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is proposed in the following work to exhibit an outline of Hindu law, so far as it is in. use in the Courts erected, whether at the presidencies, or in the Provinces, for administering justice to the Hindu subject of British India. In developing the design, it will be convenient, first, to specify the parts of that law, which do not enter into it; and then to sketch out the arrangement, that has been adopted for carrying it into effect.

1. The government of India, so far as "that country has been reduced to our power, resting, as it does, upon British institutions, upon instructions from the authorities at home, or upon the laws of England, as administered under Charters, founded upon Acts of Parliament, with a partial reference only to Native Codes, such portions of these latter as explain and enforce what we consider to be objects of constitutional law, can never come into discussion in any of the above courts. Public office of every description in British India is held exclusively by British, with the exception of some subordinate ones; in the discharge of which latter, the Native, having entered into our service, is answerable to us, and to be judged of, like our- VOL. I. B