Arrests.    Convictions. 
Offenses against public peace    15,190          5,088
Murder                            3,255          1,102
Assault                          42,496         12,597
Dacoity or highway robbery        3,320            706
Cattle stealing                  29,691          9,307
Ordinary theft                  183,463         45,566
House-breaking                  192,353         23,143
Vagrancy                         25,212         18,877
Public nuisances                216,285        201,421

The following table will show the total daily average of prisoners, men and women, serving sentences for penal offenses in the prisons of India during the years named: 

Men.    Women.     Total.
1892    93,061    3,142    96,202
1893    91,976    2,988    94,964
1894    92,236    2,941    95,177
1895    97,869    3,216   101,085
1896   100,406    3,280   103,686
1897   109,989    3,277   113,266
1898   103,517    2,927   106,446
1899   101,518    2,773   104,292
1900   114,854    3,253   118,107
1901   108,258    3,124   111,382

Those who are familiar with criminal statistics in the United States and other countries, will, I am confident, agree with me that this is a most remarkable record for a population of 300,000,000, illiterate, superstitious, impregnated with false ideas of honor and morality, and packed so densely as the people of India are.  The courts of justice have reached a high standard; the lower courts are administered almost exclusively by natives; the higher courts by English and natives together.  No trial of importance ever takes place except before a mixed court, and usually the three great religions—­Brahminism, Mohammedanism and Christianity—­are represented on the bench.

One of the most difficult and delicate tasks of the British authorities has been to prevent infanticide, the murder of girl infants, because from time immemorial among all the races of India it has been practiced openly and without restraint and in many sections as a religious duty.  And what has made it more difficult, it prevailed most extensively among the families of the highest rank, and among the natives, communities and provinces which were most loyal to the British crown.  For example, the Rajputs, of whom I have written at length in a previous chapter, are the chivalry of India.  They trace their descent from the gods, and are proud of their nobility and their honor, yet it has been the custom among them as far back as traditions run, to strangle more than half their girl babies at birth, and until this was stopped the records showed numbers of villages where there was not a single girl, and where there never had been one within the memory of man.  As late as the census of 1869 seven villages were reported with 104 boys and one girl, twenty-three villages with 284 boys and twenty-three girls and many others in similar proportions.  The statistics of the recent census of 1901, by the disparity between the