Chapter XXIII: Native Police

Native police—Frequency of stabbing and of perjury—Intricate division of
property—Too many legal advisers—Regulations concerning cart and
servant registration—Pearl-fishery—Cruelty to animals—Volunteers.

The very fine body of native police, as at present constituted, is the creation of Mr. G. W. R. Campbell,[197] under whose command it continued till this year, 1891—a force of which he has good reason to be proud.

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Footnote 197:

Now Sir George W. R. Campbell, K.C.M.G.

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In September 1866, at the request of Sir Hercules Robinson, he resigned an excellent position in India to undertake the remodelling of the very unsatisfactory police force of that day.

He found it to consist of a nominal force of 560 men, but in reality there were only 470, quite untrained, and lacking in all _esprit de corps_. These were expected to keep order in a population of over two million people, by many of whom he found that crime was regarded with complete indifference, even in such horrible cases as that of a father lifting up his infant by the feet and dashing its brains out on the floor before its mother’s eyes, merely to gratify his almost causeless rage against her; or that of a man braining his own little girl on purpose to get his father-in-law hanged for murder. He found that even under the existing very imperfect system for detection of crime, no less than 81 cases of murder and 22 of manslaughter had been proven within the two previous years.

Where public opinion viewed such crimes with perfect apathy, it was no easy task for any body of police to work effectively. Nevertheless, in an amazingly short time Mr. Campbell had reorganised the whole force, and brought it into such excellent working order as to call forth the highest commendation from Sir Hercules, to whom Mr. Campbell then reported that his aim was to raise the police to such a point that the Ceylon Rifles (an expensive native regiment with European officers) might be altogether dispensed with.

However desirable, such a project then seemed quite beyond the range of possibilities. However, soon afterwards Mr. Campbell was sent to Penang as Lieutenant-Governor for eighteen months, and thence came to England on sick-leave. On his return to Ceylon, he found that during his absence the Ceylon Rifles had actually been disbanded as unnecessary, thereby effecting a very large saving for the colony.

A considerable number of the disbanded soldiers (mostly Malays) were drafted into the police, which incorporates men of very varied nationalities—British, Portuguese, Dutch, Singhalese, Tamils, and Burghers of mixed race, welding the whole into a remarkably fine and efficient force numbering about 1,470.

The men are smart and soldierly, and may be described as civil police with a semi-military training. The thick tight-fitting jacket and trousers and stiff leather stock were at once discarded in favour of a suitable and becoming uniform, consisting of tunic and trousers of dark blue serge, with waist-belt and boots of dark brown leather, and scarlet forage-cap with a black top-knot. They are armed with Snider rifles and swords, and are regularly drilled, but except when on gaol guard or guarding convicts or treasure, they only carry batons.

Their total cost to the general revenue is set down at 401,831 rupees per annum; that of the old force was about 150,000 rupees. The present outlay includes many such items as the feeding and transport of prisoners and of sick paupers, cost of working the elaborate and very efficient systems of registration of servants and carts, and many other matters; and well may Mr. Campbell say, when pleading for a greatly strengthened detective branch, ‘No country in the East has so small or nearly so cheap a force as Ceylon.’ ‘Can it be expected that 1,500 poorly paid police, more than half of whom are employed to guard convicts and treasuries and to keep order in the streets—can it be expected that this handful of men, scattered throughout a country nearly as large as Ireland, and with a population numbering nearly three millions, and _criminal to an unusual extent_, can bring a large majority of the worst criminals to justice?

‘Whereas Ireland, with a population a little more than double that of Ceylon, has about 13,000 police with 300 officers, Ceylon (with only seven officers in receipt of upwards of 1,500 rupees per annum, which, valuing the rupee at 1_s._ 6_d._, represents £112 16_s._ per annum) has under 1,500 police. Even this small force is employed on such duties as guarding convict gangs on public works, such as the saltpans at Hambantota, the Mahara quarries, the breakwater, &c. They are, further, the only relieving officers of the vagrant portion of the helpless poor; they must attend to vaccination, sanitation of places of pilgrimage, the weights and measures of dealers, storage of kerosine, gunpowder, &c., and they are now the gaolers of several of the minor gaols.’

Till within the last few years there were no harbour-police, so that all work of this sort likewise fell on the regular force. Now the development of Colombo harbour has necessitated the appointment of a harbour-inspector with a couple of whaleboats and about sixteen men specially for this work. The police are now scattered over the country in ninety-four different detachments, and considering that there are on an average only four of the regular police at each station in rural districts to look after about a hundred square miles of cultivated land, all liable to crop-thieving, and that they have to escort and guard prisoners, keep order in one or two large village bazaars, and by their presence deter crop-thieves and purchasers of such stolen goods, take care of sick wayfarers, and serve all the countless summonses and warrants that may be issued, it is evident that they cannot eat the bread of idleness. In the whole force there is not a single mounted constable, so all the work must be done on foot. In each province, however, the Government Agent has a body of untrained and unpaid village police, who in some measure lighten the toil of the regular police.

