124 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
vating one class at the expense and to the positive de- 
gradation of the other, are we to attribute the rise and 
progress of those desperate bands of plunderers which 
swarm over the fertile plains of one of the finest coun- 
tries under heaven. Nor let us imagine that the most 
ferocious even among the Phansigars are not rather 
fair claimants for our pity than for our detestation ; 
since, ferocious though they be, they are, perhaps, 
rather the victims of depraved education than by na- 
ture the fell ministers of crime. From infancy they 
are taught to look upon murder and upon plunder as 
their just and lawful occupation. They are gradually 
inured to scenes of bloodshed, and taught to believe 
that their destiny has forced upon them the avoca- 
tion which they are destined to follow. Monsters 
as they may appear in the eyes of the pious Christian, 
whose religion has kept him from falling into a moral 
desuetude so shocking to the feelings of our better 
nature, yet, if we look upon them as the wretched 
dupes of a horrible delusion, we shall perhaps abate 
something of the fierce indignation with which we are 
naturally apt to regard such delinquents, and ra- 
ther feel our regret awakened at the existence of those 
restrictions which have raised a race of desperadoes, 
driven to embrace the desperate alternative of vice 
because they are denied all encouragements to vir- 
tue. Their ferocity and hardness of heart is the 
natural consequence of their education ; for how can 
we expect that the blander sympathies of humanity 
should be reflected from bosoms upon which no gen- 
tle emotion has ever been impressed, but which have 
been hardened from the earliest period of life by a 
