I should observe that in the meantime Native Police Magistrates, with jurisdiction over Englishmen, had been appointed in the Presidency towns, where they have acted, and are still acting, in a satisfactory way. We have not heard there of any bloodshed by infuriated Europeans, or of any trumped-up charges more than are heard of before other tribunals.

It is also the case that Natives have been appointed judges of the High Courts which superseded the Suprême and Sudder Courts, and have even acted as Chiefs of those courts. These Native judges have complete criminal jurisdiction, even to the extent of capital punishment, though they very seldom, if ever, sit as criminal judges.

In 1872 a change came at last, and the great scandal of impunity for English offences when committed in the Mofussil, or provinces, was removed. An Act was passed which has given to certain classes of magistrates power to try the privileged class called European British Subjects, and to inflict on them fines, and imprisonment never exceeding one year in a place appointed for that purpose. For offences justifying a heavier punishment, the offender must still be committed to the High Court. And in every case he has an appeal to the High Court. The new jurisdiction is given only to magistrates who are themselves European British Subjects.

This enactment was passed with very little remark by the privileged class. I was not then in India, and hardly know the cause of their unwonted quiescence; for shortly afterwards, when I was in India, and when the Act began to work, there was a great outburst of fury. A District Magistrate sent an Englishman to prison for brutally beating a Native. The English of Calcutta talked as if the foundations of the world were broken up. They would have it that the charge must be a fictitious one. All the evils prophesied of the Black Act were prophesied over again now. No Englishman was safe; capital would leave the country, which would be ruined, and English trade with it. The sentence must be reversed, and the magistrate disgraced. The sentence however was upheld. None of the prophecies took effect, and everybody is the better for its being known that there is now a real restraint upon Englishmen whose tempers incline them to violence.

The same feeling showed itself in a more subdued way on two other occasions while I remained in India. Once when a provincial magistrate committed for trial a man accused of murder, and the case for the prosecution broke down; and once when the Government reproved a magistrate for giving a mere nominal punishment to a European British Subject," whom he had found guilty of striking his servant so as to kill him.

The precise position of affairs cannot yet be understood until it is explained who these "European British Subjects" are. They are a class artificially created by the Act of 1872. They are all the

Queen's subjects, born, naturalized, or domesticated in the United Kingdom, or in the Colonies of Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa, and their legitimate children or grandchildren. I do not wish to put absurd hypotheses, such as that a Kaffir or a Maori would fall within this class, for the purpose of exercising jurisdiction or claiming exemption. But it is worth observing that not Englishmen only, but their half-caste sons, and their more Asiatic grandsons, may now sit in judgment upon English prisoners, and are exempt from the jurisdiction of a judge of pure Indian blood.

To show both the administrative inconvenience and the personal indignity resulting from the present law, I will quote a passage from a very able and instructive speech delivered by Mr. W. W. Hunter, in the Legislative Council at Calcutta on the 9th of March last.

