ART. IV.-1. An Act for establishing a Court of Subordinate Jurisdiction in the City of Calcutta. (Read in Council for the first time on the 13th March, 1847.) Calcutta Gazette, March 27.

2. An Act for the Improvement of the Administration of Justice in the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal. Read first time 13th March, 1847.—Ibid.

3. An Act for facilitating the execution of the Process of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal and the taking of affidavits out of the limits of the Jurisdiction of the said Court. Read first time 13th March, 1847.—Ibid.

THE reading in Council on one day of three draft Acts for the improvement of the administration of justice in one presidency, is, for India, a great fact, and equally gratifying and remarkable, when we recollect that the object of one of the three has apparently been dropped, after having been for several years from time to time in different shapes before the Legislative Council and in the Gazette; and that the other two acts are for the Reform of a Court which presumed in its early days to defy and overawe the Government,* and in which proved abuses of various kinds have been preserved almost like sacred things. The first mentioned draft act, for the establishment of a Subordinate Court in and for Calcutta, affords extrinsically as respects its origin and history, and intrinsically as regards its present provisions, curious matter for reflection. Its origin was as follows: for many years there had been a small Cause Court or Court of Requests, with a jurisdiction to the amount of Rupees 350 (£35), legally extending only to debts, but which had been exercised generally as to all kinds of causes of action. An attorney of the Supreme Court having discovered the excess of jurisdiction in a case against one of his clients, brought an action against a native judge of the court, who was defended at the expense of the Government, but the decision on the question of jurisdiction was against him, and the Government compromised for the damages at rupees 200 (£20 twenty) and paid the costs altogether amounting to upwards of £220. The case made a strong impression on the intelligent part of the native, as well as on the small European, community. The result was that the Court took care afterwards to keep within its strictly legal jurisdiction:

Mill's British India.

but the public were left remediless to a very great extent, after having for years had resort to a court which gave general satisfaction. Petitions consequently were sent in to the Bengal Government, by persons who had wrongs to redress and found themselves disappointed of the remedy to which they had been accustomed. The Government gave them its pen-and-ink sympathy, and official documents on the subject rapidly multiplied, until they formed a very considerable volume. We will endeavour to give some idea of the proceedings. The Government of Bengal consists of a Governor, without a Council, who at this time happened to be Lord Auckland; and in reference to the petitions and complaints alluded to, his Lordship addressed the Governor-General, that is, himself, in Council, in the following terms :

"His Lordship is credibly informed that the state of things arising out of the decision of the case in question is productive of serious inconvenience to the public of Calcutta, and deserves to be remedied as speedily as may be possible. His Lordship would earnestly recommend the GovernorGeneral in Council to give an early attention to this matter in which further delay does not appear to be just to a large population or creditable to the Legislature."

Two or three years had been lost when this was written; for though the decision of the action was recent, the Court was as effectually paralyzed by the pendency of it as by the decision. This letter now takes us to Council, where the dramatis persona are Lord Auckland, as Governor-General, the head too of the Legislative body, at a legislative sitting, considering his own letter before Council: Mr. Amos, at a desk on one side of the council table, ready to assist the legislative incubation, as legislative member of Council and head of the Law Commission: there was also the military member, and as usual a senior member of the Civil Service in Council. The Governor-General could not be expected to draw a Bill; but having as Governor of Bengal represented the urgent necessity for one, he might have proposed, and there was Mr. Amos to draw one: but as if these gentlemen had not the gift of speech, and instead of doing what men of business intent on the object before them would have done, they write Minutes which we shall now quote, to introduce a few remarks on the dilatory routine too often, as in the present instance, ending in nothing.

Mr. Amos's Minute :

"I think the Council are aware, that if a law is wanted for the Court of Requests according to the most eligible of the two or three schemes which are most deserving consideration, the whole might be disposed of in a fortnight, and might have been so disposed of in any fortnight during the last three years: but then a report from the Law Commission must have been dispensed with.'

"If the Council want immediately a scheme for a Court of Requests, I have always said, I only required a day's notice to lay several before them which may deserve their consideration."

And then follows a suggestion that the Council should write to the following effect to the Law Commission:

"That it has become necessary to modify the Court of Requests and an Act for the purpose cannot be delayed beyond the next month. The Council is anxious for the opinions of the Law Commission, but in order that they may be of practical use, it is wished that they be forwarded to Council before the middle of next month."

