The trial of Ameer Khan, the Wahabee, caused a great sensation in the Indian law courts in the year 1870. The Wahabees were a sect founded by a young Arab pilgrim of Damascus, named Abd-el Wahab, who endeavoured to reform the Mohammedan faith by denouncing the corruptions that had crept in and by calling upon Mussulmans to “return to their primitive church with its simplicity of manners and purity of morals.” The movement spread into India, where it gained great success with the Sunnis, themselves puritans, but it was fiercely hated by the Mohammedans, who had deteriorated greatly under the English rule, and there was great danger of an insurrection. In 1858 Sir Sydney Cotton had stormed the stronghold of the Wahabees at Sittana and razed the villages of their allies to the ground. In 1869 the government received information that the Wahabees had issued a propaganda from Sittana and Patna which was to be spread throughout India, and again found it necessary to take steps to suppress the Wahabees. Among others, Ameer Khan, a Mussulman banker and money lender of Calcutta, was suddenly arrested in July, 1869, on no stated charge. He applied for a writ of habeas corpus, but was refused. He appealed to the Supreme Court, and then began the famous trial which lasted six months. In December Ameer Khan was released from Alipore gaol, but he was immediately rearrested, as it had been discovered that he had been apprehended by a warrant about which there was some question. He was then tried before a civilian judge at Patna, where the offences were alleged to have been committed, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. He was found guilty of acting as agent and supplying money for the Wahabee propaganda. The religious tenets of the Wahabees are still professed by many of the Arabs and are admitted to be orthodox by the most learned of the _‘ulamas_ of Egypt. The Wahabees are merely reformers, who believe all the fundamental points of El-Islam and all the accessory doctrines of the Koran and the “Traditions of the Prophets;” in short, their tenets are those of the primitive Moslems. They disapprove of gorgeous sepulchres and domes erected over tombs; such they invariably destroy when in power. They also condemn as idolaters those who pay peculiar veneration to deceased saints; and even declare all other Moslems to be heretics for the extravagant respect which they pay to the prophet. They forbid the wearing of silk, gold ornaments and all costly apparel, and also the practice of smoking tobacco. For the want of this last luxury they console themselves in some degree by an immoderate use of coffee. There are many learned men among them, and they have collected many valuable books, chiefly historical, from various parts of Arabia and from Egypt. The Montgomery gaol in the Punjab, one of the largest in India, was recently visited by Captain Buck of the Indian army, and his description of the details of prison life there is exceedingly interesting.