waited on by the Vakeel (the client all the while surveying the transaction from his palanquin in the Court-house verandah), and requested to receive the money as a deposit, and lock it up in his desk. Mr. De Souza did so. The case was called, and was promptly decided against the briber, the Collector showing no sign whatever of the effect of a douceur. The litigant and his counsel called on Mr. De Souza for the deposit, but were surprised to find him absolutely oblivious of the whole alleged incident. He was very sorry if they had lost anything, but they seemed to be labouring under some delusion. There were his keys, they might search his desk. If any bag had ever been there, it must have been stolen. The locks supplied by the Government were wretched. But was it not imprudent, even in jest, to speak about what might seem an attempt to pervert the ends of justice by corruption? The litigant, no doubt, understood this threat, and said no more about the matter. A very curious form of corruption is mentioned by Sir W. Sleeman as prevailing in Oude at the time of his journey through the Kingdom. An official newswriter attended all officers in charge of districts, fiscal and judicial Courts, and official establishments of all kinds. His duty was to report to the Government the facts of every case for Government interference which might come to his knowledge. Of course a peccant official found it his interest to spend large sums of money on bribing the newswriters, whose gains were thus very considerable. The whole news department was under the control of a Superintendent, who contracted for it, as for the revenues of a district. In addition to the money to be paid to the treasury, the Superintendent was obliged to spend large sums in gratuities to influential officers and Court favourites, to secure the post. He nominated his subordinates and appointed them to their several offices, taking from them a sum in hand as the price of their appointments, and exacting an engagement for such monthly payments as he thought the place would enable each to make. The result of this was that the hideous atrocities of Rughbur Sing, and his agents Beharee Lal and Gooreeshunker, during 1846 and 1847, were never reported to the Government, though the newswriters were constantly spectators of the tortures* inflicted by Rughbur Sing on his prisoners, for the purpose *Moistened gunpowder was smeared over the beards of the men, and when dry, was ignited. The tunica molesta was revived with new and horrible improvements. Cloths steeped in oil were bound round the hands of female captives. These were then set on fire, so that the hands and arms of the wretched creatures became animate torches. The persons employed to torture got money from the victims or their friends to induce them to despatch the prisoners purpose of extorting ransom from their relatives. Indeed, they had a direct interest in the atrocities, each newswriter getting a handsome commission on every ransom. The Superintendent of the news department, in submitting his reports to the minister, acted on the same principles which guided his subordinates in forwarding theirs to him. If he received a charge against a man of substantial means or high official rank, he came to an understanding with the representatives of the accused in Lucknow, submitting the report only if the latter proved too hard to deal with. If ever called to account himself, he could rely on the protection of the Court favourites and high officials whom he kept in his pay. Bribery in Oude was as rife in the zenana as in the courts and public offices. A Mogulanee attendant of a favourite wife of the King had accumulated in gratuities twenty lacs of rupees. Her mistress died, and with her the influence of the Mogulanee, who was soon seized and commanded to disgorge. She resolved to spend five lacs on bribing the most powerful officials about Court; and so effectual was this policy, that some of the most influential ministers of the King were induced to wait on his Majesty and entreat him to have the Mogulanee banished across the Ganges out of his territories. They had ascertained that she was a very powerful sorceress. She had been greatly attached to her mistress, and they had strong reasons to believe that it was her intention to send his Majesty's spirit after that of his late wife, that in the next world they might still enjoy the union which had been so happy in this. His Majesty, not caring to commence at once this era of endless connubial felicity-having perhaps, indeed, an Oriental prejudice against monogamy as an institution-was without much difficulty induced to banish the sorceress forthwith. The ministers of the King saw her safely over the Ganges in British territory. They pocketed their five lacs, and she went with the remaining fifteen to Cawnpoor. 'Exceptio probat regulam' is a maxim often misapplied, as if the existence of an exception to a rule founded on induction prisoners quickly, or mitigate their sufferings. One calls to mind the terrible passage in Cicero's speech against Verres (2 Verr. v. 45, § 118). There was the lictor Sextius who drew a certain revenue from every groan, every pang. So much for admittance to the prisoner. So much for leave to bring him food. Come! how much for beheading your son with a single blow? How much to spare him prolonged agony? How much to save him multiplied blows? To secure his dissolution from the pains of torture? Even this was a source of revenue to the lictor. O, what an agonizing position! Parents forced to buy, not the life, but the speedy death of their offspring; children pleading with the lictor for a single stroke, or imploring their parents to purchase the mitigation of their pains.' C 2 could could possibly go to confirm the rule, instead of invalidating it in so far as it had any effect. The meaning of the aphorism, as was long ago pointed out by Whately and Mill, is that from the statement of a fact as an exception may be inferred a rule existing in the mind of him who adduces the fact as exceptional. For instance, the proposition 'No humane landlord should be assassinated,' implies in the mind of the propounder the existence of a principle that 'A landlord who is not humane ought to be assassinated.' By applying 'the exception proves the rule' to a passage in a somewhat recent book by a native Indian, we may see that incorruptibility is still broadly incomprehensible, save as a most exceptional phenomenon, to even a cultured native intelligence. In a memoir of the Hon. Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee, who attained the position of a Judgeship in the High Court and died in 1871, his nephew, a teacher of history in the higher grade English school, thus eulogizes his deceased uncle: 'Such was the integrity of this remarkable man, that having taken a brief from one party in a case and read it, he invariably refused a fee from the other side.' The habitual practice of a native pleader was to take a brief from one side, and, having carefully studied it, to use his knowledge against his client, if the other side were willing to make it worth his while. It would be interesting to construct a kind of moral map of the world, in which the incidence of particular virtues at particular epochs of the world's history should be marked. Thus integrity in the observance of contracts would now be marked as a crime in Ireland; and political assassination would figure as a virtue in the last century of the Roman Republic. Even the gentle Cicero tells his friend Atticus in B.C. 57 how he had been attacked by the bravoes of Clodius on the Via Sacra, but his own gang of attendant roughs was far stronger, and easily repelled the Clodian assault: he adds, Clodius might easily have been put to death, but I am tired of surgery, I am beginning to try régime.' He thinks it necessary to explain why, in violation of all precedent, he refrained from assassinating his political opponent, when the -opportunity offered itself. To turn from the East to the West is to feel that one has taken a leap over a thousand years or so. One feels glad to meet the Sovereign People again, and it is pleasant even to find * Att. iv. 3, 3. Smartness Smartness sitting in the seat from which Violence is deposed. It thrills one to picture to the imagination a government of the people, by the people, for the people,' until one begins to find out that it is of the people, by the people, for the politician.' The area of the electorate in the United States is far too wide for direct bribery, and bribery is further counteracted by the caucus. But indirect solicitation by means of the misuse of political influence has its very shrine in the American Democracy. This is the kind of corruption which was openly practised by the Whig Ministers of George I. and George II.-the open bestowal of places, and undisguised perpetration of jobs to secure political adhesion. The misuse of patronage became much less audacious in England under George III. Patronage now can hardly be said to enter into English party government, except in so far as is justifiable; each party rightly selecting from a number of pretty equally qualified candidates for office such among them as are adherents of its own policy. But in America, ever since President Andrew Jackson announced the doctrine' to the victors the spoils,' this kind of corruption has found its way into every stratum of society. Mr. Lowell, in his 'Biglow Papers,' has given it characteristic expression: 'Ef you git me inside the White House, Foreign missions and consulates, department bureaus, custom house and revenue offices, army and navy contracts, postmasterships, agencies, places of all sorts down to the letter-carrier's, are the spoils of the victors. The last President has been elected on the cry of Civil Service Reform; but so far he has not conspicuously carried it out, and he is opposed by a very powerful party who distinctly repudiate it. It is a characteristic of all new Presidents to be honest. 'Princes,' says Horace Walpole, ought not to be judged at their coronations, but at their burials.' An American senator represents a sovereign state, and holds a very high position in society. But with few exceptions politics do not attract the best men under the American or under the French democracy. It remains to be seen whether under the English democracy that inordinate admiration for all kinds of superiority, which is so characteristic of the English mind, will continue to draw her best type of intellect and character to the work of government. American men of letters are outspoken in their denunciation of politics as dirty work. Wealth, "Wealth, office, power at auction,' writes the author of 'Democracy.' "Who bids highest? Who hates with most venom? Who intrigues with most skill? Who has done the dirtiest, the meanest, the darkest, the most political work? He shall have his reward.' An acute observer of Boston society, Mr. Marion Crawford, in an American Politician,' makes one of his characters say 'We live in a great institution, and we have a good right to flatter ourselves on its management: but in the long run this will not do for a nation.' It is a great machine floundering about in the mire of politics. The weakest certainly go to the wall, and the fittest survive. But weak and fit are relative terms, and the doctrine of the survival of the fittest must always be eminently unsatisfactory to those who do not survive. American politics can hardly be called a china shop, but the Irish bull has managed to make himself very inconvenient therein. The proceedings of Mr. Patrick Ballymolloy in the novel just referred to are an instructive comment on the swelling phrase of the American historian Bancroft, 'The change which Divine wisdom ordained, and which no human policy or force could hold back, proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, and was as certain as the decrees of eternity.' So, we suppose, was the reign of nefarious peculation and corruption which has recently culminated in the arrest of sixteen out of the twenty-four members of the Board of New York Aldermen nearly all countrymen of Mr. Patrick Ballymolloy. 'Irishmen,' said an American Senator* in 1866, 'have stolen more money in this country than would buy the fee simple of the Emerald Isle a dozen times over.' In America the imposers of the taxes are not the payers of the taxes. The latter class have an interest in the economical and honest administration of public funds for public purposes. The former have a direct interest in dishonest and extravagant expenditure. It is thus that Demos is paid for his vote. Demos looks on the Government as his servant, whose duty it is to secure to him high wages, good employments, fat contracts; and these are the rewards promised by the demagogues * Francis T. Blair, United States Senator from Missouri. from |