Page:Thomas Latter, A grammar of the language of Burmah, 1845.djvu/14

 PREFACE.

“What ought to have been the course pursued by the British Rulers ? Certainly it was their duty, first, to have ordained that the language, and character of the country, should be that of the courts of Justice"—Shore’s Notes on Indian Affairs.

It would perhaps have been more adviseable that this work should have gone before the public without the accompaniment of a Preface; but this will be the more readily excused, when it is borne in mind that through its medium may be brought to public notice, and perhaps to that of those persons in whose hands lie the remedial powers, the existence of a system as liable to the perversion of justice, as it is discreditable to the present era of British rule in India; and that is, the circumstance, that though the provinces on our South Eastern Frontier, conquered from the Burmese, have been for twenty years under our sway; their Courts of Law are conducted in a language foreign to that of the Inhabitants. If this system was found so objectionable as to call for its abolition in the Courts of Law of Hindoostan, where the Omlah or Native officials were of the same religion as the Plaintiff and Defendant ; it becomes a glaring evil and a crying injustice in the case of our Burman fellow-subjects, who, as untrammelled as ourselves by caste, have not, like us,