32 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
made by the Governor-General himself, without the slightest intimation of objection, and the said Pavessi was discharged, the Governor-General having declined to state as true, in an amended return, a necessary fact which he had only on report. Pavessi had been taken up in order to be sent out of India contrary to law, he being not a British subject.* It appears, therefore, that at that early period the reform of the Indian Governments, and the superintendence of the English law over the settlement, were considered synonymous; and one great object contemplated by the Company itself, was the introduction of the writ of habeas corpus, authorizing any man deprived of his personal freedom to compel the party who imprisoned him to show that he did so by authority of law.
At Calcutta, various instances of the same kind might be cited, and others have occured at Madras. The importance of the writ of habeas corpus has been strongly and justly felt. Whatever Act was passed, and whatever charter was granted, subject to whatever limitation of powers, there was no exception to that writ, and no limitation of its sphere in any of those statutes or charters.
But the writ of habeas corpus was expressly given to the Supreme Court of Calcutta by the letters-patent of the 13th Geo. III. **,they conferred upon that court “such jurisdiction and authority as our Justices of the Court of King’s Bench have and may lawfully exercise within that part of Great Britain called England, as far as circumstances will admit.” The writs of habeas corpus issued under that power do not appear to have been questioned in any manner which could raise a doubt as to their authority. The erection of the Supreme Court of Bombay has reference to the powers given to the Supreme Court of Calcutta. The 4th Geo. IV.(c. 71), indeed gives His Majesty the power by
*This and the preceding cases appear to have been quoted from a pamphlet published in October 1828, at Bombay, and entitled “Proceedings of the Governor and Council at Bombay towards His Majesty’s Supreme Court of Judicature.” They are there stated to have been extracted from MS., notes made by one of the Judges appointed at the first establishment of the Supreme Court at Calcutta.
**[ The text of the charter is given in Morley’s Dig. Vol. II., p. 549. The constitution and powers of the High Court of Calcutta are now defined by letters patent of Dec. 28,1865 (Stat. R. and O. Rev. Vol. (iv,) p. 82), issued in pursuance of the Indian High Courts Act, 1861 (24 and 25 Viet. C. 104) ]