otherwise.

One defect of the proposition made by the writer in the Edinburgh Review is, that it is limited to improvement of the Bench, and only an infinitesimal portion of that, while it leaves the Bar and the whole of the ministerial officers as before. To us it seems that both in the Native Courts and in the European Courts it is the Bar and the Subordinate officers that most urgently call for reform. The Bench, bad as it is, is not so bad as either of these other, and we would say, equally important, branches of judicial administration.

The question as to what are the best men for Indian judges seems to us a comparatively subordinate one. Some say that English barristers alone should be appointed; others prefer civilians, and others again think natives the best judges that can be procured. Our opinion is that good judges and sound lawyers may be found in each of these classes. It is equally true, however, that each of them contains members whom it would be a disgrace to any government to appoint to a high judicial office. There are briefless barristers, whose sole qualifications consist in having eaten a certain number of dinners. There are many men also practising at the English Bar who, at least under the present judicial system, are no lawyers. They have a one-sided view of the law administered in courts of law, but have no idea of the connection of the partial knowledge they have with general jurisprudence. The judicature and justice administered in the one class of courts is, in the words of Lord Westbury, a terra incognita to the practitioners in the other. Men of this stamp would never do for an Indian court. Another objection to barristers is their astonishing ignorance of Indian languages, even after years of residence. In the presidency towns the courts have committed the enormous wrong of forcing a foreign language on all the suitors who come before them; but in the interior the language of the courts is still the language of the country, and it is to be hoped that it will long con

tinue to be so, at least to such an extent that the parties shall know how their cause is being tried.

As to the covenanted civilians, those men who have spent the greater part of their service in other than judicial work, they are of course utterly unfit to be made judges. This has been admitted on all sides, and for the last fifty years writers of all shades of opinion have been demanding that a reform should be made, by creating a judicial department of the service. The civil servants themselves have been as persistent in their assertions of the necessity of this reform as any other body of men. Public-spirited natives have again and again brought this question into prominent notice, and yet, strange to say, nothing has yet been done.

The qualifications in the civilian, which point him out as most suited for judicial work in India, are, that the legal training which he is supposed to undergo before he leaves England, is one in which the general principles of jurisprudence are made of greater importance than the technical and purely local and arbitrary distinctions of either English or any other law, while attention is also given to the positive provisions of the Hindoo and Mahommedan legal systems. Another point in his favour is, that by coming to the country early, he acquires a more intimate acquaintance with the language and manners of the people than it is possible for any man to reach who has never come to India till late in life. The benefit of knowing the language of the country is, however, under the present régime often done away with. Rather than interfere with the sacred rule of promotion by seniority, it is not uncommon for the same judge to preside in the same year over courts as distant from each other, and differing as much in their language as if, to take a European example, a French judge were transferred, say for two months to Liverpool, four to Berlin, and six to St. Petersburgh or Madrid. Most civilians know tolerably well two or three Indian languages, but it is hardly possible for any one man to know all these languages as intimately

VOL. XXX.-NO. LIX.

as is absolutely necessary for the administration of justice in India. To do this, the judge should know the language as thoroughly as he knows his own, and this can only be done by confining the judge to one country and one language during his service. From the circumstance that the European judges are only Judges of Appeal, it is impossible to compare their work with that of other courts, either in India or elsewhere.

In Bombay there is a judicial branch of the service which is kept for the most part distinct from the revenue. These, too, in a very limited number of cases, the District Judges have original jurisdiction. These cases are actions against the Government and its officers acting in their official capacity. The questions that arise in these suits are well known to be the most important, difficult, and complicated, that ever come before courts of justice, involving, as they do, the respective rights and liabilities of the subject and the sovereign power.

