Juries in India (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 edition. Excerpt: ...not possibly exercise any efficient control over the misconduct of so many European functionaries in distant provinces, where there is no public to restrain it. If we are to have corruption, it is better that it should be among the natives than among ourselves, because the natives will throw the blame of the evil upon their countrymen; they will still retain their high opinion of our superior integrity; and our character, which is one of the strongest supports of our power, will be maintained. No nation ever existed in which corruption was not practised to a certain extent by the subordinate officers of Government. We cannot expect that India is in this point to form an exception; but though we cannot eradicate corruption, we may so far restrain it as to prevent it from causing any serious injury to the public interests. We must for this purpose adopt the same means as are usually tbund most efficacious in other countries. We must treat the natives with courtesy, we must place confidence in them, we must render their official situations respectable, and raise them in some degree beyond temptation by making their official allowances adequate to the support of their station in society. With what grace can we talk of our paternal Government if we exclude them from every important office, and say, as we did till very lately, that in a country containing fifteen millions of inhabitants no man but a European shall be entrusted with so much authority as to order the punishment of a single stroke of a rattan? Such an interdiction is to pass a sentence of degradation on a whole people, for which no benefit can ever compensate. There is no instance in the world of so humiliating a sentence having ever been passed upon any nation. The weak and...