Let us compare crime in the Company's Bengal territories (the only place whence we have returns) with offences in England, in Ireland, and in France ; with reference to the yearly averages, and the proportion to the population: Averages of sentences, and comparison with the amount of population, in England and Wales, in France, and in Bengal. Proportion of yearly Averages to Population. England: Ireland: France: Bengal. Population Population Population Population 13,000,000. 7 to 8,000,000. 30,000,000. 60,000,000. 1 in 10547 1 in 25840 1 in 237078 1 in 1004182 1 in 671731 in 126289 1 in 109890 1 in 402010 1 in 43610 1 in 86419 1 in 290411 in 167669 The following extract from the Supreme Court's Reports of Calcutta, for February, 1833, adds a further gratifying instance of the decrease of crime in India. The preceding tables, as well as the facts stated in the foregoing pages, are the best criterion of the efficiency of the Company's Government, and the excellence of their criminal code'; I question whether any country in Europe would present so 1 In the Ultra Gangetic territories which have lately come into our possession, much is to be done: Captain Low states, that the utmost venality and perversion of justice prevails in the native courts of civil and criminal law in Tenasserim; and that the perpetrator of any crime, treason perhaps excepted, may buy himself off, if able to furnish the requisite sum. Murder is punished with death; the culprit has his head struck off by a sword. If the victim of murder is a man of rank, the whole family of the murderer suffers the same penalty with him, in order, as the Burmans allege, that the children of the criminal shall not have an opportunity of avenging his death. A traitor, and a conspirator against the king, or a man of high rank, is blown up by gunpowder, and his near relatives suffer the same fate. They are all shut up in a house filled with straw, and gunpowder, and other combustibles, and the whole is fired by a fusee. Adultery, theft, and minor offences are commutable by fine; incestuous intercourse is punished by banishment. If a priest rescues a condemned person on his way to execution, and conveys him to a pagoda, his life is spared. Whatever laws or rules were made on the subject of inheritance, were seldom very strictly attended to; and, unless the deceased individual was a man of rank, the local chief of any Burman government, in Tenasserim, used his discretion in apportioning it, taking care to pay himself handsomely for his self-constituted post of executor. rapid and so remarkable a diminution of crime as the Bengal tables demonstrate. It is to be regretted that we have not complete tables of all India, as also returns from all the British Colonies; I would therefore suggest, that extensive statistics of crime be prepared for the India-house and Colonial office, which would not only be most valuable in themselves, but also offer the best possible proof of the condition of the people subject to the authority of the East India Company and of the Crown 1. CHAPTER IX. GENERAL CONDITION OF BRITISH INDIA. No man was better qualified from his acute powers of observation, or his extensive knowledge of other countries, to form an opinion of our possessions in the East than Bishop Heber, who thus graphically dwells on this subject :- Southern Malwa from a mere wilderness is now a garden,' p. 74. 'During the years of trouble, Malwa (except in the neighbourhood of fortified towns, and among the most inaccessible 1 It would be extremely desirable if the number of gaols in India and in the colonies, and the number of prisoners in each gaol, were specified, as also the mode of employing the prisoners, and the general effects of prison discipline. There can be no doubt that the public exposure of criminals in road. gangs not only hardens the offender, but takes away, in a great measure, the dread of punishment from those inclined to crime, as witnessed by ine in New South Wales.-R. M. M. mountains) was entirely depopulated. All the villagers hereabout had emigrated chiefly into Berar, Candeish, and the Deckan: and some had become servants and camp followers to the British army, till, within the last three or four years, they returned each man to his inheritance, on hearing that they might do so with safety'.' 'Every where, making due allowances for the late great droughts and consequent scarcity, amounting almost to absolute famine, with its dreadful attendant evils of pestilence and the weakening of all moral ties, the country seems to thrive under its present system of Government. The burdens of the peasantry are decidedly less in amount, and collected in a less oppressive manner, than under the old monarchy. The English name is therefore popular with all, but those who are inevitably great losers by our comingthe courtiers of the Peishwa, such of the traders as lived by the splendour of his court, and probably, though this does not appear, the Brahmins '.' Though our influence has not done the good which might be desired or expected in Central India, that which has been done, is really considerable. Except from the poor Bheels, and from the few gangs of marauders which still lurk in different parts of the country, that country is now at peace; and how slight are these dangers, and how easy to be borne are the oppressions of the native rajas, in comparison with the annual swarm of Pindaree horsemen, who robbed, burned, ravished, enslaved, tortured, and murdered over the whole extent of territories from the Runn to the Bay of Bengal? While their inroads are remembered, to say nothing of Jeswunt Rao, Holkar, and Ameer Khân, the coming of the English cannot but be considered as a blessing; and I only hope, that we may not destroy the reverence and awful regard, with which our nation is still looked up to here '.' 'The country people seem content and thriving '.' The Bishop and Archdeacon Corrie (who resided in India nearly 40 years) give the following description of the country traversed during a visitation : 'Sept. 15.-We passed Mirzapoor, the size and apparent opulence of which surprised me, as it is a place of no ancient importance or renown, has grown up completely since the English power has been established here, and under our government, is only an inferior civil station, with a few native troops. It is, however, a very great town, as large, I should think, as Patna, with many handsome native houses, and a vast number of mosques and temples, numerous and elegant bungalows in its outskirts; and on the opposite side of the river, a great number of boats of all kinds, moored at its ghâts, and is computed to contain between two and three hundred thousand people. 'This is indeed a most rich and striking land. Here, in the space of little more than two hundred miles, along the same river, I have passed six towns, 'Life of Bishop Heber, vol. ii. p. 74. |