India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    139/552 page 109
    of King’s Bench for about £8 cannot be prosecuted in the Supreme Court under £40. Officers of the court are enabled to accumulate in a few years, out of the substance of ruined suitors, fortunes larger than the oldest and most distinguished servant of the Company can expect to carry home after thirty or forty years of eminent service. I speak of Bengal, where the system is now in full operation. At Madras, the Supreme Court has, I believe, fulfilled its mission. It has done its work. It has beggared every rich native within its jurisdiction, and is inactive for want of somebody to ruin.” Since 1836 no distinctions of race have been recog- nised in the civil courts throughout India. At the present time, Native judges preside over the great majority of the courts; excepting the higher appellate tribunals, in which, however, they also have seats, almost the whole administration of civil justice is in their hands. They exercise jurisdiction in all classes of civil cases over Natives and Europeans alike. The Lord Chancellor said in the House of Lords in 1883, as the result of his experience of Indian cases appealed to the Privy Council, that “ in respect of integrity, of learning, of knowledge, of the soundness and satisfactory character of the judgments arrived at, the judgments of the Native judges were quite as good as those of the English.” In regard to the character and capacity of the Native judges of the High Courts, and of the great majority of those presiding over the subordinate civil courts, the truth of this opinion will not be questioned, and in disposing of business of this sort, superior knowledge of the language and habits of the people often gives to the Native many advantages over the Englishman. Notwithstanding the great improvement that has taken place, the system under which civil justice is administered cannot be said to be altogether satis-
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