Mill in his estimate of the Hindu character is chiefly guided by Dubois, a French missionary, and by Orme and Buchanan, Tennant, and Ward, all of them neither very competent nor very unprejudiced judges. Mill,[19] however, picks out all that is most unfavorable from their works, and omits the qualifications which even these writers felt bound to give to their wholesale condemnation of the Hindus. He quotes as serious, for instance, what was said in joke,[20] namely, that "a Brahman is an ant's nest of lies and impostures." Next to the charge of untruthfulness, Mill upbraids the Hindus for what he calls their litigiousness. He writes:[21] "As often as courage fails them in seeking more daring gratification to their hatred and revenge, their malignity finds a vent in the channel of litigation." Without imputing dishonorable motives, as Mill does, the same fact might be stated in a different way, by saying, "As often as their conscience and respect of law keep them from seeking more daring gratification to their hatred and revenge, say by murder or poisoning, their trust in English justice leads them to appeal to our courts of law." Dr. Robertson, in his "Historical Disquisitions concerning India,"[22] seems to have considered the litigious subtlety of the Hindus as a sign of high civilization rather than of barbarism, but he is sharply corrected by Mr. Mill, who tells him that "nowhere is this subtlety carried higher than among the wildest of the Irish." That courts of justice, like the English, in which a verdict was not to be obtained, as formerly in Mohammedan courts, by bribes and corruption, should at first have proved very attractive to the Hindus, need not surprise us. But is it really true that the Hindus are more fond of litigation than other nations? If we consult Sir Thomas Munro, the eminent Governor of Madras, and the powerful advocate of the Ryotwar settlements, he tells us in so many words:[23] "I have had ample opportunity of observing the Hindus in every situation, and I can affirm, that they are not litigious."[24] But Mill goes further still, and in one place he actually assures his readers[25] that a "Brahman may put a man to death when he lists." In fact, he represents the Hindus as such a monstrous mass of all vices, that, as Colonel Vans Kennedy[26] remarked, society could not have held together if it had really consisted of such reprobates only. Nor does he seem to see the full bearing of his remarks. Surely, if a Brahman might, as he says, put a man to death whenever he lists, it would be the strongest testimony in their favor that you hardly ever hear of their availing themselves of such a privilege, to say nothing of the fact--and a fact it is--that, according to statistics, the number of capital sentences was one in every 10,000 in England, but only one in every million in Bengal.[27]