42 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
in such cases, has been most correctly stated by Lord Coke, in his description of the authority of the Court of King’s Bench (Co. Instit. pt. 4, cap. 7); “For the pleasure of God and the quiteness of our subjects, to save our conscience and to keep our oath, by the assent of our great men and other of our Council, we have commanded our Justices that they shall from henceforth do even law and execution of right to all our subjects, rich and poor, without having regard to any person, without letting to do right for any letters or commandment which may come to them from us, or any other, or by any other cause”. If the Court of King’s Bench in England would not have neglected to do right for any letters the King of England might send to them, it is too much to expect that the Judges of the Supreme Court of Bombay should, without remonstrating receive from the Governor and Council of that Settlement a letter or commandment interfering with the upright and conscientious discharge of their judicial functions.
Bosanquet and Spankie (Serjeants) for the East India Company.– It is obvious, from the words of the Act of the
4th of his present Majesty, that the intention was not to give any jurisdiction to the Supreme Court at Bombay within the territories subject to Bombay, beyond that exercised by the Supreme Court within the Presidency of Fort Williams. In one respect, it will be found that the jurisdiction given by the charter carrying into effect the objects of that Act is less.
But, for the present, let us suppose that the authority conferred is to the full extent the same as that conferred on the Supreme Court of Fort Williams. The great principle of the jurisdiction of the new courts which were established in India by the 13th of Geo. III. (Morley’s Dig. Vol. II., p. 549) was this, that so far as locality was concerned in the town of Calcutta, there was conferred an unqualified territorial jurisdiction over all the inhabitants. There is another jurisdiction, not so extensive in its effects, though reaching throughout the dominions subject to the Presidency, applicable to the designated classes of persons. The two things are most perfectly distinct; and we admit that so far as the privileges and authorities of the Court of King’s Bench in England can be applied, either to the localities of Calcutta or Bombay, or to the designated classes, the