It has been ascertained, by recent investigation, that in every part of India many of the hereditary landholders and the chief officers of villages have had private connexion with Thugs for generations, affording them facilities for murder by allowing their atrocious acts to pass with impunity, and sheltering the offenders when in danger; whilst in return for these services they received portions of their gains, or laid a tax upon their houses, which the Thugs cheerfully paid. To almost every village (and at towns they are in a greater proportion) several hermits, Fakeers, and religious mendicants have attached themselves. The huts and houses of these people, which are outside the walls, and always surrounded by a grove or a garden, have afforded the Thugs places of rendezvous or concealment; while the Fakeers, under their sanctimonious garb, have enticed travellers to their gardens by the apparently disinterested offers of shade and good water. The facilities I have enumerated, and hundreds of others which would be almost unintelligible by description, but which are intimately connected with, and grow out of, the habits of the people, have caused Thuggee to be everywhere spread and practised throughout India. The origin of Thuggee is entirely lost in fable and obscurity. Colonel Sleeman conjectures that it owed its existence to the vagrant tribes of Mahomedans which continued to plunder the country long after the invasion of India by the Moghuls and Tartars. The Hindoos claim for it a divine origin in their goddess Bhowanee; and certainly the fact that both Mahomedans and Hindoos believe in her power, and observe Hindee ceremonies, would go far to prove that the practice of Thuggee was of Hindoo origin. Though very remote traditions of it exist, there are no records of its having been discovered in any of the histories of India until the reign of Akbur, when many of its votaries were seized and put to death. From that time till 1810, although native princes now and then discovered and executed the perpetrators,--I believe it was unknown to the British government or authorities. In that year the disappearance of many men of the army, proceeding to and from their homes, induced the Commander-in-Chief to issue an order warning the soldiers against Thugs. In 1812, after the murder by Thugs of Lieut. Monsell, Mr. Halhed, accompanied by a strong detachment, proceeded to the village where the murderers were known to reside, and was resisted. The Thugs were discovered to be occupying many villages in the pergunnahs of Sindousé, and to have paid, for generations, large sums annually to Sindia's Government for protection. At this time it was computed that upwards of nine hundred were in those villages alone. The resistance offered by the Thugs to Mr. Halhed's detachment caused their ultimate dispersion, and no doubt they carried the practice of their profession into distant parts of the country, where perhaps it had been unknown before.