they had fee'd their lawyer to tell them which side had won. "The people knew that Eversley would do what he saw to be right, independent of Act or Code, _and they had more confidence in his sense of justice than in the written law_." What is the highest praise a Burman will give to an officer--that he is clever, painstaking, honest, energetic, kind? No; but that he has "auza." And what is "auza"? It is that influence and power that comes from personality. Who has "auza" nowadays? No one, not even Government. It has become, as Eversley expected, a Commission of Schoolmasters. CHAPTER V CRIMINAL LAW Let us turn now from the _personnel_ of government to its methods, from its men to its laws, from the motive power to the machine it works, or which more often now works government. The first subject that comes naturally to our view is the prevention and suppression of crime, for in point of time that precedes all else. When you are conquering a country, after the soldiers have partly done their work and the civil power comes in, its first care is to create and maintain peace. It organises a police and appoints magistrates. Thus in point of time the Criminal Courts are the first to be organised and criminal law to be laid down, and they are the foundation-stone on which all else is built. And they remain always the most important of the functions of government. If they work well, then there is a good beginning made, but if ill, then the outlook is bad. If what should be Courts of Justice cease in the opinion of the people to be so, then is the very foundation-stone of your rule dissolving. The whole edifice is undermined; it is not founded on a rock, but on something that decays, which soon will give way and let down everything.