dence was to our Asiatic subjects. Imagine what the state of our
country would be, if it were enacted that any man, by merely swearing
that a debt was due to him, should acquire a right to insult the persons
of men of the most honorable and sacred callings and of women of the
most shrinking delicacy, to horsewhip a general officer, to put a bishop
in the stocks, to treat ladies in the way which called forth the blow of
Wat Tyler. Something like this was the effect of the attempt which the
Supreme Court made to extend its jurisprudence over the whole of the
Company's territory.

A reign of terror began, of terror heightened by mystery: for even that
which was endured was less horrible than that which was anticipated. No
man knew what was next to be expected from this strange tribunal. It
came from beyond the black water, as the people of India, with
mysterious horror, call the sea. It consisted of judges not one of whom
was familiar with the usages of the millions over whom they claimed
boundless authority. Its records were kept in unknown characters; its
sentences were pronounced in unknown sounds. It had already collected
round itself an army of the worst part of the native population,
informers, and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents of
chicane, and, above all, a banditti of bailiffs' followers, compared
with whom the retainers of the worst English sponging-houses, in the
worst times, might be considered as upright and tender-hearted. Many
natives, highly considered among their countrymen, were seized, hurried
up to Calcutta, flung into the common jail, not for any crime even
imputed, not for any debt that had been proved, but merely as a
precaution till their cause should come to trial. There were instances
in which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted without a cause
by extortioners, died of rage and shame in the gripe of the vile
alguazils of Impey. The harams of noble Mahommedans, sanctuaries
respected in the East by governments which respected nothing else, were
burst open by gangs of bailiffs. The Mussulmans, braver and less
accustomed to submission than the Hindoos, sometimes stood on their
defence; and there were instances in which they shed their blood in the
doorway, while defending, sword in hand, the sacred apartments of their
women. Nay, it seemed as if even the faint-hearted Bengalee, who had
crouched at the feet of Surajah Dowlah, who had been mute during the
administration of Va