Some idea of the miscellaneous work which falls on the police department might be gathered from a single detail of its office-work, namely, that about 70,000 documents are annually received and despatched from the two chief offices alone, _i.e._, Kandy and Colombo.

At these two points the police barracks are a perfect triumph of ingenuity, so admirable is the result produced for the money expended, both as regards the construction of really handsome buildings at a very low cost, and also in the excellent taste displayed in the careful laying out of the grounds, with such profusion of flowering trees and shrubs, that the whole effect is that of luxuriant gardens.

This is especially striking at Kew, a peninsula on the Colombo Lake, formerly occupied by the Ceylon Rifles, whose barracks, with their dreary muddy surroundings, have been transformed by Mr. Campbell and his men into a scene of beauty. Here and at Bentota the gorgeous display of _Gloriosa superba_ and other splendid climbing plants remains vividly impressed on my memory. The same care is shown wherever a police-station has been established in various parts of the Isle, and at elevations ranging up to 7,000 feet, so that these are in a measure experimental gardens for new products.

It is greatly to be desired that these should quickly multiply, for as yet very many police-stations are still without any Government buildings, consequently ordinary dwelling-houses are hired to act as offices and lock-ups, while the constables have to hire quarters for themselves, often widely scattered, and sometimes in very undesirable company. The married men, who constitute more than two-thirds of the force, have to pay about one-eighth of their whole slender salary for the use of very wretched huts.

This is doubly hard, as not only are the necessaries of life much dearer in Ceylon than on the mainland of India, but the rate of pay in all ranks is from a quarter to half that of the corresponding rank in the Indian police. Even the Inspector-General, after serving ten years in the Bombay police, and after twenty-four years of ceaseless toil in Ceylon, has received only 1,000 rupees a month, which is the average pay of a Superintendent of Police in India. But the generally low scale of pay is more apparent by comparing the weekly 31_s._ 6_d._ of a first-class London constable with the salary of the European constables in Ceylon, most of whom receive less than 10_s._ a week, _minus_ several deductions!

Now, as regards our primary notions of the _raison d’être_ of a police force, namely, the detection and suppression of crime, I confess it was to me almost incredible when I was first told of the deeply-rooted criminal tendencies of the Singhalese—these civil people, seemingly so mild and gentle, so courteous and sympathetic to strangers—to hear of many being savage and cruel to one another, cherishing anger, wrath, malice, jealousy, railing, and revenge, resulting in a terribly large proportion of robberies, violent quarrels, and murders, was certainly a grievous revelation. Yet alas! it is all too true, and the police reports present a dreadful catalogue of most callous murders, generally on account of the merest trifle, the victim being often some one to whom the murderer bears no ill-will, perhaps even his own near relation, and the sole cause is that a false charge of murder may be brought against some innocent person, against whom he has a spite! Imagine murdering a friend in order to throw blame on a foe!

But the larger number of murders are the result of momentary passion—it is a word and a stab, and these, alas! multiply only too surely with the ever-spreading curses of drink and gambling, ‘the prolific parents of Singhalese vice.’

No one can fail to be struck with the singularly small proportion of women who find their way to the prisons of Ceylon. The daily average of convicted persons in prison in the last twelve years ranges from 1,612 (of whom only 17 were women) to 3,627 (of whom only 32 were women). Mr. Campbell questioned a number of the most intelligent prisoners as to what cause they attributed this difference to. ‘Our women do not drink nor gamble,’ was the reply.

All agreed that these two evils lay at the root of all their trouble. Not only do illicit drinking-houses provide gambling facilities to attract customers, but the men frequent secluded gardens, and arrange lonely meeting-places in the forest, whither each carries his own supply of liquor, and then they settle down to gamble, betting (heads-and-tails fashion) on the throw of certain shells, flat on one side, round on the other.

Some men, whose whole year’s earning would barely exceed a hundred rupees, confessed to having lost or won two hundred at a sitting. Then, after this excitement, some are sulky, some desperate, and the majority more than half drunk. Then the beggared, reckless men begin quarrelling, and most cruel murders ensue, in which the victim is sometimes struck a score of times, the others probably going off to recruit their fortunes by robbery or cattle-lifting.

A large number of deaths are caused by blows from clubs or bludgeons, but a still larger proportion are due to stabbing with the sharp-pointed sheath-knife which a Singhalese habitually carries in his belt for pruning and other agricultural work, and which proves only too handy in every moment of passion. It is urged that a law forbidding the use of these implements, and enforcing that of clasp-knives, would be beneficial, as the moment required for opening a clasp-knife would give time for thought; especially if it happily closed on the fingers of the passionate man, it might tend to cool his ardour, the average Singhalese, like the brutal Briton, being very averse to pain. Hence the excellent deterrent influence of flogging—a tolerably liberal use of the lash or the rattan (cane) having been found highly efficacious in diminishing cattle-stealing in some of the worst districts.

That the ever-present, ever-open sheath-knife is largely responsible for Singhalese crime is shown by the fact that nearly all the murderers are of this race; whereas the Tamils, who do not habitually wear these knives, though continually being convicted of aggravated assault, almost invariably stop short of murder.

