XIIX
INTRODUCTION,
always ready in moments of strong excitement to forget the
more elevated
rules of morality, is still further weakened by having been accustomed to accord them only a secondary place in his ordinary views of life. It is this which makes it so very dangerous to trust him implicitly. Honest and faithful under common temptations, he has no living moral principles to sustain him under the strong and unreasonable accesses of passion to which he is liable, or against sudden or extraordinary appeals to
On the other hand, his ancient literature, full of the noblest sentiments, familiarizes him with high ideal rules of conduct which bear fruit when circumstances are favourable. Of circumstances he is pre-eminently the creature a richly-gifted child, but a child to the day of his death, capable of the grandest self-devotion or of the basest moral turpitude. The natural kindness of disposition, the ready pity for
his cupidity.
and willingness to relieve it, which colour all their religion and poetry, and are strongly exhibited in their dealings with the lower animals, are diverted and limited in their relaThe tions with one another by the same sentiment of caste. is moral duties, displayed charity, which all regard as the first of only for Brahraans, and for men of another caste than their own they have as little fellow-feeling, and perhaps less, than would be commanded by an ox or a horse. Within its reduced sphere, and particularly among members of the same family, their beneTo the outer world it volence is most active and exemplary. aversion to the sight of assumes a passive attitude, and their any rate the peoples pain makes them the most merciful of at
suffering
of Asia.
The other great cause which has for the worse masters,—"
is
affected their character
their long subjection to unsympathetic foreign muto-v
yap
t' apertjs antoaivvrm,
Avspos Bvr avjiiv Kara SovXiof
ivpvma, Tlsvs '^ftap
eXifmy
The vices and corruption of a Muhammadan despotism are the same everywhere, and are apt to be regarded as the necessary features of all
A siatic
Government.
Honesty
in political con-
duct cannot be expected where it would hardly be recognized as a virtue where the honest man is as likely to be ruined as the knave by the caprice of a stupid and resistless tyrant, and where the only means of softening a fall, against which no merit provides security, must be obtained by fraud. The atmosphere of the court for the last eight centuries has directly stimulated chicanery and intrigue in all their worst forms, and almost exIt is the stability which tinguished the respect due to integrity.
