and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him,
harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned
as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be
treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility
offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and
trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the
vindication of law and authority.

Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force
dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like
rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar
to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all
his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his
constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the
Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.
He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily
habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way
(and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and
goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a
police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native
give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.

This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.
They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror.
The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to
avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full
advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous,
insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a
golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made
the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and