It is worthy of note that in almost all murder cases the victim and his assailant are of the same nationality—Tamil against Tamil, Singhalese against Singhalese, Malay against Malay—provoking the absence of any race animosity.

I think a few samples of cases quoted from the police reports will be of interest, and in any case, the native names are characteristic.

First, then, I find that Ponambalam, a Tamil man, having been locked up for drunkenness, made a desperate rush to escape. Noordeen Bawa, a police-constable, stopped him, when Ponambalam seized Noordeen’s thumb of the right hand in his teeth, and held it for half an hour. It could not be released till Ponambalam’s teeth were forced apart with a chisel. Poor Noordeen, whose thumb was nearly bitten through, died of tetanus.

Puchirale, a Singhalese cultivator, was on a tree in the jungle picking fruit, when Appuhamy, also a Singhalese cultivator, fired and killed him. He said he had mistaken him for a monkey, but as they had been on bad terms, Appuhamy was put on his trial, but was acquitted.

Urugala, a wealthy Singhalese cultivator, aged sixty-five, having signified his intention of distributing his property among his children to the exclusion of his son Ukkurala, the latter beat his father _with a piece of sugar-cane_, so that he died.

At Batticaloa a man quarrelled with his mother about a cow, and killed her with a stick. For this he received four months’ imprisonment.

Appuwa, a Singhalese cultivator, while drunk, stabbed with a knife and so killed his little daughter Kirihami, aged four years, owing to a quarrel with his wife for not having his food ready. He was acquitted.

Abaran, a Singhalese, was shot dead by Sirimalhami, whose mistress Abaran had carried off some months previously. Two young men helped Sirimalhami to remove the body to a jungle and there burn it. The two assistants were each sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment, but the murderer was acquitted.

Near Matara, eight Singhalese set upon one, and hacked him to death with choppers and sticks. Three were sentenced to ten years with hard labour, but the rest were acquitted.

Muttu Menika, a Singhalese girl of fifteen, was stabbed seventeen times by Dingirea, a Singhalese man twenty-four years of age, because she refused to marry him. He was sentenced to death.

Till recently all the inmates of a house were sometimes brutally murdered by robbers in order to get rid of inconvenient witnesses; but this was a characteristic of a form of gang-robberies now happily stamped out.

As examples of crime in 1889, Harmanis Soyza, a Singhalese fisher aged twenty-five, having deserted his mistress, Siku, a Singhalese girl aged twenty, and being taunted by her and her mother, became infuriated, and entering their house, stabbed and killed them both, also stabbing and grievously wounding Siku’s sister, Punchi Nona.

Balina, a Singhalese washerwoman, having quarrelled with Sunda, a neighbour, set fire to his house, and then stabbed him so that he died, for which she was sentenced to death.

That the amount of jewellery worn by children does not oftener lead them into peril is surprising. Here, however, is a case in point. Sinnasamy, a Tamil coolie, cut the throat of Ramer, a Tamil schoolboy aged eight, in order to steal his bangles, watch-chain, and two pairs of earrings. Sinnasamy was hanged, as he deserved to be.

Mataraye Samel, a Singhalese servant, struck Babie, an ayah, on the head with an areca-nut cutter, because she told her mistress of his intimacy with a girl in the house. Lock-jaw supervened and poor Babie died, whereupon Samel was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour.

Velen Sinnatambu, a Tamil, aged twenty-five, in a fit of rage hacked his wife, Sinnapillai, to pieces with a chopper. She was a girl under sixteen years of age. The murderer was hanged.

Even peaceful green pastures can be made the occasion of battle in Ceylon as well as in the Hebrides. Thus at Jaffna, Velan Kanapathi was killed, and Arumugan Kanapathi seriously injured, by being struck with stones in a quarrel about rights of pasturage. Ten men, all Tamils, were apprehended on this charge.

In the same district three Tamil men entered the house of a fourth, armed with clubs and a sharp-edged stone, and fractured his skull. Each was sentenced to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment. Another skull was fractured by a heavy stone at beautiful Matara, in an altercation over the produce of a kitool-palm tree.

Most extraordinary cases of murder are those which are done solely in order to bring a false accusation against someone else. At Galle, Nicholas de Silva Madanayeke took his own child, twelve months old, and dashed it to the ground; then accused three young men of good character of having killed it. Happily they were acquitted and the inhuman father was hanged within the walls of Galle gaol.

Another case is that of a man who shot his own brother in order to bring a charge of murder against three enemies, while another knocked out the brains of his own little daughter in order to get his father-in-law hanged for the murder.

Near Kurunegalla, a Singhalese boy, aged twelve, was strangled by Hatuhami, a Singhalese man, in order that the murder might be attributed to some Buddhist priests with whom he was at enmity. For this, Hatuhami was sentenced to five years’ hard labour.

