Page:Confessions of a Thug.djvu/29

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INTRODUCTION.
xxiii

sible for each to extend to every part of that under his charge the extreme attention and scrutiny which are so imperatively necessary to put an end to this destructive system (for there is no doubt that wherever one well-initiated Thug exists, he will among the idle and dissolute characters which everywhere abound in the Indian population, find numbers to join him), must be best known to the Government of India. It is only sincerely to be hoped that æconomical considerations do not prevent the appointment of others, if necessary.

The confessions I have recorded are not published to gratify a morbid taste in any one for tales of horror and of crime; they were written to expose, as fully as I was able, the practices of the Thugs, and to make the public of England more conversant with the subject than they can be at present, notwithstanding that some notice has been attracted to the subject by an able article

    the Superintendents:—Capt. Elwall, Bengal Infantry, at Bangalore, has Mysore and the whole of the southern peninsula of India; Capt. Malcolm, the whole of the territories of H.H. the Nizam.