Even English judges in India, who have been sufficiently tenacious of
what they considered as the rules of English courts, were obliged in
many points, and particularly with regard to evidence, to relax very
considerably, as the civil and politic government has been obliged to do
in several other cases, on account of insuperable difficulties arising
from a great diversity of manners, and from what may be considered as a
diversity even in the very constitution of their minds,--instances of
which your Committee will subjoin in a future Appendix.
Another great cause why your Committee conceived this House had chosen
to proceed in the High Court of Parliament was because the inferior
courts were habituated, with very few exceptions, to try men for the
abuse only of their individual and natural powers, which can extend but
a little way.[35] Before them, offences, whether of fraud or violence or
both, are, for much the greater part, charged upon persons of mean and
obscure condition. Those unhappy persons are so far from being supported
by men of rank and influence, that the whole weight and force of the
community is directed against them. In this case, they are in general
objects of protection as well as of punishment; and the course perhaps
ought, as it is _commonly_ said to be, not to suffer anything to be
applied to their conviction beyond what the strictest rules will permit.
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