like Mr. Toulmin at Bury in Lancashire-who go about protesting that we must do nothing to protect India's trade lest the dreadful foreigner should retaliate upon her. Speaking at Bury on November 14, Mr. Toulmin said: "Lancashire could not afford to have India's trade gambled with" in "the dice-box of retaliation!" No; the prescription for improving India's trade advocated by Mr. Toulmin's party is an Indian Factory Act, as suggested in the article in the Radical Dundee Advertiser already quoted.

Perhaps the strongest point made by the Dundee Advertiser against any fiscal reform for India is contained in an article in that journal of November 11, in which the Bengalee is quoted as saying: "India needs Protection neither against Germany nor against America, but she needs Protection against England, and needs it badly, too." Of course, if the contention that is implied by the Dundee Advertiser were true, that the commercial magnates of India would rather have commercial union with Germany and America than with England and the Colonies; that they think that their interests would be better consulted if India were left out of the British Imperial Zollverein, and that they prefer the Dundee Advertiser's Factory Acts and German and American dumping rather than the trade preferences in the markets of England and the Colonies. proposed by Mr. Chamberlain; then the case for the Dundee Advertiser's proposal of an Indian Factory Act would be much strengthened. But it seems incredible that any highclass Indian journal, conducted by Indian-born writers, and really representing the views of Indian-born commercial magnates, could seriously support such an absurd and suicidal contention.

In this paper I have considered Mr. Chamberlain's suggestions for inter-Imperial Preferential Tariffs simply from the point of view of the commercial interests of India. As far as the commercial interests of England are concerned, I am absolutely persuaded that they also will be far better safeguarded by this friendly give-and-take arrangement

between England and India than they would be by any number of the Dundee Advertiser's Indian Factory Acts.

A very clever and well-informed series of articles by an Indian-born economist has appeared in the Times of India over the signature of "Hindu Imperialist," and they show conclusively that the higher intellect of India is on this side. His Highness the Gaekwár-who is not only the supreme ruler under the Emperor of a kingdom larger than Saxony and more populous than Greece, but is also one of the ablest and most advanced thinkers of India-at the opening last year of the Ahmedabad Industrial Exhibition, spoke some highly significant and instructive words on this subject, which I have quoted in a recent pamphlet. In his inaugural address, referring to the teaching of the modern school of economics in Germany and America-of which he evidently knew more than the sleepy professors of some of our British Universities-His Highness used the following very significant words:

"The laws of political economy are not inexorable, and must bend to the exigencies of time and place. Theories and doctrines, however plausible, cannot take precedence of plain and practical truths. It is true that Free Trade enables a country to procure at cheaper rates those articles that can be manufactured more conveniently in foreign lands, but this cheapness is dearly bought by the loss of industrial status and the reduction of a whole people to a helpless proletariat. National defence against alien industrial inroads is more important than the cheapness of a few articles."

And these wise and thoughtful words of nearly the greatest of all our Indian potentates were ably emphasized by the Hon. Mr. Pherozeshah Mehta, a member of the Legislative Council of Bombay, and perhaps the most popular leader of the "Young India" school of politicians. He boldly declared that Protection is "not inconsistent with the true principles of Free Trade," and he concluded. a powerful speech with these words: "This country has

higher claims for Protection from the British Government, as those claims are founded upon their past policy, which has annihilated our once flourishing arts and industries.”

Lord Herschel's Committee, appointed by the Radical Government in 1894 to investigate and report on the best means of increasing the revenues of India, reported that, of all modes of Indian taxation, import duties "excite the least opposition," and might be said "even to be popular." And even the late Professor Fawcett, who learnt his political economy and published his views at a time when the ancient Free Trade dogmas were hardly questioned in England, really took much the same enlightened view of the Indian fiscal question as that quoted above from His Highness the Gaekwár. Writing against the License Tax and the enhancement of the Salt Duty in 1879, he said:

"In considering questions of taxation nothing can be more unwise than to conclude that that particular tax must be the best which is most in accord with the principles of economic science. The tastes, the habits, and the wishes of the people on whom the tax is to be imposed ought to be most carefully considered."

That is, in effect, exactly what the Gaekwár said, and what Mr. Chamberlain is saying day after day. And I feel very confident that it would be difficult to find one single Indian-born economist or statesman in any responsible position in India who would care to tell his countrymen that he advocates for them Factory Acts, License Taxes, and excise duties, rather than the Preferential Tariffs that are proposed for them under Mr. Chamberlain's Imperial plan. ROPER LETHBRIDGE.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since this article was in type I have had the advantage of reading an article on the same subject in the December number of the Empire Review by Sir Charles Elliott, late Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Sir Charles is, as everyone connected with India knows, beyond doubt the highest

living authority on all economic questions connected with the material condition of the Indian peoples. As the famous secretary of the Famine Commission, and himself the protagonist in well-nigh every campaign against Indian famine, it is impossible to exaggerate the weight and importance of the plain declaration with which he concludes his article: "The facts and arguments set forth in this article seem to show that, as far as India is concerned, the adoption of a system of Preferential Tariffs will be beneficial to the trade of the two countries, and will offend against no sound economic principles."

When two such authorities as Sir Charles Elliott and Sir Edward Buck spontaneously and independently record their deliberate conviction that the best possible insurance against Indian famines is to be looked for in the expansion of the Indian wheat-growing industry that will follow the adoption of Mr. Chamberlain's proposals, it seems to me that it must be impossible for any sincere well-wisher of India any longer to resist those proposals.

Then, again, Sir Charles Elliott absolutely pulverizes the suggestion of the Little Englanders and the Free Importer parrots that the foreigner, unless we are very humble to him, will retaliate on Indian trade. After examining the trade of India in detail with quite unsurpassed personal knowledge, Sir Charles concludes: "The prospect of a boycott against such a trade as this is one which India could well afford to laugh at!"

17

THE MODERN HISTORY OF TRIAL BY JURY IN INDIA.*

BY T. DURANT BEIGHTON.

THE subject of criminal administration is one of the most important in any civilized community-perhaps the most vital of all after providing for the national security. It is of paramount concern that the machinery for the detection, conviction, and punishment of crime should be the most efficient that can be devised. It is almost equally desirable that the system should command the assent, respect, and sympathy of the people, whatever their religion or nationality. It cannot be denied that our native fellow-subjects in India have learned to appreciate the boon of a pure administration of justice. Possibly it is the only outcome of our rule which they regard as an unmixed benefit. equality and certainty are factors as necessary for the proper administration of justice as purity. It is the object of the present paper to inquire whether these desiderata are secured under the system of trial by jury in the Provincial Courts of India. I have perhaps some claim to speak with experience, if not with authority, on this subject. I have presided as judge in six out of the seven districts in Bengal in which the system was during my period of service in force, and have devoted a considerable portion of my official life to a study of its problems, defects, and anomalies.

But

The present is not an inappropriate time for an examination of the results of trial by jury. The drift of English opinion, both professional and lay, nowadays tolerates an extent of interference with verdicts, especially in civil cases, which would have been regarded with horror a few decades ago. The time-honoured sanctity of the verdict is a thing of the past. Perverse or ridiculous verdicts are no longer received with exaggerated respect. They are openly derided

* See the Proceedings of the East India Association, elsewhere in this Review, for discussion on the paper.

THIRD SERIES. VOL. XVII.

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