The farmer of the village soon after made his way to the city, and communicated the circumstances to my old friend, who happened to be on intimate terms with the magistrate.[23] He wrote a polite note to the Thanadar to say that he should never get any rents from his estate if the occupants were liable to such fines as these, and that he should take the earliest opportunity of mentioning them to his friend the magistrate.  The Thanadar ascertained that he was really in the habit of visiting the magistrate, and communicating with him freely; and hushed up the matter by causing all, save the expenses of the feast, to be paid back.  These are things of daily occurrence in all parts of our dominions, and the Thanadars are not afraid to play such ‘fantastic tricks’ because all those under and all those above them share more or less in the spoil, and are bound in honour to conceal them from the European magistrate, whom it is the interest of all to keep in the dark.  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.[26] The chief favourite of the eleven was, however, a Persian, ’who one day threw his wife from the top of a battlement to the ground in a fit of jealousy.  He thought the fall would kill her, but she had only a few ribs broken; whereupon the kindred of the woman came and demanded justice at the feet of the governor.  The governor,