citement, when the sanctions of law are entirely absent from the memory. The insulting glance, the angry word, the deadly blow, follow each other with such startling rapidity, that the crime is consummated almost before the intention is formed. Such murders are now confined chiefly to the frontier population. They also occur not unfrequently among the Jats. These Jats have a custom of claiming a right to the custody of a deceased brother's wife, and in many cases, as was usual under the Levitical economy, to marry her. Not unfrequently this claim of an indefeasible right in the widow is disagreeable to the woman herself, who prefers to marry into another family-a course which infallibly gives rise to quarrels sometimes ending in bloodshed. In the course of last year, a case came under the writer's observation, in which a Sikh Jat, smarting under the supposed disgrace brought on his house by the marriage of his widowed sister-in-law to a man of another family, cut down the woman, her husband and her child, and then drowned himself in a tank. The records of the Criminal Courts contain many such instances of the fatal effects of rage and jealousy.

Making allowance however for cases of this kind, heinous crime is by no means frequent in the Punjaub. It is not with crime of the first class, nor yet of the second, but with offences of minor magnitude, that Government has now to deal in the way of reform and prevention. In these too there has been considerable improvement within the last four years. The question indeed has often been raised whether, granting that heinous crime has been suppressed under British rule, it be not equally true that petty crime has increased. In 1852 this question attracted the attention of the home Government, and at that time the general impression seemed to be that minor crime had certainly not been put down with the same vigour and success, as offences of a blacker dye. This impression was fully justified by the Punjaub criminal statistics, and the Chief Commissioner, while admitting its general truth, attributed it to the facilities for the escape of petty criminals arising from "the distance of our Courts, the delays in justice, the inexperience of officers, the indolence and indifference of the people, the technicality of our 'system, and the extent of proof which it demands." (Circular 68 of 1854). Offences of the third and fourth classes had been steadily on the increase from the commencement of our rule, and they continued to become gradually more and more numerous up to the year 1854. How much of this apparent increase was due to the greater efficiency of the police in detecting and reporting offences, we forbear to enquire. It has become too common to take refuge from damning facts of this kind behind the specious plea of increased zeal and intelligence on the part of

the police. Allowing this excuse its full weight during the earlier years of our Government, when the police were untrained and officers were almost exclusively engaged in laying deep and broad the foundations of a new power, it seems scarcely adequate to explain the steady growth of minor crime, up to so late a period as the year 1854. This becomes the more apparent when it is remembered that the percentage of acquittals to convictions likewise increased, a fact which is quite inconsistent with any very great improvement in the efficiency of the detective force. Nor is it sufficient to urge a greater willingness on the part of the people to give evidence, arising from the certainty of our law and the lessened fear of abuse and maltreatment. For the people do not sympathise with us in our efforts to check crime. They are most unwilling to render assistance to the police, and give evidence in our Courts with the greatest reluctance.

We are therefore compelled to admit that, immediately after the introduction of British authority into the Punjaub, while serious crime became almost extinct, there sprang up under the shadow of the law a weedy harvest of minor offences. Was this to be wondered at? Was it not natural that with the introduction of law and order, turbulent and lawless men, accustomed to the excitement and freedom of a rude Government, should seek an outlet for their rapacity in stealthy crime, which no speed of communication and no perfection of police communication can altogether prevent? If we analyse the criminal statistics, we shall find that it is to secret and profitable crime of a minor kind, that the old marauding tribes of the Punjaub have now betaken themselves. To take the third class of offences, the common felonies, we find indeed that on the whole there has been a marked and steady decrease within the last four years. In 1854, offences of this kind numbered 24,103, while in 1857 the aggregate amounted to only 17,875, being a decrease of more than one-fourth. But let us analyse this. By the arrangement which prevails in the Punjaub, the class of common felonies is made to contain only burglary, simple theft, cattle-stealing and one or two other offences, which are of rare occurrence and therefore need not be separately mentioned. Now from 1852 to 1854, the cases of burglary rose from 3,630. to 4,213, and in 1857 they numbered 4,397. The percentage of burglaries to the total offences of the third grade has progressively increased from 17 to 24 per cent. Simple theft and cattlestealing, on the other hand, have decreased, although cattle-stealing was more prevalent in 1857 than in the previous year. Petty larceny is a crime common to all classes, and prevails most of course in the neighbourhood of large cities. Cattle-theft is pe

culiarly the crime of the pastoral districts lying in the centre of the Doabs of the Punjaub. It is scarcely considered a crime by the natives. Those who suffer from it look upon it more in the light of a nuisance than a felony, while to the minds of the perpetrators it assumes the character of an honourable calling. Boys are taught to earn their first turban by the theft of a buffalo or a cow.

