In 1829, the year after the arrival of Lord William Bentinck, he electrified India by the abolition of suttee. In these advanced days it is difficult to understand why British rulers did not suppress this hateful rite the moment they had the power. But for many years toleration and non-intervention were a kind of fanaticism with British administrators; and the Bengalis appeared to exult in the performance of a rite which they knew to be obnoxious to Europeans. As a matter of fact, the number of suttees in Bengal appeared to increase under British rule, and this was most marked in the villages round Calcutta. [Sidenote: Relief of Hindus.] The abolition of suttee by treating it as a capital crime was followed by none of the evils which had been anticipated. There was no rising of the sepoys; no discontent on the part of the masses. British rulers were delivered from the odium of sanctioning a barbarous crime under the plea of religious toleration; whilst the living widow was no longer compelled to immolate herself with her dead husband, nor was her son forced by a sense of duty to apply the torch to the funeral pile. The pride of Brahmans and Rajputs may have been wounded when all concerned in the performance of the ancient rite were punished by imprisonment or death, but humanity has triumphed, and suttees have vanished from British India, and from every state owing allegiance to British sovereignty. [Sidenote: Thug atrocities.] §14. The suppression of the Thugs was another work of the time. These detestable miscreants appeared to the outer world as honest traders or agriculturists, who occasionally went on pilgrimage or travelled for business or pleasure. In reality they were organised gangs of murderers, having a dialect and signs of their own. They made friends with other travellers going the same way; halted beneath the shade of trees, and suddenly threw their nooses round the necks of their victims, strangled them to death, rifled them of their money and goods, and buried them with a speed which defied detection. Sometimes the unwary traveller was beguiled by a female to a lonely spot, and was never heard of more. [Sidenote: Hereditary Thug gangs.]