Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

by Sir W. H. Sleeman

In the ordinary civil tribunals of Europe and America a man commonly feels that, though he is removed far from the immediate presence of those whose esteem is necessary for him, their eyes are still upon him, because the statements he may give will find their way to them through the medium of the press. This he does not feel in the civil courts of India, nor in the military courts of Europe, or of any other part of the world, and the man who judges of the veracity of a whole people from the specimens he may witness in such courts, cannot judge soundly.

Shaikh Sādī, in his Gulistān, has the following tale: 'I have heard that a prince commanded the execution of a captive who was brought before him; when the captive, having no hope of life, told the prince that he disgraced his throne. The prince, not understanding him, tumed to one of his ministers and asked him what he had said. "He says," replied the minister, quoting a passage from the Korān, "God loves those who subdue their passions, forgive injuries, and do good to his creatures." The prince pitied the poor captive, and countermanded the orders for the execution. Another minister, who owed a spite to the one who first spoke, said, "Nothing but truth should be spoken by such persons as we in the presence of the prince; the captive spoke abusively and insolently, and you have not interpreted his words truly". The prince frowned and said, "His false interpretation pleases me more than thy true one, because his was given for a good, and thine for a malignant, purpose; and wise men have said that 'a peace-making lie is better than a factious or anger exciting truth'."'[22]

He who would too fastidiously condemn this doctrine should think of the massacre of Thessalonica, and how much better it would have been for the great Theodosius to have had by his side the peace- making Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, than the anger-exciting Rufinus, when he heard of the offence which that city had committed.[23]

In despotic governments, where lives, characters, and liberties are every moment at the mercy, not only of the prince but of all his public officers from the highest to the lowest, the occasions in which men feel authorized and actually called upon by the common feelings of humanity to tell 'peacemaking lies' occur every day—nay, every hour, every petty officer of government, 'armed with his little brief authority', is a little tyrant surrounded by men whose all depends upon his will, and who dare not tell him the truth—the 'point of honour' in this little circle demands that every one should be prepared to tell him 'peace-making lies'; and the man who does not do so when the occasion seems to call for it, incurs the odium of the whole circle, as one maliciously disposed to speak 'anger-exciting or factions truths'. Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk of love and duty toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and tell 'peace-making lies' on the scaffold to save their poor children from his resentment. European gentlemen in India often, by their violence surround themselves with circles of the same kind, in which the 'point of honour' demands that every member shall be prepared to tell 'peace-making lies', to save the others from the effects of their master's ungovernable passions—falsehood is their only safeguard; and, consequently, falsehood ceases to be odious. Countenanced in the circles of the violent, falsehood soon becomes countenanced in those of the mild and forbearing; their domestics pretend a dread of their anger which they really do not feel; and they gain credit for having the same good excuse among those who have no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the real character of the gentlemen in their domestic relations—all are thought to be more or less tigerish in these relations, particularly before breakfast, because some are known to be so.[24]

I have known the native officers of a judge who was really a very mild and worthy man, but who lived a very secluded life, plead as their excuse for all manner of bribery and corruption, that their persons and character were never safe from his violence; and urge that men whose tenure of office was very insecure, and who were every hour in the day exposed to so much indignity, could not possibly be blamed for making the most of their position. The society around believed all this, and blamed, not the native officers, but the judge, or the Government, who placed them in such a situation. Other judges and magistrates have been known to do what this person was merely reported to do, otherwise society would neither have given credit to his officers nor have held them excused for their malpractices.[25] Those European gentlemen who allow their passions to get the better of their reason among their domestics do much to lower the character of their countrymen in the estimation of the people; but the high officials who forget what they owe to themselves and the native officers of their courts, when presiding on the bench of justice, do ten thousand times more; and I grieve to say that I have known a few officials of this class.

