In the succeeding years, the arrear of causes, in the lowest courts of all, decreased very greatly, but it was augmented in a still greater ratio in the higher courts. In 1815, the number of causes in arrear, in the superior court of the district, was 3058, and the average delay exactly thirteen years. In 1819, the number of causes in arrear was but 391, but the average delay, notwithstanding, was thirteen years and eight months. In 1820, or the last year of the series, the number of causes undecided was reduced to 5385, and the delay in the superior court was reduced to ten months. It was much reduced, also, in the two courts of summary process, but then, in the subordinate European court, the number of causes depending was much greater than in any preceding year, and the delay amounted to three years and a half. Upon the whole period of nineteen years the average annual number of causes in arrear amounted to 6979; and in the two European courts, the average delay was, for the higher, four years and twenty-two days; and for the lower, two years and eleven days. In these nineteen years the number of causes was 132,602; allowing only one plaintiff and one defendant to each suit, and two families, or ten individuals in all, to have been interested in the decision, it appears, that in the moderate period in question, which is considerably short of the average duration of human life, within eight per cent. of the whole population of the district, must, (criminal cases excluded) have been engaged in litigation.

In the year 1814, which, as already mentioned, was that in which the census of the population was taken, the number of causes depending was 5866. The delay in the different courts in the same year was as follows, beginning with the lowest,-eight months, six months, three months, and six years and ten months. Now, suppose in this last case an appeal had been made from the subordinate European Court in the district, to the highest appellate jurisdiction at the Presidency, the delay in bringing the cause to a decision would have amounted exactly to seventeen years and four months. Even if the appeal were from the superior district court, a case of very frequent occurrence, the delay would have amounted to seventeen years and one month! The letter, containing the statements to which we now allude, is dated the 8th of December, 1824, and signed by the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Honorable the Court of Directors.

The Fifth Report of the House of Commons, written in 1810, complains loudly of the delay in the administration of justice, and, quoting the words of one of the Company's own judges, apologizes for the inhabitants taking the law into their own hands, seeing that the usual process of the courts threatened to exceed the probable duration of their own lives.' Mr. Robertson is exceedingly angry with the Fifth Report, and denounces it as a record of the days of our fathers,' or, the annals of a period long since passed.' This period

Fourteen years

long since passed, however, is but eighteen years. later, and which brings us down to within five years of the present time, matters were pretty much in the state in which they are described in the Fifth Report, as is shewn by the loud complaints made by the Court of Directors, in their letter just quoted, and still more satisfactorily by the statements which accompanied that letter. Has our author no deference for authority? Does he not know that the very part of the Fifth Report to which he objects, was written by a Director of the East India Company,-by a member of the very body to which he himself belongs,-by a gentleman, who, like him, has filled judicial situations, and under the very same Presidency? In short, does he not know that that portion of the Fifth Report, which relates to Bengal, was framed by the late Mr. Davies, a Civil servant of the East India Company, and one of the most able and liberal men which that Civil Service has ever produced? In fine, does not Mr. Robertson know that the 'collective wisdom' of the nation abetted Mr. Davies in his opinions, by adopting them as their own?

The administration of civil justice then, notwithstanding our author's attempt at extenuation, is undoubtedly in a very deplorable state; and we are clearly of opinion that as long as it is conducted by unprofessional and uneducated strangers, whose numbers no financial resources can effectually augment, on the present system, it is physically and morally impossible that the matter should be otherwise. In the year 1823, the total population of the Bengal Presidency, subject to the judicial regulations, was rated, or rather prodigiously underrated at 57,000,000 of inhabitants, spread over 328,000 square miles, and the total number of European judicial officers employed in the administration of justice to this mass of human beings, was 137, including every sort and description, belonging to whatever court, whether of primary or appellate jurisdiction. Every man then had to his share 416,058 inhabitants, and 2394 square miles of jurisdiction. These 137 Europeans, with a few ill-paid and corrupt Native servants, are called upon to administer, not only civil, but criminal justice and police, and to perform every ministerial office connected with all these. Is it in the power of possibility that the delays of justice in such a situation should amount to any thing less than a denial of it? Under the Madras Presidency the matter is no better. The Court of Directors, in a letter dated the 11th April, 1826, gives a statement, exhibiting the population of eight districts belonging to this portion of the British dominions, and the average number of inhabitants to each is 1,182,581. Supposing, and this is the utmost, that there were two European judges, and it is to be recollected, that an appeal from the one always lies to the other, each would have for his share, the administration of justice, civil and criminal, with the performance of all ministerial offices attached to either, over 591,290 inhabitants.

