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ing, I had excellent opportunities of seeing the higher ranks ; from 

 the brahmins, who under the peshwa administration held secular 

 situations, to all the principal military officers and ministers of 

 slate. Dissimulation seems to be the predominant trait in the 

 Asiatic character; very few Europeans are a match for them. 

 In my visits to Brodera during the negociation with Futty Sihng I 

 witnessed such dissimulation, treachery, and meanness in the prince 

 and his ministers, as would with difficulty be believed by a gene- 

 rous Englishman unused to these people. On one occasion his 

 naib, or vizier, thought proper to deprive me of my sword, and 

 detain me a prisoner for some hours in a close room in the palace: 

 a circumstance to a person then in a public character, which his 

 master could not be ignorant of, though he afterwards thought 

 proper to assert it was done without his knowledge. Nothing could 

 exceed the insolence of the men in office when they obeyed the 

 vizier's commands; nor the mean apologies of himself and all con- 

 cerned, when they repented of their error, and honourably dis- 

 missed me to Ragobah's camp. 



The proceedings of the great men in Ragobah's councils, Futty 

 Sihng's palace, and most of the pundits and zemindars with whom 

 I had any transactions, would have classed them high in the school 

 of Tiberius, who reckoned dissimulation among the cardinal vir- 

 tues. " Nullum aeque Tiberius, ut rebatur, ex virtutibus suis, 

 quam dissimulationem diligebat. E6 cegrius accepit, recludi qure 

 premeret." — Tacitus Ann. 



I am aware of what has been generally advanced in favour of 

 the innocent and harmless Hindoos, and of the impressions made 

 in Europe, a few years ago, by the imaginary system of cruelty in 



