202 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
suicide which come before me double those of suttees : 
men, and still more women, throw themselves down 
wells or drink poison for apparently the slightest 
reasons, generally in consequence of some quarrel, 
and in order that their blood may lie at their enemy’s 
door; and unless the criminal in question had had 
an old woman at hand and in his power, he was 
likely enough to have burned himself/ 
“ Human sacrifices, as of children, are never heard 
of now in these provinces, but it still sometimes hap- 
pens that a leper is burnt or buried alive ; and as 
these murders are somewhat blended also with reli- 
gious feeling, a leper being supposed to be accursed of 
the gods, the Sudder Dewannee, acting on the same 
principles, discourages, as I am told, all interference 
with the practice. The best way, indeed, to abolish 
it would be to establish lazar-houses, where these 
poor wretches should be maintained, and if possible 
cured, or at all events kept separate from the rest of 
the people, — a policy by which, more than anything 
else, this hideous disease has been extirpated in 
Europe.” 
All the tribes of Bengalese along the banks of the 
Ganges, from Calcutta to Hurdwar, are notoriously 
licentious in their habits, and very impatient of moral 
restraint : vice consequently prevails among them to 
a deplorable extent. Robbers used to infest the 
whole country ; and although the confederacies of or- 
ganised gangs have been in a great measure suppressed 
by the energy of British legislation, dacoit robberies 
are still but too prevalent ; and perhaps in no part 
of Hindostan are the courts of justice so constantly 
