ma. SIDNEY HERBERT ON RELIGIOUS "NEUTRALITY."
At a meeting in aid of Church Missions in South Africa held at Wilton on Monday, Mr. Sidney Herbert, who occupied the chair, set forth his views on our religious polity in India.
"We hear discussions now as to what are the duties of the English Go- vernment towards the native races in India—we have heard discussions whether or not our duty m that of neutrality in religion. I have nothing to do with India ; but this I must say, that a more unfortunate word was never used for the purpose for which we are met together than that of neu- trality. I do not believe that any Christian sect or any Christian man can ever be neutral upon the question of Christianity. What is meant, I ap- prehend, in India is this—that in dealing with the natives of that country, while we tax them for the purposes of Government, we must respect their edings—we must not attempt to bribe or coerce them into belief. In India we hare difficulties which are peculiar to a nation like ourselves. A Roman Catholic people would have no difficulty in the world in dealing with the question of religion in India. They would at once coerce into belief or coerce into a semblance of belief; but we are not only Christians, we are Protestants, and the political dogma which lies at the bottom of all Protest- antism, or at any rate, the natural deduction from it, is that ofreligious liberty. We cannot and ought not to attempt through the superiority of our civilization—through the force which adventitious circumstances may have put into our hands—to compel any class of men to accept our belief, however impressed we may be—and, as regards Protestanism, I hope we ever shall be impressed—that it is the foundation of the liberty and happi- ness which we enjoy." (Cheers.)
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