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

274 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. Vv.

Governments, and to be in number not more than thirty for a Presidency town, and not more than twenty for a district as constituted under this Act. From the delegates thus appointed are to be chosen in due rotation those who assist at the trial of suits in the matrimonial courts. The appointment of a delegate is to be for life, or until resignation, with the usual provision attached to a judicial office of ‘quamdiu se bene gesserit. The local Governments, we may be sure, will always be cautious to appoint the most respectable and intelligent Parsis to this office, and I sincerely trust that the position of a delegate may hereafter be an object of honourable ambition to Parsi gentlemen. In suits tried in the matrimonial courts all questions of law and procedure will be determined by the presiding judge, but the decision on the facts is to be the decision of the majority of the delegates assisting at the trial. Should such be the wish of either party to the suit, the case may be heard with closed doors. The procedure is to be as far as possible that of the code of civil procedure, and an appeal will lie from the decisions of all matrimonial courts, whether chief or district, to Her Majesty’s High Court of Judicature.

“Now, I think that the courts which it is thus proposed to establish will exactly attain the objects which the Bill had in view. All suits for the declaration of nullity of marriages, for dissolution on account of desertion, for divorce and judicial separation, and for restitution of conjugal rights, will in effect be decided by the Parsis themselves; while the presence and active supervision of an experienced judge will be an ample guarantee to the general public, not merely that the investigation will be a fair one—for that, as far as intention goes, would be the result if the matter were left exclusively to the adjudication of the Parsis—but that the complex rules of evidence and the various minutiz which are involved in the conduct of a trial are duly observed, and, what is an important point with an inexperienced tribunal, that the zeal and ability of advocates have no more than their just weight with those in whom the power of decision is vested.” 1

1 The Parsi chief matrimonial court at Bombay has now been in existence for nineteen years. That it has worked most satisfactorily