doing in the minds of any but their political opponents.  If a foreigner were to judge of the people of England from the tone of their newspapers, he would say that there was assuredly neither honour, honesty, nor truth to be found among the classes which furnished the nation with its ministers and legislators; for a set of miscreants more atrocious than the Whig and Tory ministers and legislators of England were represented to be in these papers never disgraced the society of any nation upon earth.

Happily, all foreigners who read these journals know that in what the members of one party say of those of the other, or are reported to say, there is often but little truth; and that there is still less of truth in what the editors and correspondents of the ultra journals of one party write about the characters, conduct, and sentiments of the members of the other.

There is one species of untruth to which we English people are particularly prone in India, and, I am assured, everywhere else.  It is this.  Young ‘miss in her teens’, as soon as she finds her female attendants in the wrong, no matter in what way, exclaims, ’It is so like the natives’; and the idea of the same error, vice, or crime, becomes so habitually associated in her mind with every native she afterwards sees, that she can no more separate them than she can the idea of ghosts and hobgoblins from darkness and solitude.  The young cadet or civilian, as soon as he finds his valet, butler, or groom in the wrong, exclaims, ’It is so like blacky—­so like the niggers; they are all alike!’ And what could you expect from him?  He has been constantly accustomed to the same vicious association of ideas in his native land—­if he has been brought up in a family of Tories, he has constantly heard those he most reverenced exclaim, when they have found, or fancied they found, a Whig in the wrong, ’It is so like the Whigs—­they are all alike—­there is no trusting any of them.’  If a Protestant, ’It is so like the Catholics; there is no trusting them in any condition of life.’  The members of Whig and Catholic families may say the same, perhaps, of Tories and Protestants.  An untravelled Englishman will sometimes say the same of a Frenchman; and the idea of everything that is bad in man will be associated in his mind with the image of a Frenchman.  If he hears of an act of dishonour by a person of that nation, ’It is so like a Frenchman—­they are all alike; there is no honour in them.’  A Tory goes to America, predisposed to find in all who live under republican governments every species of vice and crime; and no sooner sees a man or woman misbehave than he exclaims, ’It is so like the Americans—­they are all alike; but what could you expect from republicans?’ At home, when he considers himself in relation to the members of the parties opposed to him in religion or politics, they are associated in his mind with everything that is vicious; abroad, when he considers the people of other countries in relation to his own, if they happen