It doesn't look well for Englishmen to play bridge and other games of cards for money in their Clubs and bungalows while the Burmese are totally debarred. It smacks of self-righteousness. A good deal of our rule does that now, and it does not tend to make it popular. In human affairs there are a time and a place for things, but in law there is only the absolute. Now the absolute is wrong. And if there is one quality above another that is detestable it is self-righteousness. Our laws tend to self-righteousness; our judges and officials are very liable to succumb to that tendency. It is bad for a man to have to deal continually with the seamy side of human nature; he can only keep his mind sweet by continual touch with the other side. But in India and Burma the ordinary official knows nothing of the other side. He has no dealing with the people except in an official capacity. He knows nothing of their ordinary life, their work, or their amusements. He does not take an interest in the staple industries of his villages, nor in the amusements of the people. Therefore he cannot see how bad the laws are because he judges them _a priori_ and not in relation to their effects on the people. The Indian Penal Code he knows, the accused and the witnesses he does not know; the Village Act he knows, the village organism he is hopelessly ignorant of. Therefore when Government pass and enforce laws that do more harm than good he cannot tell them what is wrong. Naturally, he must believe nothing is wrong. Yet the whole Penal System of India is wrong. It is very wrong indeed. I believe I could keep a district in greater quietness and peace if its Criminal Courts were abolished altogether and I were allowed to use the village organism in its proper form for preventing crime. For the essential truth in dealing with crime, as with disease, is that it can be prevented but can rarely be cured. However, I do not mean to say that Criminal Courts, if they administered good laws and were reasonably constituted, are bad things. They will in time be to crime what hospitals are to diseases: places where the sufferer goes to have his illness diagnosed and cured so that he come out a clean man whom the community will be glad to welcome back. That a man who has once been in gaol is for ever a social leper is the strongest condemnation a system of criminal justice could receive.