Now this we take to be the retort courteous, and not an unreasonable one, to the letter of Lord Auckland; that letter conveyed in import a reproach, though not pointed to any one; which could not be meant for the Military member of Council, for he would be as indifferent on such a subject as the Duke of Wellington, and doubtless would agree with the GovernorGeneral to any Act, especially if Lord Auckland and Mr. Amos's views were concurrent: as little could it be meant to apply to the Governor-General, because it was uttered by him and the only other person to whom it could colorably apply was Mr. Amos, the legislative Member of Council who shewed that the Governor-General himself knew that it did. not justly apply to him. Here then we have check mate to every hypothesis of personal blame attaching to any one. To what cause then is to be ascribed a state of things so much deprecated by the Legislative Council, who apparently possessing the power to correct it, yet did not. The instance is not a solitary one, and we take the following to be the true solution; that the policy inculcated on the Indian by the Home Government is, as a general rule, to pass no Legislative acts without its previous sanction or direction; and although this like all rules, it may be said, must admit of exceptions, yet to make them involves a responsibility, and requires more mind and decision of character than is possessed by all Governor-Generals. In acting on the general rule, the local Government must have regard to the situation of the home Government; and this clearly is not in a condition generally to give its sanction or even to take into consideration purely local and Indian objects without a great deal of explanation which involves long reports and disquisitions in writing: hence Mr. Amos's remark about dispensing with a report from the Law Commission; and thus time runs on: much is wasted here, in preparing each case for consideration at home, and when it gets there, it miscarries from the very pains taken to obtain

parturition. If our readers will only turn to the special Reports of the Indian Law Commission, they will see ample proof of this explanation; and for corroboration, we may refer to the course adopted by the Legislative Council with the draft acts now under consideration: although the subject of a local Court has been discussed in every possible form, and the documents connected with it, would make a good thick volume, yet the second reading of the present draft act is postponed for some months from the time of publication, in order that the Council may be governed by the Court of Directors, to. whom the draft is again sent for their sanction or rejection. And what is the consequence? The Law Commission, first injured in popular estimation under the idea that it was the clog to legislation, has been cashiered by the Court, though ordained by Parliament: and the Supreme Government itself is in danger of losing the respect of the people; being regarded as a body endowed indeed with a mind to deliberate and advise, but without a will or the principle of action; and the public accordingly, taking this view of acts of Council, are indifferent, and when the present acts made their appearance, friends and foes alike treated the publication of them with, we may say, derision,-as trifling with their hopes or their fears, as the freak of some solitary law reform member of Council, or as a fanciful mode by which the Council chose to announce its partial recovery after some months of suspended animation. There is no mistaking these signs of the times: it is far from agreeable to us to record them: but the true statesman in a clime too distant for him to observe them, will, if he is a lover of his country or his kind, heed them.

But we have not yet concluded the history of this attempt at Legislation. We have quoted the Minute of Mr. Amos; the subject being again before our Hon'ble Masters the Court of Directors, it may help them to come to a right decision, if we also quote what we will call the reply to Mr. Amos, in the Minuté two days after (28th Jan. 1841) of the GovernorGeneral:

"I am strongly of opinion that no further delay should be allowed in this matter, and I would ask Mr. Amos at once to lay before us a draft act for removing the disabilities under which the Court of Requests at present labours and for extending its jurisdiction, an object to which I attach much importance, as far as can prudently and usefully be done. Such a scheme would include a provision for a single process and examination of parties, the appointment if thought necessary of a limited number of jurors, with a ready appeal to the Supreme Court."

Mr. Amos's response to this call was immediate. In two

days he presented to Council, a draft Act, which being objected to, in five days more he submitted a new draft Act free from the suggested objections: at the same time the Law Commissioners were at work, and within the prescribed period had prepared a comprehensive and adequate measure, and which forms the basis of the present draft act. Nothing appears to have been done by Council in respect of either of these measures: but at the end of seven months, about the time within which the opinion of the Court of Directors* may have come out, another draft act, makes its appearance ;-a wholly new act, emanating from the Law Commission, indorsed with the distinguished names of Amos, Cameron, Millett, Elliott, Borrodaile, and entitled as a temporary act; in fact framed on the precedent of the small Cause Court at Bombay, and according with the evidence and suggestions of Sir Edward Hyde East before a Committee of the House of Lords. But this well meant plancreditable in every respect to the Law Commissioners, did not advance the object,-to give justice to the people. Its leading provision was, that the Judges of the Supreme Court should be Judges of the Court of Requests, for deciding through its simple inexpensive forms, the class of causes over which that Court lost its jurisdiction by the decision alluded to. The Governor-General chose to refer this new draft to Lawrence Peel, Esq., the Advocate General; who, after nearly three months gave his opinion, and then, in fact annulled this work of the Law Commission; for he disapproved the fundamental and essential provision, or that which prescribes the law of the Court, viz. that it should make decrees "agreeable to equity and good conscience, following such law as the Supreme Court would have administered, if the matter had been brought before it on an action at law." Mr. Peel's objection proved a most untoward, and we may add it was an unfounded one, made, it appears, in haste, and certainly under a misconception, as appears on Mr. Peel's own shewing; for candidly enough, after making the objection, he states his preference to something else, which is for the very thing (law) objected to, but under a different phraseology, form of words, or expression: and that this was the case Mr. Peel appears afterwards to have been made aware, according to the following extract from Mr Elliott, the Law Commissioner's

annotation:

Independent Members of Parliament would do good service to the public, always to take care that the correspondence and acts or resolutions of the Court of Directors are given with papers from any of the Indian authorities.