dead of the night, as the same is described, by the illustrious traveller Bernier, to have been practised in the glorious days of Aurungezebe, and probably also in the reign of King Porus, had increased under British auspices in seven years by ninety per cent!

After the favourable account given by Mr. Robertson, of the improved state of police in Bengal, and the diminution of crime, the reader will be hardly prepared,. perhaps, to hear from the best authority, that the police is better, and crimes rarer, under the most anarchical Native Government of India, that of the Mahrattas, than under the British! The authority to which we allude is that of Mr. Elphinstone, the late governor of Bombay, a man who is no stranger to any part of India, and who is perhaps one of the most talented and best informed that the service to which our author himself belongs, has produced for the last thirty years. Judging,' says he, 'from the impunity with which crimes might be committed, under a system of criminal justice and police such as has been described, we should be led to fancy the Mahratta country a complete scene of anarchy and violence; no picture, however, could be further from the truth. The reports of the collectors do not represent crimes as particularly numerous: Mr. Chaplin, who has the best opportunity of drawing a comparison with our old provinces, thinks them rarer here than there Gang robberies and

highway robbery are common, but are almost always committed by Bheels and other predatory tribes, who scarcely form a part of the society; and they have never, since I have been in the country, reached to such a pitch as to bear a moment's comparison with the state of Bengal, described in the papers laid before Parliament.'

Mr. Elphinstone, after this statement, proceeds to give a judicious account of the superior prevalence of crime in the British dominions, and, among other causes, enumerates the general revolutions of property, in consequence of our revenue arrangements, which drive the upper classes to disaffection, and the lower to desperation.' The delays of trials, the difficulties of conviction, the inadequacy of punishment, the trouble and expense of prosecuting and giving evidence,' and last, but certainly not least, the dread' which the Natives entertain for those very courts of justice which our author so good-naturedly extols. In quoting the authority of Mr. Elphinstone, and other functionaries of the Indian Government, we are aware that we lay ourselves open to our author's censure. 'It is amusing,' says he, to observe how unceremoniously our Indian reformers appropriate to their own use, the labours of the public functionaries.' In the name of reason, from whom else are the reformers to draw their information, when the functionaries in question, not only claim a monopoly of information, but take the utmost pains to exclude all others from the means of obtaining it? If these functionaries insist themselves, that their sources of information are the very best, why should they complain when others

make use of them? Our author might as well say, that a judge and jury ought to discard the testimony of every witness in a case; and that the one should give his charge, and the other its verdict, on their own certain knowledge and mere motion,'-the old royal road to instruction! *

As to the costs of procedure in India, Mr. Robertson has given what appears to be a very satisfactory statement. In the three subordinate tribunals, he estimates the costs of suit, when the value of the thing litigated is 50l. or under, at twenty-two per cent. If there should be an appeal then from the lowest successively, to the highest of these, the costs of course would be respectively fortyfour and sixty-six per cent. We may easily persuade ourselves that under such circumstances, there must be very few appeals indeed, for it cannot be worth while to cast lots whether a man shall gain a hundred pounds, or inevitably lose sixty-six,—and his time, and his patience, and his temper. In suits where the matter litigated is from 50l. to 500l., the costs are sixteen per cent. In the inferior appellate Court, the charge is nine, and, in the superior, six per cent. If a suit for 500l. then, be appealed from the district court to the provincial court, and from the provincial court to the superior appellate court, the whole costs will amount to thirty-one per cent., or to little short of one third part of the whole property litigated. The whole period spent in litigation in this instance, according to our author's own statement for the year 1825, will be nine years and eleven months. What with the loss of the use of the property, or loss of interest and loss of time, it must appear pretty certain, that the appeal to which we here allude, if the different character of the suitors be duly estimated, must be much more hopeless to an Indian, than a Chancery suit in England would be to an Englishman.

