Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/407

Rh let them, in Jesus's name, “relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow.”

Meanwhile, let us bless God for that wonderful victory of Christian civilization in 1857-58 over Brahminical rebels, who, had they triumphed, would most surely have rekindled the fires in which, as in former days, the daughters of India would again have had to mount their chariots of flame, to be borne, not to their Vedic heaven, but before the tribunal of Him who has forbidden self-murder, because he “will have mercy and not sacrifice,” and who declares to the deluded suttee, as to the wayward sinner, “I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.”

In all lands, but especially in a country like India, with the millions utterly uneducated, and debased in conscience and morals, there are “dangerous classes,” who live by fraud and violence, and who are ever ready for any opportunity of plunder and crime that may occur.

But in India there exists what is not found elsewhere on earth, a class of men whose trade is blood, who follow murder as a profession, and even perform it as a religious duty! The Thugs for centuries have

Their organization was complete; they were bound to each other by oaths and engagements as relentless as death and as heartless as hell. Their accessions were from the worst of all classes; the perfection of villainy became a Thug. I present here seven members of this infernal association, whom I have seen in India. Every man of the group is a murderer, and a murderer, not by the heat of passion, or revenge, or the stimulus of strong drink, but a cool, sober, unexcited trader in human life, whose conscience knows no remorse, because he regards himself as rendering in the act the highest service to his chosen deity!

One day, at Agra, I had the opportunity of seeing these monsters. The English Government have a special police and staff—one of the most perfect detective systems in the world—for the capture of these wretches. At the head of this “Thuggee