they feel convinced that searching inquiry would prove the claims of others to be more than questionable. That the fact is well known that, on several occasions when new territories have been annexed by the government of India, and it has been found that certain voluntary contributions have been customarily made for religious objects by the former authorities, these donations have been continued by the East India Company, under the belief that treaties which guaranteed protection to the rights of the natives of those territories, bound the government also to perpetuate those gifts; although being originally voluntary, they are so still and ought to be withdrawn, on account of their injurious tendency. That in illustration of these remarks your petitioners can point to the celebrated temple of Parboti at Poonah which was a mere private temple of the Mahratta Peishwa, and to the college of brahmans at the same place, which two establishments with other minor temples in that collectorate receive an annual gift from the East India Company of more than £10,000.

That your petitioners have been informed that a custom formerly existed in the Agra presidency by which the government of India presented dresses of honour to Mahommedan Cadis on the occasion of the Eed festival, and that such gifts have been commuted into money payments and are continued to the present day.

That your petitioners have heard on good authority that another custom has prevailed, by which, when the governor-general and other high officers of state in travelling, have approached celebrated native shrines, offerings have been there presented which were paid out of the public purse; and that at Amritsir, Jwálá-mukhi and Tárantáron in the Punjab, such offerings have been presented within a recent period.

That your petitioners have never observed any mention of these offerings in the parliamentary returns upon the subject of idolatry in India, and are aware of other cases which have in like manner been passed over. That for a long period a poojári or brahman priest was employed, at an annual expense of about £200 (or Rs. 2000), in the salt agency at Hidgelee, whose duty it was continually to worship Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of fortune in the empty salt golahs, in order to secure the company's trade against loss; that at the opium agency in Behar a special gift was made to the brahmans to secure good fortune on the sailing of the first opium boats every season towards Calcutta; that in the money advances at the beginning of the opium season certain payments to brahmans were regularly included; and that a similar practice existed in the salt agency at Hidgelee. That your petitioners believe that these practices continued for a long period unknown to the heads of the respective departments; that

they were never specified in the parliamentary returns, being reckoned in the salt and opium agencies as regular current expenses; that these practices were recently brought to light and then suppressed; and that your petitioners mention them now, because they believe that searching inquiry would probably bring to light other practices of a similar kind.

That while solemn affirmations have been substituted for the oaths formerly taken by Hindus and Mussulmans in the company's courts, the law which permits this variation from former custom has not yet been extended to the courts established by her majesty's charters in India: and that oaths on the Koran and oaths in the names of Hindu deities continue to be administered in those courts as in former days.

That your petitioners have heard with regret that, notwithstanding the positive orders of the court of directors, the residents at Baroda and Nagpore have, within recent periods, recognized and attended in their official capacity idolatrous festivals celebrated by the Hindu rajas of those territories; and that in the latter case such attendance was doubly painful from the fact that, in 1847, the acting-resident at Nagpore, Capt. Ramsay, compelled the missionaries to give up to the raja a young convert who had applied to them for baptism, on the ground that, under the Nagpore treaty with the East India Company, he could not protect the raja's "discontented subjects," and your petitioners remind your honourable house that this view of the obligations of the government of this country was formerly sanctioned by the government of India.

That your petitioners believe that in the Madrissa college in Calcutta, and in various Sanskrit colleges endowed by government, the authoritative precepts, doctrines, and ceremonies of the Hindu and Mahommedan religions are taught at the expense of the government; that the explanations and reasons that have been offered respecting such an anomalous proceeding are insufficient to defend it; and that, in the case of these colleges, one of the most offensive and direct forms of the government connexion with false religions exists, notwithstanding the expressed wishes of the court of directors and of your honourable house, intact to the present time. Your petitioners are aware of the value of these colleges as philological institutions, promoting the cultivation of the ancient and modern languages of India, and it is not therefore to this use of them that the objections above made have referred.

That your petitioners have reason to believe that, by a despatch to the governorgeneral in 1847, the court of directors prohibited their public servants from taking part in missionary undertakings, and thereby conveyed to many minds the impression that

they would view with disfavour all who should not see it to be their duty to be entirely neutral in the great contest of Christianity in this country; and that your petitioners consider such a prohibition, in contrast to the court's own alliance with false religions, with feelings of surprise and sorrow.

Further that, in respect to one of the great obstacles to that full and complete disconnection of the government of India from the Hindu and Mahommedan religions for which they pray, your petitioners would draw the special attention of your honourable house to the regulations of the Indian government respecting endowments for the support of those religions. That by regulation XIX. of 1810 in Bengal, and regulation VII. of 1817, in the presidency of Madras, such endow ments are recognized as "pious and beneficial;" the care of them is vested in the boards of revenue as "an important duty of government;" and questions connected with them have hitherto been placed, not under the jurisdiction of the ordinary civil courts, but under the officers of those boards. That your petitioners consider that several weighty reasons may be urged against those regulations; inasmuch as they constitute the government the trustee of such endowments, and treat them as if they were matters of great benefit to society and of pecuniary interest to the revenue authorities; inasmuch also, as to enforce them fully would bring the government into more intimate connexion with those religions than they have ever yet held; and chiefly, because they now stand in the way of those very arrangements which the government of India has recently been making for disconnecting itself altogether from those endowments. In the Madras presidency, for instance, the collectors have been forbidden to interfere in the management of mosques and temples; yet the regulation which commands them to interfere still continues on the statute-book. While, at the same time, should breaches of trust in their management occur, the civil courts refuse to take them into consideration because that regulation is unrepealed. That this anomalous state of things was brought to the notice of the supreme government of India by the government of Madras, several years ago, and that they have provided no new regulations to meet the difficulty.

