We must not permit ourselves to condole with you, Sir, on your persecution. You have suffered in a good cause—the cause of your Divine Master—the cause of the poor, the needy, and the oppressed. The sympathies of Christian England are with you. The natives of India have vied with each other in their expressions of regard. Your missionary brethren have bestowed upon you their cordial commendations. Lastly, you must be sustained by a consciousness that you have performed your duty, and that your prosecution will tend to open the eyes of world to the real character of the System which has incarcerated you in a gaol; and that, by the force of a living example, you have commended Christianity itself to the acceptance of the teeming millions of India.—Extract from the address of the Aborigines' Protection Society to the Revd. J. Long.
The Planters had on their side the confessedly bad libel law of India; they pressed it to the uttermost in a vindictive spirit against the missionaries, but they have overreached themselves.—The Freeman.
The Calcutta judges have certainly established a very dangerous precedent. The liberty of the press was defended in phrase upon the bench, but, in fact, it has been seriously wounded in the house of its professed friends.—The Scotsman.
It is certain that the prosecution will not improve the position of the Planters in the estimation of the public here. Everyone knows that the cultivation of Indigo has been compulsory and unremunerative, not from the fault of the present body of Planters, who took their factories over with the outstanding balances, by which the ryot was bound to cultivate, and under the operation of which he ceased to be free agent. In conversations on the subject in this country, I have heard it remarked that there can be no severer condemnation of the system of Indigo cultivation, than the fact that Government had successively raised the price fixed to the ryot for growing the poppy, while the price of the Indigo plant had remained for twenty, thirty, and forty years, without any improvement. As to the conduct of the Bengal Secretary in circulating the pamphlet under an official frank, as he has himself expressed his regret for this act of indiscretion, I need not advert to it. There can be no doubt that but for this inadvertent act there would have been no prosecution of Mr. Long, and but for the exasperated state of public
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