[Communicated.]

Colonist, Issue 23, 8 January 1858, Page 2

[Communicated.]

" High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Omus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand.;. Showers on lier kings barbaric pearl and gold: i- S.tan exalted sat." Alas for the horrors of war, like lurid meteor J lights they stare at us fearfully and wildly in our travels through historical pages. Ruin, desolatioa and death have invariably followed these demoniac footsteps. Ghastly spectres rise in fearful array from every little field, their hollow voices are mournfully eloquent, with .many a tale of savage cruelty. Heartrending moans of mothers, sisters, daughters, fathers, brothers, sons, mingle in bitter weeping with the shrieks of their loved and lost. Ransacked territories, homes torn to pieces, all the sacred sweets of life changed into the most intense bitterness of the wormwood and gall. Time would fail us to recount the numerous train of mighty evils which are the results ofthe established method of determining justice between nations. Yet while the past famishes us with many a sad record of the hatef. 1 contests in which our forefathers were engagd, it tells us not of a time when the brutalized passions of men were morelet loose than they h:ive been in this enlightened age. " Tis strange, iis passing strange. Tis pitiful, tis wondrous pitiful," that this era of philanI thropic enterprise, of advance in every department of science and literature, should bear so many inI delible marks of bloodshed. Horror-struck at the revolting scenes in the East which we know only by hearsay ; heart-sickened at the malignant in- . | juries perpetrated on the hapless sons and daughters of England, containing a long black catalogue !of human woe, mournfully we ask, Why this fiendish tumult ? Why the tenfold murders that have destroyed by piecemeal the victims of those men whose ferocity far outstrips that of the lion and tiger in their jungles ? Why such fearful dire confusion Eife with horrors yet untold; ..>•- ---i Where nature in her rich profusion tf r\ Spreads her glorious cloth of gold. Truly ' - the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty," and appearances wolild warrant us in the supposition that in the infernal • dwelling place of lost spirits, a consultation had been held among the powers of darkness, for the plotting of one of the foulest schemes of misery and destruction on some part of the human family,-, that after the agreement had been entered into they fixed upon the dark and benighted Hindoos as williug agents in the black work, and then sent forth from the regions of weeping and wailing aiid gnashing of teeth " a fearfully qualified host bent on their horrid mission. More appalling, more revolting than the severed limbs and tortured bodies of our country women were the seared and lawless passions that raged tempest-like and tumultuously in the hearts ofthe vile perpetrators." Crime upon crime enacted without a parrallel, as all the powers of evil fought for mastery, and for a season obtained it, with doings terrible beyond description. Awoke in terrified astonishment by these fierce atrocities, the voice of the British lion roars in vengeful wrath throughout the gorgeous laud of sunshine and wealth. It is but as yesterday that the autocrat of Russia entered on the sleep of death taking with him to his supulchre the blood of murdered thousands. - Since then the devastation which threatened to sweep over \ all Europe has been stayed in its sanguinary- progress. The mighty potentates of the continents unitedly placed the sword in its scabbard and plucked each a leaf from the sacred olive branch of peace. But the sword has had no time to rust. Deep and bitter was the cry for retaliation that called for its unsheathing. And the infuriated Saxon warriors stung to madnes by the sorrowing detail of their countrymen's sufferings—rush tigerlike to the conflict, literally obeying the ancient mandate, "Let not your eye spare; neither .have pity." Havoc ragee. Beneath the calm clear

brilliancy of an»JMian sky, the ground, is soaked with the commflflftd blood of nations, and the air rent with the"?l|>mmingling cries of.mari at war. with/his fellow man. Fraught with the most lamentable recital of disorder and bloodshed that history;has ever presented; the Indian Mutiny will ever stand out in unenviable notoriety among the records of the.nineteenth century, and wlip can contemplate a scene so replete with pollution and crime f without casting a longing look for the speedy arrival of that day when Truth shall prevail universally in all its beauty and magnanimity? What confidence, we ask, can be placed on the tawney worshippers of Seeb, Krishnoo and Kalee! or a thousand other deities the marked characteristics of whose services consist in deeds of foulness and blood. Of the noble Abdiels who were found "faithful they among the faithless," it might well be said they were men better than their creed. All honour be to them. Their noble nature refused to imbibe the wholesale falsehoods of their teachers. Is it such a matter of astonishment ; this serious outbreak ? Has it never been looked for, from a people trained from birth in a system of treachery and lies, continually sinking lower and lower in the scale of human degradation ? Spending their lives in listless inactivity, "ignorance, vicious sensuality, and to a great extent debasing slavery. They are left without one .pure motive for the exercise of any moral virtue, without one high incentive for the refinement of their social intercourse. Even the belief pf an hereafter tends only to thicken their gloomy mists of error and superstition. To deaden every active principle of life by instilling the poisonous .notion, that the future consists in an endless sleep with no awaking, a vacuum disturbed by no sound, aletheofforgetfulness,where the deeds of the past shall be eternally sunk. What, are we to expect? Truthfulness,justice, honour; a regard for the lives and properties of others —No ? Nothing can warrant us in the expectation, Present disturbances may be quieted, more stringent measures taken on the part of the British Government for the preservation of future peace; but rotten at the core is the whole training system of Hindooism,—and we shall see no sound cliange until its, wily fanaticism be exchanged for the glorious light of Christianity, as the only sure foundation for the inculcation of right principles of duty.