But the strangest thing of all in this strange affair is, that the Madras authorities took it into their heads some years back, that their judicial officers were too numerous, and in six of the most populous districts they accordingly dispensed with the few that existed, and, (an easy metamorphosis in India,) converted the collector of taxes into a judge, leaving to this officer criminal and civil justice, judicial and ministerial,-police,-the collection of the land revenue, on the complex system already described,-the collection of excise duties, and the management of monopolies among 1,182,581 inhabitants; they allowed this important functionary one assistant, but one thousand would probably have been nearer the measure of his wants!

The annals of mankind surely can exhibit nothing parallel to this; and we put our author's ingenuity at defiance to discover a single instance. After quoting the statement for 1825, he conceives that he has satisfactorily made it out, that the administration of justice is not, as he expresses it, in the hopeless state' which it has been asserted to be. In the same letter of 1824, which we have already quoted, we have before us a statement of all the causes instituted throughout the Bengal Presidency, in every court, and for seven years from 1814 to 1820 inclusive. In 1814, the number of causes put on the file was 167,643 in the two years succeeding it, there is a great reduction of the number, but in the three following there is an augmentation. What does the reader imagine is the cause of the diminution of suits referred to in this statement, and the subsequent increase? Why, regulations made by the government to make access to the courts more difficult, and afterwards partially rescinded. We give the explanation in the words of the Honorable the Court of Directors themselves :- Some of the differences in the table may be thus accounted for; but the general falling off in the institution of suits, in the years immediately succeeding 1814, is, no doubt, to be chiefly ascribed to those provisions of the regulations which added to the expense of suits in the first instance, which limited the jurisdiction of the Moonsiffs, and which imposed restrictions on the admission of the suits of paupers.' By the same authority it appears that, in the year 1798, the number of suits instituted was no less than 382,483. Stamp duties, on law proceedings, having about this time been imposed, the number gradually fell off; and, in 1805, after we had received an accession of 18,000,000 inhabitants, it fell to 268,687. In 1813 it was only 184,790. In the following year, a new regulation threw additional difficulties in the way of the administration of justice, and the suits instituted amounted only to 118,809. In 1816 they fell to 106,285. Next year some of the difficulties were removed, as already mentioned, and the number rose to 119,041; and they continued to augment until 1820, when they were 175,270. In the year 1798, the number of suits decided was 346,574. In 1805,

with the accession of subjects already mentioned, they were only 271,109. According to Mr. Robertson's statement, in 1825 they amounted only to 166,504. The quantity of judicial business then, had fallen off to less than one half of what it was seven-and-twenty years before, after an addition of nearly one half to the whole population.

Such being the case, there seems no ground for supposing that we have made any very extraordinary progress since the days of our fathers,' or that justice is better administered in India, in these modern times, than we find it to have been in the annals of a period long since past.' It was bad enough in days of yore;' it is worse now. Our author has alluded, with a triumphant air, to the vast number of causes decided by summary process, and not included in his table. We have no means of determining what the number of these was in the year 1825, to which he refers; but in 1820 they amounted only to 47,347, and, on the average of the two preceding years, they were only 37,089. Adding the largest number to his statement, the whole causes decided in 1825 would amountonly to 213,851, which, supposing no cases to have been decided by summary process in 1798, would make the judicial business of the former less than that of the latter by 132,723 suits.

After such explanations as we have now given of the reduced business, in civil judicature, we confess we receive, with considerable distrust, our author's assertion respecting recent improvement in the state of the police in the Eastern provinces, particularly when there is no explanation accompanying it. With respect to the Western provinces, as far as we can comprehend his statement, which, however, is very imperfect and unsatisfactory, in 1813, the number of gang robberies, robberies by highwaymen, footpads, and hired assassins, together with the number of violent affrays, amounted to 1111. Three years beyond that, they were reduced to 692, and two years later to 601; in 1819, they rose to 805; in 1822, they were 603; and in 1825, 668; being 67 more than they were seven years earlier. In the three last years named, we have an additional article of crime not inserted in the three preceding years' statement, viz., thefts of property exceeding the value of 51., a sort of grand larceny for India. What number of these larceny cases may have been included in the violent affrays,' in the statements from 1813 to 1818, we are not informed. In 1819, the number of these cases of larceny was 2499; six years afterwards, their diminution was only 49 below the number stated. The number of murders in the year 1825 was 361. Seven years earlier, the number, as far as the imperfection of our author's statement exhibits them, was but 18: this, however, is highly improbable, and, therefore, if we take the proportion of murders to other offences, as in 1825, they would amount to 324. This crime was, therefore, largely on the increase. Professional assassination on the high-ways and in the

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

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