1793. BOOK VI. causes to which the frequent commission of crimes in general, and that of decoity in particular, may, we think, be in a great measure attributed. The trouble, loss of time, and expense, that attends a criminal prosecution on the present system, is in our opinion a serious evil, and not only induces many who have been robbed to put up with the loss they sustain, rather than apply to the police officers for redress, but prevents numbers from coming forward with informations that would be highly beneficial to the community, and would, we have no doubt, in numberless instances be preferred, were the administration of justice more prompt and speedy than at present. The consequence of delay is, that numbers of criminals of the most daring description, against whom, when committed for trial, there is the most full and complete evidence, escape, and are again let loose on society;" owing to the death, removal, loss of memory, or mendacity of the witnesses; a mendacity often purchased, often the fruit of intimidation.* 4. Manners. Where man "I am by no means sure," says the Judge of the Calcutta Court of Circuit, the enlightened Sir Henry Strachey in 1803, " of the necessity or propriety of increasing the severity of punishment. Before I can form a judgment of the efficacy of such remedies, I must be certain that the punishment reaches the offenders; at present the punishment does not reach them; they elude conviction; they elude apprehension. We cannot say that men become decoits, because the punishments are too lenient; they become so, because their chance of escaping altogether is so good." † The report in 1805 of the Judge of circuit in the Bareilly division says, "Attendance on the court, whether as a prosecutor or witness, is generally regarded as a heavy misfortune; to avoid which, many leave their homes, and submit to infinite inconvenience and vexation; and many more, I presume, pay handsomely to the Nazir or his people, for permission to keep out of the way. Hence crimes are perpetrated, and no records remain of them.-The delay, and expense, of prosecuting, are intolerable to the lower orders." + A system of law, marked by so many infirmities, may, in a country like ners are good, England, where crimes are easily suppressed, and where the sentiments and they make up manners of the people accomplish more than the law, afford an appearance of *Fifth Report, ut supra, p. 552, 554. + Ibid. p. 561. Sir Henry continues, "A robber even in Bengal is, I presume, a man of courage and enterprise; who, though he roughly estimates the risk he is to run by continuing his depredations on the public, is rather apt to under-rate that risk-small as in reality it is." Ibid. p. 565, 567. 1793. efficacy, and get the credit of much of that order which it does not produce; but CHAP. VI. in a country like India, where crimes are difficult to repress, and where the law receives little aid from the sentiments and manners of the people, a far more for many de perfect system is required. A system of law, which would really afford the benefits of law to the Indian people, would confer upon them unspeakable benefits. It is, perhaps, the only great political blessing which they are as yet capable of receiving. But the arbitrary will of a master, which though it often cuts down the innocent with the guilty, yet prohibits all crimes but his own, is preferable to a mere mockery of law, which lays the innocent man at the mercy of every depredator. fects in the law. Of the prevalence of crime in India, the first of the causes, therefore, is found, Defects of in the vices and defects of the law. The second may be traced to those of the the police. police; by the imperfections of which, because more superficial, and obvious to ordinary eyes, the attention of the Company's servants, and of the Committee of the House of Commons, appears to have been more peculiarly engaged. The main purpose of a system of police, is to serve as an instrument to the courts of justice; providing that no offence shall be committed, without the prompt subjection of the offender to the course of law. The English system appears to fail in accomplishing this important end, by two defects. In the first place, the instruments are too feeble. In the next place, they are ill adapted to the end. "The establishment of an efficient police," say the Select Committee of the House of Commons, "though an object of the first importance, appears to be a part of the new internal arrangements, in which the endeavours of the supreme government have been the least successful. With respect to the darogahs, or head police officers, who under the new system have taken place of the Tannahdars, it is observed of them, that they are not less corrupt than the Tannahdars, their predecessors; and that themselves, and the inferior officers acting under them, with as much inclination to do evil, have less ability to do good, than the Zemindary servants, employed before them. The darogah, placed in a division of the country, comprehending four hundred square miles, is, with fifteen, or twenty, armed men, found to be incompetent to the protection of the inhabitants."* If the agents of police are greatly too few, the obvious remedy is to add to their number. The answer to that exhortation, however, is unhappily the same as to that for the multiplication of the courts of justice. The finances of the Company will not endure the expense. In other words, the revenue of the * Fifth Report, p.71. BOOK VI. country, instead of being applied to its only legitimate end, the protection of the people, is disposed of in a different way. 1793. Not only are the agents of police defective in point of number, but adequate means are not employed to make them discharge the duties of their office. So far is this from being done, that the darogahs, and their people, add to the very evils which they are intended to suppress. By the Judge of Midnapore, in 1802, we are told; "The darogahs, I believe it is generally confessed, do not perform the duty that was expected. They are clearly either unable, or unwilling. Their insufficiency consists, I think, in a general neglect of duty, in petty rogueries, in a want of respectability, in being destitute of that energy and activity, and that delicate sensibility to character, which ought to characterize a police officer. In the duties of his office, a darogah is hardly occupied half an hour a day; and he often becomes negligent, indolent, and, in the end, corrupt. His dishonesty consists, in taking bribes from poor people who have petty foujdarry suits, in conniving at the absconding of persons summoned through him, in harassing ryots with threats, or pretended complaints, creating vexatious delays in settling disputes, or preventing their being settled, and chiefly in deceiving the poor and ignorant, with whom he has to deal. The avowed allowances of a police darogah are not sufficiently liberal to render the office worthy the acceptance of