THE NEGLECTED WELSH IN country is the profession of religion more LONDON.

general. Therefore if Mr. Williams's acTo the Editor of The Baptist Magazine. out of the 40,000 Welsh alleged

count of this matter were true, viz. :-That

be in Dear Sir, I am anxious to be allowed London, only 10,000 attend public worto state, in reference to the letter of the ship-the remaining 30,000 wholly neg, Rev. B. Williams, on the above subject, in lecting it, and living "without God and page 41 of “The Baptist Magazine” for without hope"—the humiliating fact would this month, that the number of persons in tend to show that even the widest diffusion London at the present moment who un. of Scriptural knowledge is not sufficient to derstand Welsh" well, does not exceed preserve the Welsh people from generally 10,000; and at least one-half (5000) of disregarding the worship of God when they this number understand English as well as once leave their mountain homes; or, it they understand Welsh. I do not hesitate would show that Nonconformist teachers to add, that the Welsh residents in the (for they are the teachers of the people) laMetropolis are as moral, and even religious, mentably fail in inculcating those principles as any other portion of its inhabitants. which should bind my countrymen to love I make this statement after consulting the and practise religion even in London. . Census of 1851, and after somewhat care

I am, dear Sir, fully investigating the subject, having had

Yours faithfully, occasion to do so before my attention was

HUGI OWEN. drawn to Mr. Williams's letter. The peo. 21, Richmond Crescent, Islington, ple of Wales are distinguished for their

London, 17 Jan., 1857. acquaintance with the Scriptures, and in no

Notes on the Month.

The past month has been one of surprises. Though in our January number we foreboded a speedy rupture with China, yet it came with startling sudden. ness. The telegraph flashed upon us the intelligence, all the more startling from its abrupt brevity, that the forts had been destroyed, twenty-four war junks sunk, and Canton bombarded. What a fearful amount of devastation and destruction of life and property is described in these few brief words! The despatches indicate pretty clearly that the reason assigned for this appalling chastisement is not the true one. The boarding of a native-built lorcha, whose register had expired, and the capture in her of Chinese subjects charged with piracy, and taken in the very act of smuggling, only furnished the occasion for carrying out a foregone conclusion, a pre-arranged 'policy, and was not the real cause for taking so terrible a vengeance. The almost unanimous verdict of the English press is condemnatory. The case made out by the British authorities in China is admitted to be bad both legally and morally. The only justification offered is that there is some more adequate cause in the background which furnishes the true casus belli. Against this attempted exculpation we do most earnestly protest. To make war on false pretences and with unavowed designs, we hold to be bad policy and worse morality. It constituted the gravamen of our charge against Russia in her aggressions upon Turkey. The political immorality, for the repression of which we arm in Europe, is unseemly and reprehensible as practised by ourselves in Asia.

Scarcely had we recovered from the shock of surprise with which the intelligence of hostilities in China was received, before we were again startled by the news that not merely had it been decided to operate with a military force in Central Asia, but that a British brigade had started for the scene of action, had passed those hideous defiles and dreary wastes in which a few years ago a whole army had been swallowed up, and had arrived within six marches of Cabul. There, surrounded by wild tribes whose homes are impregnable mountain fastnesses, whose trade is plunder, and whose pastime is war, our troops occupy a position where to maintain themselves would be difficult, and to retreat would be impossible, should the wily and fickle Affghans once more turn against u. The policy which dictated this perilous movement is kept a profound secret, as was the movement itself until it was accomplished. May God in his mercy avert the omen afforded by our last advance in the same direction !

