MR. ISAACS
A TALE OF MODERN INDIA

BY F. MARION CRAWFORD


1882



BY F. MARION CRAWFORD





CHAPTER I.


In spite of Jean-Jacques and his school, men are not everywhere born
free, any more than they are everywhere in chains, unless these be of
their own individual making. Especially in countries where excessive
liberty or excessive tyranny favours the growth of that class most
usually designated as adventurers, it is true that man, by his own
dominant will, or by a still more potent servility, may rise to any
grade of elevation; as by the absence of these qualities he may fall to
any depth in the social scale.

Wherever freedom degenerates into license, the ruthless predatory
instinct of certain bold and unscrupulous persons may, and almost