The peasantry
from whom the prince draws his revenues feel that they are bound to
pay that revenue; that, if they do not pay it, he will, with his
strong arm, turn them out and give to others their possessions--but
they have no idea of any right on their part to any return from him.
The village communities were everywhere left almost entirely to self-
government; and the virtues of truth and honesty, in all their
relations with each other, were indispensably necessary to enable
them to govern themselves.[13] A common interest often united a good
many village communities in a bond of union, and established a kind
of brotherhood over extensive tracts of richly cultivated land. Self-
interest required that they should unite to defend themselves against
attacks with which they were threatened at every returning harvest in
a country where every prince was a robber upon a scale more or less
large according to his means, and took the field to rob while the
lands were covered with the ripe crops upon which his troops might
subsist; and where every man who practised robbery with open violence
followed what he called an '_imperial_ trade' (padshahi kam)--the
only trade worthy the character of a gentleman.
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