and more than half the injuries committed, are thus concealed."

This last statement, coming as it does from an individual who had sustained a judicial station in the country, is the more important, inasmuch as the comparative fewness of the convictions, as measured by the population, has been urged as a proof that the depravity of the Hindoos must be greatly exaggerated.+ The fact is, that the criminal calendar of a country like India, forms no index to the crimes which abound in it, no criterion of the state of morals. Under an efficient system of judicature and police, in proportion as the amount of crime was diminished, the number of committals and convictions would probably be increased by the additional facilities of detection. "In India, the chances of escape without a trial, are,” Mr. Tytler says, "perhaps double what they are in England; and this proceeds from the unbounded corruption of police officers, and the want of regard to truth in the witnesses. There is not in Bengal," he adds, one man proof against a bribe. The dacoits and robbers, while they have booty, are sufficiently safe; and we have those only sent in, who have ceased to pay for their freedom." Altogether," the probabilities that the

66

Tytler's Considerations, vol. i. pp. 212, 223, 242, 244, 106-10, 264, 5. Mr. Tytler was assistant judge in the twenty-four pergunnahs.

† See an attack on Mr. Mill's India, by Major Vans Kennedy in Bombay Transactions, vol. iii. p. 132. In the Fifth Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on Indian affairs, the number of trials before the Four Courts of Circuit, comprehending Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, in 1802, was 5667, and of convictions, 2820. This, on a population of thirty millions, gives a smaller proportion of crime than in England. From this, the Major wishes us to infer, that the Hindoos are a more moral people than the English!!

criminal shall never be brought to trial are, perhaps, ten to one.' ""* The prodigious difference between the number of trials and that of convictions, is thus explained in a report from the circuit-judge of Patna. "Few of the murders and only one of the robberies charged, really occurred; the rest are merely fictitious crimes brought forward to harass an opposing litigant, or to revenge a quarrel. The criminal court is the weapon of revenge, to which the natives of this province resort on all occasions." The same circumstance is mentioned by other judges. On the other hand, no sooner is a culprit brought up for trial, than the utmost cunning and address of the Hindoo character are put forth to defeat the purposes of justice. Especially in the case of dacoits, witnesses are intimidated by the threats of revenge. Add to which, the Mussulman law and the Mussulman mode of procedure in civil and criminal cases, which has been unhappily adopted in India by the Anglo-Indian authorities, is allowed by all competent judges to be" the most faulty perhaps on earth." Sir Henry Strachey, a judge of circuit in the Calcutta district in 1802, speaking of the increase of licentiousness, says: "Chicanery, subornation, fraud, and perjury are certainly more common. Drunkenness, prostitution, indecorum, profligacy of manners, must increase under a system which, although it professes to administer the Mohammedan law, does not punish those immoralities." The judge of circuit in the Bareilly divi

Tytler, ii. 93, 95.

Fifth Report of the Commons Committee.

See on this subject Tytler, i., 109, &c. Mill, v., 475. The mixture of the Mohamedan and English systems now established, is so contrived, according to the latter writer, as to combine the principal vices of both.

§ Fifth Report, p. 68.

sion, in 1805, warns the Government against supposing that the lists transmitted from the courts exhibit an accurate view of the state of delinquency; inasmuch as the cases are extremely numerous which are never brought before the magistrates, from the negligence or connivance of the police-officers and the aversion of the people to draw upon themselves the burthen of a prosecution. Hence it happens, that the less aggravated cases of robbery, with those of theft and fraud," are frequently perpetrated, and no records of them remain." Hence, the cases of homicide, which least admit of concealment, occupy the largest space in the criminal calendar. "The number of persons,' ," continues the judge, " convicted of wilful murder, is certainly great. The murder of children for the sake of their ornaments, is, I am sorry to say, common. For my own part, being convinced that, under the existing laws, we have no other means of putting an end to the frequent perpetration of this crime, I could wish to see the practice of adorning children with valuable trinkets altogether prohibited." "A want of tenderness and regard for life is, I think, very general throughout the country.'

