ll you, and I have no doubt has
often told you, that if only you look out for friends among the
Hindus, you will find them, and you may trust them.

There is one book which for many years I have been in the habit of
recommending, and another against which I have always been warning
those of the candidates for the Indian Civil Service whom I happened
to see at Oxford; and I believe both the advice and the warning have
in several cases borne the very best fruit. The book which I consider
most mischievous, nay, which I hold responsible for some of the
greatest misfortunes that have happened to India, is Mill's "History
of British India," even with the antidote against its poison, which is
supplied by Professor Wilson's notes. The book which I recommend, and
which I wish might be published again in a cheaper form, so as to
make it more generally accessible, is Colonel Sleeman's "Rambles and
Recollections of an Indian Official," published in 1844, but written
originally in 1835-1836.

Mill's "History," no doubt, you all know, particularly the candidates
for the Indian Civil Service, who, I am sorry to say, are recommended
to read it, and are examined in it. Still, in order to substantiate my
strong condemnation of the book, I shall have to give a few proofs:

Mill in his estimate of the Hindu character is chiefly guided by
Dubois, a French missionary, and by Orme and Buchanan, Tennant, and
Ward, all of them neither very competent nor very unprejudiced judges.
Mill,[19] however, picks out all that is most unfavorable from their
works, and omits the qualifications which even these writers felt
bound to give to their wholesale condemnation of the Hindus. He quotes
as serious, for instance, what was said in joke,[20] namely, that "a
Brahman is an ant's nest of lies and impostures." Next to the charge
of untruthfulness, Mill upbraids the Hindus for what he calls their
litigiousness. He writes:[21] "As often as courage fails them in
seeking more daring gratification to their hatred and revenge, their
malignity finds a vent in the channel of litigation." Without imputing
dishonorable motives, as Mill does, the same fact might be stated in a
different way, by saying, "As often as their conscience and respect of
law keep them from seeking more daring gratification to their hatred
and revenge, say by murder or poisoning, their trust in English
justice leads them to appeal to our courts of law." Dr. Robertson, in
his "Historical Dis