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it did not perceive that its own miscalculation of means was root of the evil. The whole blame of the failure was ascribed in the gross to the litigious character of the people. No allowance was made for the chaos of disorganization into which centuries of misrule and oppression had thrown society. It was not considered that where there was no authoritative definition, nor so much as any intelligible and consistent understanding of rightseven on the part of those who had no interest or desire to do wrong, and no means of ascertaining what was right and wrong in a multiplicity of constantly occurring cases, but a reference to the courts of law-these courts were likely to have a superabundance of employment, unless their strength were duly proportioned to the demand for their services. These considerations, however obvious, appear to have been altogether overlooked: at least the government gave no weight to them in the scheme which it devised for getting out of its embarrassments. Having made up its mind that the people did not really want all the justice that they applied for, instead of providing for the efficient administration of the laws, it determined to check the influx of suits. But as it had no means of determining, a priori, what suits were, and what were not litigious, it took the simple course of rendering the access to the temple of justice difficult to all but the very rich, but most difficult to the poorestthe persons most likely to be wronged-by refusing to entertain any complaint until the party desiring to institute it should show-not that it was founded in truth-but, that he could command a certain sum of money to purchase withal a piece of stamped paper, whereon to set forth his wrongs, and his desire to be righted. The further course of every suit- the exhibition of documents, and the summoning of witnesses—was also purposely loaded with expense.

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It is difficult to add any thing to the powerful arguments with which Mr Mill has denounced the absurdity and injustice of this measure. 6 Nothing,' he says, 'is more easy than Ito lessen the business of the courts of law; to diminish it to 'any proposed extent; to produce its annihilation. What are

the means? The most obvious in the world: denial of justice. 'Decree that no person whatsoever who is less than six feet high 'shall be admitted to sue in a court of justice; and you will 'reduce the business to a very manageable quantity. Decree 'that no man who is less than eight, and you reduce it to nothing. A man's stature is surely as good a test to judge by, whether he has received an injury, as his purse. Of the two parties to a suit, it is not of absolute necessity that either should be dishonest: because the case may have in it such obscurity

as to require the decision of a judge. But these cases are, or at any rate if there were a good code of laws would be, very rare. In by far the greater proportion of cases, when lawsuits are numerous, one of the parties is intentionally dishonest, and wishes to keep or to gain some unjust advantage. When legis'lators, therefore, propose to drive people from the courts of 'justice by expense, they must of necessity imagine that it is the 'dishonest parties only whom the expense will deter: for it would be dreadful to make laws to prevent the honest from re'ceiving a legal protection. But is it easy for the wit of man to 'frame a proposition stamped with stronger characters of igno'rance or corruption than this? That to render access to justice 'difficult is the way to lessen the number of crimes. What is 'the greatest encouragement to injustice? Is it not every thing 'which tends to prevent immediate redress? What is the greatest discouragement to injustice? Every thing which tends to en'sure immediate redress. But tedious and expensive forms of law, of which uncertainty is a consequence, have the greatest tendency to prevent immediate redress. They are, therefore, a great encouragement, not a hinderance to injustice.'

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Mr Mill proceeds to prove, with unanswerable reasons, that the cases in which the expedient of rendering justice expensive can deter the unjust litigant, must always be few;' and that in all cases in which it does not deter the unjust litigant, it is mischievous beyond expression.' He cites the high authority of Sir Henry Strachey, an Indian judge of great ability and experience, and a personal witness of the effect of the attempt to reduce litigation which we are describing; for the fact, that out of a hundred suits, perhaps five at the utmost may be fairly pronounced litigious, and these few are probably instituted by 'men well able to bear the expense.' This is the state of the case as regards the class of suitors who,' in Mr Mill's forcible language, can endure the expense of a lawsuit, rendered expensive by legislative design.' The poor man is altogether shut out from redress. I have often seen a suitor,' says Sir Henry Strachey, when stripped of his last rupee, and called upon for the fee on a document, produce in court a silver ring or other trinket, and beg that it might be received as a pledge: —and after all, perhaps, he was cast for want of money to 'produce proof,' Surely, the reduction of judicial business by such means, is any thing but a subject of exultation.

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Dr Johnson remarks, that no scheme of policy has, in any 'country, yet brought the rich on equal terms into courts of justice. Perhaps,' he adds, experience, improving on experience, may in time effect it.' The device of the Anglo-Indian

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Government had a direct tendency to aggravate this inherent and most mischievous inequality. Yet Mr Mill says with melancholy truth—such was the scheme for the better adminis 'tration of justice which was devised by British legislators in the year 1795; such the scheme the existence of which they 'still approve; and finally, such is the scheme which obtained the applause of a select committee of the British House of Commons in the year 1810.' That committee certainly described the affording law proceedings at little or no expense,' (as if mere attendance on a court of justice were not a heavy charge upon all to whom time is of any value-as if, under the most favourable circumstances, pleaders are not to be retained, and many expenses unavoidably incurred,) as 'means taken to fa'cilitate, if not to encourage litigation.' Where was the rod of Jeremy Bentham, that it was not applied for the chastisement of such legislation!

