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brahmin or nair passes by, or even while their provision is carried 

 along, they are destroyed, like a wild beast, for daring to breathe 

 the same atmosphere with those inflated tribes. Thus says the 

 Hindoo law on murder: "If an inferior kills his superior, he 

 shall suffer death. If a brahmin kills a brahmin, his estate shall 

 be confiscated, and the hair of his head cut off; he shall be 

 branded in the forehead and banished. If a brahmin kills a keh- 

 leree, he shall be fined one thousand cows, and a bull. If a brah- 

 min kills a byse, he shall be fined one hundred cows, and a bull. 

 If a brahmin kills a sooder, he shall be fined ten cows and a bull." 

 Here seems to be a regular scale of degradation in human nature; 

 from a thousand cows to ten, according to the elevation or de- 

 pression of casle: in which the chandalah is not deemed worthy 

 of notice. 



The efficient government of a nation whose own laws and 

 privileges (as far as human institutions can) deservedly boast the 

 perfection of jurisprudence, whose monarch extends his sceptre 

 over sixty millions of Asiatic subjects, will surely now be exerted 

 in giving full effect to that wise and benevolent resolution of the 

 House of Commons in 1793; " that it is the peculiar and bounden 

 duty of the legislature to promote, by all just and prudent means, 

 the interests and happiness of the inhabitants of the British domi- 

 nions in India; and that for these ends, such measures ought to 

 be adopted, as may gradually tend to their advancement in use- 

 ful knowledge, and to their religious and moral improvement." 

 From so long a residence amongst the exalted brahmins and 

 degraded chandalahs, and witnessing many other evils occa- 

 sionally mentioned among the natives of India, I cannot refrain 



