The English system being out of the question, something might surely have been borrowed from the French; care might have been taken to prevent the conversion of a privilege or admitted right into a public abuse; and the ultimate tribunal should have been the terror of evil doers as well as the refuge of the helpless; the protector of society as well as the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence.' Nothing of the kind was done. The judicial authorities of the day, with the tacit connivance of the executive, devised and handed down a system, which, for weakness and obliviousness of the claims of the wellordered portion of the community, has, as we have observed, perhaps never had a counterpart in any civilised dominion. The plan was, not to set right the decisions of erring subordinates on grave questions of law, nor to order a new trial where there had been a positive failure of justice, nor to annul a conviction clearly obtained against the weight of evidence or where the balance of probabilities was vastly in favour of the appellant; but calmly and coolly to re-try every case on the dead record, starting with a sort of presumption of innocence, just as if the criminal had never had a trial at all. We do not say that this extraordinary doctrine was ever openly propounded, but it did form the rule of the Curia; it was almost universally acted on; its influence descended to the Courts of Sessions below it, which were appellate as well as original tribunals; and the advocates of rogues and robbers were allowed to act on it with very considerable success for a long series of years. Very often one appeared to defend the conviction or to guard the interests of householders. The case, in appeal, was left to a glib native pleader or to a clever English advocate, who did with the record pretty much as he pleased; and criticised

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sharply the recorded and tame depositions of witnesses, devoid of all those adjuncts of manner, voice, expression, and so forth, which give life and animation to a trial and enable a presiding Judge of ordinary intelligence to discriminate between falsehood and truth. We have seen scores of instances where the decisions of Sessions Courts, arrived at after patient enquiry, by Judges conversant with the language,

familiar with procedure, and without the least bias against the accused, were overruled by special pleading, in the form of a decision, or by a vague sibylline sentence, to the effect that the Judges, or it may be the single appellate Judge, was not satisfied with the evidence' or disbelieved witnesses whom he had never seen. We should especially mention that, by law, the Appellate Court could not enhance punishment; it could only reverse and acquit, so that there was every reason for its cautiously using the only power it had. There was naturally something to be urged in favour of careful appellate supervision, owing to the corruption of the police, the want of training on the part of the judicial branch of the service, and occasional ebullitions of zeal and instances of haste and intemperance. But check and interference, modifications and reversals of sentences, were carried to an excess for which no necessity existed; and the effect was to paralyse industry, to impede trade, and to fairly bewilder the orderly part of the community, who had vainly imagined the British Government to be as strong and wise as it was benevolent. The Sudder Court became the despair of magistrates and judges, anxious for the welfare of their districts, and the hope and delight of criminal classes ranging over districts equalling Continental Principalities in extent. By a comparison of statistics it has been ascertained that, even in the best days of the old

Sudder Court, one-third of the criminals convicted at the Sessions obtained their release in appeal. Under the improved system, partly due to the High Court and partly to legislation, only one fourteenth of appealing criminals have obtained a reversal or a modification of their awards; for the right of appeal is now limited and construed in accordance with common sense.

The laxity of the criminal administration on the part of the Company's Judges, and the contrast between their misplaced benevolence and the wholesome severity of the Supreme Court, was still more strikingly exemplified in the treatment of the celebrated rite of Suttee. More than forty years have now elapsed since the calm and courageous Bentinck abolished the fiendish rite which the first of Hindu lawgivers had in reality never sanctioned, and which the most enlightened of Mohammedan Emperors had almost forbidden. Lord Lawrence, when he first landed in India, may have heard startling accounts of the burning of widows not more than two years before his arrival. But the subject had been discussed, minuted, and reported on, and tossed about as a difficult official question, for just fifteen years before the Act of Abolition. The part played by the Judges of the Supreme Court was decisive, practical, and consonant to their training and character. They quietly but clearly let it be understood that whoever lighted a pile for the living widow and the deceased lord within the precincts of the town of Calcutta, would be arraigned for wilful murder, without benefit of priesthood, and without being able to urge the nauseous pleas of sacred prescription and religious rights. Not a pyre blazed in the populous but limited area where the Writ of the Court ran. Very different was the mode in which the Company's Judges at tacked this crime. They gravely

