yet been), it is neither necessary nor desirable to make permanent settlements. Very long leases, and a principle of assessment under which capital, beneficially invested in the land, shall not be taxed, will be sufficient for all good purposes; while it is fair that Government should, at certain intervals, have the benefit of the increased value resulting from the general progress and wealth of the country, and an opportunity of rectifying inequalities. No landlord would think of making a permanent settlement with his tenants. They would have all the gain of good bargains, and he all the loss of bad ones. On the occurrence of balance every effort should be made to avoid the extreme measure of sale or forfeiture; but when proprietors are incorrigible their rights must be sold or forfeited. I would give to Government the option of declaring an estate to be forfeited by non-payment of revenue, instead of selling it, so that future arrangements may be discretionary. When the proprietors cultivate, their proprietary rights must be distinguished from tenant-rights, and the latter will remain with them even when they lose the former. In the case of extreme bad cultivators I would adjudicate tenant-rights to be forfeited in satisfaction of balances, to the Government or to the intermediate proprietors, so that the holders, being ejected, may be reduced to the condition of labourers, and better men put in their place. One more measure is very necessary to the welfare of the agriculturalists,--that the judicial determination of their rights, and of the priviagrarian rights. leges accorded to them by Government, should rest with those who are qualified for the duty, and who have the means of performing it without giving rise to endless and harassing litigation, and affording opportunity to all kinds of legal chicanery.

Judicial determination of

Indian landed tenures form an important science, and

one which much depends on the possession of a mass of records. A great proportion of the existing landed rights have been created, and all have been altered, regulated, and determined, by us. This science is acquired and practised by the revenue officers-these records are formed and kept by those officers-these rights have been in the first instance ascertained and registered by those officers. The Civil Courts, on the other hand, have none of these facilities. They have no laws which can sufficiently guide them in determining rights which have not heretofore existed in their present form, and they know nothing about revenue matters. Yet because the landed interests are considered to be property, the judicial determination of landed rights is referred to those Civil Courts, either in the first instance or in appeal from the decisions of the much better qualified Revenue Courts. The consequences are most distressing -ruinous litigation, great injustice, and an uncertainty of tenure which, after all that Government has done to render it certain, is a monstrous and crying hardship.

Most questions of this kind can be well decided in the Revenue Courts and from the revenue records. Still they may also involve questions which more properly belong to the Civil Courts, and to permit the revenue officers to decide such points might create legal discrepancies.

The plan which I would propose is this-that all such cases should be first heard in the Revenue Courts; and if the records and evidence possessed by or available to those courts are sufficient to decide the whole or any part of the matter in dispute, that it should be decided accordingly, without appeal to the Civil Courts, but only to the superior Revenue Courts. If there remain issues of law other than revenue law, or issues of

fact which the collector does not think himself competent to decide, and regarding which there seems to be reasonable ground for seeking a judicial decision, then he is to state the issue, and to give a warrant authorising the trial of that issue in the Civil Court. Every decision of such issues should be subsequently attested by the collector as practicable, and not inconsistent with revenue law, and then executed by him. The collector would not, under this system, acquire any arbitrary power, as the appeal from his decisions to the higher Revenue Courts, and, eventually, to Government, would be an amply sufficient security. Under the provisions regarding the transfer of small shares, the holdings of petty proprietary cultivators could not be sold by auction in satisfaction of civil claims without the consent of the representative of Government; and I think it by no means desirable that tenant-rights of any kind should be compulsorily sold, except in special cases with the consent of the Government, which has the chief valuable interest in the soil. But it is an essential part of the scheme that the rights of the proprietary middlemen should be in every way freely transferable.

Duties of the Law Commission.

There remain the more properly legal codes, for which we shall look to the committee of justice. Hitherto the Law Commission has certainly signally failed. It is quite melancholy to read the story how the first commissioner made a penal code-how, for the next eleven years, it was bandied about without any result-how the commissioners meantime, instead of making the urgently required code of civil procedure, waited to see the fate of the penal code-how, at the end of the eleven years, the Government of India was ordered to revise and adopt it-how the next head of the commission pronounced it unphilosophical, drew his pen through it, and

made another code-how the rival codes were referred by the Government of India to the Court of Directors, and by the Court of Directors to the Government of India and how, at this day, we are just where we were. But still this by no means proves that an efficient department of the Government, charged with similar functions, might not succeed. As to the past,' at the worst we have, after all, only the fact that Mr. Macaulay, in a comparatively short time, made a penal code, which did not meet with universal approbation, but regarding which we have arrived at no decision whether it is good or bad. That nothing has been done since 1837 is the personal fault of some person or persons, but no proof that something might not have been done, since no one has tried to do anything. I believe that a man of strong will and resolute hand, uninfluenced by prejudices, bent on achieving the object in view in the best way, whether by creating, borrowing, or adapting-looking to use and not to the most perfect philosophy--preferring to rescue India from the lowest juridical state, and to raise it to the level of the best of the imperfect systems yet discovered, rather than vainly imagining to make it more perfect than all the world beside-I believe that such a man, devoting himself uninterruptedly to the subject, and well supported by Government, might have and would have long ago effected all that is most urgently required; and I think that it is well worth our while to make another attempt, and to determine that it shall succeed. If the Indian Government, being itself efficient, wills it, and goes the right way about it, we may at least succeed in obtaining, with very little delay, the codes most pressingly required-a code of civil procedure and a penal code. The penal code, having been so long in hand, being by far the most simple, and being immediately required in order to subject all classes to a uniform law, may be

first finished, but one member of the committee of justice should at once take in hand a code of civil procedure. The other codes would follow, and, in the mean time, a special commission might be issued to digest the materials for the great work of a civil code.

Everything will, of course, depend on the men selected for the task. Shall I venture to say that, if we could obtain the services of a good foreign jurist, he might be not the least useful member of the committee of justice?

I shall here merely glance at the nature of the codes and of the policy which I would propose.

We have not, in most parts of India, coped with crime with sufficient success. Something may be done by improving the executive; but we also especially require an improvement of our laws. Good criminal codes, both of crimes and punishments, and of criminal procedure, are much wanted.

A mere penal code (as distinguished from criminal procedure) may be very much the same

Penal code.

all over the world; and Mr. Macaulay's code seems just as applicable to France or England as to India. We have already in India more and better laws in this department of justice than in any other; but we have no foundation for our patchwork legislation. Our classification of crimes is altogether imperfect; and there are great defects in our punishments, especially as regards the property and civil rights of criminals, which are often more dear to them than a few years' liberty.

Mr. Macaulay's code is certainly constructed on a refined plan not very intelligible to the multitude, and in very hard language. These are evils: are they inevitable? Let us look at the French penal code. The French are a highly civilised nation; they seem content with their penal code. Is it so complex in structure and