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.  The same interest required that they should unite in deceiving their own prince, and all his officers, great and small, as to the real resources of their estates; because they all knew that the prince would admit of no other limits to his exactions than their abilities to pay at the harvest.  Though, in their relations with each other, all these village communities spoke as much truth as those of any other communities in the world; still, in their relation with the Government, they told as many lies;—­for falsehood, in the one set of relations, would have incurred the odium of the whole of their circles of society—­truth, in the other, would often have involved the same penalty.  If a man had told a lie to cheat his neighbour, he would have become an object of hatred and contempt—­if he told a lie to save his neighbour’s fields from an increase of rent or tax, he would have become an object of esteem and respect.[14] If the Government officers were asked whether there was any truth to be found among such communities, they would say, No, that the truth was not in them; because they would not cut each other’s throats by telling them the real value of each other’s fields.

If the peasantry were asked, they would say there was plenty of truth to be found everywhere except among a few scoundrels, who, to curry favour with the Government officers, betrayed their trust, and told the value of their neighbours’ fields.  In their ideas, he might as well have gone off, and brought down the common enemy upon them in the shape of some princely robber of the neighbourhood.

Locke says:  ’Outlaws themselves keep faith and rules of justice one with another—­they practise them as rules of convenience within their own communities; but it is impossible to conceive that they embrace justice as a practical principle who act fairly with their fellow highwaymen, and at the same time plunder or kill the next honest man they meet.’ (Vol. i, p. 37.) In India, the difference between the army of a prince and the gang of a robber was, in the general estimation of the people, only in degree—­they were both driving an imperial trade, a ‘padshahi kam’.  Both took the auspices, and set out on their expedition after the Dasahra, when the autumn crops were ripening; and both thought the Deity propitiated as soon as they found the omens favourable;[15] one attacked palaces and capitals, the other villages and merchants’ storerooms.  The members of the army of the prince thought as little of the justice or injustice of his cause as those of the gang of the robber; the people of his capital hailed the return of the victorious