But the measure altogether failed of the desired end. In 1803, the Court of Directors were compelled to animadvert on the almost incredible number of cases undecided ;' and to state that, to judge by analogy of the courts in Europe, they should be induced to think that so great an arrear could scarcely ever 'come to a hearing. Since that date, a constant struggle has been kept up, in a few instances, with partial and temporary improvement, but generally with very disheartening results, to improve matters in this respect; but the inherent vices of the system, and the pertinacity with which, for many years, the Anglo-Indian Government clung to the hopeless expectation of being able to administer justice to millions by the instrumentality, principally, of European functionaries, opposed insuperable obstacles to any successful issue.

For years the Government went on, under this pressure, timidly applying one, and only one, of the remedies which the nature of the case admitted of:-it gradually and insufficiently increased the numbers, the powers, and the salaries, of the native judges. No attempt was made to meet the evil nearer the fountain-head, by an ascertainment and definition of rights, and an intelligible exposition of the law. And circumstances occurred during the fifteen years following 1795, to aggravate the insufficiency of the means provided for the dispensation of civil justice. We refer to the frightful increase which took place, during that period, in the frequency and atrocity of that heinous crime against property-and too often, at that time, against life which is termed in India, Dacoity, or gang-robbery. We shall have occasion to describe this offence in the sequel. We only allude to it here in order to explain that the judge of each district being,

under lord Cornwallis' system, the magistrate of it also; the government being more directly and strongly interested in the suppression of such outrages, than in the dispensation of justice between man and man; and it being really more essential, apart from any such motive, that the lives and property of the people should be protected from open and frequently most shocking violence, (almost occasioning in some parts of the country the utter disorganization of society,) than that civil suits should be decided, the judge-magistrates were compelled to devote nearly the whole of their time and attention to what they felt to be their primary duty. The same urgent pressure, and the same sense of obligation, produced the same results in the employment of the judges of circuit, and of the superior court. The eyes of the executive government were also far more intently fixed upon the state of the police, and the conviction and punishment of gang-robbers, than upon the administration of civil justice. The necessary consequence was, that the latter was grievously neglected.

We state this without the smallest intention to censure harshly any of the administrators of Lord Cornwallis' system. Nor, when we said above that no attempts were made by the successive rulers of British India, to ascertain and define rights, and to render the law complete and explicit, did we mean to imply that those who failed in these respects were inefficient in respect to ability, or unmindful of their duties and responsibilities. Such, by implication, has been the language of some of Mr Mill, as a notable example-who assuredly would not have pressed, or even entertained such a charge if they had heard what the parties involved in it had to urge in their justification. Such, to this hour, are the sour cavils of a very different class, who have travelled through the history-stranger than romance of the rise and progress of British ascendency in Indiaand have personally witnessed the marvellous ease and power with which the machinery of our government works-insensible to the genius and energy which alone could have wrought such effects, and seeing only the errors and omissions which qualify, in certain particulars, a record of statesmanship altogether unparalleled in its general success. We take no such ungrateful view of the labours and deserts of the men who have so signally served England in India. Reason and equity alike demand, that we should admit into our calculation what they have achieved, as well as what they have left undone. We know, too, what the difficulties of their situation have been, and how great the energy and devotion with which they have toiled to surmount them. Time and means-physical as well as moral

have been wanting for the execution of many measures, of the great importance of which the statesmen who have governed India have been at least as well aware as the critics who have proclaimed their omissions. In repeated instances, and for long periods, the attention of those statesmen has been called away from the affairs, however important, of their own territories, to provide against or to resist foreign aggression; and even to struggle, with all their energies, for the very existence of our power. But, under all disadvantages, there has been both an earnest desire for the good government of the people of India, and strenuous exertions to effect that end. Undoubtedly there have been errors of judgment, as we have already shown, and shall further demonstrate in the course of this paper; but honesty of intention has been the pervading principle; and common justice requires that, in looking at results, great allowance should be made for those whose efforts have not only not been adequately seconded by the miserably degraded people for whom they have laboured, but have been thwarted, at every turn, by their ignorance of their true interests; by their anti-social customs; and by their inveterate selfishness. Reformers in all other lands have had a party-however small-to support and cheer them. The statesmen who have attempted the regeneration of India, have had to work-excepting a handful of European officers, with the worst of unfaithful instruments-upon a body politic in a state of apathy and demoralization of which those who have seen only those European communities most devoid of virtue and public spirit, can form no adequate conception.

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This much was necessary to obviate misconstruction. return mischief beyond that attendant upon the immediate want of their services, and the consequent accumulation of hopeless arrears, involving a practical denial of justice, resulted from the vain attempt, so long persisted in, to dispense with the aid of native judges, (except in petty cases,) and to administer the laws by the exclusive agency of a small body of English functionaries. The class which had furnished officers of a description superior to the general body of their countrymen during the rule of delegates from the Court of Dehli, and as long as we were content to govern in the same fashion as our predecessors, who were looked up to with some degree of respect by the great body of the people, and who had therefore somewhat of an interest in public opinion, and somewhat of character to sustain-this class altogether disappeared in the course of the long period during which there was no demand for their services. They lost the little elevation above the dead level of Asiatic society which they or their forefathers had attained; and with that the power of