Note 272 — Chapter IV · GOVERNMENT.
Reading edition
“The habit of irregular remuneration, in lieu of fixed, invariable, and actionable wages, produces a difference of mental habits, as regards servants and masters, that I am sure is not to be understood through description; and yet every day you see Europeans, those men who affect such comprehensive views and such powers of logic, reviling the habit of giving presents, not perceiving that this practice leads to the preservation of those interesting domestic relations which I conceive to be the greatest lesson, political and moral, that is presented to us by the Eastern world.”—Urquhart’s Spirit of the East, vol. ii. p. 402.