issued a set of regulations, which required landholders, priests, and relatives to give notice to the police of the intention of a widow to burn herself with her husband. And the native police officer, as well as the English magistrate, whenever possible, was to endeavour to dissuade the widow from self-sacrifice by argument and reason, was empowered to prevent the use of violence or compulsion on the part of fanatic Bramans or covetous reversioners, but was not authorised to stop the sacrifice by downright exertion of authority or, what is the same in the eyes of orientals, by personal influence speaking in the firm tone of command. This, it was naïvely remarked, would show the natives that we respected their prejudices, while we denounced crimes committed under the cloak of religion. The rest was to be left to time, to the spread of education, and to English example and influence, and similar verbiage. With the utmost gravity, the Judges further introduced a distinction between the widows who were burnt without the necessary formalities and were sometimes thrust into the flames by forks and bamboos wielded by pitiless relatives, and those who, after hearing the expostulations of Englishmen, or Mohammedan officials, walked calmly to the pile with a heroism that would not have disgraced the countrywomen of Portia. The former kind of crime figures in bulky reports and statistical tables as 'Illegal Suttees,' and occasionally but rarely an active or interested zealot or reversioner, who had failed to report the preparations, or who had hurled back a shrieking and repentant girl of sixteen into the burning fiery furnace, was punished with a few months' imprisonment or a paltry fine. The consequence of these contemptible palliatives was, as may readily be imagined, that the rite of Suttee between 1815 and 1829 flourished with a vigour and a

vitality unknown till it had become the subject of official narrative and enquiry. The number of reported deaths swelled in one year to more than eight hundred. Pyres blazed, literally, at the rate of one a week, in the very suburbs of Calcutta, and just beyond the precincts of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

The crime was most rife in the parts of India where the natives were the least warlike, where cowardice was most allied to cruelty, and where degrading superstition and sensual worship had most debased the feelings of the people. Not even Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus, could boast as many helpless victims as the metropolitan districts of Hooghly, Nuddea, and Burdwan. Meanwhile, the Press, to its credit, was not an idle spectator of these revolting scenes. Nor were there men wanting in the civil and military services of the Company, who fearlessly denounced timid counsels, who pleaded the claims of humanity and mercy against the dictates of covetousness and superstition, and who even at times, in contemptuous defiance of red tape and regulation, saved the widow at the hazard of their official character and even at some personal risk from an infuriated crowd. And we are glad to take this opportunity of commemorating the conduct of one Sudder Judge, whose caustic pen denounced the timidity of his colleagues and the wavering of the Government in a strain not unworthy of his humane and witty brother, the Canon of St. Paul's. The most withering and logical denunciations of the temporising policy of his colleagues and of the Government came from Courtenay Smith, 'ut fratre Hannibale dignum erat.'

The history of the rise, progress, and extinction of Suttee would make an essay of itself; and we have no wish to dwell further on a chapter in Indian history which is discreditable no less to British humanity than it is to our boasted insight into the habits and feelings of the people. Lord William Bentinck

did not hesitate for more than a few months after his arrival, when, in some weighty and dignified sentences, he placed Suttee where it ought to have been placed long before, i.e. in the category of the highest crimes. The lugubrious prophecies about discontent in the Sepoy army and alienation of the community vanished at once. And it is gratifying to think that some independent princes of the most ancient lineage and of scrupulous observance of the strict tenets of Hindustan, have, under successive Viceroys, from Lord Hardinge to Lord Mayo, almost ended these infernal sacrifices in dominions where English bailiffs and sheriff's officers would have as little chance of serving a process or arresting a culprit as they would have had in the wilds of Connemara a hundred years ago.

We much regret that want of space prevents our noticing several other topics which have been treated by the author with equal soundness, dexterity, and suggestiveness. We allude especially to his remarks on the complicated civil law administered by the Indian Judges, and to his chapter on Prices and Rents, whether exacted by competition or paid by custom. Many of his comments might be made starting points for separate treatises, and all are pregnant with thought.

CLOS

YLOSE outside the gate of Jerusalem, in the good old city of Damascus, lived once upon a time a venerable Sheik, who was justly considered one of the wisest men of his time. The little dwelling he occupied was called by himself a country-house; his solitary slave called it simply 'the house,' and his neighbours spoke of it as the kiosk. It was in reality but a summerhouse in a garden, from the produce of which the Sheik derived his frugal income. It was rather a garden with a house, than a house with a garden, which he cultivated with the assistance of an only slave, while another, a female, kept house for him, and waited upon him and his daughter. It was generally conceded that no juicier or more luscious melons were to be found than those the old Rizan, as the slave was called, brought to the market from the Sheik's garden. His figs, pomegranates, and pistaccios were equally famous. At any rate, it was very certain that old Rizan's basket was soon emptied, when he appeared in the public market-place, and that he honestly rendered an account to his master for every farthing upon his return home. Even if he had not by nature been strictly honest, it would hardly have answered to try to impose upon the Sheik, as the venerable man was not alone well acquainted with everything upon this earth, and not alone familiar with all human knowledge, such as theology, philosophy, algebra, and poetry, but was generally supposed to be deeply versed in all kinds of hidden lore, as astrology, geomanty, Sanscrit, Kabbala, necromanty, and Mekaschela. You felt convinced of that at once, when his cavernous

