Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/84

 ers of society privately to plead with the crude, stickling judge to do a little wrong so as to achieve a great right. But how this has come to be so and why this is thus endured in a country otherwise jealous of female chastity, it is not difficult to see. Of all the harmful consequences of the caste system none would seem to be so injurious as its tendency to place merit and demerit on a level. Both being made customary, virtue is not necessarily honoured with social credit and vice is not perforce branded with social discredit. Not what is good but what is usual, is commendable; likewise, not what is bad but what is unusual, is condemnable. The national conscience is, in many important matters, hide-bound with custom. Hence the ruthless, sometimes savage, punishment of chance instances of secret vice, alongside of this disgusting indifference nay, this culpable encouragement given socially through the nautch and religiously through temple service to innumer-