INTRODUCTION.
XXVll
from without. An Englishman would not he thought that he would thereby cease to be an Englishman, and the Hindu has a far more extravagant idea of his own natural superiority than even we have. The qualities which secure it from decay equally deny it all power of development and completely arrest the. completion and free circulation of labour without which progress is impossible. As an instrument of police repression it is within its own range of unsurpassed efficiency, and in formalizing and giving its utmost force to the sanction of public opinion it excels any other code resist all influence
eat with a
Hindu
if
in the world in its choice of a penalty. selection and limitation of the offences to applied.
Before estimating it is
its
effects
on
It only fails in the
which
its
penalty
is
the national character,
as well to attempt an outline of the character
itself.
There
can be no doubt that the different nations of the world are distinguished by peculiar moral and intellectual traits, or at any rate, by the predominance in special cases of traits common to all, and the inhabitants of the various parts of the Indian continent are for this purpose as distinct as the different peoples of Europe. Still, generalizations as to national character are so exceedingly complex, and rest on such a multitude of ill-understood and conflicting single intances, that there is hardly anything on which it is more difficult to form a true opinion any case where hasty decision at first sight is so certain to bepride ourselves on our national honesty ; but that is wrong. hardly the first virtue with which a foreign dealer in Manchester
—
We
cottons would credit us. "Writing two centuries before Christ, of the Hindus most like those of Oudh in the neighbouring kingdom of Patna, an educated Greek selected as the leading feature in their character their honesty and integrity in the ordinary relations of life and paradoxical as it may sound to most English ears, it is probable that this is almost as true of the Hindu village of to-day as it was of the Buddhist court of two thousand years ago. Even among our own servants no one can fail to have been astonished at the absolute safety with which large sums of money may be
entrusted to their keeping, when theft would be almost impossible of detection and would secure them comfort for the remainder of their lives. In the higher ranks the well-paid and educated office clerks are faithful and trustworthy beyond any other class of men who can be procured for their responsible, What has been said applies to their relations with foreign duties. masters, for whom they can rarely feel any affection, anjl who not
