One would imagine that this circumstance was much more likely to have happened in our High Court of Chancery, under the “sharp practice” of a Dodson and Fogg. It seems to be a mutilated Burman version of one of our “great” institutions made into a matter of physical force by Malcom’s Oriental Chartist. I may here mention an affecting incident related by Sangermano,[38] and doubtlessly too true.
A poor widow, who was hard pinched to pay the tax demanded of her, was obliged to sell her only daughter to obtain the sum. The money was received, and heavy at heart she returned home, and put it in a box in her house, intending to lament that night, and carry the money to her inexorable creditor in the morning. But the measure of her sorrows was not yet full. Some thieves broke into the house and stole the money. In the morning she discovered her loss, and this additional circumstance caused the bounds of her grief to flow even beyond that of silence, and sitting before her door she gave herself up to loud lamentations. As she was weeping, an emissary of the city magistrate passed by, and inquired into the cause of her sorrow. He, upon hearing the sad story, related the matter to his master. The poor creature was then summoned to the _court of justice_, and commanded to deliver up the thief. Of course this was impossible. She was detained in the stocks until she could scrape together money enough to satisfy the rapacity of the judge.
Sometimes these affairs are very comical. The same author relates another, the circumstances of which are as follows:—
A woman employed in cooking fish for dinner was called away for an instant. The cat, watching her opportunity, seized a half-roasted fish, and ran out of the house. The woman immediately ran after the cat, exclaiming, “The cat has stolen my fish!” A few days afterwards she was summoned before the magistrate, who demanded the thief at her hands. It was of no use that she explained that the thief was a cat. The magistrate has nothing to do with that. His time was valuable, and the expenses of the court must be paid.
The report of Captain Alves, cited in Crawfurd,[39] contains ample accounts of the court charges.
How very similar the Burman law courts are to our own! The following extract from the good father’s work will show it:[40]—“In civil causes, lawsuits are terminated much more expeditiously than is generally the case in our part of the world, provided always that the litigants are not rich, for then the affair is extremely long, and _sometimes never concluded at all_. I was myself acquainted with two rich European merchants and ship-masters, who ruined themselves so completely by a lawsuit, that they became destitute of the common necessaries of life, and the lawsuit withal was not decided, nor will ever be.” Just like Jarndyce and Jarndyce,—the same costly affair everywhere!