Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/22

xiv natives themselves of the condition of life and property at that period is clearly shown in the proverb which has survived in some parts to the present day; "The buffalo is to the man who wields the bludgeon." In my humble opinion, formed after a service in India of thirty-five years, during which I have mixed freely and on the most intimate terms with the natives, the seventy odd years which have intervened between the battle of Laswárí and the present day have wrought no considerable change in the general character of the people. Not that amongst them there have not been, and are not, men of the highest moral character; whose friendship is an honour, who know what is right and who act up to their knowledge. But these men form an inconsiderable minority. In a time of confusion they would be swept away. The love of intrigue still survives, and I write my own personal experience when I state that in the present decade, as much as in any that preceded it, intrigue uses falsehood and slander to move from high places men who strive earnestly and with all their power to eradicate those blots in the native character which were the curse of past generations.