Taking our author's own statement, the number of petty suits, that is, of suits of 50l. and under, amounted in the year 1825, to 155,846, which is in the proportion of about sixteen and a half to one, to those above that sum. But of these suits, again, no less than 150,651 were for sums of five pounds or under, a matter to be expected from the poverty of the people. In above ninety parts, therefore, out of a hundred of all the suits, the costs are twenty-two per cent., and in the remaining fraction but sixteen per cent.; or to be more explicit, the expense of justice to the poor, when there is no appeal, is by thirty-seven per cent. more than to the rich, and if the poor should appeal, it is seventy-eight per cent. more. In the inferior tribunals, that is to say, in the Courts in which the thing litigated does not exceed the value of five pounds, the process is in some measure of a summary nature. In England, the advantage of

Report of the Hon. Mr. Elphinstone, 25th October, 1819.-Revenue Selections, vol. iv. p. 179.

Oriental Herald, Vol. 22.

C

such courts is the small expense attending them. In India, the case is exactly reversed, and even the average delay, by our author's shewing, is no less than eight months. Such are Indian courts of conscience!

Mr. Robertson himself in one place gives a curious sample of the state of the laws. Juggoo (there is nothing romantic or musical in Indian names), is the owner of a field which supports himself and his family. A rich neighbour, by name Sumbhoo, takes a fancy for the field in question. 'What is poor Juggoo to do,' says our author, and then he proceeds to inform us of the nature of the dilemma in which this Juggoo is placed, and the course which Juggoo pursues in the sequel. The Court of Justice is exactly fifty miles off, and Juggoo, in all human probability has some serious apprehension of the twenty-two per cent., or the forty-four per cent., or the sixty-six per cent. of costs of suit, not to say of twelve false witnesses whom the rich man can bring forward without the smallest difficulty, at the rate of, probably, about two shillings per head, to swear any thing on earth. He naturally prefers a summary mode of procedure, and therefore, without fail, institutes a criminal prosecution against the wealthy oppressor. 'No,' says Juggoo, (proceeds our author,) 'I will say nothing about the property, but just swear flat (flatly?) that Sumbhoo has broken my head, and get Ruggut and Jewun, whose fields are next to mine, and who also are afraid of Sumbhoo, to support me,' Off he goes accordingly to the English Judge, accompanied by his two worthy coadjutors, and in due course, they swear assault and battery against Sumbhoo, who, to avoid the 'summary process of arrest,' gives up the field. There is one little difficulty here. Why did not the rich man's twelve witnesses come forward in this predicament to relieve their patron, and swear that Juggoo's head, instead of being broken, was as sound as any head could well be expected to be, that had just given vent to a deliberate perjury? Our author, in reference to this case, and in extenuation of the delay in civil suits, shews that many cases virtually civil are decided, and we allow very naturally, judging from this example, in the 'criminal department!' He himself, to a certain extent, admits, that if the Courts of Justice were more numerous, Juggoo and Sumbhoo cases might be less frequent; but after all he is disposed to ascribe their occurrence for the most part to the inherent lubricity of the Native character, and indeed, the rehearsal of the anecdote just mentioned, is forthwith followed up by his invective against the inhabitants of Bengal, already referred to.

To the total absence of physical means for conducting the administration of justice in India, is to be added the intricacy of the proceedings-their being carried on in a language equally foreign to the Judge and to the people-and, without any reproach to them, for they do not claim it, a want of all legal training and judicial knowledge on the part of the Judges. Speaking of the country courts,

