l another term.

[Sidenote: Punished by death.]

The trial came on a few days ago, and the jury, much to their honour,
found the prisoner guilty. On this an agitation was got up to obtain a
commutation of the sentence of death which had been passed by the
judge. A petition, with a great number of signatures, was presented in
the first instance to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal; but he was
advised that, the crime having been committed in the Punjab, he had
nothing to do with the case. It was then transmitted to me. There was
quite enough doubt as to my power of acting, to have justified me in
referring the case to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. But I
felt that the delay, and, above all, the appearance of a desire to
shrink from the responsibility of passing a decision on the case,
which this step would involve, would be so mischievous, that, having
obtained from the Advocate-General an opinion that I had the requisite
authority, I determined to take the matter into my own hands. The
verdict was clearly borne out by the evidence. The sentence was in
accordance with the law, and the judge, to whom I referred, saw no
reason to question it. The decision of the Governor-General in Council
was, that the law must take its course.

[Sidenote: Little value put on native life.]

It is true that this murder was not committed with previous
preparation and deliberation. It had not, therefore, this special
quality of aggravation. But it was marked by an aggravation of its
own, not less culpable, and unfortunately only too frequently
characteristic of the homicides perpetrated by Europeans on natives in
this country. It was committed in wanton recklessness, almost without
provocation, under an impulse which would have been resisted if the
life of the victim had been estimated at the value of that of a dog.
Any action on my part which would have seemed to sanction this
estimate of the value of native life, would have been attended by the
most pernicious consequences.

It is bad enough as it is. The other day a station-master, somewhere
up country, kicked a native who was, as he says, milking a goat
belonging to the former. The native fell dead, and the local paper,
without a word of commiseration for the victim or his family,
complains of the hardship of compelling the station-master to g