The trial came on a few days ago, and the jury, much to their honour, found the prisoner guilty.  On this an agitation was got up to obtain a commutation of the sentence of death which had been passed by the judge.  A petition, with a great number of signatures, was presented in the first instance to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal; but he was advised that, the crime having been committed in the Punjab, he had nothing to do with the case.  It was then transmitted to me.  There was quite enough doubt as to my power of acting, to have justified me in referring the case to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab.  But I felt that the delay, and, above all, the appearance of a desire to shrink from the responsibility of passing a decision on the case, which this step would involve, would be so mischievous, that, having obtained from the Advocate-General an opinion that I had the requisite authority, I determined to take the matter into my own hands.  The verdict was clearly borne out by the evidence.  The sentence was in accordance with the law, and the judge, to whom I referred, saw no reason to question it.  The decision of the Governor-General in Council was, that the law must take its course.

[Sidenote:  Little value put on native life.]

It is true that this murder was not committed with previous preparation and deliberation.  It had not, therefore, this special quality of aggravation.  But it was marked by an aggravation of its own, not less culpable, and unfortunately only too frequently characteristic of the homicides perpetrated by Europeans on natives in this country.  It was committed in wanton recklessness, almost without provocation, under an impulse which would have been resisted if the life of the victim had been estimated at the value of that of a dog.  Any action on my part which would have seemed to sanction this estimate of the value of native life, would have been attended by the most pernicious consequences.

It is bad enough as it is.  The other day a station-master, somewhere up country, kicked a native who was, as he says, milking a goat belonging to the former.  The native fell dead, and the local paper, without a word of commiseration for the victim or his family, complains of the hardship of compelling the station-master to go to Calcutta, in this warm weather, to have the case inquired into.  Other instances in which the natives have died from the effect of personal chastisement administered by Europeans have occurred since I have been here.

I have gone at some length into this case, both because you may hear of it, and also because it exemplifies what is really our greatest source of embarrassment in this country—­the extreme difficulty of administering equal justice between natives and Europeans.

* * * * *

    To Sir Charles Wood.

    July 16th, 1862.