that he should be made acquainted, as fully as possible, with every ascertainable detail of the cases upon which his opinion is demanded. In the first place, the circumstances which generally lead to the perpetration of various crimes against the person, the descriptions of crimes usually committed, and the means commonly employed to effect and to conceal them, form an essential portion of the Medical Jurist's knowledge. A very few illustrations will sufficiently set forth this principle. The body of a woman is discovered on the floor of a London garret. The evidences of want and sorrow are stamped upon her countenance, as deeply as the recent gashes and bruises which disfigure it. The surgeon and the policeman hold an undivided opinion upon this case;—it is not one of accident or robbery; life has been taken away by the hand sworn to protect it; and the criminal must be sought for with the fumes of liquor still in his brain, and with his victim's blood still upon his clothes and behind his nails. A girl lies dead in a small room in Paris; the Medical Inspector, on entering, presses his handkerchief to his face, to exclude the suffocating atmosphere, glances at a charcoal pan beside the bed, tears out a caulking of rags from the crevices of the sash ;-and the leading facts of the case are before him. In like manner, the body of a female is discovered beside a tank in Bengal, mutilated by a dozen wounds, each sufficient to cause almost instantaneous death. The skull is cloven, a hand has been lopped off, the shoulder is gashed through muscle and bone to the lungs. Whether the remains are those of a Hindu woman or of a Mussulmaunee, the matter scarcely admits of a doubt;-the murder has been committed by her husband or paramour, in a fit of jealousy; search must be made for a dhao, or bill-hook, which will probably be discovered with the evidences of crime upon its blade. Still again, the body of a native of good condition would be found buried near a water-course, scored from head to heel with enormous gashes; these, however, would be entirely passed over in the examination, the evidences of strangulation by a Thug's girdle would alone be sought for. Various as are the modes of effecting and of concealing crime in different countries, a large experience will always show that a really new crime is an unexampled event in the criminal annals of any land. As the hunter and the brutetamer learn to approach and to subdue the cunningest and the strongest beasts and the most venomous reptiles, the detective officer follows the criminal through all his feints and doublings towards escape; while the medical jurist,— guided here by a scratch or a blood spirt, there by a dingy stain, or an almost invisible speck of powder, or a metallic film weighing the twentieth part of a grain,-tracks out and lays bare the evidences of his crime, almost with the certainty of an irresistible fate. To start fairly on the scent, however, it is necessary, as we have seen, that he should know something of the propensities and customs of the criminal, and be thoroughly practised in the unravelling of similar cases.* A very large proportion of the experience and tact essential to the attainment of this end in India has yet to be gained; somewhat, however, is known at present, and sufficient for all practical purposes may, doubtless, be acquired by the combined labours of several close observers, pursuing their investigations in various parts of the country, each noting the varieties in the modes of effecting and of concealing crime, according to the religious classes, habits and races of the offenders. "As a hunter traces the lair of a wounded beast by the drops of blood; thus let a King investigate the true point of justice by deliberate arguments"-Menu. CRIMINAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. It would probably be impossible to point to any races of men whose great crimes more distinctly emanate from and illustrate their national character, than is the case with those various classes of natives who inhabit the British possessions in India. A thorough insight into the intimate peculiarities of the native character could only follow a life-long acquaintance with Hindus and Mussulmauns of all classes, and has probably never yet been fully mastered by any European. Still, the strong broad features which stand prominently forth upon the surface of their national characters, and which are displayed with the greatest expression in the details of their crimes are, of course, open to every cautious observer, and especially demand the study of the Lawyer, the Physician and the Medical Jurist. I shall, therefore, make no apology for citing here the opinions formed of the moral characteristics of two foremost classes of the people in India, as viewed by two great lawyers :-verdicts evidently weighed on the judgment-seat with regards unrelentingly directed to the criminal aspects of the natures judged : "The Rajpoots are the representatives of Hinduism. In them are seen all the qualities of the Hindu race unmitigated by foreign mixture, exerted with their original energy, and displayed in the strongest light. They exhibit the genuine form of a Hindu community, formed of the most discordant materials, and combining the most extraordinary contrasts of moral nature; unconquerable adherence "The physical organization of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapour-bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence, veracity, are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally unfavorable. His to native opinions and usages, with servile submission to any foreign yoke; an unbelieving priesthood, ready to suffer martyrdom for the most petty observance of their professed faith; a superstition which inspires the resolution to inflict, or to suffer the most atrocious barbarities, without cultivating any natural sentiment, or enforcing any social duty; all the stages in the progress of society brought together in one nation, from some abject castes, more brutal than the savages of New Zealand, to the polish of manners and refinement of character conspicuous in the upper ranks; attachment to kindred and to home, with no friendship, and no love of country; good temper and gentle disposition; little active cruelty, except when stimulated by superstition; but little sensibility, little compassion, scarcely any disposition to relieve suffering, or relieve wrong done to themselves or others. Timidity, with its natural attendants, falsehood and meanness, in the ordinary relations of human life, joined with a capability of becoming excited to courage in the field, to military enthusiasm, to heroic selfdevotion. Abstemiousness, in some respects more rigorous than that of a western hermit, in a life of intoxi mind bears a singular analogy to his body. It is weak, even to helplessness, for purposes of manly resistance, but its suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climates to admiration, not unmingled with contempt. All those arts which are the natural defence of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the horns are to the buffaloe, what the paw is to the tiger, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the Armies of the Company. But as usurers, as moneychangers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class of human beings can bear a comparison with them. With all his softness, the Bengalee is by no means placable in his enmities or prone to pity. The pertinacity with which he adheres to his purposes, yields only to the immediate pressure of fear. Nor does he lack a certain kind of courage, which is often wanting in cation. Austerities and self-tor- his masters. MACKINTOSH. sage. To inevitable evils, he is sometimes found to oppose a passive fortitude, such as the stories attributed to their ideal An European warrior, who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah, will sometimes shriek under the Surgeon's knife, and fall into an agony of despair at the sentence of death. But the Bengalee, who would see his country over-run, his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonoured, without having the spirit to strike one blow; has yet been known to endure torture with the firmness of Mucius, and to mount the scaffold with the steady step, and even pulse of Algernon Sydney." MACAULAY. The operation of the great moral defects here laid bare, in stamping a peculiar and distinctive character upon the crimes most frequently committed by the people of India, is abundantly evidenced in every page of our criminal reports. Theft, Perjury, Personation, Torture, Child-stealing,* the Murder of Women and of Aged Men, Assassination, Arson, the Butchery of Children for the sake of their ornaments, Drugging and Poisoning, Adultery, Rape, Unnatural Crime, the Procuration of Abortion, are among the leading villanies "This crime is very common in Mahomedan towns, the children being mostly girls stolen to be sold as slaves or for purposes of prostitution."-Mr. Dunbar's Police Report L. P. 1845. |