[134] Euripides, Phœnissæ, 392. Cf. Burton, Arabian Nights, i. 176, n. 1.
[135] Livingstone, Expedition to the Zambesi, p. 309. See also Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, ii. 59.
Hardly anything has been a greater inducement to falsehood than oppression. Whilst the old Makololo were truthful, this is not the case with their sons, “who, having been brought up among the subjected tribes, have acquired some of the vices peculiar to a menial and degraded race.”[136] The Wanyoro, who are described as “splendid liars,” exercised deception chiefly to evade the intolerable exactions of their own chiefs, whereas they are fairly truthful in contact with Europeans who attempt to treat them justly.[137] The duplicity and cunning of the Malagasy are “the natural result of centuries of superstition, ignorance, and submission to the rule of tyrannical despots, with whom the spy system has always been a necessity.”[138] In Morocco the independent Jbâla, or mountaineers of the North, are more to be trusted than the Arabs of the plains, who have long been suffering from the extortions of rapacious officials. The duplicity of Orientals is very largely due to their despotic form of government.[139] In India, Mr. Percival observes, “despotism in one form or other that has so long prevailed, and the consequent oppression attendant thereon, must have rendered it difficult to make way without fraud. Deception and arts of cunning, under such circumstances, being the only means at the command of the inferior portions of the community for gaining their ends, and securing the plainest rights, they would resort to them as the only way of avoiding certain ruin.”[140] The Chinese habit of lying has been attributed partly to the truckling fear of officers.[141] In China and many other parts of the East, says Sir J. Bowring, “there is a fear of truth as truth, lest its discovery should lead to consequences of which the inquirer never dreams, but which are present to the mind of the person under interrogation.”[142]
[136] Livingstone, Expedition to the Zambesi, p. 283.
[137] Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, ii. 591.
[138] Little, Madagascar, p. 72.
[139] Vámbéry, Der Islam im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, p. 231.
[140] Percival, Land of the Veda, p. 288. Cf. Malcolm, Memoir of Central India, ii. 171; Hodgson, Miscellaneous Essays, i. 152.
[141] Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, i. 835.
[142] Bowring, Siam, i. 105 sq.