A reference to the reports shows that in India they are certainly not less difficult than petitions of right are in England. The last Administration Report of the Bombay Presidency gives a return of these cases. We find from it that out of 393 appealable judgments passed by Assistant Zillah Judges, five were reversed, four modified, and five remanded for re-trial; altogether only 2.29 per cent. of these decisions were altered. We believe that this will compare favourably not only with Indian cases in other Mofussil Courts, but even with the decisions of barrister judges in the High Courts, who have about five times the salary of an Assistant Judge. From the same report we find that out of 469 appealable judgments passed by these barrister judges, twenty-five appeals were made. How many of these appeals were successful in whole or in part is not stated, but unless the parties were very badly advised, it is to be presumed that nearly one-half would succeed. This would give about 24 per cent., and as the majority of the High Court cases are mere money claims for goods sold, or on promissory notes and such simple matters, such cases, in

fact, as are likely to arise in a City Court, the result does not show any very marked superiority on the part of the High Court Judges, especially when it is considered that the Assistant Judges are young men, and new to their work, and have neither the assistance of a Bar nor of competent officers.

If we compare this with work of exactly the same description performed by Native Judges, the result is equally favourable. The only return of such cases which we have been able to procure is that of the Remembrancer of Legal Affairs to the Bengal Government, containing a Report for two years, 1866-67 and 1867-68. In the first year the number of cases was 305, out of which 28, or 9.1 per cent., were reversed on appeal. In the second year there were 435 cases, out of which no less than 77, or 17.7 per cent., were reversed. This does not include the cases remanded for re-trial. The whole of these trials are not by Native Judges, but it is believed that the great majority were tried by them, as they alone have jurisdiction to receive the case originally, and it is only when a special order is made to transfer the suit that a European judge can try it. These facts seem to bear out the opinion expressed by one of the most learned barrister judges who ever came to India, and who was not likely to have a prejudice in favour of civilian judges. We refer to Sir Joseph Arnould, one of the Judges of the High Court of Bombay. The following was what was said by him in reply to the toast of the Bench and the Bar, at the dinner given by the Byculla Club to Sir Bartle Frere, on the occasion of his retiring from the Governorship of Bombay. The toast of the Bench and the Bar had, till then, uniformly been treated in India as applicable only to the judges and barristers in the City Courts of Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay. The existence of any other Bench or any other Bar in India was invariably ignored, both in proposing and replying to the toast. There was, therefore, nothing in the nature of the toast which, in

the ordinary course of things, called for such a eulogy as Sir Joseph went out of his way to make.

The

“I am,” he said, “one of those who think that the amalgaIt mation of the Courts has been a great and a decided success. has in every way been beneficial. It has done much towards the extinction of old class prejudices, and has decidedly tended to improve the administration of justice in the Mofussil. barrister judge who sits on the appellate side of the High Court learns to respect the legal acquirements of his learned civilian colleagues; to the young civilians themselves the position of a High Court Judge presents greater attraction than the position of a Sudder Judge did formerly. The feeling of the service itself, with regard to the judicial office and functions, has lately undergone a considerable change for the better. The old implicit belief of the Civil Service-the rooted conviction that ex quovis ligno fit judex-if not altogether abandoned (it would be too sanguine, perhaps, to expect this) has, at all events, been very considerably mitigated. Some of the ablest members of the Service have cultivated with successful zeal the science of jurisprudence, some of the more promising among the young civilians have given fuller intimation that, as far as the exigencies of the service admit, they desire to be regarded as candidates, rather for its judicial than for its administrative branch. Under these circumstances, it is to be hoped we have almost heard the last of the old-class cry, of trained against untrained judges, which was once so much too common. I never could in any way join in that cry; it always seemed to me so ungenerous and unjust. What, in fact, could be more unfair than a comparison between the barrister judges of the presidency towns, with all the appliances that a centralised administration of justice placed at their command, and the civilian judges of the Mofussil, left to grope their way through masses of native documents and labyrinths of native testimony, without the aid of skilled interpreters and translators, above all, without the inestimable advantage of a trained Bar, a body of men too honourable to misstate or mislead, too learned not to throw all the light that can be devised from established principles and recorded decisions on the point submitted for judicial determination, and now I want His Excellency (Sir Bartle Frere) to