lost his life in the issue
of a disturbance he had raised in the district. Two of the sons died
afterwards, within a week of each other. Mas Kaddah, the fourth, is
blind; and Treman, the fifth, lame. All this is attributed to, and firmly
believed to be the consequence of, the father's perjury.

COLLATERAL OATHS.

In administering an oath, if the matter litigated respects the property
of the grandfather, all the collateral branches of the family descended
from him are understood to be included in its operation: if the father's
effects only are concerned, or the transaction happened in his lifetime,
his descendants are included: if the affair regards only the present
parties and originated with them, they and their immediate descendants
only are comprehended in the consequences of the oath; and if any single
one of these descendants refuses to join in the oath it vitiates the
whole; that is, it has the same effect as if the party himself refused to
swear; a case that not unfrequently occurs. It may be observed that the
spirit of this custom tends to the requiring a weight of evidence and an
increase of the importance of the oath in proportion as the distance of
time renders the fact to be established less capable of proof in the
ordinary way.

Sometimes the difficulty of the case alone will induce the court to
insist on administering the oath to the relations of the parties,
although they are nowise concerned in the transaction. I recollect an
instance where three people were prosecuted for a theft. There was no
positive proof against them, yet the circumstances were so strong that it
appeared proper to put them to the test of one of these collateral oaths.
They were all willing, and two of them swore. When it came to the turn of
the third he could not persuade his relations to join with him, and he
was accordingly brought in for the whole amount of the goods stolen, and
penalties annexed.

These customs bear a strong resemblance to the rules of proof established
among our ancestors, the Anglo-Saxons, who were likewise obliged, in the
case of oaths taken for the purpose of exculpation, to produce a certain
number of compurgators; but, as these might be any indifferent persons,
who would take upon them to bear testimony to the truth of what their
neighbour swore, from an opinion of his veracity, there seems to be more
refinement and more knowledge of human nature in the Sumatran practice.
The idea of devoting to destru