Page:The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy Vol 2.djvu/261

Rh well as by the example of the most revered of his predecessors, the author of the Mitakshura; and that he has been eminently successful in his attempt at so doing, more particularly by unfettering property, and declaring the principle, that the alienator of an hereditary estate is only morally responsible for his acts, so far as they are unnecessary, and tend to deprive his family of the means of support. That he is borne out in the distinction he has drawn between moral precepts, a disregard to which is sinful, leaving the act valid and legal, and absolute injunctions, the acts in violation of which are null and void. If I have succeeded in this attempt, it follows that any decision founded on a different interpretation of the law, however widely that exposition may have been adopted in other provinces, is not merely retrograding in the social institution of the Hindoo community of Bengal, mischievous in disturbing the validity of existing titles to property, and of contracts founded on the received interpretation of the law, but a violation of the charter of justice, by which the administration of the exsistingexisting [sic] law of the people in such matters was secured to the inhabitants of this country.