At home the great topics have been the alarming increase of crime, and the treatment of our criminals. Murders of frightful atrocity, robberies accompanied with brutal violence, burglaries of unwonted daring, and embezzlements and frauds on the part of persons who seemed above suspicion, have for the last year or two made our newspapers read like a Newgate calendar. How shall we deter from crime, and how shall we deal with criminals ? are two questions which have been forced upon us, and have occupied the pens of journalists, the hearts of philanthropists, and, doubtless, engaged the attention of statesmen. The tendency of society in all such matters is like a pendulum to oscillate from side to side, to fall from one extreme into the opposite ; and it is only after overshooting the mark in opposite directions, for many times in succession, that we find our true centre. There can be no doubt that the tendency of the past century was to extreme severity—there can, we think, be as little doubt that the present tendency is to an excessive lenity. The design of punishment we take to be the protection of society, the infliction of penalties upon crime, and the reclamation of the criminal, if that be possible. If our forefathers overlooked the third of these objects, and allowed justice to degenerate into vindictiveness, we have not less overlooked the second, and permitted mercy to the criminal to pass over into a mawkish sentimentalism. The healthy sentiment of indignation against crime has been in danger of dying rut. The inmate of the gaol has been better fed, better lodged, better cared for, than the hard-working labourer or the aged pauper. The ruler, bearing the word in vain, has ceased to be "a terror to evil doers and a praise to them that do well.” We have sacrificed justice at the shrine of pity, and in the wellmeant endeavour to ameliorate the condition of our criminals, have removed one very important restraint upon the commission of crime.

A great crime which has absorbed the attention of Paris—the assassination of its archbishop at the foot of the altar, when engaged in the most solemn rites of his religion-has been so fully discussed, that our readers will not care to bear more of it. There is, however, a matter connected with it to which we may for a moment advert—the feeling with which it is regarded by the Parisians. That the upper classes think of it with detestation and horror may be taken for granted ; but that the canaille contemplate it with very different feelings is abundantly, evident. Eye-witnesses have described to us the rivolity and mirth of the crowds who have flocked to the spectacle, as indi. cating-what has long been known to exist—the worst possible feeling toward their superiors. “ Poila ce que c'est que de laisser mourir de faim les pauvres," See what comes of letting the poor die of hunger) is reported to have been a constant exclamation, accompanied with much bad and threatening language about the present state of things. So alarming did the demonstrations become, that it was deemed prudent to terminate the exhibition of the body some days earlier than was intended.

From the tragedy of the Archbishop of Paris we turn to the comedy lately enacted by his brother prelate, the Catholic Archbishop of Victoria. We can hardly suspect so grave a personage of quizzing his audience, or satirising his On Church ; yet certainly the following extract from his speech at the inauguration of the Catholic Institute in that colony reads exceedingly like cutting irony. We wonder that he and his audience did not burst out laughing in one another's faces. “Let," said he, " the pages of history be turned over, and it will always be found that the Catholic Church has been foremost in the cause of science; and that whatever freedom Europe enjoys, she is now, and always has been, indebted for it to the Church. How came the Magna Charta? Did not that emanate from the Church? The British Constitution, not as now administered, but as it existed in its bright ideal, in its pure integrity, was precisely modelled on the constitution of the Catholic Church, ke." This we take to be the very sublime of impudence !

Have our readers forgotten Hassenpflug? He was the minister under whose auspices the persecutions were carried on against our brethren in Hesse. He was always understood to be their instigator and promoter. A week or two ago, being at Marbourg on a visit, he applied for admission into the club in that town during his stay. A vote of the members was taken, but instead of being admitted as a matter of course, as is usual, he was black-balled and refused—a pretty clear indication of the feeling towards him. The police took the matter up, and sentenced the refractory members to pay a heavy fine for thus asserting their independence, and venturing to express their opinion upon the persecutions for which he was responsible.

Editorial Postscript.

Our next number will contain an Address on Social Duties, by the Rer. W. Brock, and an article by the Rev. Thos. Pottenger, of Newcastle. It will likewise contain papers on Luther's Courtship and Marriage ; Jacques Bridaine, with Extracts from his Sermons ; the Life of Dr. Cone, of America ; Literature for the Young, &c., &c. The engraving of the new chapel at Downton, Wilts, (which ought to have appeared this month, but which our friends have kindly consented to defer in favour of the new chapel at Shepherd's Bush, the first stone of which is to be laid this month), will also appear in our next number.

