"Its population consists almost exclusively of Hindoos: a quiet, inoffensive, industrious, submissive people, possessing little energy, less courage, and no ambition; concerning themselves not much about their own government, and not at all about the government of any other country; more frugal and abstemious than any other nation, and perhaps equal to any other nation, not in enlightened acquirements or refined precepts of philosophy, but in natural capacity and practical morality; attached, above all things, to their religion, which is always before them, from the uprising of the sun to the going down of the same – it enters into all the concerns of their daily life, it regulates the minutest detail of their domestic affairs. They feel, not an impetuous, ostentatious enthusiasm, but a quiet yet deeply profound sentiment of passive devotion, which excluding, unhappily, the light of reflection and reason, perpetuates from age to age, and from generation to generation, the errors and extravagances of a primeval superstition. But multiplied and impenetrable as seem to be the defences which thus encompass and preserve the prejudices of the Hindoos, there can be no doubt that these will at last give way to the persuasive influence of Christian communication and instruction, if duly seconded by the effect of Christian example; provided that this great and desirable work, this best result of our dominion in the East, be not frustrated by acts of impatient zeal or offensive interference."