Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 4.7.7

4.7.7

We cannot, indeed, too greatly admire the old Persian proverb, Na-hac Kouta Better-Ez hac Deras: 'Speedy injustice is preferable to tardy justice.' Protracted law-suits are, I admit, insupportable evils in any state, and it is incumbent upon a Sovereign to provide a remedy against them. It is certain that no remedy would be so efficacious as the destruction of the right of private property. Do away with this meum and tuum, and the necessity for an infinite number of legal proceedings will at once cease, especially for those which are important, long, and intricate : the larger portion of magistrates employed by the King to administer justice to his subjects will also become useless, as will those swarms of attorneys and counsellors who live by judicial contests. But it is equally certain that the remedy would be infinitely worse than the disease, and that there is no estimating the misery that would afflict the country. Instead of magistrates on whose probity the monarch can depend, we should be at the mercy of such rulers as I have described. In Asia, if justice be ever administered, it is among the lower classes, among persons who, being equally poor, have no means of corrupting the judges, and of buying false witnesses ; witnesses always to be had in great numbers, at a cheap rate, and never punished. I am speaking the language of several years' experience ;