We have just received a letter from Mr. Stent, of Hastings, in which he informs us that he has received intelligence of the safe arrival at Madras of Mr. Kerry. The voyage had been, on the whole, very pleasant and without casualty; and with brother missionaries of the Church of England Society he had much pleasant intercourse. The letter is dated Dec. 11.

The list of Baptist ministers given in the December supplement needs the following additions and corrections :

Evans, W. W., 21, West Street, Derby Road, Liverpool.
Evans, D., Newtown, Montgomeryshire.
Harvey, Jos., Little Leigh, Cheshire.
Hill, J, H., Swansea.
Jones, Samuel, Ainerica.
Sage, John, Kenninghall, Norfolk.
Wylie, D. S., dead.
Austin, John, left Tring 2 years, should be 2, Kent Terrace, Deptford.
Baker, George, Hailshamn, is the same as G. Baker, Dartford; the latter is correct.
Couthern, G., should be Southern ; address London ; left West Ilam some time since.
Dixon, John, left Risely 2 years, address London.
Dunning, Robert, Hoxton, should be Islington ; resigned the pastorate at Hoxton

PROHIBITION OF RELIGIOUS TORTURES IN INDIA. The subject of torture in our Oriental Empire bas of late very much engaged the attention of the public at home. We are glad now to find that tortures, as a part of the superstitious practices of the

people, are consigned to the same fate as infanticide and suttee. The progress of civilisation and the effects of an improved administration of public affairs, have doubtless contributed to these results; but far more is to be attributed to the wide-spread influence of the gospel. In these changes we behold some sure signs of our success.

The following remarks are taken from the columns of “The Christian Times;” and no apology is needed for reproducing them to our readers, since they relate to the great cause in which they are so deeply concerned.

So far distant are we from the scene of action, that even in this dullest season, when there is no domestic question moving to engage general attention, people scarcely make any account of an event in India which deserves the most grateful notice. Mr. Duncan Davidson, magistrate of Poonah, a district of the Bombay Presidency, has been instructed to issue a proclamation for abolishing the custom of swinging by the hook, and of self-wounding by swords, practised from time immemorial by the heathen devotees. For some time past, as it appears, the enlightened part of the Indian community has become sensible of the revolting barbarism of such practices; the Government, aware of this improved state of public opinion, caused an inquiry to be instituted, and the result of this inquiry is Mr. Davidson's proclamation. Henceforth, any one attempting to swing or to be swung by flesh-hook, or to drive swords through the fleshy parts of his limbs, will be taken into custody by the police, and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be, of disobedience to authority. A discretionary power as to the penalty seems to be left with magistrates, and we must hope that if the voluntary sufferers do not desist from wounding their persons, and hazarding their lives, for the sake of sprinkling their own sacred blood upon the spectators, proper measures will be taken to compel them to have pity on themselves. This proclamation does great honour to the Indian Government; and, not to speak of the prevention of suttee and infanticide-customs which were long treated as tenderly as if they had grown virtuous and necessary with lapse of time—we very lately heard that, at the request of the Indians themselves, young widows, no longer burnt, indeed, but perpetually doomed to a compulsory widowhood, were released from that obligation, and may now become members of society. After this wise exercise of the prerogative of sovereignty, the Government of India is now removing another of the customs which had been revolting to humanity. Against those customs the tide of public feeling had begun to set in, and their disuse during a few years will no doubt be sufficient to render any return to them impossible.

But what changed the opinion of the most intelligent natives? and what created any intelligence among them ? Undoubtedly that is owing to the influence of Christian missions ; and if it had not been for missionaries, councils and magistrates would never have thought of abolishing these various forms of suicide and murder. In Rome gladiatorial shows abounded in spite of Ciceronian refinement: so, in our Eastern empire, a merely secular civilisation would have not only left human sacrifice rampant in all its forms, but also devised new methods of grati. fying multitudes with religious cruelties on a far larger scale.

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