Here is a more elaborate story of a case which occurred in 1879. A young Singhalese girl, possessed of some land, had just died. Two men induced another Singhalese girl to personate her, and to appear before a notary and make over the land to them. The fraud was discovered, and in order to prevent the whole story from being revealed, the men dragged the luckless girl night after night from one jungle to another, till she told them that life was a burden to her; whereupon they killed her, and cut off her head to prevent identification in case the body should be found. Found it was, and identified by the toes, which were partially webbed. The men were hanged.

One is struck by the pitifully small temptation which results in such cruel murders. For instance, Babiela, a Singhalese villager, had a trifling dispute with a neighbour, and knowing that he possessed jewels worth about 200 rupees (less than £20), he stole quietly into the house at midnight, and cut the throats of the man, his wife, and four children. This miscreant was hanged.

I will only quote two more cases, each full of dramatic interest, only premising that though all the names are Portuguese, all the _dramatis personæ_ are pure Singhalese. The first is that of Miguel Perera, a wealthy and influential Singhalese, living within ten miles of Colombo, and a man popular with Europeans because of his pleasant manners, and on account of his great energy and influence among his people. When anything had to be done quickly, such as the repair of a road or the decoration of a town to welcome a distinguished visitor, he was the man to be depended on. For these good services he received from Government the title of Mudaliyar of Ragama.

But there was a dark side to this attractive person. In his private life he was unscrupulous and tyrannical, both to men and women, and when one day he was found at high noon lying on a road on his own estate with his throat cut, the investigation proved that the crime had been committed by some of his own retainers, goaded to madness by his ill-usage, one detail of which was that after cruelly beating a man, he would lock him up for the night in stocks, which he kept at his own house.

Four men were apprehended, and the evidence would almost undoubtedly have proved them to be murderers. But it seems as if the Singhalese could not leave justice to prove itself, so the two eldest sons of the dead man set to work to torture witnesses in order to fabricate further evidence, chiefly with a view to implicate an enemy of their father’s, Louis Mendis. Tampering with witnesses is an everyday occurrence, but torturing them is going a little too far; so when this conspiracy came to light, the tables were turned—the murderers were acquitted, and the two brothers were each sentenced to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

The Louis Mendis just mentioned was a cart-contractor, living at Nawalapitiya, in the Central Province, and the quarrel with Miguel Perera was due to the latter sending carters all the way from the coast to take away his custom. Mendis, not unnaturally, urged his own men to beat the intruders, and on one occasion, when he had primed his men with much arrack, a savage encounter occurred, in which a young carter from the coast, by name Juan Fernando, was _said to have been killed_. There was evidence of Fernando having been seen wounded, especially on the shoulder, but no corpse could be found, and Mendis and his party averred that the story of his death was a fabrication in order to damage Mendis, and that Perera was keeping Fernando out of sight.

Several months later the father came from his home on the coast to inform the police that he could point out the spot where his son’s body was buried. He accordingly led them to a spot in the jungle some miles from Nawalapitiya, and there they found the headless and decomposed corpse of a young man with a broken shoulder-blade, and on the body was found the waist-belt of the missing Juan Fernando, with his initials scratched on the plate. It was assumed that the body had been carried to the jungle, and there buried by a carter in the service of Mendis, who, however, was not available as a witness, having, in the interval, been hanged for stabbing a police-constable. Consequently, Mendis and his men were punished only for assault, being sentenced to terms of imprisonment with hard labour.

They maintain, however, that Juan Fernando is still alive, and concealed by Perera’s party, and that the body was one taken by Perera’s order from some graveyard, adorned with Fernando’s belt, and buried in the jungle in order to ruin Mendis, the head being removed in order to prevent its being proved that the body was _not_ that of Fernando. (Of course Perera’s people say the head was removed to prevent identification; but if that had been the case, it would have been a strange oversight to leave the belt with the telltale initials.)

These instances may suffice to give some idea of the chief difficulty which attends all judicial inquiries in Ceylon, namely, that of dealing with a race who, so far from attaching any disgrace to perjury, consider it as a fine art, and that the courts of law are the field where it may be most effectually and brilliantly practised. Mr. Campbell says, ‘Perjury is rampant and destructive, flooding our courts with false cases, paralysing their action, and producing grave deterioration of character.’

In his recent report on the administration of police in Ceylon, Mr. Giles[198] observes: ‘The most dangerous form of crime in Ceylon, and that which perhaps involves the greatest moral turpitude, is the proneness of the people _to prefer false accusations and to bear false testimony_. No man can feel safe while this state of things continues; and the evils are by no means confined to the individuals falsely accused. The prevalence of perjury causes the judiciary to reject evidence which, in a purer atmosphere, would be unhesitatingly accepted, and criminals benefit by this reluctance. The courts are flooded with cases which should never come before them, _their time dissipated in vainly endeavouring to arrive at truth where all is falsehood_, and a virtual denial of justice often leads to the perpetration of fresh crime.’

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Footnote 198:

Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Bengal.

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A somewhat striking illustration of this all-round falsehood was revealed to an astonished European by a grateful client, who had recently won a case to the utter amazement of his adversary. The latter had brought an action against him for the recovery of a large sum of money, for which he held defendant’s bond. There were reliable witnesses to prove the debt, and the case was apparently quite clear, till the defendant produced the plaintiff’s receipt in full for the sum advanced and duly repaid, and a tribe of witnesses to prove the authenticity of the signature. Nothing could be clearer, and the case, after patient hearing, was dismissed.

