Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/51

 would lead one to suppose. Courts of appeal, whether under the style of Supreme Courts or High Courts, have always been a bugbear to the energetic district official. The lawyers got a footing in the factories of the Company when it was still only a trading association, and ever since have marched steadily in the train of the armies; but seventy years ago there was probably a much closer approach to rough and ready justice than is now possible. The magistrate complied with the formal requirements of the law, but was, it may be suspected, guided in cases of considerable importance to a decision by the hearsay evidence he heard out of doors. Proceedings, it is to be feared, were in this idyllic period often perfunctory, and a great deal of the perjury which is now attributed to the inherent depravity of the average Hindu may be explained by the want of discrimination and care in the old tribunals. It is not that the people believe in lying in the abstract. They have imbibed somehow a notion that lying is the proper thing in an English Court. In this respect the process of amelioration was already beginning in Lord Amherst's time. The necessity of codifying the law was then recognized, though India had still to wait many years for the boon bestowed upon it by Lord Macaulay and Sir James Stephen. There were no doubt gross miscarriages of justice in the somewhat hasty processes of investigation, but if an innocent man sometimes was punished owing to the malice of his neighbours or by want of judgement on the part of the magistrate,