govern the inhabitants of such a country, we must govern them upon their
own principles and maxims, and not upon ours. We must not think to force
them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we must extend ours to take in
their system of opinions and rites, and the necessities which result
from both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable. We have
more versatility of character and manners, and it is we who must
conform. We know what the empire of opinion is in human nature. I had
almost said that the law of opinion was human nature itself. It is,
however, the strongest principle in the composition of the frame of the
human mind; and more of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides
in that inward principle than in all external circumstances put
together. But if such is the empire of opinion even amongst us, it has a
pure, unrestrained, complete, and despotic power amongst them. The
variety of balanced opinions in our minds weakens the force of each: for
in Europe, sometimes, the laws of religion differ from the laws of the
land; sometimes the laws of the land differ from our laws of honor; our
laws of honor are full of caprice, differing from those other laws, and
sometimes differing from themselves: but there the laws of religion, the
laws of the land, and the laws of honor are all united and consolidated
in one invariable system, and bind men by eternal and indissoluble bonds
to the rules of what, amongst them, is called his _caste_.

It may be necessary just to state to your Lordships what a _caste_ is.
The Gentoo people, from the oldest time, have been distributed into
various orders, all of them hereditary: these family orders are called
castes; these castes are the fundamental part of the constitution of
the Gentoo commonwealth, both in their church and in their state.

Your Lordships are born to hereditary honors in the chief of your
houses; the rest mix with the people. With the Gentoos, they who are
born noble can never fall into any second rank. They are divided into
four orders,--the Brahmins, the Chittery, the Bice, and the Soodur, with
many subdivisions in each. An eternal barrier is placed between them.
The higher cannot pass into the lower; the lower cannot rise into the
higher. They have all their appropriated rank, place, and situation, and
their appropriated religion too, which is essentially different in its
rites and ceremonies, sometimes in its object, in each of those castes.
A