"The native civilians have now reached a stage in their service when they must become in the natural course District Magistrates and Sessions Judges. We have guaranteed to them equal rights with their English brethren, yet they must be excluded from those offices in the more eligible districts where English private enterprise exists, and they must be turned out of those offices in any district into which English private enterprise comes. Let me illustrate this by two examples; one taken from Bengal, the other from Bombay. On the 17th January last, a Native civilian was, in the ordinary course, appointed Joint Magistrate, with powers of a Magistrate of the first class, at the important station of Dacca. On the 23rd January he received a letter from the Secretary to the Bengal Government, cancelling the appointment, and transferring him to a less eligible district, on the ground that the opening out of the Dacca and Maimansingh Railway was bringing a number of Europeans into Dacca district. The gentleman thus disqualified had won the second place in his year, by open competition in England, from among several hundred candidates; he is an English barrister, and he had proved his fitness for the post from which he was turned out by twelve years of service. In the Bombay Presidency, a Native civilian holds the important office of District and Sessions Judge of Kanara. His head-quarters are at Karwar, the coast terminus of the railway which, some time ago, was proposed to be constructed from the Dharwar cotton country. If this scheme should be revived, and the railway sanctioned, the Sessions Judge of Kanara would, under the exigencies of the existing law, have to be turned out of his district. Let us see what this practically means. The gentleman in question is Mr. Tagore. After a distinguished education, both here and in England, he has given about twenty years of unblemished service to the Government, and has established a high reputation as a Judge. He is a near relative of our late colleague, the Maharaja Sir Jotendro Mohan Tagore, who, during an unusually prolonged period, assisted this Council in making the laws of India. The well-earned encomiums in which your Excellency expressed your sense of the services thus rendered are still fresh in our memories. Yet we are told that we must not entrust to a member of the same noble house, notwithstanding his training in England, and his twenty years of proved integrity as a Judge, the power of sentencing a European British subject to a short term of imprisonment. This too, although the European British criminal has the right of immediate appeal from any sentence of imprisonment, however brief, and from any fine, however small. If it were necessary I could multiply examples. Unfortunately, the time has come when such examples will year by year multiply themselves, unless the existing law is changed."

Such being the state of things, all that Lord Ripon proposes by way of change is that when one of the Natives, whom for fifty years we have laboured to get into our service, is of such proved capacity and merit as to obtain an appointment into a high class of magistracy, he shall not, merely on account of his race, be excluded from functions which other magistrates of his class exercise.

I think that every one who has followed what I have written will see the reasons for such a change, and that it is the necessary consequence of the long movement for employment of the Natives. It was proposed in 1872, and was then supported by a majority of the Government of India, and by five of the Legislative Council out of twelve. It has been brought forward now by the Bengal Government. The Government of India consulted all the Local Governments upon it, and with the exception of the very small Province of Coorg, all those Governments, and most of their component members and of the officers consulted by them, were in its favour, though a new Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal has taken an opposite view to his predecessor. All our experience goes to prove that it is a prudent step and a beneficial one. Something may be argued from the success of the Native criminal courts in the Presidency towns. Much stronger is the argument from the Native civil courts. I have heard a judge's personal status referred to as a reason why his authority on the particular law he was laying down should be considered greater or less; but I have never heard it suggested that Hindoo or Mohammedan judges favoured their own people, or that either favoured Natives as against Europeans. And yet the vast mass of Indian litigation is decided by Hindoo and Mohammedan judges.

One favourite argument used against the measure seems to me so transparently fallacious that I should not reply to it if I did not find it frequently repeated, and that by able men. It is founded on the existence of other privileges besides that one which the Jurisdiction Bill strikes at. There are, it is said, a great many anomalies in India. Various classes of Natives have privileges and customs, some of them very inconvenient. Europeans have privileges which we are not proposing to take away. What is the use of abolishing one anomaly when we retain a heap of others? We are straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Lord Lytton puts this dilemma. We have two alternatives. We may place Europeans and Natives on an absolute equality by abolishing all distinctive laws and privileges. If not prepared to do that, let us take things as they are in good part. Moreover, it is added, the Natives ought not to complain of European privileges when they have so many of their own.

The first answer to this line of argument is, that it supposes that the only, or at least the main, motive for the Jurisdiction Bill is to remove an anomaly. I have written this paper to little purpose unless I have made it clear that what is to be removed is not merely

an anomaly but a hurtful obstruction to a great policy. The second answer is that Lord Lytton's dilemma is an exceedingly common one, and yet nobody is ever unwillingly entangled in its horns. When has the impossibility of doing everything been accepted by the statesman as a reason for doing nothing? Only when he wishes to do nothing. English statesmen in especial are reproached for their piecemeal legislation. That means that we take a step forward when and as circumstances call for it and make it practicable. Piecemeal and opportunist legislation has its drawbacks; and so comprehensive legislation, and slap-dash legislation, and standing stock still, have each its merits. But by piecemeal legislation we manage to adjust old arrangements to the wants of a growing society in a way which causes a less amount of convulsion, and is more consistent with sympathy between ruler and subject, and with harmony among the various classes of society, and with steady progress, than is found to be the case with other methods.

