In this there is nothing that need surprise us.

For ages the peasantry were exposed to the arbitrary power and ruthless exactions of those who were placed over them; and as the law gave them no means of legally protecting themselves, their only means of self-defence lay in cunning and deceit.
* Kireyefski, in the Russakaya Beseda.
We have here, I believe, the true explanation of that "Oriental mendacity" about which Eastern travellers have written so much.

It is simply the result of a lawless state of society.

Suppose a truth-loving Englishman falls into the hands of brigands or savages.

Will he not, if he have merely an ordinary moral character, consider himself justified in inventing a few falsehoods in order to effect his escape?
If so, we have no right to condemn very severely the hereditary mendacity of those races which have lived for many generations in a position analogous to that of the supposed Englishman among brigands.