•DEFECTS IN LEGAL SYSTEM. 301 



inconveniences of protracted litigation. These were soon 

 multiplied. It is a general practice in India never to dis- 

 charge debts till compelled by necessity ; and when it was 

 discovered that by not paying till a lawsuit was instituted a 

 long delay could be gained, this course was adopted to an 

 extent which increased incredibly the number of processes. 

 The time thus spent, and the temptation to profit by it, 

 were more and more augmented, till the undecided cases 

 swelled to an unprecedented multitude. These delays, 

 amounting almost to a denial of justice, caused, as already 

 observed, the ruin of the whole body of zemindars without 

 any benefit to their dependent ryots. Even after the fullest 

 examination the English lawyers found themselves very ill- 

 qualified to form a correct opinion. The general indifference 

 to the obligation of an oath, which the most respecta- 

 ble natives consider unlawful, joined to the ignorance of 

 the judge in regard to habits and modes of thinking alto- 

 gether foreign to those which prevail in England, rendered 

 it impossible to discover the truth in many cases, where the 

 shrewd sense and local experience of the zemindar would 

 have discerned it by a species of intuition. In consequence 

 of the difficulty of bringing the guilty to justice, the system 

 of decoity for some time increased to a great degree. No 

 complete remedy has yet been found for these defects in the 

 legal system, and a complaint was recently made in a native 

 newspaper, that every one who had brought a plea before the 

 supreme court found it terminate in his ruin. The expe- 

 dients from which intelligent writers entertain the greatest 

 hope are the more frequent employment of natives, and the 

 extension of the punchayets, — a sort of jury, which in many 

 districts there is a great disposition to employ. 

 Vol. II.-C P ' 



