committed for trial to the sessions.  Men are often ultimately acquitted for want of judicial proof, when there is abundance of that moral proof on which a police officer or magistrate has to act in the discharge of his duties; and in a country where gangs of professional and hereditary robbers and murderers extend their depredations into very remote parts, and seldom commit them in the districts in which they reside, the most vigilant police officer must often fail to discover the perpetrators of heavy crimes that take place within his range.[6]

When they cannot find them, the native officers either seize innocent persons, and frighten them into confession, or else they try to conceal the crime, and in this they are seconded by the sufferers in the robbery, who will always avoid, if they can, a prosecution in our courts, and by their neighbours, who dread being summoned to give evidence as a serious calamity.  The man who has been robbed, instead of being an object of compassion among his neighbours, often incurs their resentment for subjecting them to this calamity; and they not only pay largely themselves, but make him pay largely, to have his losses concealed from the magistrate.  Formerly, when a district was visited by a judge of circuit to hold his sessions only once or twice a year, and men were constantly bound over to prosecute and appear as evidence from sessions to sessions, till they were wearied and worried to death, this evil was much greater than at present, when every district is provided with its judge of sessions, who is, or ought to be, always ready to take up the cases committed for trial by the magistrate.[7] This was one of the best measures of Lord W. Bentinck’s admirable, though much abused, administration of the government of India.[8] Still, however, the inconvenience and delay of prosecution in our courts are so great, and the chance of the ultimate conviction of great offenders is so small, that strong temptations are held out to the police to conceal or misrepresent the character of crimes; and they must have a great feeling of security in their tenure of office, and more adequate salaries, better chances of rising, and better supervision over them, before they will resist such temptation.  These Thanadars, and all the public officers under them, are all so very inadequately paid that corruption among them excites no feeling of odium or indignation in the minds of those among whom they live and serve.  Such feelings are rather directed against the government that places them in such situations of so much labour and responsibility with salaries so inadequate; and thereby confers upon them virtually a licence to pay themselves by preying upon those whom they are employed ostensibly to protect.  They know that with such salaries they can never have the reputation of being honest, however faithfully they may discharge their duties; and it is too hard to expect that men will long submit to the necessity of being thought corrupt,