History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

cHaP. v.] LEGAL DIFFERENCES. 251

requirements. Every day, they said, was bringing forth stronger proofs of the necessity of some action +o meet their wants and wishes; as, in the event of persons dying intestate, their property was hable to the operation of the English law, which was quite at variance with their customs and usages. They cited a case of recent occurrence, in which a Parsi had shortly before his death married a second wife, leaying children (minors) by the first marriage ; according to English law the widow in that case was entitled to a third, and the children, in equal shares, to the residue. This, they said, according to their laws and customs, was a most unfair and improper distribution of property, as by it the son was deprived of the means of carrying on the father’s name, while the daughters, if any, were invested with a large share of property, which they could not watch over themselves, and which must surely expose them to the machinations of bad and worthless relatives or other persons into whose hands they might confide their affairs.

The evils which have been mentioned were admitted by the judges of the late Supreme Court. They frequently suggested to the Parsis that they should remedy the unhappy state of things by preparing and submitting a code of laws, which, if agreed upon by the mass of their people, would be accepted as law in the English courts of justice. The late lamented Sir Erskine Perry, Chief Justice