In the ordinary civil tribunals of Europe and America a man commonly feels that, though he is removed far from the immediate presence of those whose esteem is necessary for him, their eyes are still upon him, because the statements he may give will find their way to them through the medium of the press.  This he does not feel in the civil courts of India, nor in the military courts of Europe, or of any other part of the world, and the man who judges of the veracity of a whole people from the specimens he may witness in such courts, cannot judge soundly.

Shaikh Sadi, in his Gulistan, has the following tale:  ’I have heard that a prince commanded the execution of a captive who was brought before him; when the captive, having no hope of life, told the prince that he disgraced his throne.  The prince, not understanding him, tumed to one of his ministers and asked him what he had said.  “He says,” replied the minister, quoting a passage from the Koran, “God loves those who subdue their passions, forgive injuries, and do good to his creatures.”  The prince pitied the poor captive, and countermanded the orders for the execution.  Another minister, who owed a spite to the one who first spoke, said, “Nothing but truth should be spoken by such persons as we in the presence of the prince; the captive spoke abusively and insolently, and you have not interpreted his words truly”.  The prince frowned and said, “His false interpretation pleases me more than thy true one, because his was given for a good, and thine for a malignant, purpose; and wise men have said that ’a peace-making lie is better than a factious or anger exciting truth’."’[22]

He who would too fastidiously condemn this doctrine should think of the massacre of Thessalonica, and how much better it would have been for the great Theodosius to have had by his side the peace-making Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, than the anger-exciting Rufinus, when he heard of the offence which that city had committed.[23]

In despotic governments, where lives, characters, and liberties are every moment at the mercy, not only of the prince but of all his public officers from the highest to the lowest, the occasions in which men feel authorized and actually called upon by the common feelings of humanity to tell ‘peacemaking lies’ occur every day—­nay, every hour, every petty officer of government, ’armed with his little brief authority’, is a little tyrant surrounded by men whose all depends upon his will, and who dare not tell him the truth—­the ‘point of honour’ in this little circle demands that every one should be prepared to tell him ‘peace-making lies’; and the man who does not do so when the occasion seems to call for it, incurs the odium of the whole circle, as one maliciously disposed to speak ’anger-exciting or factions truths’.  Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk of love and duty toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and tell ‘peace-making