"What! and be guilty of a breach of faith?" was his resolute answer. "Even my father should not be permitted to make me such a proposal!"
They were ashamed, and left him to remain that night with Serfojee, whom he probably thus saved from foul play, since the jealous and vindictive passions of Ameer Singh had been thoroughly excited. The captivity must have been very wretched, for he observed that the poor boy walked lame, and found that the cause was this:-"I have not been able to sleep," said poor Serfojee, "from the number of insects in my room, but have had to sit clasping my knees about with my arms. My sinews are a little contracted, but I hope I shall soon recover."
When taken out, the poor little fellow was delighted once more to see the sun, and to ride out again. A Brahmin master selected by Mr. Swartz was given to him, and he very rapidly learnt both to read his own language and English. Swartz also interfered on behalf of the late Rajah's minister, Baba, who had indeed been extortionate and severe, but scarcely deserved such a punishment as being put into a hole six feet long and four feet broad and high.
For two years Serfojee was unmolested; but, in 1792, the husband of Ameer Singh's only child died without children, and this misfortune was attributed by the Rajah to witchcraft on the part of the widows of Tuljajee. He imagined that they were contriving against his own life, and included Serfojee in his hatred. By way of revenge, he caused a pile of chilis and other noxious plants to be burnt under Serfojee's windows, and thus nearly stifled him and his attendants. He prevented the Prince's teachers from having access to him, shut up his servants, and denied permission to merchants to bring their wares to him. Mr. Swartz was absent at the time, and Serfojee wrote a letter to him, begging that the English Government would again interfere. It was found that any remonstrance put the Rajah into such a state of fury that the lives of the youth and the ladies we're really unsafe while they remained within his reach, and it was therefore decided that they should be transplanted to Madras. It was a wonderful step for Hindoo princesses to take, and was only accomplished by the influence of Mr. Swartz, backed by a guard of soldiers, under whose escort all safely arrived at Madras, where Serfojee's education could at length be properly carried on.
The youth was so entirely the child of Swartz and of the Government, that it is disappointing to find that he did not become a Christian. No stipulation to the contrary seems to have been made by Tuljajee; but, probably, the missionary refrained from a sense of honour towards the late Rajah, and because to bring the boy up in the Church would have destroyed all chance of his obtaining the provinces, and probably have deprived him of the protection of the Company, who dreaded the suspicion of proselytizing. Still it is very disappointing, and requires all our trust in Swartz's judgment and excellence to be satisfied that he was right in leaving this child, who had been confided to him, all his life a heathen. Serfojee learnt the theory of Christianity, was deeply attached to Mr. Swartz, and lived a life very superior to that of most Hindoo princes of his time. His faith in his hereditary paganism was probably only political, but he never made the desperate, and no doubt perilous, plunge of giving up all the world to save his own soul. Was it his fault, or was it any shortcoming in the teaching that was laid before him, and was that human honour a want of faith? It puzzles us! Here was Swartz, from early youth to hoary hairs unwavering in the work of the Gospel, gathering in multitudes to the Church, often at great peril to himself, yet holding back from bringing into the fold the child who had been committed to him, and, as far as we can see, without any stipulation to the contrary. Probably he thought it right to leave Serfojee's decision uninfluenced until his education should be complete, and was disappointed that the force of old custom and the danger of change were then too strong for him; and thus it was that Serfojee was only one of the many half-reclaimed Indian princes who have lived out their dreary, useless lives under English protection, without accepting the one pearl of great price which could alone have made them gainers.
It is just possible that there may have been too much of a certain sort of acquiescence in Swartz's mind, missionary as he was. He did not attack the system of caste, with its multitudinous separations and distinctions. Of course he wished it to be abolished, but he accepted converts without requiring its renunciation, allowed high-caste persons to sit apart in the churches, and to communicate before Pariahs, and did not interfere with their habits of touching no food that the very finger of a person of a different caste had defiled. He no doubt thought these things would wither away of themselves, but his having permitted them, left a world of difficulty to his successors.
He lived, however, the life of a saint, nearly that of an ascetic. His almost unfurnished house was shared with some younger missionary. Kohloff, who was one of these, related in after years how plain their diet was. Some tea in a jug, with boiling water poured over it and dry bread broken into it, formed the breakfast, which lasted five minutes; dinner, at one, was of broth or curry; and at eight at night they had some meal or gruel. If wine were sent them, it was reserved for the communions or for the sick. Swartz only began, very late in life, to take a single glass in the middle of his Sunday services.
Every morning he assembled his native catechists at early prayer, and appointed them their day's work. "You go there." "You do this." "You call on such and such families." "You visit such a village." About four o'clock they returned and made their report, when their master took them all with him to the churchyard or some public place, or to the front of the Mission-house, according to the season of the year, and there sat either expounding the Scriptures to those who would come and listen, or conversing with inquirers and objectors among the heathen. His manner was mild, sometimes humorous, but very authoritative, and he would brook neither idleness nor disobedience.
Over his Christian flock his authority was as complete as ever that of Samuel could have been as a judge. If any of them did wrong, the alternative was-
"Will you go to the Rajah's court, or be punished by me?"
"O Padre, you punish me!" was always the reply.
"Give him twenty strokes," said the Padre, and it was done.
The universal confidence in the Padre, felt alike by Englishmen and Hindoos, was inestimable in procuring and carrying out regulations for the temporal prosperity of the peasantry at Tanjore, under the Board which had pretty well taken the authority out of the hands of the inefficient and violent Ameer Singh. Districts that, partly from misery, had become full of thieves, were brought into order, and the thieves themselves often became hopeful converts, and endured a good deal of persecution from their heathen neighbours. His good judgment in dealing with all classes, high and low, English or native, does indeed seem to have been wonderful, and almost always to have prevailed, probably through his perfect honesty, simplicity, and disinterestedness.
The converts in Tinnevelly became more and more numerous, and Sattianadem had been ordained to the ministry, Lutheran fashion, by the assembly of the presbytery at Tranquebar, there being as yet no Bishop in India; and thus many, the very best of his catechists, served for many years, at Palamcotta, the first Christian minister produced by modern India. On the whole, Swartz could look back on the half-century of his mission with great joy and thankfulness; he counted his spiritual children by hundreds; and the influence he had exerted upon the whole Government had saved multitudes of peasants from oppression and starvation, and had raised the whole tone of the administration. He was once or twice unkindly attacked by Englishmen who hated or mistrusted the propagation of Christianity. One gentleman even wrote a letter in a newspaper calling a missionary a disgrace to any nation, and raking up stories of the malpractices of heathens who had been preached to without being converted, which were laid to the charge of the actual Christians; but imputations like these did not meet with faith from any one whose good opinion was of any real consequence to Swartz.