The question here is whether it is expedient to give a certain jurisdiction to Native Magistrates. If it is, it may or may not be right to urge Lord Ripon to do something more. But his proposal does not become inexpedient because he does nothing more.

So with the privileges accorded to Natives. The argument assumes that the only or main reason for the Bill is that Natives complain of the present law. That they complain is an excellent reason for looking to see how the law works and whether it should be altered. But it is altered not because the Natives complain, but because on their complaint it is found to require alteration,

Since we have been rulers in India many Native customs, some very important ones, have been abolished by law, and so have the privileges of Europeans been curtailed by law. There have been many steps towards uniformity, though we are very far from uniformity yet. At every stage the arguments now used might have been used, probably have been. Why do you make this change and not make others? The answer is: one thing at a time; we do not know that absolute uniformity is either attainable or desirable; we are doing what circumstances call upon us and enable us to do; if it is good do not oppose it because there is not more of it; if it is good to bring Natives more within the general law, the thing is not made bad by the circumstance that Europeans remain privileged in some particulars; and if it is good to bring Europeans more within the general law, it does not become bad because Natives remain privileged. Let each case be judged upon its own merits.

There is then no substantial argument against the change except the excitement of the English non-official community; and what that is worth let those judge who will take the pains to study with how little cause they have been excited on like occasions, and how groundless their fears have proved to be.

Now I would ask anybody possessed of the true state of the case to follow Lord Salisbury's account, and to mark how entirely the opponents of the measure have misunderstood it.

"A great and vital question has been raised." No, the great and vital question is the training and employment of Natives, which was decided by Parliament in principle fifty years ago, and has ever since been calling for one change or another.

"The measure has been adopted for the sake of sentiments and theories." No, it is part of a far-seeing policy insisted on by Ministries, Parliaments, and the most experienced statesmen. It is dictated by circumstances and favoured by experience. The sentiments and the theories are all on the side of those who cling to a useless and injurious restriction because it is a badge of conquest and privilege.

"The question is whether Englishmen shall or shall not be placed at the mercy of Native Judges." No, the question is whether a Magistrate of proved ability shall, merely because he is of pure Indian blood, be declared incapable of exercising a limited jurisdiction, not only over Englishmen, but over a large class of persons with some English blood in their veins: a jurisdiction which the Magistrate's own subordinates may exercise if they have the requisite drops of blood.

"What would your feelings be if you were in some distant and thinly populated land, far from all English succour, and your life and honour were exposed to the decision of some tribunal consisting of a coloured man?" Where, then, are these thinly populated lands, far from all English succour, and which are to be presided over by a Native civil servant? Lord Ripon will have to send a Commission of Inquiry to find them. How is life exposed to the decision of a tribunal which can, at the utmost, imprison for one year? What evidence is there that coloured men who are worthy to be judges are less careful of honour than uncoloured men? A coloured man who showed himself regardless of people's honour would soon find himself corrected by the High Court; and Lord Salisbury should remember that no one of the privileged class is so far from English succour but that he has an appeal to the High Court. And what amount of colour is enough to excite mistrust? Could the present Advocate-General of Calcutta be trusted with criminal jurisdiction? I myself, were I accused of a crime, would trust him entirely. But I believe he is an Armenian, and not a European British subject. Is the son of an English father and Hindoo mother too coloured to be a judge? Or is the son of that half-caste son by a Hindoo mother too coloured? If so, they are both European British subjects, and the law of 1872, as tested by colour, stands condemned.

As for the analogy of ex-territorial jurisdictions in Turkey and the like, it does not apply. The Turkish courts refused to administer