Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/591

 542

police barracks are a perfect triumph of in genuity, so admirable is the result produced for the money expended, both in the con struction of really handsome buildings and the laying out of the grounds with flowering trees and shrubs. This is especially the case at Kew, a peninsula on the Colombo Lake. There, a.nd at Benlota, the gorgeous display of gloriosa superba and other climbing plants im pressed itself vividly on my memory. The same care is shown wherever a police station has been established on the island. As they are at elevations ranging up to 7000 feet, they are, in a measure, experimental gar dens for new products. It is greatly to be desired that these should be quickly multiplied; for many police sta tions are still without any government build ings, and consequently, ordinary dwelling houses are hired to be used as offices and gaols, while the constables have to find quar ters for themselves, and are often widely scattered, and sometimes in very undesir able neighborhoods. The married men, who constitute more than two-thirds of the force, have to pay about one-eighth of their slender salary for the use of very wretched huts. This is doubly hard, as not only are the necessaries of life much dearer in Ceylon than on the mainland of India, but the rate of pay in all ranks is only from a quarter to half of that of the corresponding rank in the Indian police. The Singhalese police reports present a dreadful record of callous bloodshed. The victim is often someone towards whom the murderer bears no ill-will—perhaps, even, it is his own near relation—and the sole cause of the crime is a desire to bring a false charge against an innocent person against whom the murderer has a spite! A friend is murdered in order that a foe may be blamed! 'Most of the murders, however, are the result of momentary passion—it is a word and a stab. Drink and gambling, the prolific par

ents of Singhalese vice, multiply this class of crime. No one can fail to be struck with the sin gularly small proportion of women among the prisoners of Ceylon. About 95,000 to 110,000 persons are each year apprehended, or summoned before the courts, and never brought to trial, which shows either the cases are utterly frivolous, or that the complainants or the witnesses, or both, have been bought. Even these figures, large as they are, give no idea 'of the extent to which the machinery of justice is misused by the people to op press and harass each other, and actually to frustrate justice itself, unless we take into account the cloud of witnesses, who are also brought up by summonses and warrants and further, the multiplied postponements which characterize the courts. In addition, it must be borne in mind that minor cases are actu ally tried by the Gansabhawa, or Village Tri bunals. The results of this inordinate misuse of the courts are the impoverishment of the people both by a waste of time and by actual expenditure on worthless, self-styled law yers, the fostering of their innate love of liti gation, the encouraging of false witnesses and of perjury, the general demoralization which follows the prostitution of justice, and the obstruction of the thorough investigation and punishment of serious crime. Better that a man should, at his own proper peril, strike a blow with a stick, or even with a knife, than by preferring false and malicious charges he should make a court of justice an instrument for inflicting a cowardly blow. Of course, when it is made impossible for a judge to know whom and what to believe, true evidence is constantly rejected, crimi nals escape, and innocent people suffer un merited punishment, or at least retain a rankling sense of injustice which leads to re taliation, either in the form of false charges in court or in that of criminal violence. The