THE ASIATIC NOTION OF JUSTICE.
THE opposition offered by Riza Pasha and others of the higher officials to judicial reform in Egypt is usually set down in this country to corrupt motives. They want bribes, it is said, for protecting unworthy suitors, or they desire the opportunity of oppressing their enemies, or their dependents' enemies, through the agency of the police. The charge is probably true in part, most Orientals desiring irregular rewards, just as Bacon did, and thirsting for irregular power and the abject deference and sense of authority which irregular power speedily produces ; but they could, if they were perfectly articulate, make a, better defence for them- selves than Englishmen imagine, a defence, too, in which the suitors before them would cordially concur. There are just Asiatics as well as unjust, though they are usually few, and Asiatics, too, whom no man could bribe ; and as they and their suppliants would resist Mr. Scott's reforms as stiffly as their corrupt compatriots, it may be of some interest to a few observers of human nature to state the reasons why. The popular notion that Asiatics do not care for justice, or even positively dislike it is, of course, entirely without foundation. The approval of justice is almost as instinctive as the idea of difference between right and wrong, and an Asiatic submits more humbly to a just sentence than a European. The agent of God, he thinks, has found him out, which it was his especial business in this world to do, and which is evidence, among other things, of the reality of his commission, and vindictiveness on that account would be only a new crime,—an idea asserted by English gaol-keepers to be also entertained by the convicts in their charge. The idea that an Asiatic does not desire a just decision on the merits of the case m between plaintiff and defendant, or accuser and accused, is utterly without foundation. The only differences in that respect between the races are that the Asiatic is not convinced of the inherent equality of men, holding that the great and those invested with sanctity ought to have some favour shown them, and that as regards fitting punishments, he belongs to the fifteenth century, and would have no kind of feeling about torture, mutilation, or breaking on the wheel. The highest Egyptian expositor of the law did, indeed, in this very discussion, lay it down as a cardinal dogma that a brigand should suffer the amputation of his hands, a penalty which no European Government dare attempt to enforce for any offence whatever. It is not as regards justice in itself, but as regards the method of distributing it, that the Asiatic parts company from the European. The latter in all countries insists on a specially qualified Judge, definite rules of evidence which often exclude evidence, and a mode of procedure as well known and as rigid as the law itself. He always employs expert intermediaries to attack or to defend, and he has usually an inexplicable desire that the place for doing justice should, so to speak, be consecrated to that business only, a sentence delivered out of Court striking him as something abnormal, suspicious, and, in some way not defined, irreverent. The result of these feelings is, that the Englishman, American, or German secures justice, but only after an expensive and tedious process, excessive interruption to ordinary business, and, in civil cases, great differences between the amount of his just claim and the amount which, after the lawyers are paid, actually comes into his hands. All that is to the Asiatic utterly detestable. He thinks that when he is wronged, it is the business of the ruler, or his executive delegate, to right him at once, without delay, without expense, fully and finally. He appeals to him loudly in the market- place, in the road, or in his hall of audience, indifferently, and expects justice either there and then, or if witnesses must be summoned from a distance, at a fixed time, not to be altered without the gravest cause. The decision thus given is to be just, inexorably just, but is to be reached irrespective of any rules of evidence, any customs, or any laws not directly religious ; and even that last qualification is only for the sake of form. So intense is this feeling, that the gravest charge an Asiatic can bring against his ruler is that, though outside his palace, be refused to hear him, or that, having given a decision, he failed to make it instantly executive, Moreover, the ruler is entirely of his subjects' opinion in the matter. There never has been an Asiatic Sovereign, however bad, or however accustomed to profound seclusion, who would not have admitted that this was his duty, which he sinned in neglecting, or who, if caught unawares, say on a hunting party, would not have fulfilled it to the best of his ability. Aurungzebe, the great Emperor of Delhi, who assumed the manner rather of a deity than a monarch, and used to receive his Court seated on crossed stone girders in the roof of his audience-hall, 20 ft. above all heads, would hear the raggedest wretch in his dominions, and give a decision, often strangely astute, there and then ; and woe to the courtier, however powerful, who barred the execution of a decree so pronounced. The Oriental, in fact, desires suddenness, inexpensiveness, and finality in the distribution of justice, and therefore looks for it—as that unhappy Sikh is doing who is always getting imprisoned because he wants to ask the Queen in person to restore his land, forfeited by some Court's wrongful decision— only from the executive power. No other can be so quick, or so final, or so cheap, and the notion of depriving it of its first function is, in the eyes of subject and ruler alike, positively immoral. The Khedive has just given away this right, and but that he is supposed to be in durance to the infidel, and no longer possessed of free-will, he would be held by every subject to have given away also his moral right to reign.
