to be done by Brahmans, who added their personal sanctity to the weight of the custom. The Brahman's wergild, as it might be called, the value set upon his life, was so much higher than the life of the ordinary creditor, and the penalty to be incurred in this or the next world so much greater, that Brahmans made a trade of hiring themselves out and fasting on behalf of their principals until restitution was made. Nor is this custom peculiar to India; it existed in Ireland. There too custom and Government had endeavoured to throw obstacles in the way of men obtaining redress by violence; the creditor was required to give warning to his debtor that he would retaliate by seizing his goods if he did not pay by a given time; but upon persons of distinction against whom the poor man had no power to retaliate, the Irish law provided that" fasting "precedes distress in their case. He who "does not give a pledge to fasting is an eva"der of all, he who disregards all things

Early History of Institutions, page 297,

"shall not be paid by God or man.”

The laws of distress, of attachment before judgment, and of impounding stray cattle are likewise developments of the practice of obtaining redress by seizure of a debtor's property, including his women and children. As the Government grew stronger, and the administrative machinery became more perfect, restrictions were imposed upon the free exercise of the right of obtaining redress by force, and rule after rule was made, until the exercise of the right became so hampered by the rules that it slowly fell into disuse from the fear of the penalties which might be incurred by the infraction of rules.

To return to the practice of common responsibility for crimes, it follows as a matter of course that, where there was no individual and separate property, the fines which it might be necessary to pay on behalf of one of the tribe, or subsequently one of the joint family, should be paid from the common stock, and to the kindred or joint family of the deceased when the fine was for a life price or wergild. This was the practice of the Germans, as described by Tacitus, and the duties of the kindred in England are described by Stubbs. In the ancient Irish law tracts there is a passage showing that retaliation prevailed in Erin before the time of St Patrick. That every crime, even murder, can be compensated by a fixed fine, must after a time tend to great abuse, when wealth has increased and wealthy men may with impunity commit crimes, and by payment of fines which would not be felt as a loss, and hence on the conquest of Ireland by England we find the English rulers expressing abhorrence at eric fines and declaiming against them as contrary to God's law and man's, utterly unconcious that the same practice had prevailed in early England, and had died

out some time after the Norman conquest. But, inadequate as the system of pecuniary compensation may be in a wealthy community, it was of infinite value at a period when life was held cheap, when violence and retaliation was the rule, and when money and cattle were of much more account than freeman life. These fines must originally have acted with crushing severity, until the progress of wealth and the greater sanctity of life put them out of date. This custom of family responsibility for the offences of their kin appears to have survived in the function of punishing the whole family for certain offences, such as treason, and the disgrace which even now falls on a family for the offence of one of its number. The blood of the family was considered as tainted, and banishment and forfeiture of the whole property was a necessary consequence. The custom that every landless man must have a lord, grew up from the primitive custom that every freeman had a right, from his relationship to the tribe, to the possession of land, while strangers and slaves had no such right, and were permitted to occupy on sufferance only. As all privileges and duties were confined to members of the tribe, the tribal customs could take no direct notice of strangers, except through some one of the tribe, The slave-owner was then responsible for the slave, and strangers were required to find some freeman who would undertake to be their surety. The possession of land was the index of freedom, but cases occurred where freemen had no land, and they were then treated as strangers without land, and required to find a surety. In return for the patronage afforded, the patron received certain services and dues from his client, and exercised some control over him.

This custom was fixed as a law by Athelstan, and confirmed by Edgar. Canute also enacted it, and decreed that the hundreds should be divided into 10 parts, or tithings, that every man should have his place in a tithing. This was apparently devised for the convenience of police administration, since there was an obligation upon the hundred and the tithing to pursue and capture thieves. Edward the Confessor fused these customs together.

The practice of making the hundred responsible continued after the Norman conquest, with this amendment, that a person found slain within the hundred was presumed to be a Norman, and a heavy fine levied from the hundred, unless they could prove that the deceased was an Englishman.

Turn to the description of the village police in India to be found in Elphinstone's Report:-"The Patel is responsible for the police of his village, he is aided by his Khulkarni and Changala, and "when the occasion requires it, by all the inhabitants." The Mahars, or "Jaglias and Dheds, are the village watchmen and detect

"

"ives, and in the event of a theft committed within the village "bounds, it is his business to detect the thief. It is very common "for him to track a thief by his footsteps, and if he does this to "another village so as to satisfy the watchman there, or if he "otherwise traces the property to an adjoining village, his responsibi"lity ends, and it is the duty of the watchman of the new village to "take up the pursuit. The last village to which the thief has been clearly traced becomes answerable for the property stolen, which "would otherwise fall on the village where the robbery was com"mitted. The watchman is obliged to make up this amount as far 66 as his means go, and the remainder is levied on the whole village." Elphinstone remarks on this practice, that if the great secret of police be to engage many people in the prevention and punishment of crime, it will not perhaps be easy to find a measure more advisable. It was adopted by our own early lawgivers, and is not less suited to the state of society in India than it was in England under Alfred.

