This inconvenience would be apt to be attended with effects of the most serious nature in the case of an Hindoo of any of the superior castes; an association, however involuntary, with persons of an inferior rank, or contaminated character, causing forfeiture of caste, which, among the Hindoos, is productive of the same afflictions as excommunication at its first institution was intended to produce amongst Christians---extreme infamy and an utter exclusion from society, but that of persons marked with the same stigma. It has been said, I hope without truth, that by some unhappy neglect, when the Rajah Nuncomar, a man of the first rank in Bengal, was in custody for the forgery for which he was afterwards tried under the laws of Great Britain, and executed, proper care was not taken to protect him from this ideal contamination. If this be true, before he was proved guilty, he was made to suffer a punishment greater perhaps than that to which he was afterwards sentenced.