322 THE LAWS OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO 
siderations which must occur to every one who has any experience 
of the actual operation of a purely European jurisprudence hi a com¬ 
munity like that of Singapore, of which only one fiftieth has even the 
religion of Europe. It is ow'ing to this, on the one hand, and, on the 
other, to the great dissimilarity in civilization and customs between 
the different races themselves, the recent origin of the Settlement, 
and its almost purely commercial character, that there is perhaps no 
other British colony where interesting and nice questions of interna¬ 
tional, and what may be termed inter-religious law, so frequently 
arise as in Singapore. But as they generally occur incidentally to 
the lawyer in his chambers, and have rarely been discussed in the 
Court, (for there is little inducement to carry such questions to a tri¬ 
bunal from which the professional judge is absent three fourths of 
the year,) this branch of jurisprudence has hitherto been little culti¬ 
vated. The religious and domestic usages of each class of our mot¬ 
ley population have received a certain degree of toleration; but in 
professing to combine with this an invariable recognition of the law 
of England as the only foundation of its decisions, the Court has not 
been successful, or perhaps always consistent, in elucidating the prin¬ 
ciples by which this union may be practically consummated. It has, 
on the contrary, as much as possible, avoided the discussion and de¬ 
termination of these principles ; and the claims of the Asiatics under 
its jurisdiction to have the extent to which their usages may legally 
prevail, so defined as to be in some measure comprehensible, have 
been met by general declarations of its willingness to administer Eng¬ 
lish law with a large and liberal regard to their religions, manners, 
and customs. Without venturing to impute any blame to the Court 
for thus shrinking from grappling with a subject apparently of a dif¬ 
ficult afid obscure nature, it might perhaps have been of better con¬ 
sequence if it had not hesitated to explore it thoroughly, and expose 
the very limited and inadequate protection w'hich the most liberal in¬ 
terpretation of English law, if sound, will allow to native usages. To 
have accomplished this, however, an intimate knowledge of these us¬ 
ages, and of the laws with which they are synonimous or interwoven, 
or from which they are derived, would have been necessary ; and, as 
