GANG-ROBBERY. 
107 
Rajah’s judicial functionaries, including the girl by 
whom his subject had been betrayed into so danger- 
ous a snare. They were all executed as I have de- 
scribed. 
We cannot be surprised at the numerous classes of 
robbers with which every part of India abounds,, when 
we consider the civil degradations to which such a 
vast proportion of her population is subjected. The 
prejudices of caste are so inflexible and exclusive as to 
produce moral mischiefs which never can be got rid of 
until those prejudices shall be repudiated. When men 
are degraded below the dignity of their species, they 
will naturally make reprisals upon their oppressors, 
and cause them to reap the fruits of that harvest of 
tyranny which the latter are perpetually sowing. The 
oppressed looks upon his oppressor as his natural foe ; 
and when those links that bind him to the conditions 
by which all civilized societies are governed are once 
snapped by the violence of arbitrary customs, and he 
has the means of revenge within his grasp, he seldom 
fails to exercise them with a reckless and malignant 
spirit. In India thousands are forced from that pale 
of kindred communion consecrated by the imposition 
of certain civil and social laws, which it is held a dis- 
grace to infringe. They are cast from the bosom of 
society, and, while encircled in the vast coil of pol- 
lution, are flung into the arena of guilt and crime. 
Can we then wonder that, thus forced from the contact 
of virtue into an atmosphere of moral contagion, they 
should be imbued with the pestilence, and that the 
infection should extend instead of yielding to the mild 
process of moral influence. Gang-robbery in India, 
