were a hanging Judge, my juries would not convict as readily as they do. Mr. Ward (the present Chief Commissioner) was also a soft Judge." The printed papers show that the Viceroy did not agree either with the Chief Commissioner or the Judge. After Mr. Quinton had been killed at Manipur, and Mr. Ward had succeeded him, the Government of India moved the latter to agree to exclude from trial by jury all cases of homicide, which exclusion seems tantamount to abolition of the system. The endeavour is said to be to "eliminate those offences which experience has shown to be unsuitable for trial by juries in India.” It may however be presumed that this elimination is not to be applied in the Presidency Towns, as no such change in the law is suggested. One curious reason given for the new order in Assam is the insuperable difficulty of explaining to juries those intricate clauses of the Penal Code which explain how murder differs from manslaughter.

In the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, the local Government reports that the system has worked fairly well, and has been a success. The Chief Justice however suggests its abolition, and so does the Sessions Judge of Lucknow, but only on general grounds, and not because they are dissatisfied with the verdicts. The LieutenantGovernor and Mr. Justice Young however give credit to the jury for knowing more about native customs and habits of thought than the most experienced Judge. In those Provinces, cases of homicide do not go before juries, and the same restriction applies to the Presidency of Madras, where however a great experience has been obtained of other cases, as trial by jury exists in almost every district. The Government of Madras in a short letter answer the Viceroy's question by saying that the jury system is unsuited to the country, and that it has had no effect one way or another upon crime. It appears also that in Tanjore out of 135 cases tried there in five years, the Judge only referred 3 to the High Court as bad verdicts. In the present article I refrain from discussing the working of

trial by jury in Bengal, because the learned Judges there. differ in their opinions about it, and because the Viceroy has refused to amend the law in the way proposed by the Bengal Government, so as to allow appeals against verdicts, or to require the Judge to refer the case to the High Court whenever he differs from the jury. The Chief Justice writes "I am unwilling to express any opinion unfavourable to the existence of the system of trial by jury, as it is called, in these provinces, or as to its merits as a means for the repression of crime."

I think the above facts and opinions show sufficiently that the concrete question raised as to any particular district requires local knowledge as a factor in the solution, exactly as in Ireland, where I notice, in the reports of Parliament, trial by jury is not assailed merely on general reasons such as its unsuitability, or because trial by an expert, I mean a Judge, may be a better system, but only as to its use or abuse in some county or other, Clare or Kerry, where, it is alleged, crime becomes rampant because the local juries, misled by political feeling, agrarian grievances or outside intimidation, refuse to convict on clear, uncontradicted testimony. Whether such a state of things exists is of course a serious question for the Executive Government to decide; and it is in my opinion wrong and foolish to impute to the Indian Governments any motives inconsistent with that desire for pure justice which they have invariably shown. Neither have I any sympathy with that class of writers who wish or expect that no questions will be put in Parliament about the official action taken in India: as it is part of our constitutional system that the control of Indian affairs is vested in a Minister responsible to Parliament, and it has always been the custom, as in the case of the corrupt Magistrates in Bombay a few years ago, for Parliament to make inquiry into what goes on in Indian Courts of Law and the Secretariats. is absurd to suppose that either House will ever pass a self-denying ordinance, excluding from its view matters of

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weighty concern which an Under Secretary in India is encouraged to take up as a volunteer. Moreover there is no reason to be angry with the more highly educated sections of our Indian fellow-subjects, who value trial by jury much as a man would prize some heirloom of great cost and beauty, which he has held in secure possession for many years, under the will of a guardian, who has long cared for his moral and material interest. matter of mere policy, the case is thus stated in the Bombay Government letter "In this country the jury system is looked on with considerable pride by the pretty large class whose idea of progress consists in the imitation of English institutions. The more interested they thus become in the jury system, the better on the whole will it work in their hands or with their aid. They would certainly resent its extinction, and their reclamations would find echoes elsewhere." The case for and against jury trial in India should be considered without any special prejudice or bias, as it is not a matter in dispute among political parties, and there is nothing to appeal to the passions, as in the accounts of outrages in some parts of Ireland.

