QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 30 July 1888)

LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY

asked the Secretary of State for India, What steps have been taken by the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal with reference to the conduct of Mr. Kirkwood, Sessions Judge at Patna, who was reported to have ordered the examination by a surgeon of a Hindu girl who was complainant in a case of theft of her property by a man recently released from gaol after three years' imprisonment? The noble Lord said, that a Hindu just released from three years' imprisonment had broken into a house at Dinapore and carried off some brass utensils. The occupier of the house, a Hindu girl of 12 years of age, who had left it to fetch some water, returned immediately after the robbery, found the door had been tampered with, and that her brass vessels had disappeared. A hue and cry was raised, and the thief was pursued and captured, and committed to trial by the cantonment magistrate of Dinapore, as he was an old offender. On the 11th of May the prisoner was tried at the Patna Sessions by Mr. Kirkwood. The prisoner had no questions to ask the girl, nor did he set up any defence tending to impugn her character. Nevertheless the Judge, Mr. Kirkwood, thought fit to ask the witness whether she had always been chaste. She said she had, upon which the Judge ordered her to be examined. No evidence against the girl was produced; but Mr. Kirkwood discredited her evidence, and the prisoner, who had made no defence, was acquitted. After this a Punchayat, or committee of five of her caste men, expelled the girl from her caste on account of the outrage put upon her by Mr. Kirkwood, and she had been deprived of her means of subsistence. Now what was the previous record of Mr. Kirkwood's exploits on the Bench? Three cases of his misconduct on the Bench were reported. One of these occurred in 1876, when he was district magistrate in Chittagong, when he wantonly disgraced Babu Lal Chand Chowdhury, honorary magistrate and municipal commissioner, and ordered him to mount guard over a public latrine, the erection 723 of which he had opposed, and subsequently instituted a groundless criminal prosecution against him. It was said that Mr. Kirkwood should have been dismissed the service at that time, but Sir Richard Temple simply degraded him, and, declaring his unfitness for executive work, transferred him to the Judicial Bench. It also appeared that Lord Lytton considered the sentence on Mr. Kirkwood too lenient, but declined to enhance the punishment. He (Lord Stanley of Alderley) would ask the noble Viscount the Secretary of State what redress he would give to the girl for the outrage which she had suffered from Mr. Kirkwood? This, however, was not the only case of judicial misconduct in Bengal; there were complaints against Mr. Posford and four other civilian Judges or Magistrates. There were also great complaints against the political agents, and these had culminated in the Hyderabad scandals. He regretted to be obliged to say that he thought that the Secretary of State for India or the India Office were responsible for increased misconduct on the part of the officials in India. The Secretary of State had done two acts which must have encouraged the hopes of impunity in wrong-doers, and must have discouraged Governors and Lieutenant Governors in their endeavours to check evil-doers. The Secretary of State last year had refused to make any inquiry into the Arnighad case, on the ground that it had not been referred to him by the Indian Government. If a wrong was done and the Indian Government neglected to redress it, why should they report it to the India Office? The noble Viscount lately professed great respect for the High Courts of India; why, then, had he appointed Sir Alfred Lyall to be a Member of his Council, in the teeth of the summing up of the Chief Justice of Allahabad, since promoted to be Chief Justice of Calcutta, in the trial of Captain Hearsey? In that trial Sir Alfred Lyall had been the virtual defendant. The trial turned upon the bad language used by Mr. Laidman on the Bench. Sir Alfred Lyall had shown, by what he had written in The Old Pindarry, that he had no personal predilection for the use of bad language, but he had upheld Mr. Laidman only because he belonged to the Civil Service. Other Members of the India Office 724 Council might have the same tendency always to uphold the Civil Service. If he was mistaken in accusing the India Office, the noble Viscount could prove it by stating how many Minutes of dissent had been recorded by the Council in such cases against his views or those of his Predecessors. In the Cambay case, the noble Viscount had administered a rebuff to Lord Reay, the Governor of Bombay; and Lord Reay must be a man of great forbearance if he had not sent to the Secretary of State a despatch containing most voluminous inclosures of criticism on the course followed by the Secretary of State, taken from the whole Press of India. He would make two entreaties to the noble Viscount—one that he should not put too great a strain upon his personal popularity by refusing to inquire into these matters; the other, that he should rely more upon his own unassisted judgment, and less upon that of Members of his Council. Some might say that he (Lord Stanley of Alderley) had laid too much stress upon this case, and that things might be done in Patna which might not be done in London. But it was not competent to a Secretary of State for India to say that the female subjects of the Empress were to be less protected from outrage than the female subjects of the Queen; and if the Secretary of State were to show by his actions that he thought so, he would be reminded of the words of the Royal Proclamation of 1858, which were only a paraphrase of the words of an ancient Queen— Tros, Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Viscount CROSS)

My Lords, in answer to the Question put to me, I must refer the noble Lord to the reply given in "another place" on the 24th instant by Sir John Gorst to Mr. S. Smith. That reply was as follows— Mr. Kirkwood appears to have ordered a girl of 12, who had accused a man of stealing, to be examined. He has been severely censured for this by the High Court of Judicature in Bengal, and the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal has determined to remove him from judicial service. It is stated that Mr. Kirkwood intends to appeal. Subsequently information has reached me by telegram that Mr. Kirkwood proposes to resign the Civil Service, if the order of degradation be withheld and the censure restricted to the terms used 725 by the Bengal High Court—namely, conduct reprehensible in high degree. This proposal is now under the consideration of the Government of India. Whatever decision they may arrive at will be reviewed by me in the usual way when the facts of the case are fully brought to my knowledge. The noble Lord has referred to other cases of alleged misconduct on the part of judicial officers of the Civil Service, and to the apathy of the India Office and of the Government of India; but nothing of the kind, however, has been brought to my knowledge to show that any of the Judges have not behaved properly. Since I have been in Office I have taken care to appoint no judicial officers who are not adequate to perform their duties. I was rather astonished to hear the speech of the noble Lord attacking these officials, because the Notice on the Paper simply referred to one particular case, and I have little to add to the answer given the other day in "another place."