"There is perhaps no part of the world where the communities of which the society is composed have been left so much to self-government as in India.... The village communities were everywhere left almost entirely to self-government; and the virtues of truth and honesty, in all their relations with each other, were indispensably necessary to enable them to govern themselves. A common interest often united a good many village communities in a bond of union, and established a kind of brotherhood over extensive tracts of richly cultivated land. Self-interest required that they should unite to defend themselves against attacks with which they were threatened at every returning harvest in a country where every prince was a robber upon a scale more or less large according to his means, and took the field to rob while the lands were covered with the ripe crops upon which his troops might subsist…Though, in their relations with each other, all these village communities spoke as much truth as those of any other communities in the world; still, in their relation with the Government, they told as many lies; – for falsehood, in the one set of relations, would have incurred the odium of the whole of their circles of society – truth, in the other, would often have involved the same penalty. If a man had told a lie to cheat his neighbour, he would have become an object of hatred and contempt – if he told a lie to save his neighbour’s fields from an increase of rent or tax, he would have become an object of esteem and respect. If the Government officers were asked whether there was any truth to be found among such communities, they would say, No, that the truth was not in them; because they would not cut each other’s throats by telling them the real value of each other’s fields. If by the term public spirit be meant a disposition on the part of individuals to sacrifice their own enjoyments, or their own means of enjoyment, for the common good, there is perhaps no people in the world among whom it abounds so much as among the people of India. To live in the grateful recollections of their countrymen for benefits conferred upon them in great works of ornament and utility is the study of every Hindoo of rank and property. Such works tend, in his opinion, not only to spread and perpetuate his name in this world, but, through the good wishes and prayers of those who are benefited by them, to secure the favour of the Deity in the next. According to their notions, every drop of rain-water or dew that falls to the ground from the green leaf of a fruit-tree, planted by them for the common good, proves a refreshing draught for their souls in the next [world]. When no descendant remains to pour the funeral libations in their name, the water from the trees they have planted for the public good is destined to supply its place. Everything judiciously laid out to promote the happiness of their fellow-creatures will in the next world be repaid to them ten-fold by the Deity. In marching over the country in the hot season, we every morning find our tents pitched on the green sward amid beautiful groves of fruit-trees, with wells of ‘pakka’ (brick or stone) masonry, built at great expense, and containing the most delicious water; but how few of us ever dream of asking at whose cost the trees that afford us and our followers such agreeable shade were planted, or the wells that afford us such copious streams of fine water in the midst of dry, arid plains were formed! We go on enjoying all the advantages which arise from the noble public spirit that animates the people of India to benevolent exertions, without once calling in question the truth of the assertion of our metropolitan friends that ‘the people of India have no public spirit.’…"