Now came the surprising revelation, which was that _there had been no money lent and none repaid_; but from the moment the defendant had learnt the charge that was to be brought against him, he had been perfectly aware that a bond must have been forged, and witnesses bribed to attest it; therefore (on the principle of ‘diamond cut diamond’), he had at once secured the services of a skilful forger to prepare the receipt, and of witnesses to attest it, and had thus by foul means secured the justice which he could not have obtained by fair straightforward action.

This is a fair example of the manner in which the criminal law is employed as ‘an engine of oppression rather than of redress;’ and to such an incredible extent is this perversion of justice carried, that in his report for 1881 Mr. Campbell says that from 95,000 to 110,000 persons are each year apprehended or summoned before the courts and never brought to trial, showing either the utter frivolity of the cases, or that the complainants or witnesses, or both, have been bought over.

‘Even these figures,’ he says, ‘large as they are, give no idea of the extent to which the machinery of justice is misused by the people to oppress and harass each other, and actually to frustrate justice itself, until we take into account the cloud of witnesses who are also brought up by summons and warrants, and further take into account the multiplied postponements which characterise our courts, and unless we still further recollect the multitude of minor cases which are annually tried by the Gansabhawa or village tribunals. These, in the course of the year 1880, numbered no less than 26,748.

‘The results of this inordinate misuse of the courts are the impoverishment of the people both by a waste of time and by actual expenditure on worthless crowds of self-styled lawyers, the fostering of their innate love of litigation, the encouraging of false witnesses and perjury, the general demoralisation which follows the prostitution of courts of justice, and the obstruction of the thorough investigation and punishment of serious crime. Better that a man should at his own proper peril strike a blow with a stick, or even with a knife, than that, by making false and malicious charges, he should make a court of justice an instrument for inflicting a cowardly blow. The blow by the court is quite as severe as the other, and the demoralisation of every one concerned is infinitely greater.’ It has been tersely said that ‘perjury is made so complete a business that cases are as regularly rehearsed in all their various scenes by the professional perjurer as a dramatic piece is at a theatre.’

Of course, when it is so impossible for a judge to know who or what to believe, true evidence is constantly rejected, criminals escape, and innocent people suffer unmerited punishment, or at least retain a rankling sense of injustice which leads to retaliation, either in the form of false charges in court or of criminal violence.

This subject impressed itself strongly on Mr. Campbell on his first arrival in 1866, when, at the court at Panaduré, out of six hundred cases instituted there were only six convictions. Of course, such immunity from punishment tends to prevalence of crime, the chances of conviction being so small that heinous offences are committed with little risk; for nothing is easier than to bribe all the witnesses, and probably the headman, whose duty it should be to prosecute, and sometimes even the plaintiff himself is bribed!

As regards the headmen, it is only natural that they should be amenable to bribes, for instead of receiving remuneration for helping in the detection of crime and the capture of criminals, by doing so they often have to incur serious expense out of their own slender means; so naturally it conduces both to their ease and profit to screen offenders.

The number of convictions fluctuates greatly, not from increase or decrease of crime, but according to the varied interpretation of law by successive Chief-Justices. In some years the interpretation has been such that convictions have been almost impossible, and so the most glaring criminals have been acquitted, and all their fraternity, openly laughing at the police, become bold beyond measure. Then comes a Chief-Justice who interprets laws differently; criminals find their deserts, and a comparative lull ensues.

Mr. Campbell has for years striven to effect the introduction of various simple measures with a view to lessening some of the evils complained of. Such are the preliminary investigation of cases ere granting warrants and summonses wholesale. This was instituted in 1872, as was also the payment of a trifling stamp duty, amounting only to 15 cents on each criminal charge and 5 cents on each subpœna of an accused person, or of one summoned as a witness.

Incredible as it may seem, these petty and vexatious cases, which in 1871 had numbered 68,832, at once fell to 46,701 in 1872! That stamp fees amounting to a few pence should in one year have kept 22,131 cases out of court is good proof of how frivolous and false were the pretexts for litigation.

Unfortunately, in 1888 the process was in a measure reversed. The 25-cent duty was taken off of all charges of voluntarily causing hurt, consequently the list of one class of cases rose in one year from 6,820 to 20,052, mainly owing to utterly frivolous, and certainly in most cases false charges; the lesson to be learnt being that ‘the trifling tax suffices to deter a large number of vindictive, idle, litigious people from using the courts as engines to oppress their neighbours.’

In one very common class of accusation, against which no man can be safe, namely, that of grave immorality, the whole question turns on which man can bribe the largest number of false witnesses, and the innocent accused is very often obliged to purchase safety by paying his accuser to let the charge drop.

