The system and principle
of that government is locality. Their laws, their manners, their
religion are all local.
Their legislator, whoever he was, (for who he was is a matter lost in
the mists of a most obscure antiquity,) had it as a great leading
principle of his policy to connect the people with their soil.
Accordingly, by one of those anomalies which a larger acquaintance with
our species daily discovers, and which perhaps an attentive reflection
might explain in the nature of man, this aboriginal people of
India,--who are the softest in their manners of any of our race,
approaching almost to feminine tenderness,--who are formed
constitutionally benevolent, and, in many particulars, made to fill a
larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in,--who extend their
good-will to the whole animal creation,--these people are, of all
nations, the most unalliable to any other part of mankind. They cannot,
the highest orders of them, at least, cannot, come into contact with any
other. That bond which is one of the chief instruments of society, and
which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no
existence with them: I mean the convivial bond. That race can be held to
no other by that great link of life. No Hindoo can mix at meals even
with those on whom he depends for the meat he eats. This circumstance
renders it difficult for us to enter with due sympathy into their
concerns, or for them to enter into ours, even when we meet on the same
ground.
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