XIV
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION
The Committee has said all that it could against individual publicists, Indian public movements and the native press. They have found no fault with the Anglo-Indian press and the Government. The whole force of their judicial acumen has been applied in recommending fresh measures of repression and suppression which they have divided into two kinds:
Punitive Measures, Permanent, (a) Points of General Application. The measures which we shall submit are of two kinds, viz., Punitive, by which term we mean measures better to secure the conviction and punishment of offenders, and Preventive, i.e., measures to check the spread of conspiracy and the commission of crime.
We may say at once that we do not expect very much from punitive measures.[1] The conviction of offenders will never check such a movement as that which grew up in Bengal unless all the leaders can be convicted at the outset. Further, the real difficulties have been the scarcity of evidence due to various causes and the want of reliance whether justified or not, on such evidence as there has been. The last difficulty is fundamental and cannot be remedied. No law can direct a court to be convinced when it is not.
Punitive Measures (Permanent).
Legislation directed better to secure the punishment of seditious crime may take the shape either—
(a) of changes in the general law of evidence or procedure which if sound would be advisable in regard to all crime, or
(b) changes in the substantive law of sedition or modifications in the rules of evidence and procedure in such cases designed to deal with the special features of that class of offence.