[6]
When they cannot find them, the native officers either seize innocent
persons, and frighten them into confession, or else they try to
conceal the crime, and in this they are seconded by the sufferers in
the robbery, who will always avoid, if they can, a prosecution in our
courts, and by their neighbours, who dread being summoned to give
evidence as a serious calamity. The man who has been robbed, instead
of being an object of compassion among his neighbours, often incurs
their resentment for subjecting them to this calamity; and they not
only pay largely themselves, but make him pay largely, to have his
losses concealed from the magistrate. Formerly, when a district was
visited by a judge of circuit to hold his sessions only once or twice
a year, and men were constantly bound over to prosecute and appear as
evidence from sessions to sessions, till they were wearied and
worried to death, this evil was much greater than at present, when
every district is provided with its judge of sessions, who is, or
ought to be, always ready to take up the cases committed for trial by
the magistrate.[7] This was one of the best measures of Lord W.
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