should be done away with.  A codification of existing laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our Indian rulers.  More especially should this be the case in rural districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve delicate points of law.  Our present courts, divested of their hungry crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would in a measure supplement the punchayiet system, which would be easy of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of authority.  It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.

If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a vakeel, that is, a lawyer.  If he has to cool his heels in your office, or round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is, that this is ‘Adanlut lea mafich,’ that is, ‘Like a court of justice.’  Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?

The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.  Men’s minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I have indicated.  All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to try petty cases.  There is a vast material—­loyalty, educated minds, an honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of everything pettifogging and underhand—­that the Indian Government would do well to utilise.  The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal facility to fall under pecuniary temptation.