after seven years' experience, Sir Hyde East, the Chief Justice of Bengal and an eminent lawyer, passes the following just censure upon them, writing if we remember well, about the very year 1825, which is that of our author's peculiar eulogy. Such is the state of business in these courts, the uncertainty of the system of law, and the delay and vexations of a protracted attendance, that many persons prefer to abandon their just demands rather than pursue them..... The inexperience of the Judges and the badness of the law, are the principal causes of the expense, uncertainty, and the delay of the present course, and arise from the too early employment, in judicial offices, of very young and inexperienced men, who, having never studied law upon any system, must necessarily be unacquainted, for the most part, with its principles and practice; and, as matters are now contrived, have very little opportunity of profiting by the example of others, who have not long preceded them in the same helpless condition. There is little or no continuity of knowledge and experience in the present system. The young Judge must set off with a small stock in hand-he leaves no ear-witnessing successor to the hard-earned experience which he afterwards acquires. This begets the necessity, and has enforced the providing, of checks upon checks, not only to correct the final errors, but even to guide the interlocutory proceedings of such magistrates; thence the cumbrous machinery, box within box, appeal upon appeal, which overloads the proceedings of the country courts, and leads to insuperable vexations and delays, with proportionable expense. There is seldom any tolerable certainty even when a cause is to be heard, and the parties are accustomed to retain agents, at monthly salaries, to give them information of it.'*

The condemnation of the Court of Directors themselves, although more measured, is scarcely less decisive. In the conduct,' say they, ' of trials, in unravelling intricacies of particular cases, in eliciting truth from witnesses, in appreciating evidence, in applying the law to the fact, Indian Judges, unprepared by education or otherwise, for the judicial office, have many peculiar difficulties to contend with. The code of regulations by which they are bound, consists almost entirely of rules of procedure; the Mohammedan and Hindoo laws are the guide for their decisions in certain cases only; and, in all others not specially provided for, the Judge has no law but that of his own conscience. For propriety in the proceedings of the Courts, therefore, little security is to be found in the state of the law, and of the judicial establishment.'†

It is quite wonderful after all this to find our author, not only vindicating the country courts, but attempting to draw a favorable

Letter of Sir E. H. East to the Earl of Liverpool. See previous Numbers of The Oriental Herald,' in which this correspondence is published entire,

† Judicial Selections, vol. iv. p. 32.

comparison between the laws administered in these and in English courts of justice. After enumerating the delays of process, and its expenses, he ventures to compare them with the delays and expenses of English justice. This is of the same complexion with his estimate of the condition of the peasantry of India, by the standard of happiness and comfort among the peasantry of Ireland! The laws which are the object of his approbation, were deliberately framed only two and thirty years before the period which he quotes, and intended for a poor and ignorant people of very simple habits. Can he really think that such a judicature as ought to have been formed under such circumstances, can be a fair subject of comparison with a complex code of laws, which has been accumulating since the Saxon heptarchy, which is in operation among a wealthy people, of relations the most complex, agricultural, manufacturing, commercial and political? The advantages of the English law in its application to India (and not one of them is possessed by the Indian judicature) consist in this, that the judges are men of legal education, and habits of business, that they understand the language in which justice is administered,-—that they are independent of the local government and irremovable by it, and that they are assisted by a bar possessing as much knowledge, as much ability, and as much industry as themselves. Administered by such men, almost any code of laws would be tolerable. But what the effects of a clumsy and unsuitable code, administered by men notoriously wanting in all the qualities we have enumerated, and not only without the assistance of an enlightened bar, but encumbered by a crowd of corrupt and ignorant servants, must be, we leave it to the reader to judge, if indeed the facts before adduced have not already satisfied him on this subject.

In common with the King's Judges, however, it ought in justice to be noticed, that the judicial servants of the Company possess, in an eminent degree, honour and integrity, the very qualities for which they are least likely to receive credit in this country. They often possess zeal, and sometimes industry. All these are no doubt valuable qualifications, but common sense forbids us from imagining that they constitute every requisite for the judg

ment seat.

The great defect of the English law in its application to the people of India, consists in its being burthened with useless technical forms. This disadvantage of it was purely incidental. The charter and statute gave the first judges the power to regulate the process of their court, and the first judges being pedants, adopted by choice, the forms of Westminster Hall. In those parts of India, where English law is not burthened with technical forms, its administration is cheap, expeditious, and effectual. Not only is the process less intricate than that of the country courts, framed by the very same judges who imposed technical forms on the King's Court, but