of property supposed to be concealed, is to burn the proprietor with straws or torches until he discloses the property or perishes in the flames.” He mentions one man who was convicted of having committed fifteen murders in nineteen days, and adds that, “volumes might be filled with the atrocities of the Decoits, every line of which would make the blood run cold with horror.” He does, indeed, give some details of them of the most amazing and harrowing description. Sir Henry Strachey in his Report already quoted, says, “the crime of decoity, in the district of Calcutta, has, I believe, greatly increased since the British administration of justice. The number of convicts confined at the six stations of this division (independent of Zillah twenty-four pergunnahs) is about 4000. Of them _probably nine-tenths are decoits_. Besides these, some hundreds of late years have been transported. The number of persons convicted of decoity, however great it may appear, is certainly small in proportion to those who are guilty of the crime. At Midnapore I find, by the reports of the police darogars, that in the year 1802, a period of peace and tranquillity, they sent intelligence of no less than ninety-three robberies, most of them, as usual, committed by large gangs. With respect to fifty-one of these robberies, not a man was taken, and for the remaining forty-two, very few, frequently only one or two in each gang.” Other judges describe the extent to which decoity existed, as being much vaster than was generally known, and calculated to excite the most general terror throughout the country.