Of course, as a matter of fact, the system works horribly worse, perhaps, than any system whatever, except that of Spain, where you institute the suit and your grandson gets the decree. The ruler gets bored with the work, and delegates his power, which is again sub-delegated, until there is at last an ignorant and corrupt official, intent on money-making, who can give an absolute order, and enforce it with the whole power of the State, and who, being the Sovereign's representative, is independent of evidence, laws, and every other restraint, except the one remote chance that if a suitor, palpably oppressed beyond bearing, can reach his Sovereign's ear and convince him, an order may come for that oppressor's head. So strong is tradition, that we think even the Sultan under those circumstances would give that kind of re- dress ; but except in extraordinary cases when the ruler will work like Frederick the Great, or in the more frequent cases when the dread of him is so acute that the oppressor is paralysed by the threat of personal appeal to the Throne—this is actually the case in Afghanistan at this moment—the reserved power of the Sovereign is no protection, and justice suffers such depravation, that but for two checks very carious in their operation, society would go to pieces. Most suits and plaints are between equals, or persons nearly equal, and bribery in such cases ameliorates tyranny, the wronged man being willing to make the larger pecuniary sacrifice. And there is a point of injustice hard to ascertain, but indubitably existing, beyond which an official Asiatic, when sitting in. judgment, must not go. If he does, the universal conscience revolts ; he is boycotted in a style that even he feels, and the atmosphere of respect for power which in the East clothes and protects the powerful, ceases to guard his life. As for the police, under this system they degenerate into fiends. They cannot prevent access to the official's presence; but they collect the evidence, they arrest the accused—and keep him just as long as they like—and they carry out or do not carry out the ultimate decree ; and every one of these operations is an excuse for a fresh bribe. The official cannot punish them, and except under superior order never does, for either he shares the bribes, or he is dependent on them for the collection of taxes, the one duty he dare not fail in, or he is positively afraid. of them, the latter a case con- stantly occurring in Egypt, and, it is said, in the interior of China. The oppression of the police throughout Asia, outside India, is something quite awful, and almost as great a cause of human misery as even slavery. Indeed, it would desolate whole States, but that at a certain point of endurance the populace takes arms, the police are killed everywhere at sight, and society, which as a rule detests breaking up, re-forms itself again under the protection of Vigilance Committees. The Asiatic knows how to organise them well enough, but never will do it in good time or persistently, and when he has done it, usually falls under the temptation to use his new power in brigandage.
Nevertheless, for all its bad results, there is something lofty in the Asiatic notion of the proper distribution of justice, and it does sometimes, under very favourable circumstances, as in one or two of the smaller States of India, produce an extraordinary harmony between ruler and ruled, the former appearing every day as a beneficent person who redresses wrong as a deity would, at once and by a fiat which executes itself ; but there is, even under such circumstances, a draw- back to it too seldom noticed. It checks prosperity too much. Anglo-Indians often lament that the Asiatic system is not tried in India, where we could secure just satraps ; but just satraps are of little use as Judges except in a simple state of society. The moment commerce comes in with its complexities, the just satrap is an injurious nuisance. Solomon was a great Judge, no doubt, though a very cruel one, cruel as the first Shah of the Kajar family, who ripped open a soldier to see if he had stolen some milk ; but if Solomon had one day decided contracts according to the English rule, that the buyer must take care of himself, and the next day according to the Mussulman rule, that there is always an implied warranty, commerce would have become impossible. To make a country prosperous, civil suits must be decided not only with justice, but with justice according to a rule which never swerves, is never forgotten, and is always known beforehand,—that is, in practice, they must be decided by experts in accordance with written law. It seems a clumsy system, because of the expense and delay it necessarily in- volves; but it is the only one which will work when affairs have grown in the least degree complei or many-sided. The will of the just man armed with all power seems a grand in- strument; but it is of no use whatever in deciding whether unbleached shirtings are up to sample, or whether such-and- such documents establish agency or not. You must have , written law, and there is no written law in Asia except the
religious ones; and among the religious ones, not one pays the smallest attention—very properly—to such questions as arise an commerce. There must not only be law, but positive law, case law, and therefore experts to advise, and therefore trained tribunals, and therefore that separation of law from the executive which the Asiatic mind detests. The process is inexorable, and produces exactly the same conclusion as the degradation of justice which follows, slowly but inevitably, on perfect despotism,—viz., that if a country wants civilisation, or prosperity, or unbroken order, it must put up with Courts.
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