PUBLIC BUILDINGS
was holding the English services in the Portuguese Chapel, the Roman Catholic priests having been temporarily banished from the settlement. This chapel was a small and damp brick building on the site now occupied by the Moorgehatta Cathedral, and here Kiernander, with the chaplain's permission, instituted a Sunday service in Portuguese, his Mission being addressed primarily to the Portuguese Roman Catholics, of whom there were an immense number in Calcutta.
These people, who formed the poorest class of natives, were descendants for the most part of the Portuguese adventurers and soldiers who had come to Bengal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was always the policy of the Portuguese commanders in India to encourage marriages between their soldiers and the women of the country, with the idea of strengthening their rule by ties of interest and affection. At the same time, they steadily refused all official employment to the children of such marriages, and even debarred the children of Portuguese parents who were born in India from the higher offices of Government. Such a policy naturally worked its own ruin; the bolder and more enterprising members of the mixed community, disowned by their father's race, outcasts from their
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