If the besetting sin of the Singhalese is their inordinate love of litigation, this certainly is fostered by their very troublesome law of inheritance, which results in such minute subdivisions of property that the 199th share of a field, or a 50th of a small garden containing perhaps a dozen palms and a few plantains, becomes a fruitful source of legal contention, quarrels, and crime. Emerson Tennant alludes to a case in which the claim was for the 2,520th share in the produce of ten cocoa-palms!

As a sample of this sort of litigation, the Rev. R. Spence Hardy quoted an instance of an intricate claim on disputed property, in which the case of the plaintiff was as follows: ‘By inheritance through my father I am entitled to one-fourth of one-third of one-eighth. Through my mother I am further entitled to one-fourth of one-third of one-eighth. By purchase from one set of co-heirs I am entitled to one-ninety-sixth, from another set also one-ninety-sixth, and from a third set one-ninety-sixth more. Finally, from a fourth set of co-heirs I have purchased the 144th of the whole.’ There is a nice question to solve ere a landowner can begin to till his field or reap its produce.

But though these difficult questions must always have proved a fruitful source of contention, it is only in recent years that the number of gentlemen of the legal profession has increased so enormously. Mr. Spence Hardy, writing in 1864, stated that sixty years previously there were in the Isle only two Dutchmen who did the whole work of advocates. Even in that time the number had increased to 16 advocates, 135 proctors, and 144 notaries.

Now, as we enter on the last decade of the century, there are about 300 advocates and proctors, and solicitors and notaries have increased in proportion, besides an incalculable brood of self-styled lawyers of the lowest species, who infest every village tribunal, ‘outdoor proctors,’ as they are called, who gain their own living by inciting the people to litigation, till the whole country is flooded with warrants and summonses, resulting in a large proportion of the population spending their time either in the courts or on the road between them and their houses, greatly to their own impoverishment.

It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that so many favour a profession in which the highest honours are equally open to all without distinction of race—Singhalese or Tamil, Portuguese or Dutch, Eurasian or European, have equal chances in the race for distinction as barristers, magistrates, or judges.

In looking over the list of these legal names, I am much struck by observing how curiously certain names predominate in certain districts. Thus among the notaries in the Southern Province I find twenty-one De Silvas, distinguished by such high-sounding first names as Goonewardene, Sameresingha, Wickremanaike, Rajakuruna, &c. Turning to the Colombo district, I find in succession fourteen of the family of Perera with such Christian names as Andris, Juan, Paulus, Manual, &c. Of the multitude of De and Don there is no end, by no means necessarily implying Portuguese descent, but because so many of the families of purest Singhalese and Kandyan blood took these names from the godfather of their Christian baptism; thus we have Don Philip de Alvis, Don Charles Appuhamy, Don Carolis Senevaratna, Don Francisco Weresakara, Don Johanis Amarasakara, Domingo De Mendis.[199]

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Footnote 199:

I trust these gentlemen will pardon my quoting real names to
illustrate an interesting subject.

As a sample of pleasant names for daily use, I cannot resist quoting a
paragraph from a Ceylon paper which happens to be lying before me:—

‘A MURDERER WANTED.—Induruwabadahelage Jema of Talawala, charged with
the murder, on July 20th last, of one Pepiliyanebadahelage Barlis
Barbos, has fled from justice. A large reward is offered for such
information as shall lead to his apprehension and conviction.’

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Some historical suggestion may perhaps be gathered from the geographical distribution of these names. Thus in the list of notaries for the district of Colombo, I observe nine with the prefix De, and upward of forty with that of Don. In Kalutara, out of fifty-one, twenty-three own these honorific prefixes. Ratnapura has sixteen notaries, not one prefix. In the Central Province a dozen in a hundred are thus distinguished. In the Eastern and Northern Provinces, including Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Jaffna, and Manaar, there is not one. In the Southern Province, out of a total of about fifty, twenty-four are De and only one Don. In the North-West Province, Chilaw owns one in fifteen, and Kurunegalla, out of a list of twenty-seven, furnishes one Don.

It would be interesting to know whether the names accepted in the last century as a passport to State employment retain any special traditionary interest for their present owners.

Where so many have elected to earn their own bread by fostering the natural love of litigation among their countrymen, it follows that the blessing of the peacemakers is the last thing to be desired, and the longer a case can be spun out, and the oftener it is postponed, the better for the lawyers. In this respect matters have not mended since, in 1849, Major Thomas Skinner wrote: ‘The prevailing system of our district courts admits of the proctors feeding upon their client for years.... I have seen instances wherein the judicial stamps have far exceeded the value of the case under adjudication, and which, by numberless vexatious postponements, have been protracted over a period of many years, to the ruin of both plaintiff and defendant—the proctors by their fees, and the Government by the sale of judicial stamps, being the only gainers.’

For one thing, criminal cases are constantly brought to court so ill-prepared as to necessitate being postponed again and again, thus wasting the time of magistrates, prosecutors, and witnesses.

Another thing by which the business of the courts is very unnecessarily delayed is by the invariable employment of magistrates’ interpreters. In India, where in each Presidency there are so many different languages, each magistrate is bound to master whatever is requisite for the conduct of his own court, interpreters being only employed in the supreme courts. In Ceylon, although there are only two native languages, in which every newcomer has to pass examinations, every word spoken in court, every question and every answer, must be repeated through an interpreter, just doubling the work and the time expended.

