orthwith to the magistrate of the district, and
found the report that I wanted, and thereby completed the chain of
evidence upon a very important case. The Thanadar seemed much
surprised to find that I was so well acquainted with the
circumstances of this murder, but still more that the perpetrators
were not the poor old Begam's subjects, but our own.

The police officers employed on our borders find it very convenient
to trace the perpetrators of all murders and gang robberies into the
territories of native chiefs, whose subjects they accuse often when
they know that the crimes have been committed by our own. They are,
on the one hand, afraid to seize or accuse the real offenders, lest
they should avenge themselves by some personal violence, or by thefts
or robberies, which they often commit with a view to get them tumed
out of office as inefficient; and, on the other, they are tempted to
conceal the real offenders by a liberal share of the spoil, and a
promise of not offending again within their beat. Their tenure of
office is far too insecure, and their salaries are far too small.
They are often dismissed summarily by the magistrate if they send him
in no prisoners; and also if they send in to him prisoners who are
not ultimately convicted, because a magistrate's merits are too often
estimated by the proportion that his convictions bear to his
acquittals among the prisoners committed for trial to the sessions.
Men are often ultimately acquitted for want of judicial proof, when
there is abundance of that moral proof on which a police officer or
magistrate has to act in the discharge of his duties; and in a
country where gangs of professional and hereditary robbers and
murderers extend their depredations into very remote parts, and
seldom commit them in the districts in which they reside, the most
vigilant police officer must often fail to discover the perpetrators
of heavy crimes that take place within his range.[6]

When they cannot find them, the native officers either seize innocent
persons, and frighten them into confession, or else they try to
conceal the crime, and in this they are seconded by the sufferers in
the robbery, who will always avoid, if they can, a prosecution in our
courts, and by their neighbours, who dread being summoned to give
evidence as a serious calamity. The man who has been robbed, instead
of being an object of compassion among his neighbours, often incurs
their resentment for subjecting