The variety of balanced opinions in our minds weakens the force of each: for in Europe, sometimes, the laws of religion differ from the laws of the land; sometimes the laws of the land differ from our laws of honor; our laws of honor are full of caprice, differing from those other laws, and sometimes differing from themselves: but there the laws of religion, the laws of the land, and the laws of honor are all united and consolidated in one invariable system, and bind men by eternal and indissoluble bonds to the rules of what, amongst them, is called his _caste_.
It may be necessary just to state to your Lordships what a _caste_ is.
The Gentoo people, from the oldest time, have been distributed into various orders, all of them hereditary: these family orders are called castes; these castes are the fundamental part of the constitution of the Gentoo commonwealth, both in their church and in their state.
Your Lordships are born to hereditary honors in the chief of your houses; the rest mix with the people.

With the Gentoos, they who are born noble can never fall into any second rank.

They are divided into four orders,--the Brahmins, the Chittery, the Bice, and the Soodur, with many subdivisions in each.

An eternal barrier is placed between them.
The higher cannot pass into the lower; the lower cannot rise into the higher.

They have all their appropriated rank, place, and situation, and their appropriated religion too, which is essentially different in its rites and ceremonies, sometimes in its object, in each of those castes.
A man who is born in the highest caste, which at once unites what would be tantamount in this country to the dignity of the peerage and the ennobled sanctity of the episcopal character,--the Brahmin, who sustains these characters, if he loses his caste, does not fall into an inferior order, the Chittery, the Bice, or the Soodur, but he is thrown at once out of all ranks of society.