AND THE LORD SAID UNTO— 43
jurisdictions may be conceded; but it does not follow that they should have in the territory at large a jurisdiction, either to attach upon individuals not of the designated class, or to control the proceedings of other courts of a distinct authority. The distinction appears to have been wisely and considerately adopted by the Legislature. At Fort Williams, at Madras, and Bombay, the English law had prevailed for at least a century. It had prevailed, at all events, from the charter of Geo. I.
(1726 : 13 Geo. I). It was known as the existing law there antecedently to the year 1774 : persons had been tried and condemned under the local jurisdiction of Calcutta for forgery and other crimes created by English status. Those who came to those towns, which were a kind of English colonies, came to the English law: they came to a place where they could no more evade the jurisdiction than men who come to England have a right to be tried by the law they leave behind them. The other class was a class who became subject, by their own acts, the servants of the Company, or British subjects, etc. etc.; who by voluntarily entering into those services rendered themselves subject to the jurisdiction of the King’s Courts. It was the policy of the law to leave those persons out of the local limits and of the designated classes, in point of jurisdiction, to be governed by their own law; and the exception was an exception to which they subjected themselves; and this is the view taken of the subject in the speech of Sir Elijah Impey in the House of Commons [ Parliamentary History, Vol. 26
(1341-1416)].
The power enjoyed by the native or provincial court, is a power possessed by them long antecedent to the British conquests in India, and which exists, except where it has been altered by the legislative authority, which the British Parliament does not directly exercise, but which it has confided to the Governor General in Council. Thus all persons not subject to the King’s Courts are living under their own laws, under the authority of the British Legislature, and may be considered, to many purposes, as a separate nation under a different government. What is the power of the Court of King’s Bench supposed to be? The King himself formerly exercising his sovereign authority in the aula regis, which he now exercises by that court, still called the Court of our Lord the King before the King himself. The whole administration is derived from the ancient aula regis, the centre of all judicial authority; and all the