Under the Cornwallis system, there was an office which, though then
always filled by a member of the Civil Service, seemed, in the
limitation as well as the importance of its duties, to be exactly suited
for natives to hold. When the civil file of a district became overloaded
with arrears, the government used to appoint an officer to be assistant
or deputy judge. To him the regular judge of the district was empowered
to refer any cases that he thought fit, though there his power ceased,
as the appeal lay direct to the provincial court from the award of the
deputy.
The deputy being made merely a referee without original jurisdiction,
was a wise provision for keeping the primary judicial power in the hands
of the officer charged with the preservation of the peace of the
district, while importance and weight were given to the office of the
deputy, by making the appeals from his decisions lie to the Provincial
Court, and not to his local superior. A single little law of three
lines, declaring natives of India to be eligible to the office of Deputy
Judge, would, by throwing a number of respectable situations open to
their aspirations, have provided for their advancement, without any
disturbance of institutions to which the people of the country had
become accustomed and reconciled. Again, as to the monopoly of higher
judicial office by members of the Civil Service, the Cornwallis system,
perhaps, provided a readier means of abating even this grievance than
will be found in that by which it has been supplanted.
Nothing can be more extravagant than the scheme of sending out
barristers from Westminster Hall, to undertake, without any intermediate
training, the management of districts in Bengal and Hindostan. Sir
William Jones himself, unintelligible as he was, on his first arrival,
to the natives of India, would have failed if he had undertaken such a
task. This visionary proposal has happily received its _coup de grace_
from Sir Edward Ryan, the late Chief Justice in Bengal, in his evidence
before the Commons’ Committee; but it does not, in our opinion, follow
that the aid of lawyers trained in England is therefore to be altogether
discarded in providing for the administration of justice in India.
Although the man fresh from England would be sadly bewildered if left by
himself in a separate district, it does not follow that he should not,
after some preparatory training, be able to co-operate vigorously with
others. The horse will go well in double-harness, or in a team, who
would upset a gig, and kick it to pieces.
If barristers chose to repair to Bengal, and, while there practising at
the bar of the Supreme Court, would study the native languages, it
appears to us that, on their proficiency being proved by an examination,
they might have been advantageously admitted, under certain limitations
as to number, into the now abolished Provincial Courts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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