XV to the Chief Government of India, in which he strongly recommended the enforcement of the Hindu law and the compilation of a better code. The sentiments expressed in that paper are truly worthy of him. “ Nothing (he says) could be more obviously just than to determine private contests according to those laws, which the parties themselves had ever considered as the rules of their conduct and engagements in civil life; nor could any thing be wiser than, by a legislative act, to assure the Hindu and Mussulman subjects of Great Britain, that the private laws, which they severally hold sacred, and a violation of which they would have thought the most grievous oppression, should not be superseded by a new system, of which they could have no knowledge, and which they must have considered as imposed on them by a spirit of rigour and intolerance.” So far the principle of decision between the native parties in a cause appears perfectly clear ; but the difficulty lies (as in most other cases) in the application of the principle to practice ; for the Hindu and Mussulmam laws are locked up for the most part in two very difficult languages, Sanscrit and Arabic, which few Europeans will ever learn, because neither of them leads to any advantago in worldly pursuits; and if we give judgment only from the opinions of the native lawyers and scholars, we can never be sure that we have not been deceived by theni. It would be absurd and unjust to pass an indiscriminate censure on a considerable boly of men; but my experience justifies nie in declaring, that I could not with an easy conscience concur in a decision merely on a written opinion of native lawyers, in any cause in which they would have the remotest interest in misleading the court : nor, how vigilant soever we might be, would it be very difficult for them to mislead us, for a single obscure text, explained by themselves, might be quoted as express authority, though perhaps in the very book, from which it was selected, it might be differently explained, and introduced only for the purpose of being exploded. The obvious remedy for this evil had occurred to me before I left England, where I had communicated my sentiments to some friends in Parliament, and on the bench in Westminster Hall, of whose discernment I had the highest opinion ; and those sentiments I propose to unfold in this letter with as much brevity as the magnitude of the subject will admit. If we had a complete digest of Hindu and Mahomedan laws, after the model of Justinian’s incstimable Pandects, compiled by the most learned of the native lawyers with an accurate verbal translation of it into English ; and if copies of the work were
- Again, at the conclusion of luis preface to Mann, that eminent judge remarks : “Whatever opinion in short may be formed of Mann and his laws, in a country happily enlightened by sound philosophy and the only true revelation, it must be remembered that those laws aro actually revered as the word of the Most High, by nations of great importance to the political and commercial interests of Europe, and particularly by mility anillions of Hindu subjects, whose well directed industry would add largely to the wealth of Britain, and who ask no inore in return than protection for their persons and plaeos of abode, justice in their temporal eoncerns,
indulgence to the prejudices of their old religion, and the benefits of those laws, which they have been taught to believe sacred, and which hlone they can possibly comprehend.” Sir Francis Macnaghten too remarks : “The right of Hindus to have their contests decided by their own laws. has been established by the legislature of Great Britain ; and I most cordially concur in the sentiments which have been e ssed by Sir William Jones, upon this subject.” “As to the Hindus. I have not a predilection for the tenets of any of their schools, or for the doctrines of any of their scholiasts. in particular. Such as their law is, they have a right to an administration of it, among the parties themselves. To deprive them of this right against their will, or without their desire, would be rigorous in a civil, and intolerant in a religious point, of view; for their laws and their religion are so blended together that we cannot disturb the one without doing violence to the other.” “Their own is the only law to be alluministered to them.'* ** ( §-ivo them uot. any laws but their own ; yet undor a protext of douling those out, let us not subject the people to wrong. II. L., prc. Pp. v., vi. Cous