That your petitioners feel the need of a searching inquiry into all these subjects. They fear that while public attention has been specially directed to the temple of Juggernath and to the donation which it annually receives, other matters not less important have continued almost unnoticed, although they have the authority of one of the members of the supreme council in India (Sir H. Maddock in his published minute of 1844) for saying, that "the temple of Juggernath is only one of innumerable Hindu temples, receiving

endowments from the government of India."

That your petitioners hailed with lively gratitude the draft of an act which the supreme council of India published in the Calcutta Gazette upwards of a year ago, for the final severance of government from the temple of Juggernath; and that your petitioners hoped that a measure so wise and just, demanded alike by sound policy, public justice, and Christian principle, would speedily be passed into a law; but that now they fear that the views and intentions of the government of India have changed; and that the passing of this act is extremely uncertain.

Your petitioners, therefore, without dwelling on the very solemn subject of the evils of this connexion between a Christian government and the shrines of false religions, respectfully pray your honourable house to take into consideration such further measures as may be required for completing the entire severance of the government of India from the Hindu and Mahommedan religions; to institute a searching investigation into the allegations of this petition; and to have laid upon the table of your honourable house a copy of the despatch of 1847 above referred to, with a statement of its origin and intended aim. Your petitioners especially pray that your honourable house will be pleased to call for a complete, distinct, and detailed statement of every grant now directly or indirectly paid to the above religions, in every district and province of the continent of India under English rule; to institute a rigid scrutiny into the ground and title upon which each one of these grants is claimed, whether it be to mosques or temples, to brahmans or moulvies, to idolatrous ceremonies, or the education of the young in the authoritative shastras of those religions; and to cause every revenue official in India to report minutely on every fact that brings the government into any connexion whatsoever with Mahommedanism or Hinduism in the district under his charge. They pray also that your honourable house will direct the government of India to repeal the two regulations which your petitioners have referred to, and to enact in their stead a regulation applicable to all the presidencies of India by which the endowments of the Hindu and Mahommedan religions shall, like all other trusts, be placed under the jurisdiction of the civil courts.

And lastly, your petitioners will ever pray that the spirit of wisdom and of justice may be abundantly granted to your honourable house by that great and gracious God, who has said that "righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people."

EUROPE.

PERSECUTION IN GREECE.

The Rev. Dr. King, an American mis

sionary, has been imprisoned, tried, and condemned to exile for preaching Protestant doctrine at Athens. The New York Recorder contains a letter from a gentleman in the Piræus to a friend in Brooklyn, who says, "If you have been a reader of the Missionary Herald you are apprised of the contest between Dr. King and the ecclesiastical government of Greece, that has been going on for some years past. This has at length reached a crisis. Yesterday the final decision of the court was given him, which sentences him to banishment from the coun

try. He has fourteen days to get ready for his departure. He will go to Constantinople. Thus, this venerable missionary and Philhellene, who came to Greece with the first store-ship for the relief of famishing Greeks, the almoner of American charities, &c., &c., is compelled to go at the dictation of Russian, Austrian, and French influence at the court of Otho. But this is a judicial sentence; and there must needs be a show of justice in the case, and Dr. King must be found guilty of a penal offence. At this his enemies have been aiming for many years, but with poor success. At last he has been tried under the law in the penal code which prohibits the use of abusive, scurrilous, offensive language against the established religion, and witnesses depose that they have heard Dr. King teach contrary to the perpetual virginity of the mother of God,' and to the doctrine of the real presence in the sacrament of the Lord's supper.' The sentence is based upon nothing save this deposition; and thus the court have found him guilty of a breach of the law in question. The court find no evidence that he has reviled the established religion. The publication of the charge alongside the sentence would be the best possible proof of a judicial persecution in face of law and evidence. Dr. King has never once broken that law, for all that appears in the trial. His counsel ably managed the case before the Areopagus (the highest court of appeal), and showed, clear as sunlight, that he is not an offender, according to the verdict itself of the lower tribunal. Nevertheless, the king's attorney charged that the judges have conscientiously decided otherwise; that is to say, in their opinion, heterodox teaching is a breach of that 14th article !-is to abuse and revile the established religion !

"Everybody knows-it is, in fact, a thing perfectly well understood in the community; that the whole matter, from first to last, has been ruled by government to please the allabsorbing influence of Russian, Austrian, and French powers represented at Athens."

sented to a baptist minister in answer to his inquiries, by the Government of East Prussia, in the following terms :

"In reply to the application of April 17, we, in compliance with the order of March 11, 1850, give for your instruction the following extract from the code of laws then instituted, page 277-If you wish to hold religious meetings, our permission is not necessary, but only that you should, at least twenty-four hours before the commencement of the meeting, give notice of the time and place at which the same should be held to the police court of the place, who will then give you immediately a certificate to advertise the meeting.

larly, so that time and place is fixed, once "If you hold meetings of this kind regufor all, then the notice need only be given once at the police court, namely, twenty-four hours before the first meeting, and a repetition of this for the following meetings is not required.

"It is necessary here to remark that the meeting must commence at the latest within an hour of the time fixed, and if they are interrupted for an hour and recommenced a fresh notice will be required to prevent the incurrence of a penalty. It is also required that under all circumstances, your leaders should, within three days of the formation of your Society lay before the Police-court a certificate of the Statutes, and confession of faith of the same, with a list of the members, and to give any other information which may be required respecting it.

Konigsberg, May 28, 1851. Government Office, Home Department."

PRUSSIA.