We have in England known many occasions, particularly in the cases of prosecutions by the officers of Government for offences against the State, where little circles of society have made it a 'point of honour' for some individuals to speak untruths, and for others to give verdicts against their consciences; some occasions indeed where those who ventured to speak the truth, or give a verdict according to their conscience, were in danger from the violence of popular resentment. Have we not, unhappily, in England and among our countrymen in all parts of the world, experience of a wide difference between what is exacted from members of particular circles of society by the 'point of honour', and what is held to be strict religions truth by the rest of society? Do we not see gentlemen cheating their tradesmen, while they dare not leave a gambling debt unpaid? The 'point of honour' in the circle to which they belong demands that the one should be paid, because the non-payment would involve a breach of faith in their relations with each other, as in the case of the members of a gang of robbers; but the non-payment of a tradesman's bill involves only a breach of faith in a gentleman's relations with a lower order. At least, some gentlemen do not feel any apprehension of incurring the odium of the circle in which they move by cheating of this kind. In the same manner the roué, or libertine of rank, may often be guilty of all manner of falsehoods and crimes to the females of the class below him, without any fear of incurring the odium of either males or females of his own circle; on the contrary, the more crimes he commits of this sort, the more sometimes he may expect to be caressed by males and females of his own order. The man who would not hesitate a moment to destroy the happiness of a family by the seduction of the wife or the daughter, would not dare to leave one shilling of a gambling debt unpaid—the one would bring down upon him the odium of his circle, but the other would not; and the odium of that circle is the only kind of odium he dreads. Appius Claudius apprehended no odium from his own order—the patrician—from the violation of the daughter of Virginius, of the plebeian order; nor did Sextus Tarquinius of the royal order, apprehend any from the violation of Lucretia, of the patrician order—neither would have been punished by their own order, but they were both punished by the injured orders below them.

Our own penal code punished with death the poor man who stole a little food to save his children from starvation, while it left to exult in the caresses of his own order, the wealthy libertine who robbed a father and mother of their only daughter, and consigned her to a life of infamy and misery. The poor victim of man's brutal passions and base falsehood suffered inevitable and exquisite punishment, while the laws and usages of society left the man himself untouched. He had nothing to apprehend if the father of his victim happened to be of the lower order, or a minister of the Church of Christ; because his own order would justify his refusing to meet the one in single combat, and the other dared not invite him to it, and the law left no remedy.[26]

Take the two parties in England into which society is politically divided. There is hardly any species of falsehood uttered by the members of the party out of power against the members of the party in power that is not tolerated and even applauded by one party; men state deliberately what they know to be utterly devoid of truth regarding the conduct of their opponent; they basely ascribe to them motives by which they know they were never actuated, merely to deceive the public, and to promote the interests of their party, without the slightest fear of incurring odium by so doing in the minds of any but their political opponents. If a foreigner were to judge of the people of England from the tone of their newspapers, he would say that there was assuredly neither honour, honesty, nor truth to be found among the classes which furnished the nation with its ministers and legislators; for a set of miscreants more atrocious than the Whig and Tory ministers and legislators of England were represented to be in these papers never disgraced the society of any nation upon earth.

Happily, all foreigners who read these journals know that in what the members of one party say of those of the other, or are reported to say, there is often but little truth; and that there 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 as their institutions happen to conform to those which his party advocates. A Tory will abuse America and Americans, and praise the Austrians. A Whig will, perhaps, abuse the Austrians and others who live under paternal or despotic governments, and praise the Americans, who live under institutions still more free than his own.
This has properly been considered by Locke as a species of madness to which all mankind are more or less subject, and from which hardly any individual can entirely free himself. 'There is', he says, 'scarce a man so free from it, but that if he should always, on all occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly does, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation. I do not here mean when he is under the power of an unruly passion, but in the steady, calm course of his life. That which thus captivates their reason, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense will, when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of. Some independent ideas, of no alliance to one another, are, by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, so coupled in their minds, that they always appear there together, and they can no more separate them in their thoughts than if they were but one idea, and they operate as if they really were so.' (Book II, Chap. 33.)