Besides the many other traces of family affinity between the Indian and Teutonic races, another is furnished by the Germanic constitution, which forms the political basis of most European kingdoms. In India the noble class who most especially are bound to military service forms also the caste of the lords of the soil; and from their latter character they also derive their name as a class.[61] Some of the most general and most ancient features of the feudal system have likewise been discovered among them, though not, indeed, its more artificial and complicated system, to which feudalism was in later times developed among European nations. To this landed nobility belong the nabobs and even the rajahs. For it was left open to the fluctuating fortunes of different families to rise or to fall from the summit of political dignity. Between the several grades of honor accessible to a particular caste no insurmountable barrier was raised; all were open to all the members of the same rank or caste. The democratical writers of a recent era, in obedience to a sentiment natural enough to their false system, have expressed a deep horror and strong aversion to this institution of castes among the Hindoos, stamping it on every occasion with the strongest marks of reprobation. Viewing it, however, in an historical light, I for my part am disposed to think that it is to this ancient and hereditary institution, however much of imperfection it undoubtedly involves, that this great and populous country owes that firm stability of its laws and customs, and that indestructible prosperity which the various conquests it has undergone both in ancient and modern times have been unable to shake or to undermine. No doubt the Indian gradation of ranks wants the stamp of perfection and mildness which belongs to Christian politics. And in this respect the comparison is especially instructive. It serves to draw attention to, and strongly illustrates the fact, that a Christian division of ranks is, in some points, different in its principle, and the very opposite to the correspondent state of things in the old world, as yet unrefined and purified by this divine element. For, first of all, according to the Christian idea, the spiritual class can not depend upon birth; it must possess a higher and peculiar vocation. This order, consequently, can not recruit itself merely by birth, but must derive its members from the other classes which are hereditary. But in consequence of this principle, the partition-wall, otherwise impassable and absolute, between the other ranks, which, taken on the whole, are hereditary, is so far removed, that exceptional cases occur when these barriers are opened to merit or other important considerations. It is a self-evident fact, requiring no elaborate argument for its proof, that the Christian sentiment, or, as we have here expressed it, that principle of equity so universally and essentially interwoven with the