men who are fit to perform the duty." * The secretary of government says; "The darogahs of police seldom, if ever, possess any previous instruction as to the nature and extent of their duties, nor any habits of life calculated to enable them to perform those duties with effect. A brahmin, a sirdar, a moonshy, or even a menial servant, is, each in his turn, a candidate for this situation, of their fitness for which it is easy to judge. Their agency, even in furnishing information, a duty which requires no particular exertions or capacity, is totally ineffectual. Happy, however, would it be if the defects already noticed were the greatest to be found in the character of the police darogahs. The vices, which render them a pest to the country, are, their avarice, and addiction to every species of extortion." + The description of the following scene of iniquity, in which the police agents are the principal actors, is necessary to convey a just idea of the state of this branch of the government. The Judge of circuit, in the Calcutta division, in 1810, in a paper addressed to the Judge and magistrate of the Zillah, says, *Fifth Report, p. 538. + Mr. Dowdeswell's Report on the Police of Bengal, in 1809, ibid. p. 611, 612. 1793. "The practice, so nefarious and so prevalent, of extorting and fabricating CHAP. VI. confessions, requires your most serious attention. I remarked, with much concern, that, in every case of decoity brought before me, the proof rested on a written confession, given in evidence at the trial; and regret to add, that all those confessions bear the marks of fabrication. In one of these cases (No. 7 of your calendar), a prisoner, who was perfectly innocent, confirmed, before the magistrate, under the influence of improper means previously made use of towards him, a confession, before a police darogah, which was proved on the trial to be false; and which had, in fact, been extorted by intimidation and violence. An erroneous idea prevails, that a confession is the strongest proof of guilt. This false notion, perhaps, first gave rise to the custom of fabricating them; and the practice appears to have increased, till it has become general and systematic. It would be endless entering into a detail of the different modes in which confessions are fabricated and proved. The usual course appears to be, first, to apprehend as many people as caprice may dictate, and then to select from the number those individuals who are to confess, and determine on the purport of their confessions. The preliminaries being thus arranged, the victims are made over to the subordinate agents or instruments of police, to be dealt with according to circumstances; and the rest are discharged. It sometimes happens that they meet with a man whom they are able to deceive, by assurances of immediate pardon, and false promises of future favour and indulgence. In such case, he is usually told, that by signing a paper, prepared by the buckshee for that purpose, or repeating before witnesses what he is instructed to say, he will not only escape hanging, or, at least, perpetual imprisonment, but become one of the chosen of the police, and make his fortune as a goyendah; that all he has to do, is, to pretend that he was concerned in the decoity, and say, that the gang was composed of particular individuals, who are named to him, and leave the rest to the darogah. In short, the alternative is offered him, either of making a friend, or an enemy of the police; either of suffering ignominious death through their power, or of raising himself to a post of honourable ambition and profit by their favour. When these means fail, they have recourse to compulsion. In this event the prisoners are taken out singly, at night; and subjected to every species of maltreatment, till they consent to subscribe before witnesses, to the contents of a confession, drawn up for their signature by the buckshee; or to learn it by heart, and repeat it in their presence. When the prisoner is thus prepared, if there appears no danger of his retracting before morning, he is left at peace for a few hours; but if any apprehension of that sort is entertained, a burkundaaz is sent, for three or four 1793. BOOK VI. people of the village, to witness the confession instantly, and they are roused from their sleep, at all hours of the night, for that purpose. It is to be observed, however, that the sending for impartial witnesses does not often occur, except when the darogah has not sufficient weight or talent to keep his place, and at the same time set appearances at defiance. A darogah who is sure of his post, will, with the utmost impudence, send in a confession witnessed only by a few pykes, or other police dependants, who were, perhaps, the very instruments by whose means it was extorted." The fabrication of evidence in general, and the subornation of perjury for that purpose, is declared by the same indubitable authority to have become a prevailing practice with the agents of police."* When such are the deeds of the very men by whom the crimes of others are left to be suppressed, it is easy to judge of the sort of protection which the British government has succeeded in providing for the people of India. The Secretary, Mr. Dowdeswell, complains, that powers, far too great, are entrusted in the hands of those men. They have not only the executive powers of a constable and sheriff's officer, but those, united to them, of a justice of the peace they have the power of receiving charges and information without limit; the power of receiving them on oath, or dispensing with the oath, a power of great moment, considering the prejudices of the natives with regard to an oath; the power of proceeding by summons or arrest, at discretion; the power of referring or not referring the determination to the magistrate; of fixing the amount of bail; of making, or, if they please, causing to be made, a local inquiry upon the recent commission of any robbery or violent offence; and, finally, of apprehending and sending to the magistrates all persons under the vague denomination of "vagrants and suspected persons : " "powers," adds Mr. Dowdeswell," which never have been confided to any subordinate peace officers in England; and which, indeed, would not be tolerated for a moment in that country: powers, the interposition of which, by the hands of the Indian darogahs, are attended with intolerable vexations." + The means, employed for accomplishing the ends of a police, have, therefore, been ignorantly devised. "It is now," say the Committee of the House of Commons," unequivocally acknowledged on the proceedings of government, that the existing system of police has entirely failed in its object." The Judge *Fifth Report, p. 595, 596. + Report on the Police of Bengal, Fifth Report, p. 611, 612. Fifth Report, p. 73. This expression, if authority can give it force, deserves peculiar attention. It was first employed by Mr. Lumsden, a member of the Supreme Government, recorded |