Perjury would disappear. What is its present cause? Contempt of the Court and sympathy with either complainant or accused, which sympathy sees no chance of justice for its object except by perjury. Because a trial is a fight. There is not a human being East or West who would not be ashamed to lie to a Court he knew was trying to do its best for all—parties and public. It is because the Courts as at present constituted do as much harm as good that perjury is rampant and condoned. It is so in all countries, it has been so in all periods.
Then, as soon as possible, juries should be introduced. This cannot be done until the law, especially as regards punishment, is greatly altered in accordance with the common sense of the people, but it is the objective to be aimed at as soon as possible. Until the public co-operate with the Courts in all ways you will never have a good system of justice. Crime hurts the people far more than it hurts Government. Don't you think the people know that? And don't you suppose they want it prevented even more than Government does? In any case that is the fact. They hate the Courts now because they don't prevent or cure crime; they only make matters worse.
The only objection I see to this proposed alteration is that it will take more time and so cost more money. At first it may do so, but even then what the public loses by more taxes it will more than save in having to pay less to lawyers. How much unnecessary money is now paid to lawyers? Enough, I am sure, to double the magistracy and then leave a big balance. Courts should be made for the people, not for lawyers. And in time crime would so decrease that there would be saving all round.
The reform of the Civil Courts should follow somewhat the same lines. A man should not have to wait to see a civil judge till his case is all made out. He should be able to go to him at once and confide in him, and the judge should send for the other party and try to make an arrangement between them so that no suit should be filed. Not until that has been done and not unless a judge give a certificate of its necessity should a suit be allowed to be filed as it is now. And then when it is filed the judge should conduct the case and not the advocates on each side. That is the only way to stop the perjury which increases and will increase. Magistrates and judges must cease to be umpires of a combat, and become investigators of truth.
As regards the laws of marriage and inheritance, no great change can be made until there is a real representative Assembly to make these changes, but even there something could be done. That fossilisation of custom described by Sir Henry Sumner Maine should stop. Because a High Court proved a hundred years ago that a certain custom existed there is no evidence that it does or should exist now. To establish precedents of this nature is to stop all progress of every kind; we have a vision different from the poet's
Of bondage slowly narrowing down
From precedent to precedent.
Why should not fresh inquiries into custom be made from time to time, it being understood that any Court-ruling only applied to that time and place, and did not bind the future? Something must be done. Things cannot go on as they are. We reproach the Indians for want of progress, but we ourselves are the main cause of that stagnation. We bind them and they cannot move.
As regards land policy there is this to be said, that fixed ideas are a mistake.
In Bengal there was at one time a fixed idea that all land did and must belong to large land-owners, and so, partly out of sheer ignorance, partly out of prejudice, a race of Zemindars was created out of the tax-gatherers to the Mogul Empire. The result has been sad.
Again in Burma the same idea prevailed for a while, and headmen were encouraged to annex communal waste as their private land. This was unfortunate.