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It is impossible to understand Mr. Watson's reasons for this phenomenal increase by any reference either to the history of this case or to the law or equity involved therein.
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He seems to have ignored entirely the long series of agreements solemnly made between the Jaips and the Palitana Durbar throughout the Nineteenth Century,--agreements which were given an added degree of solemnity by their being sometimes negotiated through the mediation of the British Government, and always ratified and confirmed by that Government. Even if we go no further back than the British period, the legal force of these solemn agreements ought to have counselled Mr. Watson, had he ever paid the slightest attention to them, that the nature and bearings of the Jain-Palitana dispute was something quite sui juris, something which had to be judged by the law and custom and contracts governing that particular case. In those agreements it has been laid down more than once, and without possibility of ambiguity, that the payment made by the Jain community was in the nature of an agreed stipulation for specific service, and not in the least in the nature of a commutation of tax payments. The Palitana Durbar has no right to tax the Jain pilgrims, from its own state, and a fortiori, from beyond its own jurisdiction. In the former case,
