rable critics, has persistently ignored the evidence
which members of the Civil Service, officers and statesmen--men of the
highest authority--have given again and again, in direct opposition to
these unfavorable opinions.

Here, too, I must ask to be allowed to quote at least a few of these
witnesses on the other side.

Warren Hastings thus speaks of the Hindus in general: "They are gentle
and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them,
and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted than any people on
the face of the earth; faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal
authority."

Bishop Heber said: "The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most
eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful to
parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient,
and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and
feelings than any people I ever met with."[55]

Elphinstone states: "No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved
as the dregs of our own great towns. The villagers are everywhere
amiable, affectionate to their families, kind to their neighbors, and
toward all but the government honest and sincere. Including the Thugs
and Dacoits, the mass of crime is less in India than in England. The
Thugs are almost a separate nation, and the Dacoits are desperate
ruffians in gangs. The Hindus are mild and gentle people, more
merciful to prisoners than any other Asiatics. Their freedom from
gross debauchery is the point in which they appear to most advantage;
and their superiority in purity of manners is not flattering to our
self-esteem."[56]

Yet Elphinstone can be most severe on the real faults of the people of
India. He states that, at present, want of veracity is one of their
prominent vices, but he adds[57] "that such deceit is most common in
people connected with government, a class which spreads far in India,
as, from the nature of the land-revenue, the lowest villager is often
obliged to resist force by fraud."[58]

Sir John Malcolm writes:[59] "I have hardly ever known where a person
did understand the language, or where a calm communication was made to
a native of India, through a well-informed and trustworthy medium,
that the result did not prove, that what had at first been stated as
falsehood had either proceeded from fear or from misapprehension. I by
no means wish to state that our Indian subjects are more free from
this vice