“But, whoever was first in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore took care to be most so.  They called in the interposition of Government, and sent up such petitions and memorials as I never saw before or since; made up of lies, invectives, bragging, cant, bad grammar of the most ludicrous kind, and texts of Scripture quoted without the smallest application.  I remember one passage by heart, which is really only a fair specimen of the whole:  ’These missionaries, my Lord, loving only filthy lucre, bid us to eat Lord-supper with Pariahs as lives ugly, handling dead men, drinking rack and toddy, sweeping the streets, mean fellows altogether, base persons, contrary to that which Saint Paul saith:  I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’

“Was there ever a more appropriate quotation?  I believe that nobody on either side of the controversy found out a text so much to the purpose as one which I cited to the Council of India, when we were discussing this business:  ’If this be a question of words, and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters.’  But though, like Gallio, I drove them and their petitions from my judgment seat, I could not help saying to one of the missionaries, who is here on the Hills, that I thought it a pity to break up the Church of Tanjore on account of a matter which such men as Swartz and Heber had not been inclined to regard as essential.  ‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ’the sooner the Church of Tanjore is broken up the better.  You can form no notion of the worthlessness of the native Christians there.’  I could not dispute this point with him; but neither could I help thinking, though I was too polite to say so, that it was hardly worth the while of so many good men to come fifteen thousand miles over sea and land in order to make proselytes, who, their very instructors being judges, were more children of hell than before.”

Unfortunately Macaulay’s stay on the Neilgherries coincided with the monsoon.  “The rain streamed down in floods.  It was very seldom that I could see a hundred yards in front of me.  During a month together I did not get two hours’ walking.”  He began to be bored, for the first and last time in his life; while his companions, who had not his resources, were ready to hang themselves for very dulness.  The ordinary amusements with which, in the more settled parts of India, our countrymen beguile the rainy season, were wanting in a settlement that had only lately been reclaimed from the desert; in the immediate vicinity of which you still ran the chance of being “trod into the shape of half a crown by a wild elephant, or eaten by the tigers, which prefer this situation to the plains below for the same reason that takes so many Europeans to India; they encounter an uncongenial climate for the sake of what they can get.”  There were no books in the place except those that Macaulay had brought with him, among which, most luckily, was Clarissa Harlowe.  Aided by the rain outside, he soon talked his favourite romance into general favour.  The reader will consent to put up with one or two slight inaccuracies in order to have the story told by Thackeray.