believe, no class of men in India from whom it is more
difficult to get the true statement of a case pending before a court
than the sepoys of our native regiments; and yet there are, I
believe, no people in the world from whom it is more easy to get it
in their own village communities, where they state it before their
relations, elders, and neighbours, whose esteem is necessary to their
happiness, and can be obtained only by adherence to truth. Every case
that comes before a regimental court involves, or is supposed to
involve, the interest or feelings of some one or other of their
companions; and the question which the deponent asks himself is-not
what religion, public justice, the interests of discipline and order,
or the wishes of his officers require, or what would appear manly and
honourable before the elders of his own little village, but what will
secure the esteem, and what will excite the hatred, of his comrades.
This will often be downright, deliberate falsehood, sworn upon the
Koran or the Ganges water before his officers.

Many a brave sepoy have I seen faint away from the agitated state of
his feelings, under the dread of the Deity if he told lies with the
Ganges water in his hands, and of his companions if he told the
truth, and caused them to be punished. Every question becomes a party
question, and the 'point of honour' requires that every witness shall
tell as many lies about it as possible.[20] When I go into a village,
and talk with the people in any part of India, I know that I shall
get the truth out of them on all subjects as long as I can satisfy
them that I am not come on the part of the Government to inquire into
the value of their fields with a view to new impositions, and this I
can always do; but, when I go among the sepoys to ask about anything,
I feel pretty sure that I have little chance of getting at the truth;
they will take the alarm and try to deceive me, lest what I learn
should be brought up at some future day against them or their
comrades. The Duke of Wellington says, speaking of the English
soldiers: 'It is most difficult to convict a prisoner before a
regimental court-martial, for, I am sorry to say, that soldiers have
little regard to the oath administered to them; and the officers who
are sworn well and truly to try and determine _according to the
evidence_, the matter before them, have too much regard to the strict
_letter_ of that administered to them.' Again: 'The witnesses