Extraordinary facilities are afforded for cattle-lifting by the peculiar nature of the Punjaub plains. In the centre of each of the Doabs, lie extensive sandy plains, covered with low brushwood, or the tall jungle-grass. Here and there at vast distances by intervening solitude is planted a lowly hamlet, with a small batch of stunted sugar-cane or half-grown corn forced from the reluctant soil. The population is scanty and scattered. Their chief wealth consists in their goats, their buffaloes and their cows; their chief food coarsely ground corn and the milk which their herds supply. Into these jungle tracts, the villagers, skirting the borders, send their cattle under the charge of a boy, sometimes of their women or blind old men, to crop the herbage where some lingering pool has afforded to the neighbouring soil a little juice and verdure. Scattered singly up and down the plain, wherever their instinct leads them in search of food, hidden from the neglectful herdsmen by the intervening bushes, the wandering cattle fall an easy prey to the cattle-lifter, and before the theft is discovered the prize is miles away, mingling with the large herds of the grazier in the centre of the waste. It is surprising with what patience and accuracy the professional trackers will follow the thieves through these solitudes, guided only by the faint trail left in the mutable sand. For forty or fifty miles together they will follow the trail and pounce on the thieves, when they thought pursuit had been eluded. Tales of fiction or of military adventure, and books of travel amid the scenes of savage life, have given world-wide fame to the acute instinct of the Indian trail-party and the Hottentot on the sfoor." But the dusty records of crime in the Punjaub contain instances of the sagacity of the Khojeé, or professional tracker, as wonderful as either."

Cattle-lifting has been the subject of special legislation. The attention of the officers of the Commission has been particularly directed to its detection and suppression, and a combination of fine and flogging, or imprisonment, has been specially introduced as its appropriate punishment. Under these vigorous measures which have been adopted, cattle-stealing, which never was a calling followed by the class of hardened offenders, is gradually diminishing.

Burglary there is almost the only crime which is decidedly on MARCH, 1859.

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the increase. It is not only relatively, but absolutely, more prevalent now than it was ever known to be before.* The burglars are the really criminal population of the Punjaub, and are deterred by the vigilance of Government alone from betaking themselves to more open and violent crime. During the excitement of 1857, the Cis-Sutlej States and Mooltan were the two divisions of the Punjaub which were most disturbed, and in which the power of the law was least felt. Accordingly, in these divisions, the burglars betook themselves as of old to the roads, and highway robberies became exceedingly prevalent, as the following extract from the Criminal Report of last year will show ;-"In the Cis-Sutlej States, while simple highway robberies have doubled, there has been a great 'decrease in burglaries, thefts and cattle-stealing. In the Lahore Division, theft has decreased to a remarkable degree, while burglaries and cattle-stealing cases are rather more numerous than in 1856. In Mooltan, thefts have diminished considera'bly, while highway robberies have increased from 4 to 15, and 'there has been a large increase of 542 cases in cattle theft." With the return of order the footpads will again fall back on their burglarious callings. The ranks of the burglars are supplied by the Nuzabees, the Sausees, the Pukkewars, the Bhowreas and other outcast and gipsy tribes, who formed the old criminal population under the former regime. These men, by profession beggars, vermin-hunters, acrobats, without local or social attachments, by disposition and training callous and indifferent to pain, outcasts from society and with nothing to lose, deterred by a vigilant police from taking to the roads, fatten on systematic and profitable burglarious crime. Apparently the poorest of the poor, they are yet in many cases able to pay largely for shelter from the arm of the law. Miserable reed huts form their only shelter from the heat and cold, and vagrancy is their only calling. Wandering often from village to village in strolling parties to display their gymnastic feats, they pick up such scraps of local information as favour their criminal designs. It is believed that among many of their gipsy tribes there exist organised societies for robbery and theft, with ramifications through many villages far and near and a system of operations complete in all its details.

The state of property in India affords many facilities for the perpetration of burglary. Money is not invested, but locked up

in worthless boxes, buried in chambers protected only by mud walls or rotten doors, unguarded and almost forgotten, offering a tempting bait on which the burglar is not slow to seize, Large though this class of crimes is shown by the statistical returns to be, the reported burglaries constitute but a fraction of those which are actually perpetrated. In the Punjaub, as in the Regulation Provinces, police officers are in certain instances prohibited from investigating cases of burglary, or taking any steps to bring the offenders to justice. "Section 2 of Regulation II. of 1832 enacts that thefts and burglaries, unattended with personal violence, shall not be investigated without a petition from 'the person injured, unless an express order to that effect be 'issued by the Magistrate or Joint Magistrate to whom the Thannadar is subordinate, and the Thannadar must act accordingly. On first thoughts it might appear that the cases would be few in which a real sufferer would neglect to complain to the police. Not so. Whether from natural apathy on the part of the people, the corruption of the police, distrust of our courts, fear of offending the head-men of the village or whatever other cause, certain it is that in many parts of the Punjaub, cases of this kind, which are brought within the jurisdiction of the police by complaint, are but a fraction, often a small one, of the number of cases of burglary committed, and the number of cases actually investigated is again only a fraction of the cases reported.

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Burglary in the Punjaub is a very migratory offence. It pears in and disappears from villages and districts with the most surprising suddenness. This is of itself sufficient to indicate that the wandering outcast tribes are the principal perpetrators of the crime. The arrival of a single vagabond in a village is often the signal for the commencement of a series of startling thefts, burglaries and robberies, which it baffles the police to account for or detect. The property is easily made away with or concealed, the locality of the crime is the heart of the village where the tracking-system, the never-failing resource of the Punjaub police in difficulties, is totally useless, and the detectives are at fault. The dry sandy beds of streams, and the broken ravines formed by the torrents which in the rains cut for themselves a path from the mountains to the great arterial rivers, are the favourite hiding-places for stolen property. Trinkets of gold and silver and all small articles of value find a ready market in the shops of the Zurgurs or goldsmiths, where the crucible soon removes all risk of discovery. Effectually to check burglarious crime, a strict watch must be kept over

* Darogah's Manual, p. 73.