As a proof" how little a female death is cared for," Bishop Heber mentions the following circumstance, which occurred a short time before, near Ghazeepoor. "In consequence of a dispute which had taken place between two small freeholders about some land, one of the contending parties, an old man of seventy and upwards, brought his wife (of the same age) to the field in question, forced her, with the assistance of their children and relations, into a little straw hut built for the purpose, and burned her and the hut

* Fifth Report, pp. 565, 6; 540. Mill, v. 471-3,

together; in order that her death might bring a curse on the soil, and her spirit haunt it after death, so that his successful antagonist might never derive any advantage from it. On some horror and surprise being expressed by the gentleman who told me this case, one of the officers of his court, the same indeed who had reported it to him, not as a horrible occurrence, but as a proof how spiteful the parties had been against each other, said very coolly: Why not?-she was a very old woman,-what use was she?' The old murderer

was in prison; but my friend said, he had no doubt that his interference in such a case between man and wife, was regarded as singularly vexatious and oppressive; and he added: The truth is, so very little value do these people set on their own lives, that we cannot wonder at their caring little for the life of another. The cases of suicide which come before me, double those of suttees. Men, and still more, women, throw themselves down wells, or drink poison, for apparently the slightest reasons; generally out of some quarrel, and in order that their blood may lie at their enemy's door; and unless the criminal in question had had an old woman at hand and in his power, he was likely enough to have burned himself.' Human sacrifices, as of children, are never heard of now in these provinces; but it still sometimes happens, that a leper is burned or buried alive; and as these murders are somewhat blended also with religious feeling, a leper being supposed to be accursed of the gods, the Sudder Dewannee, acting on the same principle, discourages, as I am told, all interference with the practice."

Heber, vol. i. pp. 352-4. A striking resemblance would seem to exist, in this trait of character, between the natives of Bengal and the Chinese. "It is the detestable custom of Canton Province, on every slight occasion, for a slight resentment, to commit suicide.

Mr. Warner, the Dacca magistrate, told the Bishop, that the numbers of a dacoit party were generally exaggerated by the complainants. "Nevertheless, there was, he said, a great deal of gang-robbery, very nearly resembling the riband-men of Ireland, but unmixed with any political feeling, in all these provinces. It is but too frequent for from five to ten peasants to meet together as soon as it is dark, to attack some neighbour's house, and not only plunder, but torture him, his wife and children, with horrible cruelty, to make him discover his money. These robbers, in the day-time, follow peaceable professions; and some of them are thriving men; while the whole firm is often under the protection of a zemindar, who shares the booty, and does his best to bring off any of the gang who may fall into the hands of justice, by suborning witnesses to prove an alibi, bribing the inferior agents of the police, or intimidating the witnesses for the prosecution.* In this way, many persons are suspected of these practices, who yet go on many years in tolerably good esteem with their neighbours, and completely beyond the reach of a Govern

And the relatives of the self-murderer view the dead body as a piece of goods of extraordinary value. They contrive to allege, that the deceased committed suicide, in consequence of ill usage from some rich neighbour, who, to avoid litigation, gives them a sum of money; or, if he refuse, they combine with the police, and commence a prosecution." Proclamation by the Viceroy of Canton. Trans. of R. Asiat. Society, vol. i. p. 47.

* "Two circumstances worth notice," remarks the Bishop, "are, the gangs in which most crimes are committed, and the nature of the defence usually set up, which, I observed, was, in nine cases out of ten, an alibi, being the easiest of all to obtain by the aid of false witnesses. Perjury is dreadfully common, and very little thought of." See also Sir Henry Strachey's testimony, in Mill, v. 492. "The progress of this system," says another magistrate," is dreadful. The decoits become every thing, and the police and the criminal judicature, nothing."