Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/230

 can, nevertheless, exhibit a numerous sect of professional ruffians, who, with subsistence as their object, the murder of human beings as the means, and religious fanaticism as a palliation for their crimes, wander over the country like demons of destruction, regardless of the laws of God or man.

It is a remarkable fact, that these diabolical wretches, whose subsistence was procured at the sacrifice of two or three men per month, had, nevertheless, a fixed habitation in some Native state, where their wives and their families resided, and to which they retired with their plunder after a fortunate expedition;and what is most unaccountable, their dreadful profession was known by every inhabitant in their village, and they were regularly mulcted of part of their ill-gotten spoil, by the chief of the village, who occasionally threatened to deliver them up to justice, unless they paid him a handsome bribe. From these headquarters gangs of Thugs, wont to set out on expeditions, towards all parts of Hindostan, from the Sutlej to the Brahmapootra, and from the Himalayah mountains to Cape Comorin.

The extent to which Thuggee has been carried on for many years, appears altogether incredible, and the drain upon human life, in any other country less populous than India,must have been manifest and unaccountable. Previous to the noble