We have thus been able to see how great a part the idea of blood relationship has played in the formation of early groups of society. Wherever we look, the first indication of social life begins with the family group gradually expanding into the tribes; we see with what suspicion and distrust one tribe regards another and an alien tribe as something more cruel and cunning than wild beasts, and to be guarded against accordingly. The Jews, divided into twelve tribes, trace up their origin to twelve brothers. The German tribe, connected by blood, settles into a village and makes a dismal waste round it to protect itself from surprise. As some central authority grows up and social life becomes less suspicious, strangers are admitted into the village, but admitted jealously and kept down under hard conditions and aloof from the life of the men of pure descent. In India the same isolation of tribes in villages is visible, and the same jealousy of the stranger who cannot be admitted into the commune villages without consent, the right of pre-emption among villagers, the obligation to sell to one of the tribe before a stranger, and the privileges of the older settlers, the mirasdars, the bhagdars and others over the strangers. In Rome the citizens of the victorious city were tenacions of their privileges, and dignity, and grudgingly admitted strangers to their privileges. To be a citizen of Rome was to be of kin to the descendants of a long line of heroes, and the dignity carried with it its proper privileges. We see the power of the Roman father over his family and his slaves to be the same as the power of the German and Hindu father. Everywhere we see tribal property with its periodical re-divisions fading into private property; in Western Europe the change completed, in Eastern Europe and in India the change still progressing and

in almost every stage of development, from the advanced position of the Bengal provinces to the partial communes of Oude and Gujerat, and the almost primitive condition of parts of Arcot and of North Gujerat. Throughout the German marks and the Indian villages can be observed the equality of all men of pure descent. The introduction of slaves and strangers introduced the first idea of difference of rank as indicating difference in descent; the introduction of private property produced differences in wealth, and wealth becomes the origin of nobility among Germans and Celts; but among Hindus nobility attaches itself to the idea of a warrior caste, the Khatriyas, and still more to a privileged priesthood, the Brahmans. In its criminal practice the joint responsibility of the Indian village for thefts traced to it is the same as the joint responsibility of the relatives of the German offender to pay the wergild due for the offence; while everywhere in Europe and India the succession to the family property is strictly equal among the sons, England alone furnishing the exception of adopting primogeniture, a practice copied from a military rule.

W. R. HAMILTON.

ART. VI-KHELAT.

THE HE present Government at home proceeds steadily and surely with its plan of divesting itself of all relations and responsibilities beyond our immediate frontier. It is far from improbable that our garrison in Belooch territory at Quetta, and our political agency at Khelat will, in due time, share the fate of Kandahar and the Khurrum, and that we shall ere long resume what some one has been pleased to call our giant repose along the banks of the Indus. However that may be, the geographical position of Beloochistan vests it with sufficient importance to warrant our giving some account of its past history and present relations with the Indian Government.

The first ruler of Khelat known to history is Abdulla Khan, a chief who was early checked in a career of victory by death on the field of battle in attempting the conquest of Sind. His son Mohubbut Khan attached himself, in 1730, to the famous Nadir Shah, when that monarch annexed Kandahar; and he accompanied his forces in the invasion of Hindustan. On Nadir Shah's return Mohubbut's services were rewarded, at the expense of the rulers of Sind, by the transfer to Khelat of the Sind district of Gundava, now traversed by the Bolan railway. On Nadir Shah's death in 1747, all his subject chiefs and generals scrambled for the fragments of his empire. Mohubbut Khan attempted to get a slice of Kandahar, but Nadir's Afghan general, Ahmed Khan Abdali, was too prompt for him, and, after possessing himself of the whole of Afghanistan and being proclaimed king, he invaded Khelat, deposed Mohubbut Khan, and replaced him by his younger brother Nasseer Khan.

Nasseer Khan was a faithful vassal for many years of the great Ahmed Shah. He accompanied him in two campaigns undertaken for the conquest of Khorassan, the easternmost province of Persia. The Belooch contingent was in the forefront of two bloody battles fought in these campaigns; and it was Nasseer Khan's brilliant generalship which saved the remnants of Ahmed Shah's army on the disastrous termination of the first, and secured the success of the second, campaign. For this he was confirmed in his government of Khelat and received as a gift the district of Quetta or Shâl, the gift being represented as a shawl, or khillat, for his mother, Bibi Miriam, then in Ahmed Shah's camp. Nasseer Khan appears at first not to have accompanied Ahmed Shah to Hindustan; on the contrary, on rumours of disasters having befallen the monarch there, he rebelled, and succeeded in defeating one of Ahmed Shah's generals who marched to reduce him. Indeed,