eyes rested upon you, and by the commanding dignity which clothed his whole manner and presence. That he was superhumanly wise was a fact that nobody dared to deny. He spoke always in short sententious phrases, and the Koran and the poets he had at his finger ends. The philosophy of his life was equally profound and solid. It was contained in these three articles, which deserve to be written in letters of gold: 1st. Peace is the most precious gift in this world; 2ndly. To attain peace you must first acquire a complete independence; and 3rdly. To become independent it is necessary first and foremost to break with the whole half of the human race, especially with women, whom Allah created in his wrath to bring temptation and strife into the world. On these three points the Sheik was especially touchy; no panther in the desert could be more pugnacious for its young than the Sheik for his three pet philosophical dogmas. But for all that he was not entirely invulnerable; he had a tender spot, which all his philosophy had not been able to render callous; in the very heart of his being was hidden a germ of unquiet and disturbance, namely, a daughter, who, in spite of her beauty, was still on his hands. This circumstance occasioned him many a sigh of chagrin, and embarrassed the good old man exceedingly, whilst he would patiently stroke his venerable beard, murmuring, Help, Allah! there is no safety except from him, who is ever merciful.'

In the cool of the evening, when people gathered together at the gate of the city to gossip or to transact business with one another, the Sheik would, almost without fail,

be found sitting calmly outside his garden gate. As his wisdom and benevolence were very generally known, he was frequently called upon to dispense his stores of good advice, the value of which was so highly esteemed by the good people of Damascus that he could easily have made it a profitable trade if he had been so disposed. But such an idea was far from his thoughts. Nothing would have been more against his principles than to eat the bread or take the money of the stranger; his little garden yielded him enough for his necessities, and what more was needed?

When people came outside the gate to enjoy the coolness of the evening, or returned from their gardens in the beautiful environs of Damascus, they would often stop at the Sheik's gate and enter into conversation with him, either for the purpose of benefiting themselves by his great world-experience, or to be entertained by his conversation about distant countries and foreign nations. He had not alone studied man and life in the abstract, but had in his younger days travelled far and wide, and used his eyes and ears to some purpose; consequently, it was but natural that words flowed from his lips sweeter than the honey from Emesa, and more fragrant than the wine from blessed Shiras.

It was, however, as one perhaps might be led to think, not only elderly gentlemen who gathered around him at this impromptu levée; young men, too, were by no means adverse to linger in the vicinity of the modest summerhouse near the Jerusalem gate. It was perhaps less the Sheik's words of wisdom which attracted these than a girl's sparkling black eyes and white hand which sometimes became visible behind the latticed window of the kiosk facing the road. It was well known that Zarka, a girl of fifteen, the Sheik's

daughter and only child, was one of the most lovely maids in all Damascus. It would, then, at times happen that one of these young gentlemen would have occasion for a private interview with the Sheik, who, upon entering his kiosk later in the evening, would then commonly address his daughter thus: 'The peace of Allah be with you, daughter.'

'And with you, my good father.' 'We are all in the hand of Allah,' continued the Sheik, after seating himself on his divan with great gravity, and gathering his legs under him: Chaler, Alladin-BenShivas' son, has knocked on our door to-day and enquired for the young daughter of the house.'

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'Well, father.'

'He is a good man-not too old or too young-just in his best years.' 'Is he handsome?'

'Not exactly handsome; no, not handsome, my child, but neither is he ill-favoured. His eyes are as gleaming spear-points, his beard as a foaming river, his turban is cocked up smartly, and his caftan descends from a pair of strong, free and haughty shoulders.'

'I care nothing for these kinds of spear-points,' pouted Zarka, fanning herself.

'He enjoys universal esteem.'

'I don't fancy a venerable beard.' 'He is very wealthy, and can present his wife with twenty slaves, if he likes.'

'I would then be but the twentyfirst, merely the chief of the lot,' said Zarka, with a roguish smile on her lovely little mouth, whilst she threw away her fan, and took her darling little naked feet in her hands to change her position on the soft pillows. It was enough to make one lose his senses to get a glimpse of these snowy, delicatelyshaped feet-that is, if you had not already taken leave of them, in gazing on the beautiful hands which grasped them, and soft round arms