John Dickson, an English gentleman of good birth though at present rather in straightened circumstances had fallen under the displeasure of a clique of designing natives headed by one Rungini Jeliani, a person, as we are assured on good authority, of great wealth, and considerable influence in native society. He was hauled up before a native Magistrate on a charge of some petty larceny which, if the trial had taken place before a European magistrate, would have been at once thrown out as preposterous, when preferred against a European of Mr. Dickson’s position and character. But Baboo Jaladhar Gangooly, the ebony-coloured Daniel before whose awful tribunal, Mr. Dickson had the misfortune to be dragged, was incapable of understanding that petty larcenies, however congenial to sharp intellects of his own country, have never been known to be perpetrated by men born and bred on English soil, and the poor man was convicted on evidence the trumpery character of which, was probably as well known to the magistrate as to the prosecutors themselves. The poor man pleaded his birth, and his rights as a European British subject, to be tried by a magistrate of his own race, but the plea was negatived for reasons we neither know nor are able to conjecture. Possibly the Babu was under the impression that Lord Ripon’s cruel and nefarious Government had already passed into Law the Bill which is to authorize every man with a dark skin lawfully to murder and hang every man with a white one. May that day be distant yet! Meanwhile we leave our readers to conjecture from a study of the names Jaladhar and Jaliani whether the tie of kindred which obviously exists between prosecutor and magistrate has had no influence in producing this extraordinary decision.”
এই লীডর বাহির হইলে পর উহা পড়িয়া জেলার মাজিষ্ট্রেট সাহেব জলধরবাবুকে চাপরাশি পাঠাইয়া তলব করিয়া আনিলেন। গরিব ব্রাহ্মণ নবমীর পাঁঠার মত কাঁপিতে কাঁপিতে হুজুরের কাছে গিয়া উপস্থিত হইল। তিনি সেলাম না করিতে করিতে, সাহেব গরম হইয়া বলিলেন, “What do you mean, Babu, by convicting a European British subject?”
ডিপুটি। What European British subject, Sir?
