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THE PHILOSOPHIC INQUIRER
The Philosophic Inquirer, of Madras, a weekly Anglo-Tamil Freethought Journal, has sent us its issue of March 19 with two editorials, and an article in it for republication. We think it but fair to our brave Madras colleague, to help him to circulate the truth about that most disagreeable person—the perstreperous and perspirative orator flung to us over the Atlantic by the Bostonians, who had enough of him. Unless we do so, and, by helping the fearless little Dravidian champion help truth to come to light, very soon all America and Europe would be deluged with missionary tracts spreading broadcast his shameless falsehoods, and still falser reports about his imaginary triumphs in India. It is not because we would avenge our own wrongs—as, on the whole, that poor J. Cook has done us more good than harm—but, as it is useless to expect the so-styled respectable secular Anglo-Indian papers the religious organs being out of question—to come out with a true account of anything that is likely to be distasteful to some of their subscribers, we range ourselves—as we always do—on the side of the minority and of the weakest. With the exception of the Pioneer and the Bombay Gazette, no other English paper in India we know of, however much itself “freethinking” (sub rosa, of course), has hitherto had the courage to pronounce Mr. Cook what he really is—a brutal, coarse, and vulgar lecturer. Therefore, we gladly make room in our Journal for the honest, though rather too outspoken editorials of our esteemed colleague of Madras. May his subscribers increase at the rate of his enemies.