lawyers and their more wealthy clients. Arrears accumulated : more European officers were appointed-at a ruinous costthe use of native agency was universally decried. The bulk of the people was thus virtually excluded from legal remedy while the forces of the State were employed to debar the lower classes from taking the law into their own hands. In Madras and Bombay some attempt was made to improve this state of things by local legislation-for which these Presidencies received powers in 1807--but it cannot be said that any profound insight into the subject was revealed, either there or in the provinces more directly subject to the Governor-General. The administration of penal law was not much better. The civil judges were also magistrates: the Muhamadan law was followed-except in respect of some punishments, such as mutilation—which were abolished. Work accumulated to such an extent that in one district alone there are said to have been at one moment 1,500 persons awaiting trial in the lock-up.

Act III., of 1812 was aimed at this abuse; but it did not provide any increase of the staff, and was therefore a mere palliative and almost a sham.

Next to warlike undertakings it was in State finance that Minto's chief successes took place. The decline in which this important branch of affairs had been left by Wellesley received but little amelioration in the short and feeble administration of Barlow. But Minto, while conducting the great and successful military operations mentioned above, did not neglect this department of his duty. By increased receipts from Bengal, by new taxes in Madras, and by reduction of interest on the public debt, Minto converted a deficit into a handsome surplus. Taking the rupee at its then value, the revenue in 1857-8 came to a total of £15,670,000, and the expenditure -inclusive of interest on debt-to £15,979,000. In 1813-14 the revenue amounted to £17,228,000 and the expenditure to no more than £15,575,000.

It is to be feared, however, that these exertions of the Government-however admirable-were not of much benefit to the people of India; for the whole of the money was sent home to London by positive order of the Court of Directors, at that time more than usually pressed for resources.

On 4th October, 1813, Lord Moira landed in Calcutta and took charge from Minto. His administration marks a new departure in the affairs of British India: and it was accompanied by a radical change in the powers and attributes of the Company he was supposed to serve.

[Consult―if possible—the celebrated "Fifth Report" of the Select Committee; also Wilson, as already cited, and Marshman, Vol. II. on the period. Wilson's statement is especially able, and shows wide research.]

420

CHAPTER XII.

REVIEW OF THE FOREGOING.

Section : Hindustan during first Muslim period (1193-1398)—Section 2: Under Mughal Empire (1586-1748)-Section 3: End of pre-British period.

SECTION I. There are not wanting in various parts of history instances of the existence of an apparent limit to the duration of a dynasty or political system left to the ordinary laws of nature, and not cut short by war. Thus, in the Roman Empire, the democratic absolutism devised by Augustus, B.C. 30 came to an end by the death of M. Aurelius, A.D. 180. The famous Khalifate of Bagdad-founded A.D, 754-ran its bright course till 964, when it proved unable to hold its own against Nicephorus Phocas, and ceased to exist as an Empire: though not entirely extirpated for nearly three more centuries. The contemporaneous empire of the Karlings in Western Europe lasted from its foundation in 752, to the usurpation of Hugh Capet on the virtual exhaustion of the Imperial Line, in 956. In England the foreign monarchy founded by William the Conqueror, came to a natural end with the death of Henry III. and the appearance of elected Deputies in Parliament, 1060-1272. In modern France the Bourbon monarchy lasted from the accession of Henry IV. (1589) to the death of Louis XVI in 1793. Turning again to England, if we take the "Petition of Right" as the beginning of the Government by King, Lords, and Commons, we shall find that it was worn

out, and came to an end in 1832, when the influence of the Lords in Parliament was destroyed, and the Crown became little more than an ornament on the summit of the political fabric. From such instances we might feel tempted to infer that--be the reason what it may-the ordinary vitality of a dynasty or constitution is not good for more than seven generations; though in many cases that limit may not be reached, or even approximated.

This duration was at least twice made good in Indian History. The Turkmán or purely foreign government, which lasted from the invasion of Muhamad Guri, or Bin Sám, to the flight of the feeble Abdulla in 1378, was often broken by palace revolutions, but never changed in its character, or effect, upon the people, until it had spent all its force, and the Empire of the "Lord of the World" extended, according to the doggrel quoted in CHAPTER IV., p. 93, for about six miles from his house-door. The Mughal Empire, founded by Bábar in 1526, was quite worn-out before the death of Muhamad Sháh, (1748): "the Seal," as a native historian says, " of the House of Taimur."

Of the condition of the people during the earlier, or Turk mán, period in Hindustan, we have little exact information. When the storm first began to gather upon the Northern hilltops, the Hindus were in a state of considerable culture and prosperity. They still possessed, in the Veda and the writings of its early commentators, a supposed basis of law, the apparent finality and shortcoming of which were reconciled to the wants of a growing society by something savouring of legal fiction that is to say, the religious schools and orders developed the Canon, pro re natá, by help of new precepts which appeared in the guise of supplementary tradition. Thus the law preserved the austere dignity of regulations for human conduct, arising out of a sort of cosmic necessity. The Gods and the Hindus being what they were, such-and-such principles were of eternal obligation: but their written record was not intended

to be complete; and details were to be dealt with, from time to time if they arose by the wisdom and inspiration residing in the bosom of the sages. It was a sort of Common-Law tempered by the Bench.

Of law, thus conceived and depending for sanction chiefly on the opinion of an acquiescent public, a formal digest appeared-probably in the Deccan-towards the end of the 11th century of the Christian era, when the Muslims of Ghazni had already gained the Punjab and were threatening the whole of Hindustan. This is the Mitakshara itself a birth from the school of Yajnavalkya and Manu, contemplating the ancient social framework. The old Aryan religious thought is still seen playing round normal ideas, or domestic habits, and taking an active part in the rules of the tribe and the family; the patria potestas-as in ancient Rome, with the worship of the Pitris (ancestral manes) which in both systems formed the sacra of the gens-forming the basis of right and duty. Status is everything, contract is barely recognised. The performance of funeral rites is necessary to the repose of the dead and to the heir-ship of the surviving son, who required to hold the estate in order to meet what was a primary charge upon it. Out of this proceeded the continuity of families and tribes; and its guarantee was provided for by the rules of adoption with the curious ceremony of the Srádh, originally a sort of All-Souls' day where the kindred entertained their dead, like Ulysses in the Odyssey. The ancient codes provide for the frame of suits: the archaic tribunal was a committee of the village elders; and the procedure opened by a distraint of the defendant's cattle, by which device the burden of action and of proof was shifted from him who complained of wrong to him who was presumed to be the wrong-doer. The estimated value of the cattle became the stake, or sum-in-suit, and the losing party either forfeited his cattle or their price, according to the Court's decision.