Association, and to the Indigo planters? The learned Counsel would not deny that there were bad men among the Indigo planters, no such large community could exist without containing a portion of the bad element as well as the good. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that Indigo planters had been attacked by more persons than one belonging to the defendant's cloth, but such attacks had been made openly in the public press, and had been answered in the same public way by planters, who had not hesitated to append their names. But how differently was this attack made, not publicly and openly, but with strict injunction as to secrecy! The book was printed by Manuel, the copies sent to Mr. Sandys, and from him to the Bengal Secretariat. The motive that induced this publication was a secret there, and whether it was a political conspiracy or not, of which the Revd. Mr. Long was the working agent, was question which would doubtless be answered some day.
Granting even that the publication was a drama having no particular object, political or otherwise, still if it was likely to create among the Natives a false impression regarding the character and conduct of their European brethren it was the duty of the Revd. Mr. Long, whose occupation was to convert the Heathen to Christianity, to destroy the copies that gave rise to the false impression. That was a much more charitable office than to disseminate slander, and one more conductive by far to the avowed end he had in view, the propagation of the Gospel. How could he expect to make a single convert while the calumnies in that drama were allowed to exist, and painted in the blackest dye the characters of men brought up in that faith of which he was professedly the promoter among the Heathen? Had the conduct of any planters been half as oppressive as made against them? He would not say that there were not some among their body, whose conduct required reprobation, but he utterly denied that any body of civilised men, men moreover whose interest it was to treat the Natives well, could be guilty of the attrocities, could revel in such a glut of vice as depicted in that libellous drama, the Nil Durpan. When the publication had gone forth no definite information could be obtained concerning it, and the Indigo planters' only resource was to select the person who by an Act of Parliament was compelled to put his name to everything
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