Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1

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[p.38]magistrate, or an officer, the very picture of cringing submissiveness. But after leaving the room, he is as different from his former self as a counsel in court from a counsel at a concert, a sea captain at a club dinner from a sea captain on his quarter-deck. Then he will discover that the English are not brave, nor clever, nor generous, nor civilised, nor anything but surpassing rogues; that every official takes bribes, that their manners are utterly offensive, and that they are rank infidels. Then he will descant complacently upon the probability of a general Bartholomew's Day in the East, and look forward to the hour when enlightened Young India will arise and drive the "foul invader" from the land.[FN#12] Then he will submit his political opinions nakedly, that India should be wrested from the Company and given to the Queen, or taken from the Queen and given to the French. If the Indian has been a European traveller, so much the worse for you. He has blushed to own,-explaining, however , conquest by bribery,-that 50,000 Englishmen hold 150,000,000 of his compatriots in thrall, and for aught you know, republicanism may have become his idol. He has lost all fear of the white face, and having been accustomed to unburden his mind in "The land where, girt by friend or foe, A man may say the thing he will,"- he pursues the same course in other lands where it is exceedingly misplaced. His doctrines of liberty and
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