AND THE LORD SAID UNTO— 25
any acts (however legal you may deem them) which, under the measures, we have felt ourselves compelled to take and which we deem essential to the interests committed to our charge, must have the effect of producing open collision between our authority and yours, and by doing so, not only diminish that respect in the native population of this country which it is so essential to both to maintain, but seriously to weaken, by a supposed division in our internal rule, those impressions on the minds of our native subjects, the existence of which is indispensable to the peace, prosperity and permanence of the Indian empire. This conclusion refers to a variety of circumstances which we are equally forbid from explaining as you are from attending to such explanation; but we deem it necessary to state our conviction of the truth of what we have asserted, expecting that it may have some weight with you as connected with the preservation of that strength in the Government, which in all our territories, and particularly those we have so recently acquired, is the chief, if not the only power we posses for maintaining that general peace, on the continuance of which the means of good rule, and of administering law under any form must always depend.
“2. In consequence of recent proceedings in the Supreme Court, in the cases of Moro Ragonath [1 Knapp, 8] and Bappoo Gunness [1 Knapp, 11], we have felt compelled, for reasons which we have fully stated to our superiors, to direct that no further legal proceedings be admitted in the case of Moro Ragonath; and that no returns be made to any writs of habeas corpus of a similar nature to those recently issued and directed to any officers of the provincial courts, or to any of our native subjects not residing in the island of Bombay.
“3. We are quite sensible of the deep responsibility we incur by these measures, but must look for our justification in the necessity of our situation. The grounds upon which we act have exclusive reference to considerations of civil Government and of State policy; but as our resolution cannot be altered until we receive the commands of those high authorities to which we are subject, we inform you of them; and we do most anxiously hope, that the considerations we have before stated may lend you to limit