Among the cases which call for considerable detective skill are those of forging bank-notes and coins, the former being generally the joint work of professional engravers and surveyors, while the false rupees, though generally manufactured by Singhalese goldsmiths, are occasionally proved to be the handiwork of Buddhist priests, who have acquired the requisite skill by casting images of Buddha! The Buddhist priests are said to be the chief money-lenders and usurers, and it is whispered that they contribute rather a large proportion to the catalogue of felons, though, to avoid scandal, they are generally unrobed before trial. Some years ago, however, one was hanged in full canonicals, just to show that British law is no respecter of persons.

As regards deaths from violence or accident, the statistics for 1889 show that during that year inquests were held in the Isle on the bodies of 2,166 persons. But there must have been many more whose deaths were never heard of—men and women who from sickness or weakness perished by lonely roadsides, or were killed by wild beasts in jungles, or murdered and secretly buried, to say nothing of those drowned in the sea, the rivers, lakes, and tanks.

Among the details of these deaths are 125 suicides, of whom 21 drowned themselves and the rest hanged themselves, 121 died from snake-bites, 87 by accidentally drowning in rivers and tanks, 134 by falling into wells, 383 by falling from trees, and 33 from gunshot wounds. (The increasing misuse of firearms forms a notable feature in recent police reports.) Almost every year wild beasts are responsible for a certain proportion of deaths; bears, elephants, chetahs, boars, buffaloes, alligators, and even hornets and bees, each doing their part in thus thinning the population.

To glance at the pleasanter aspects of police-work in Ceylon, one of Mr. Campbell’s most successful schemes has been the Servants’ Registration Ordinance, by which every servant is bound to have a pocket-register, in which his antecedents are recorded, as are also the beginning and end of each new service, and the character he has acquired in each. The registrars are assistant-superintendents of police. The scheme has proved invaluable in the prevention of one of the commonest forms of burglary, made easy by the connivance of servants.

Alas! here as elsewhere familiarity with the white race does not always tend to raise them in the veneration of their brown brothers. Mr. Campbell says: ‘The days have gone by in which we could leave the house-door unbarred during the night. Much of the old contentedness and of the old respect for the European has gone, and new wants and excitements—amongst them drinking and gambling—must be satisfied.’

In a country whose wealth consists so largely in its crops, these of course, are a continual source of temptation to thieves, not only in the wide extent of growing crops, which it is scarcely possible for planters to guard, but still more when these are gathered and travelling from the store to the market. Take, for instance, the transport of coffee from a plantation in Uva to Colombo, a distance of perhaps two hundred miles, by road, river, and either lake or rail. Each cart-load is worth about 1,000 rupees, each boat-load about 10,000 rupees.

Under the old system each cart-load was intrusted to the sole care of a carter, and each boat-load to that of a crew, of whom, in either case, ‘the senders generally knew absolutely nothing, and in whose honesty they had every cause to disbelieve!’ The consequence was that whole cart-loads sometimes disappeared. In one case the police had the satisfaction of convicting a carter and a native agent who had thus appropriated 400 bushels of coffee, valued at 4,500 rupees! Less audacious thieves were content with freely helping themselves from the coffee-bags. These carts were lost sight of for weeks; and the coffee which travelled from Ratnapura to Colombo by river, canal, and lake was at the mercy of the boatmen, who could halt for as many days as they saw fit, and call the aid of their families to manipulate it as they pleased.

So that throughout its long journey the coffee was subject to pilfering at the hands of drivers, boatmen, and other depredators, who sometimes stole half the good beans and filled up the sacks with inferior ones, or else made up weight and bulk by swelling the remainder with water, so that it reached the London market deteriorated in colour and in value.

To counteract this mischief, Mr. Campbell devised a simple and very effectual system of cart registration. He established police-stations at regular intervals along the road and river from Ratnapura to Kalutara (whence the sea-coast railway conveys the freight to Colombo), and each loaded cart or boat is compelled to report itself at each of these stations, whence the exact date of its arrival and start is intimated day by day to the Chamber of Commerce at Colombo. Thus the precious produce is under strict care throughout its journey, and theft becomes well-nigh impossible.

The regulation of pilgrimages and the strict sanitation of pilgrim camps is another of the schemes devised and excellently enforced by Mr. Campbell, thereby preventing a very large amount of suffering and mortality, and the too probable development of cholera in the Isle.

The system of police registration of all dogs is so rigidly enforced in the principal towns, that Ceylon is in a great measure exempt from hydrophobia. Each registered dog must wear a stamped municipal collar, obtained by his owner on payment of a small fee, and any luckless dogs not provided with this safeguard are captured and carried in a large cage on wheels to a pond, where, unless claimed within forty-eight hours, they are either shot or drowned (by bodily immersing the cage in water).

