regards the practice of caste, which have
been so industriously circulated in England, are almost entirely false.

I have said that I proposed inquiring, further, whether there are not some
compensating advantages in this division of the people into castes which
tend, in a great measure, to neutralize the prejudicial effects that arise
from people's sympathies and feelings being more or less confined to
members of their own caste, instead of being distributed over the human
race considered as a whole. Now, it is perfectly true that the tendency of
caste is to weaken the claim that humanity in general has on an
individual; but though the claim of society in general is weakened, it
must be remembered that the claims of each caste on the members of it are
strengthened. And though this fact may militate against an enlarged and
Christian philanthropy, the aggregate force of claims will be found to
amount to a much larger sum than if one part of a society had no more
claim on a man than another. A man of one caste would not, for instance,
perhaps feel that a man of another caste had much claim on him; but he
would distinctly and strongly feel that a member of his own caste had. And
every caste acting on the same principle of supporting and helping its
members, I am convinced that the aggregate force of assistance rendered
must be greater than in a country where there is little or no caste
principle. This may seem a rash assertion, and of course it is one that it
is impossible, as far as I am aware, to prove. But the fact that there is
not a poor-house from one end of India to the other, seems to me a
significant and satisfactory circumstance; and the only way I can account
for there being no need of such a thing is,[42] that caste feeling must
often come in where all other aids fail. Nor are we in this country
without instances of the value of caste feelings, and both the Jews and
the Scotch may still be pointed to as illustrations of what I mean. A
Scotchman still has a sort of caste feeling for a Scotchman, and would do
things for a man, as a Scotchman, that he would not do for people of
either English or Irish descent. This principle may now have lessened, and
is, no doubt, daily lessening. But when I started in India, I very soon
experienced the benefit of this caste feeling; and, as one illustration to
the point, I may mention that, before my estates came into bearing, I was
attended in a long and serious illness by two S