=Source.=--_The Times_, March 5.
Four weeks have elapsed since we first called attention to
the disapprobation and discontent excited among the English
residents in India by the Bill for subjecting them to the criminal
jurisdiction of native judges and magistrates. The measure,
of which we then pointed out the dangers, has since assumed a
portentous importance. The whole non-official European community
has been convulsed by it.... As for the asserted symmetry which is
to follow from it, and the asserted inequalities which it is to
remove, it will not, and cannot, do what it has been credited with
doing. It removes one inequality while it leaves a dozen others
untouched, and the inequality which it does remove is just that
which is most clearly justifiable. It is a pandering, we will not
say to native opinion, for no such opinion has been formed for it,
but to the noisily expressed views of the native Press, and of
one or two native civil servants, who are anxious to exercise the
powers which the Bill confers, and who are on that very account
so much the less fit to be trusted with them.... The Bill may be
unimportant in itself, but it is one among many signs of the new
ideas and new principles upon which the Government of India is to
be conducted, ideas and principles which are utterly at variance
with those by which our position in the country has been gained and
held.