A matter which has involved much care and thought has been how to check cruelty to animals in this land, where (by the teaching of Buddha being carried out in the letter and utterly neglected in the spirit) life must not be taken—at least not the life of lower animals, for that of human beings is by no means so secure! But suffering is of no consequence. The cruelty so common in Ceylon is not wanton, as in too many countries, but seems to arise from sheer callousness to the tortures which are carelessly inflicted on poor suffering creatures. Thus deer, hares, snipe, doves, &c., badly wounded and with broken bones, are kept alive for days and hawked about in hopes of obtaining a sale. Six or eight fowls are tightly tied together by the feet, and are then strung, head downwards, from the ends of a stick balanced on the shoulder, and are thus carried for miles, cackling in anguish, till they are too weak and suffering to do so any more. Even the lovely little green parroquets are not exempt from cruel treatment. Large numbers are captured in the neighbourhood of Chilaw, and crammed into mat bags, the mouth of which is tied up, and these are carried, slung from the ends of a stick, all the way to Colombo, where the survivors find a ready market.

Fat pigs are thus fastened to a stick, carried between two men, the cord by which their poor legs are tied cutting deep into the flesh, and causing such pain that the wretched pig sometimes dies ere reaching his destination. The system of branding cattle by burning elaborate patterns all over them (to the destruction of the hide) is justified by the plea that doing so prevents rheumatism. Whether it does so or not, it assuredly causes the poor beast excruciating agony.

Worst of all is the barbarity, formerly commonly practised in the open market, and not yet wholly put down, of selling large live turtles piecemeal, each purchaser pointing out the exact slice he desired, while the wretched fellow-creature lay writhing and gasping in agony for hours, till the last comer came to claim the heart and head, the latter being the only vital part; for, wonderful to tell, turtles continue to live and suffer after the heart has been cut out.

The commonest form in which cruelty is now apparent is in over-driving wretched worn-out horses, which are too often brutally beaten to make them drag weights far beyond their strength.

In 1862 a law was enacted for the protection of domestic animals, elephants, and turtles, but it does not appear to have been strictly enforced till about ten years ago. In 1881, however, the police were exhorted to greater diligence in this matter, with such excellent effect, that since that date there have been upwards of 3,000 convictions under this head. Moreover, a strong Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has now been formed, which it is hoped will prove a valuable auxiliary to the police. In the first six months of 1891 it secured convictions of cruelty against 229 persons in Colombo alone.

In addition to the regular duties of the police, a severe strain of work occasionally arises from external causes. Such was the famine in Southern India in 1877, from which time till 1880 thousands of poor starved creatures found their way to Ceylon, hoping to obtain employment on the estates, but who from weakness and illness were totally unable to work.

These helpless creatures, men, women, and children, reduced by starvation to mere apathy, were collected from the roadsides. Hundreds were found dead or dying, and received decent burial. The survivors were carried to temporary hospitals, where they were cared for and fed till they were able to work or travel, when they were helped on their journey, the naked being furnished with needful clothing, and free passages to India provided for such as longed to return to their own homes. So cheaply was this managed, that the average cost of the journey for each coolie was under two rupees. Food for the voyage was also provided, and a small sum to keep them from starvation on their journey from the coast to their own village.

A very onerous ‘occasional duty’ is the care of the pearl-fishery, as may well be imagined, were it only in guarding the sanitation of the huge camp of 10,000 persons on the arid sea-beach, to which are daily brought millions of oysters to putrefy in the burning sun. The presence of about sixty police is required for about eighty days, during which they have charge of everything. They must strictly guard the only available drinking-water; they are responsible for the orderly and punctual start of all the boats, numbering about two hundred, and for seeing that each is escorted by a member of the civil boatguard, who must never sail twice with the same tindal and crew. The boats start at midnight and return the following afternoon, when the oysters are carried ashore in baskets, and the European police have to keep close watch during the unloading, and then, in all weather, to wade out and search the boats to see that no oysters have been secreted. They must also ceaselessly guard the enclosure within which the precious shells are stored, for when an uncomfortable oyster gapes, and reveals a tempting pearl, there are plenty of eager coolies ready to snatch it up and swallow it, or, if it is small enough, they might conceal it under a long finger-nail. But so well do the police guard the treasure, that there is no reason to believe that either the pearls or the large sums of money brought for their purchase are ever stolen.

Having discoursed at such length on the police and their manifold duties, I may add that Ceylon has now also a very efficient volunteer regiment—the Ceylon Light Infantry Corps, which in 1885 numbered 930, including officers. Like the police, this force is composed of representatives of all the nationalities on the Isle, namely, 200 British-born, 454 Eurasians, 86 Malays, 53 Tamils, 107 Singhalese, and 33 others. The headquarters of the force are at Colombo, but companies are stationed at Kandy, Badulla, and Kurunegalla.[200]

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Footnote 200:

Since the retirement of Sir G. W. R. Campbell from public service, the
police force in each province has been placed under the direction of
the Government Agent, who is held responsible for the suppression of
crime and for the maintenance of order. Under these circumstances,
there is room for hope that there will henceforth be less zeal in
promoting a more extensive sale of arrack.]

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Long may it be ere they are called out to defend the beautiful Isle against foreign foes!