Court by its own authority, which it is not overscrupulous in exercising, would have visited the editor with marked displeasure. But a similar interference with a native journal would come with the worst grace imaginable, and, in all probability, have the worst effect; and how absurd is it to prohibit to an English journal what you are obliged to permit to a native one!" I could not refrain from observing, that fortunately, the Supreme Court did not extend over the native population beyond the limits of the Presidency.

"True," said he, "it is limited both for good and evil to the jurisdiction of Calcutta ; but consider how large a portion of the wealth and intelligence of Bengal that jurisdiction embraces; and even in respect of population, it is equal to many European sovereignties. Such, however, is the ubiquity of a printed journal, that the grievance inflicted at Calcutta vibrates to Benares, in the ruin and destitution perhaps of some member of a large family, or some partner of a mercantile concern, whose names are familiar in every part of India. The original discontent is thus propagated over Hindustan, and the confidence of a whole empire may be shaken in a government by which they may, erroneously indeed, but not unnaturally, suppose the obnoxious system to be upheld and che

rished. Yet I perceive that, with regard to expense" (he seemed half-pleased as he made the observation), "the Supreme Court inflicts its justice with the same impartial measure upon its European as on its native suitors."

Here he pointed out a report, in the Calcutta John Bull, of the proceedings for a libel, instituted by Dr. Bryce against the proprietors of a Bengal journal. Nothing could have come more opportunely to the confirmation of his prejudices on this subject (if they deserve to be called prejudices), nothing more calculated to excite an additional quantity of his honest bile against the machinery of that tribunal. It was simply this:-an action had been brought by this gentleman (a clergyman) for damages as a compensation for the injury he had sustained from that libel. He obtained a verdict of 800 rupees damages. Such, however, and so operose, were the proceedings, such the pleas, the demurrers, the subsequent taxation of costs by the master, that the final decision of the court, which had awarded him those damages, inflicted upon him, the successful plaintiff, an amount of costs considerably outweighing the compensation that had been awarded him.

"Here," said my friend, as he put the report into my hands: "cast your eyes over the opinions

of the judges. The very hair of a lawyer, trained to the practice of Westminster Hall, would stand on end for the rest of his natural life after he had read them. It is an inexplicable enigma what it was they intended to say, and no Edipus can resolve it. What they said borders on the extreme point of absurdity. It seems that one of the counsel was so forcibly struck with the incoherence and inconsistency of the Chief Justice, as to have thus expressed himself, in reply to one of his lordship's opinions: "My lord, on the 16th November 1829, your lordship said very differently." To this the Chief Justice replied, "I will not allow counsel to bring forward from newspapers, or from his own notes, statements that differ from what is in the recollection of the judge, and which do not appear in his notes." It is pretty clear, therefore, that on these terms he can never be convicted either of being inconsistent or absurd: for the inconsistency and absurdity must appear from his own notes!

“These enormous expenses, it is said, arose from a number of pleas pleaded by the defendant. That is no excuse, for the court ought to have struck them off the record. Well: to these pleas there were demurrers. The question of costs, however, was referred to the master, who thought the easiest

mode of solving the difficulty, was to transfer the items from the defendant's bill of costs to the plaintiff's. The reference itself was irregular as well as oppressive; the question ought to have been decided by the court. The costs of the reference, a thing never heard of after a nisi prius verdict, came out of the successful plaintiff's pocket, and those costs amounted to 10,000 rupees, when the damages recovered were only 800. Not to dilate superfluously on this singular procedure, he, the victorious plain_ tiff, the recompensed plaintiff, had to pay in sterling money £638 more than the defeated unsuccessful defendant. Most insane wert thou, O Reverend Dr. Bryce," exclaimed the Anglo-Indian, “not to have submitted in silence to the wounds inflicted on thy character. Thou mightest then have escaped the Master's office-that Serbonian bog, where so many suitors have sunk-that gulf of rupees and gold mohurs, from which the unhappy litigant is day after day bandied to the court, and again from the court to the master's office, 'dragging, if I may so profane the words of the poet, at each remove a lengthening chain' of expense and vexation."

He continued: "Yes; I have for years watched this Supreme Court, from its first establishment in 1781 to the day of my departure from India, and I

have traced the original sin that has entailed all this world of woe upon those who in an evil hour are induced to have recourse to it. The charter by which it sat was unhappily so framed, as to erect a judicature, especially on its equitable side, which should be as precise a fac-simile of the English courts, with all their technical complexities, as possible. Even then, the vices of the English Court of Chancery were of an adult growth, and they were transplanted in all their vigour and luxuriance to Calcutta. The table of costs was framed on the principle and practice of Westminster Hall, but in a tenfold proportion of expense. Hence bills, answers, exceptions, paper-books, the master's office, the examiner's office, enormous fees to counsel, an almost indefinite licence of plunder to the attornies, and the vast swarm of minor evils, which disturb the fountains of equity. This I consider the master-vice of the system-the introduction of the artificial rules of English law, and of the numberless fictions of that law, with all its disgusting verbosity, and the whole mass of its abuses, which, with us, has been the growth of ages, and are attributable, in a great measure, to the efforts made, from time to time, to force into a reluctant amalgamation the usages and maxims of rude periods with the modes of thinking that belong to more improved ones. For what can