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British India, most pathetically detailed, by senatorial elo- 

 quence, to establish facts which had no foundation, except in 

 the warm imaginations of a party under the influence of preju- 

 dice and misinformation. During my residence in India I con- 

 stantly witnessed the reverse of those assertions; I beheld English 

 generosity and clemency stretch forth the hand of mercy and pro- 

 tection, and endeavouring to rescue the peasantry from the op- 

 pressions of the zemindars and merciless officers in the revenue 

 departments. The devastations by the Mahratla armies, and the 

 cruelties committed by the Gracias, Bheels, and other banditti, are 

 notorious deviations from the national character of peaceful inno- 

 cence. An accurate writer, in describing the march of the Mah- 

 ratta forces under Purseram Bhou through the Mysore, a march 

 marked as usual by devastation, famine, and murder, says that 

 " After two days, the Mahratta general took Shiva-mogay, a town 

 in Canara, which then contained six thousand houses; the whole 

 of them were destroyed, the women ravished, and the handsomest 

 carried away. Such of the men as fell into the hands of the Mah- 

 rattas were killed, and of those who escaped the sword, a large 

 proportion perished by hunger; every eatable thing having been 

 swept away by those whom the people in Europe are pleased to 

 call the gentle Hindoos. These ruffians did not even spare the 

 guroo, or head priest of all the Mahratta brahmins of the Smarlal 

 sect, and who is by them considered as an actual incarnation of 

 the deity. His college was plundered and burnt; but this cost 

 the peshwa clear, as the enraged guroo held out threats of instant 

 excommunication, and was only to be pacified by a present of 

 four hundred thousand rupees." 



