ere is still less of
truth in what the editors and correspondents of the ultra journals of
one party write about the characters, conduct, and sentiments of the
members of the other.

There is one species of untruth to which we English people are
particularly prone in India, and, I am assured, everywhere else. It
is this. Young 'miss in her teens', as soon as she finds her female
attendants in the wrong, no matter in what way, exclaims, 'It is so
like the natives'; and the idea of the same error, vice, or crime,
becomes so habitually associated in her mind with every native she
afterwards sees, that she can no more separate them than she can the
idea of ghosts and hobgoblins from darkness and solitude. The young
cadet or civilian, as soon as he finds his valet, butler, or groom in
the wrong, exclaims, 'It is so like blacky--so like the niggers; they
are all alike!' And what could you expect from him? He has been
constantly accustomed to the same vicious association of ideas in his
native land--if he has been brought up in a family of Tories, he has
constantly heard those he most reverenced exclaim, when they have
found, or fancied they found, a Whig in the wrong, 'It is so like the
Whigs--they are all alike--there is no trusting any of them.' If a
Protestant, 'It is so like the Catholics; there is no trusting them
in any condition of life.' The members of Whig and Catholic families
may say the same, perhaps, of Tories and Protestants. An untravelled
Englishman will sometimes say the same of a Frenchman; and the idea
of everything that is bad in man will be associated in his mind with
the image of a Frenchman. If he hears of an act of dishonour by a
person of that nation, 'It is so like a Frenchman--they are all
alike; there is no honour in them.' A Tory goes to America,
predisposed to find in all who live under republican governments
every species of vice and crime; and no sooner sees a man or woman
misbehave than he exclaims, 'It is so like the Americans--they are
all alike; but what could you expect from republicans?' At home, when
he considers himself in relation to the members of the parties
opposed to him in religion or politics, they are associated in his
mind with everything that is vicious; abroad, when he considers the
people of other countries in relation to his own, if they happen to
be Christians, he will find them associated in his mind with
everything that is good, or everything that is bad, in proportion