They know that the people will hardly ever
complain, from the great dislike they all have to appear in our
courts, particularly when it is against any of the officers of those
courts, or their friends and creatures in the district police.[24]
When our operations commenced, in 1830, these assassins [_scil._ the
Thugs] revelled over every road in India in gangs of hundreds,
without the fear of punishment from divine or human laws; but there
is not now, I believe, a road in India infested by them. That our
government has still defects, and great ones, must be obvious to
every one who has travelled much over India with the requisite
qualifications and disposition to observe; but I believe that in
spite of all the defects I have noticed above in our police System,
the life, property, and character of the innocent are now more
secure, and all their advantages more freely enjoyed, than they ever
were under any former government with whose history we are
acquainted, or than they now are under any native government in
India.[25]
Those who think they are not so almost always refer to the reign of
Shah Jahan, when men like Tavernier travelled so securely all over
India with their bags of diamonds; but I would ask them whether they
think that the life, property, and character of the innocent could be
anywhere very secure, or their advantages very freely enjoyed, in a
country where a man could do openly with impunity what the traveller
describes to have been done by the Persian physician of the Governor
of Allahabad? This governor, being sickly, had in attendance upon him
_eleven physicians_, one of whom was a European gentleman of
education, Claudius Maille, of Bourges.
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