I have said that I proposed inquiring, further, whether there are not some compensating advantages in this division of the people into castes which tend, in a great measure, to neutralize the prejudicial effects that arise from people's sympathies and feelings being more or less confined to members of their own caste, instead of being distributed over the human race considered as a whole. Now, it is perfectly true that the tendency of caste is to weaken the claim that humanity in general has on an individual; but though the claim of society in general is weakened, it must be remembered that the claims of each caste on the members of it are strengthened. And though this fact may militate against an enlarged and Christian philanthropy, the aggregate force of claims will be found to amount to a much larger sum than if one part of a society had no more claim on a man than another. A man of one caste would not, for instance, perhaps feel that a man of another caste had much claim on him; but he would distinctly and strongly feel that a member of his own caste had. And every caste acting on the same principle of supporting and helping its members, I am convinced that the aggregate force of assistance rendered must be greater than in a country where there is little or no caste principle. This may seem a rash assertion, and of course it is one that it is impossible, as far as I am aware, to prove. But the fact that there is not a poor-house from one end of India to the other, seems to me a significant and satisfactory circumstance; and the only way I can account for there being no need of such a thing is,[42] that caste feeling must often come in where all other aids fail. Nor are we in this country without instances of the value of caste feelings, and both the Jews and the Scotch may still be pointed to as illustrations of what I mean. A Scotchman still has a sort of caste feeling for a Scotchman, and would do things for a man, as a Scotchman, that he would not do for people of either English or Irish descent. This principle may now have lessened, and is, no doubt, daily lessening. But when I started in India, I very soon experienced the benefit of this caste feeling; and, as one illustration to the point, I may mention that, before my estates came into bearing, I was attended in a long and serious illness by two Scotch doctors (one of whom attended on me for six weeks incessantly), both of whom resolutely declined any remuneration whatever. I cannot, of course, positively assert that these gentlemen would not have attended me on the same terms had I been an Englishman, but, from my general experience with other doctors, I am sure that these gentlemen must have been not a little influenced by caste feeling. And I have no doubt whatever that the way the Scotch get on, wherever they go, is to be attributed, in no small measure, to the existence of the same feeling. It may seem to many of my readers that to