ioned, they are often labouring in the 'darkness visible'
created by the native officers around them. They not only learn this,
but they learn what is still worse, that they may tell what lies they
please in these tribunals; and that not one of them shall become
known to the circle in which they move, and whose good opinion they
value. If, by his lies told in such tribunals, a man has robbed
another, or caused him to be robbed, of his property, his character,
his liberty, or his life, he can easily persuade the circle in which
he resides that it has arisen, not from any false statements of his,
but from the blindness of the judge, or the wickedness of the native
officers of his court, because all circles consider the blindness of
the one, and the wickedness of the other, to be everywhere very
great.

Arrian, in speaking of the class of supervisors in India, says: 'They
may not be guilty of falsehood; and indeed none of the Indians were
ever accused of that crime.'[7] I believe that as little falsehood is
spoken by the people of India, in their village communities, as in
any part of the world with an equal area and population. It is in our
courts of justice where falsehoods prevail most, and the longer they
have been anywhere established, the greater the degree of falsehood
that prevails in them. Those entrusted with the administration of a
newly-acquired territory are surprised to find the disposition among
both principals and witnesses in cases to tell the plain and simple
truth. As magistrates, they find it very often difficult to make
thieves and robbers tell lies, according to the English fashion, to
avoid running a risk of criminating themselves. In England, this
habit of making criminals tell lies arose from the severity of the
penal code, which made the punishment so monstrously disproportionate
to the crime, that the accused, however clear and notorious his
crimes, became an object of general sympathy.[8] In India,
punishments have nowhere been, under our rule, disproportionate to
the crimes; on the contrary, they have generally been more mild than
the people would wish them to be, or think they ought to be, in order
to deter from similar crimes; and, in newly-acquired territories,
they have generally been more mild than in our old possessions. The
accused are, therefore, nowhere considered as objects of public
sympathy; and in newly-acquired territories they are willing to tell
the truth, and are allowed to do