PREFACE.

MANKIND in considering the necessity of restraining those evil propensities which affect the life, property and character of their fellow men commonly appeal to three standards. 1st. The will of the Deity, as revealed to them in their scriptures, or interpreted to them by the expounders of their religion. 2d. The moral feelings of the circles of society in which they move. 3rd. The Penal laws in force and the character of their administration.

1st. The Thug associations which we are now engaged in suppressing have been taught by those whom they revere as the expounders of the will of their Deity, that the murders they perpetrate are pleasing to her, provided they are perpetrated under certain restrictions, attended by certain observances, and preceded and followed by certain rites, sacrifices and offerings. The Deity who, according to their belief, guides and protects them is ever manifesting her will by signs; and as long as they understand and observe these signs they all consider themselves as acting in conformity to her will; and consequently, fulfilling her wishes and designs. On all occasions and in all situations they believe these signs to be available if sought after in a pure spirit of faith, and with the prescribed observances; and as long as they are satisfied that they are truly interpreted and faithfully obeyed they never feel any dread of punishment either in this world or the next.

2d. The second standard to which men appeal is commonly more powerful in well regulated societies than the first, in checking the indulgence of their vicious propensities.

Where men are taught by a pure system of religion, that every act which robs their fellow men of life, of property, or of character, is a crime punishable in the next world, they are apt to believe that a deathbed repentance will appease a justly offended God, and secure their pardon; and in that state of body and mind in which men are most tempted to those crimes, they are all too apt to believe that death is yet far distant. But in such well regulated societies the odium of the circles in which men move for crimes which shock their moral feelings is a punishment sure and immediate, and consequently more dreaded. The circles of society in which these assassins by profession live and move are conciliated by their lavish expenditure of the booty they acquire on their annual expeditions, and by that amiable deportment which they find necessary to enable them to win the confidence of their victims while abroad, and which they continue to preserve at home, where they are commonly the most scrupulous in the discharge of their duties in all relations of life-the most liberal promoters of all social enjoyment, and the most rigid observers of every thing relating to cast and religion. In such circles, the dreadful trade of murder by which they earn their incomes, even when known or suspected, as it commonly is, hardly ever makes them odious; for the want of sympathy between men of different casts, or different places of abode is, unhappily, the grand characteristic of Indian society; and as long as these assassins forbear to murder in and about the places where they reside, and conciliate or keep in ignorance the local police authorities, they are sure of being cherished as among the dearest members of society. At least the most dangerous members of the associations are so, for the qualities which give them influence over their associates are precisely those which must endear them to the circles in which they move; and the greatest leaders are always those to whose arrest and conviction such circles of society oppose the greatest obstacles. In some cases the village communities among whom they

live and the local authorities in native states have a notion that they are under some supernatural influence, and dread the consequences of being made in any way instrumental to their punishment. Such people oppose their arrest and conviction as they would oppose the killing of a snake or a wolf; and in most parts of India a village community would lament the killing of a wolf within their boundary by one of the community as a great calamity though he should have destroyed a child a week among them. They consider the wolf as an instrument in the hand of God, and dread the consequence of any violence to it. From the same feeling many village communities believe it to be impious to prescribe medicine for the Cholera Morbus when it rages among them, considering it as a means used by Davey for the destruction of a certain portion of the human race, and consequently to be averted only by prayers and sacrifices. In appealing, therefore, to two out of the three great standards, the will of their God, and the moral feelings of their own circles of society, the Thug fraternity feels no necessity whatever to cease from murder; and the tradition or legend that the Deity at some remote period saved them the trouble of burying the bodies of their victims by swallowing them herself, is, perhaps, typical of a time when no human laws were in force for the protection of travellers against their depredations. There are many parts of India still in which they are accustomed to leave the bodies of their victims unburied having no fear of enquiry or pursuit from the local Governments.

3rd. From Penal laws and their administration they have rarely had any thing to fear in the Districts where they resided; and with their ordinary precautions seldom any from those in which their crimes were perpetrated. It was their rule never to rob before they had murdered the person to be robbed; never to suffer one of a party to escape except an infant for adoption, and to destroy all property that might by its recognition lead to their detection, or convert it into