The disadvantages of the system are set forth here and there in the Indian compilation, more especially in the Viceroy's letters. One objection made as regards particular districts is that the jurymen are stupid and uneducated. Now it can hardly be the case anywhere that this description applies to the whole population: the objection is not treated as serious by the executive governments, and must lose its force as education advances. It applies as much to trials with Assessors who are men of the same classes as the juries; and its logical result is to remit trials to the Sessions Judges alone. In England we have grown familiar with trials of civil actions by single Judges without juries. But in India, where these Judges are foreigners, often ignorant of the language and customs of the districts to which they have been transferred, no responsible authority has yet advised that the Assessors should be abolished in criminal trials.

Assam is an example of the trouble caused by the multiplicity of languages which an Indian Civil Servant is called on to learn. Mr. Luttman-Johnson, the Judge, brings it into clear view.

"If a European officer remained in one district all his service, he might acquire such a knowledge of the language as might enable him to charge juries efficiently. I commenced with Bengali (not the Bengali of the books). I then learned Behari (not the Hindustani or even the Hindi of the books). I then learned Sylhetia, both eastern and western. I am now learning Assamese, of which there are many varieties. varieties. I cannot pretend to be competent to charge a jury in Assamese. This experience of languages is of a type common all over India. The present writer, for instance, found himself in a new world of things when promoted from Bombay to be Judicial Commissioner of Burma. In Rangoon witnesses speaking the following languages have to be examined in the Courts-English, Burmese, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Hindustani, Shan, Karen, Red Karen, Chinese in several dialects. No wonder then that the Judge of Assam and I suppose every Judge finds it no easy task to explain correctly to the jury the definitions, explanations and exceptions, which the Penal Code uses about murder and grievous hurt. The fault is not with either the Judge or the jury the intricacy is in the subject-matter. The Viceroy treats it as an obstacle to trial by jury. But it is a matter of everyday experience that a Judge without a jury may fall into the trap and what seems to be wanted is a simpler statement of the law. It is natural however that the official class in India should assume, what as regards the Judges of England so high an authority as Sir James F. Stephen believes to be the fact, that a Sessions Judge is more likely to come to a correct judgment on matters of fact than a jury is. But this view has I believe never been propounded by the higher authorities in India; and as like causes produce the same effects, the administrators there

have always tried to get the opinion of the natives, by means of Punchayets, Assessors or juries on issues of fact, like as the earlier Norman Judges and Exchequer Barons in England availed themselves of the local inquests, those dignitaries being unfamiliar with the Saxon dialects and local customs. While on this point I may refer again to the objection taken to trial by jury on the ground that the Sessions Judges are not very competent to work the system. But I must add that I am not aware of this kind of inefficiency having been used by any High Court as an argument against it.

Another objection pointed out to the disadvantage of trial by jury is that innocent men, especially when jointly tried with a number of guilty persons, are sometimes convicted from heedlessness. But the Indian Law Reports show that this result happens also at trials by Judges without juries no known system is so perfect as to avoid it, although in England it was a common direction that it is better that nine guilty should escape rather than one innocent prisoner should suffer. The usual course is to represent the case to the Crown for pardon; and if the mistake has occurred through a defective summing up to the jury, the convict can appeal to the High Court.

The gravamen of the results of jury trial in India, according to the views published by the Viceroy, is that suggested by the form of His Excellency's question, as to the merits of this form of trial in repressing crime. The chief ground of the new orders in Bengal is that great criminals, especially murderers, are acquitted by juries perversely or wantonly. The papers seem to disclose two causes, the first being the dislike of Hindus to take action against Brahmans, whom they believe to be sacred persons, sprung from the head of Brahm, the universal, impersonal deity. It may well be that this sentiment has been operative at trials in Bengal; in opposition to the equity of the law, of which we say proudly, that it is no respecter of persons. As to other parts of India, anyone who knows the people