circulate by post at one-fourth the then heavy rate. The natives
welcomed their first newspaper. Although it avoided religious
controversy, in a few weeks an opposition journal was issued by a
native, who sought to defend Hindooism under the title of the
Destroyer of Darkness. To the Darpan the educated natives looked as
the means of bringing the oppression of their own countrymen to the
knowledge of the public and the authorities. Government found it
most useful for contradicting silly rumours and promoting
contentment if not loyalty. The paper gave a new development to the
Bengali language as well as to the moral and political education of
the people.

The same period of liberty to the press and to native advancement,
with which the names of the Marquis of Hastings and his accomplished
wife will ever be associated, saw the birth of an English periodical
which, for the next fifty-seven years, was to become not merely
famous but powerfully useful as the Friend of India. The title was
the selection of Dr. Marshman, and the editorial management was his
and his able son's down to 1852, when it passed into the hands of
Mr. Meredith Townsend, long the most brilliant of English
journalists, and finally into those of the present writer. For some
years a monthly and for a time a quarterly magazine till 1835, when
Mr. John Marshman made it the well-known weekly, this journal became
the means through which Carey and the brotherhood fought the good
fight of humanity. In the monthly and quarterly Friend, moreover,
reprinted as much of it was in London, the three philanthropists
brought their ripe experience and lofty principles to bear on the
conscience of England and of educated India alike. As, on the
Oriental side, Carey chose for his weapon the vernacular, on the
other he drew from Western sources the principles and the thoughts