in the Courts of the Madras Presidency. 23 



in its turn, merely a compromise between the corporate sys- 

 tem which it is abandoning, and the system of individual 

 rights to which it tends. Where people are living in a state 

 of arcadian simplicity, without the desire or the possibility 

 of advancement, the family system is a very sound one, as it 

 prevents properties being split up, and enables a number of 

 persons to be supported with the maximum of comfort on 

 the minimum of means. But as soon as Society begins to 

 dash ahead, then the effect of the corporate union is dead- 

 ening in the direct ratio of its strictness. Who will work 

 with full energy, when the benefit of his labour goes, not 

 solely, nor even chiefly, to himself ? Who will work at all, 

 when some one else is working for him ? Ingenuity could 

 not contrive a more effectual plan for damping the spirit of 

 the industrious, and extinguishing the spirit of the idle. It 

 makes the best member of the family a slave, that the others 

 may be sloths. 



Now, one might have anticipated, that the same causes 

 which made the inhabitants of Southern India partially 

 emancipate themselves from the bondage of family union, 

 would have made them aim at the greater freedom attained 

 in Bengal. Accordingly Mr. Strange, in the preface to the 

 second edition of his Manual of Hindu Law, laments that 

 the practice of enforcing a division is growing much more 

 frequent than it used to be before British Courts of Justice 

 were established. If I may judge from my own experience 

 of Mofussil litigation, I should say that Natives are making 

 incessant attempts to deal with their property as if they 

 were under Bengal law, and these attempts seem to be con- 

 stantly acquiesced in by their own family, and sanctioned by 

 the Native Judge in the original Court. I have constantly 

 seen suits in which the only question raised by the litigants 

 in the lower Court was, whether a particular alienation had 



