frederick IV. of Denmark sent thither Ziegenbalg and Plütschan, the two first Protestant missionaries who had ever appeared in India. Tranquebar soon became the headquarters of an active Lutheran propaganda. About 1728 some native Catholics at Tanjore apostatized and became Lutherans, chiefly through the influence of a soldier who had been converted" by the missionaries during a visit to Tranquebar. After this Tanjore was visited by Pressier, a member of the Danish mission; but it does not appear to have become a permanent centre of Lutheranism until Swartz arrived in India.

Christian Frederick Swartz * was one of the most remarkable of the early Protestant missionaries in India. He was a man of considerable mental power, with a marked talent for languages, and a great influence over the minds of other men. No one who reads his letters can doubt his earnestness and zeal for the diffusion of what he held to be the truths of Christianity. He was born at Sonnenburg, in Prussia, in 1726, and in 1750 he went out to India to take part in the labours of the Lutheran mission, of which he became before long the most active and

*The name is now often written Schwartz, but the missionary himself used to write it Swartz.

prominent member. In his missionary journeys he occasionally visited Tanjore, and in 1769 he was introduced to its ruler, Tuljaji Rajah, on whom he made such a favourable impression that their acquaintance soon ripened into friendship. After this his visits to Tanjore became more frequent, until in 1778 he established himself permanently there. By this time there was a British resident at the Court, and an English garrison at his command, so that Tuljaji was practically a tributary prince. Swartz was protected and assisted by the Rajah in various ways, and he showed his gratitude by being helpful to him when the occasion offered. Thus in 1782 he made him a loan of about £400. Five years later when Tuljaji was on his death-bed he adopted as his son a young prince of his house, named Sharabhoji, appointing his brother, Amir Singh, regent during his minority, and Swartz his tutor. Before he died, Tuljaji handed to the missionary "a written document, sealed by himself and his chief ministers, in which he made an appropriation for ever of a village, of the yearly income of about five hundred pagodas (£200), for the school, and more especially for the orphans." This was not the only grant Swartz received for his mission from the authorities at Tanjore. Later on we find him accepting a monthly grant in aid of the Protestant poor of an adjacent mission. There is no doubt that he accepted these grants in a most disinterested spirit, and used them with prudent care that they should not degenerate into bribes for proselytes; but in the hands of less worthy, or less prudent successors, the funds of the Tanjore mission have proved, as we shall see, a fatal possession.

Swartz died in 1798; it says much for him that he was all his life opposed to the marriage of missionaries. He held that men who came to do such work should be wholly devoted to it, and should have no other interests in the world, and he practised what he preached. Self-interest of any kind had no part in his character. He had unbounded influence with the successive rulers of Tanjore, and with the East India Company's representatives in Southern India, and there is no doubt that he used it only for the advantage of the people among whom he laboured. Swartz worked at Tanjore in connection with the English Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, to which he had transferred himself from the Danish mission some time after his arrival in India. The establishments of the Danish mission at Tranquebar were, in 1841, handed over to the Leipzig

Pearson: "Memoirs of Swartz," ii. 145.

Ibid. ii. 146.

In 1826 the S.P.C.K. transferred its missions in the Madras Presidency to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Madras Diocesan Committee was formed in connection with the S.P.G. to direct them.

Evangelical Lutheran Mission. In most India districts, by an arrangement between the missionary societies, only one of the various forms of Protestantism is presented to the natives. In the Tanjore district this convenient arrangement does not exist. The Danes have gone from Tranquebar, but the German Lutherans have taken their place, and pushed their operations to Tanjore itself. There is therefore a standing quarrel in the district between the representatives of Lutheranism and those of Anglicanism. Both claim "Father Swartz" as their own.

It is not easy to say how many or how few Protestants there were in Tanjore at the death of Swartz. Dean Pearson, his biographer, gives no statistics. Three years later, however, in 1801, Gericke, his successor, reports: "It is delightful to see the growth of the Tanjore mission, and the southern congregations dependent on it. The inhabitants of whole villages flock to it. What a pity that there are not labourers for such a great and delightful harvest!" Our business, however, is mainly with the condition of Tanjore at a much more recent date. But before we pass on to these matters, we have a glimpse of the state of the mission some thirty years after the death of its founder. In 1834, Macaulay wrote home from his summer quarters in the Nilgheries +:

By all that I can learn the Catholics are the most respectable portion of the native Christians. As to Swartz's people in the Tanjore, they are a perfect scandal to the religion which they profess. It would have been thought something little short of blasphemy to say this a year ago; but now it is considered impious to say otherwise, for they have got into a violent quarrel with the missionaries and the bishop. The missionaries refused to recognize the distinctions of caste in the administration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the bishop supported them in the refusal. I do not pretend to judge whether this was right or wrong. Swartz and Bishop Heber conceived that the distinction of caste, however objectionable politically, was still only a distinction of rank; and that as in English churches the gentlefolk generally take the sacrament apart from the poor of the parish, so the high-caste natives might be allowed to communicate apart from the pariahs. But whoever was first in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore took care to be most so. They called in the interposition of Government, and sent up such petitions and memorials as I never saw before or since; made up of lies, invectives, bragging, cant, bad grammar of the most ludicrous kind, and texts of Scripture quoted without the smallest application. I remember one passage by heart, which is really only a fair specimen of the whole :-"These missionaries, my lord, loving only filthy lucre, bid us eat Lord supper

"Memoirs of Swartz," ii. 441.

"Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," ed. 1878, vol. i. pp. 383, 384.

with pariahs as lives ugly, handling dead men, drinking rack and toddy, sweeping the streets, mean fellows altogether, base persons, contrary to that which St. Paul saith: 'I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' . . . . I could not help saying to one of the missionaries who is here on the hills, that I thought it a pity to break up the church of Tanjore on account of a matter which Swartz and Heber had not been inclined to regard as essential. Sir," said the reverend gentleman, "the sooner the church of Tanjore is broken up the better. You can form no notion of the worthlessness of the native Christians there." I could not dispute the point with him; but neither could I help thinking, though I was too polite to say so, that it was hardly worth the while of so many good men to come 15,000 miles over sea and land in order to make proselytes, who, their very instructors being judges, were more children of hell than before.

Let us now see if matters have improved much in fifty years in this the oldest Protestant mission in India. The last census (1881) gives the following religious statistics for the Tanjore district. Out of a total population of 2,130,383, there are 1,939,421 Hindus, 112,058 Mohammedans, and 78,258 Christians. Of the Christians, no less than 67,292 are returned as Roman Catholics; and of some seventeen hundred Christians the precise denomination is not stated. This leaves some 9,000 non-Catholics who are thus divided among the sects:

The Church of England does not appear to great advantage in this list, but probably some of the 5,705 who are returned simply as "Protestants" belong to the S.P.G. mission. Of the Catholics, 65,745 are natives, against 8,367 native Protestants We now compare these last figures with the results of the preceding census:—

"Natives" are Hindus, to the exclusion of Eurasians, who, however, are a mere handful in Tanjore.

VOL. XVII.—NO. 1. [Third Series.]

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