the weight of uns worn evidence, and the punishment and shame of perjury were awarded to the crime of bearing false witness.

The repugnance universally entertained by the natives of India, both Mahomedan and Hindoo, to the taking of a judicial oath, is well known, though the grounds of their objection have never been clearly stated. Their total want of power to bind the conscience and extract true evidence is as generally acknowledged; and ineffectual attempts have been made to correct the evil by enacting severer punishments for perjury, and by seeking for more impressive forms of administering them. The true remedy, in conjunction with, and in subordination to, the slow effects of religious instruction, seems to be by permitting all classes to give evidence unsworn, to remove, or at least greatly diminish the objection which repectable persons now have to appearing as witnesses in a court of justice. Mr. Edward Strachey has supported the proposition with irresistible arguments. "Such is the terror of the "that no respectable per

"oath," he observes,

son will

appear

in our courts, as a witness, if "he can help it. My own little experience en"ables me to say that it is common for families, "sometimes even whole villages, to fly at the

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apprehension of being named as witnesses.

I.

"have often known men cry and protest against "the injustice of others who have accused them "of being witnesses to a fact; and they declare "that they are innocent of the charge with as "much anxiety as if they were accused of felony. "Some men refuse to swear from conscience and "others from pride. Whatever may be the orthodox opinion of the Hindoo theologians, the people

66

66

at large do certainly consider that the taking "of an oath on the Ganges water, is a spiritual "offence of the most horrid nature, which con

66

signs them and their families, for many gene"rations, to damnation. With respect to those persons who do not make it a point of conscience, "it must be admitted that to appear in one of our courts as a witness, is, in the highest degree, disgraceful. In short, the very fact of a na"tive having taken an oath in one of our courts, " is a presumption against the respectability of "his character, or the purity of his conscience.

If any doubt is entertained of the truth of these "facts, I can only say that I assert them on the

39

grounds of my own experience, and of the best "information which I have been able to collect "from natives as well as Europeans. I suppose "that the evils are acknowledged to exist to their "fullest extent, but that they are considered to "be necessary evils. The courts have now au

thority, in certain cases, to exempt persons "from swearing. This is something, but it does "not appear to be sufficient. If the corporal oath, in the form now used, does tend to banish "truth from our courts, and if it is liable to the objections I have stated, I know no reason why it should not be banished altogether.— "The imposition of an oath on a man, who be"lieves that by taking it he brings damnation

on himself and his family for many generations,

appears to me to be a mode of finding out “truth not very different from torture.”

Improvements in the text of the law, and in the training of the judges, cannot well precede, but will certainly follow, the general progress in wealth and intelligence.

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CHAPTER V.

ON THE EXCLUSION OF BRITISH SUBJECTS FROM THE RIGHT OF HOLDING LAND IN INDIA.

THE Company's servants who were first employed in the collection of the land revenue received' much smaller salaries than the present collectors, and were more impatient of the privations and inconveniences incident to a residence in India. Various indirect modes of acquiring wealth were resorted to, and more or less sanctioned by general usage, connivance, and countenance: but the practice of holding (in the names of native men of straw) and trafficking in under-assessed land, which directly intercepted revenue from the treasury, was among those against which the earliest efforts of counteraction were directed. In 1766, the Court of Directors, in their general letter of 17th May, thus address the Bengal Government :-"We positively order that no

"covenanted servant, or ENGLISHMAN residing "under our protection, be suffered to hold any "land for his own account, directly or indirectly, "in his own name or that of others, or be con"cerned in any farms or revenues whatever."

The comprehensive term "Englishman" was used for additional security against collusion, but still more from the antipathy of monopolists to interlopers, and from jealousy of men less subject to their authority, whose obvious interest it would be to besiege the legislature with petitions for relief from the restraints by which their industry was fettered, and the more grievous oppression to which their personal liberty was subject. These feelings naturally induced a determination that there should never be many Europeans in India who were not covenanted servants of the Company; and an exclusion originating, and still maintained, from principles which actuate the proceedings of corporations of every description, civil, ecclesiastical, municipal, and commercial, has since been defended by every available artifice of sophistry, and by a reliance on the indifference rather than the ignorance of their countrymen. If our possessions in India had been acquired in the same manner as other foreign dominions of the crown; if the Company had never exercised, or been long ago deprived of, the