Bombay in the days of George IV; memoirs of Sir Edward West, chief justice of the King's court during its conflict with the East India company, with hitherto unpublished documents

Front matter

BOMBAY IN THE DAYS QF GEORGE IV.

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Preface

The greater part of this necessary vindication of the acts of one, whose reputation has been at the mercy of his opponents, was written some time ago. It has no relation to present vexed questions. Whatever enchantment distance of time may lend, Bombay in the days of George the Fourth can have no more resemblance to modern Bombay, than a " Collector " in the time of Thackeray, to the scrupulous and efficient India Civil Servant of to-day.

Nor is it intended in any way to depreciate the great work — taken as a whole — accomplished by England in India. England's ideals are high, and she criticises her actions with severity; but, if her rule in that vast Empire be compared, not with that of an ideal Government, in a perfect world, but with such as exist, or are known to have existed, on the earth, fair-minded people must agree that the British nation has been worthy of its sovereignty.

There is no perfectly even advance in human affairs. All true progress seems to be as intermittent as the ebb and flow of a steadily advancing tide on a sandy seashore ; and nations, vi PREFACE

like individuals, ought to be judged by the sum of their highest, not their least successful achievements— as painters by finished pictures, not by imperfect studies. The greater Anglo-Indians have far more than atoned for the lesser.

In ages to come — may they be far distant — when the strength, mental and physical, necessary to the nation who holds India shall fail — when blindness shall overtake the seer — and want of wisdom the wise — and England shall no longer know the things that pertain to her good — when the unchanging decree shall at last go forth that wheresoever the carcase is there shall the eagles be gathered together — then, in that dread day, may the just administration of her great Empire by the best of her silent, toiling sons be not forgotten !

Chapter I

India eighty years ago — Suttee — Thuggee — The East India Company's government — The King's Law Courts — Unenviable position of the King's Judges — Sir James Stephen on the l( Regulating Act " — The King;s Judges of Bombay — Sir James Mackintosh as Recorder : his conflict with the Company — Sir Alexander Anstruther — Sir William Evans — Excessive mortality among the King's Judges : Sir J. W. Kaye's comment .........

Chapter II

Birth and parentage of Sir Edward West — Childhood at Hillington — Harrow — Honours at Oxford : Fellow of University College — Writes "A. Treatise of the Law and Practice of Extents " — His eminence as an early writer on Political Economy recognised in the United States — Death of Sir Martin Ffolkes — Edward West on Circuit — Family correspondence— A contested election in 1822 — His marriage with Lucretia Ffolkes — Appointed Recorder of Bombay — Knighthood 17

Chapter III

Departure for India — Life on an Indiaman ; crew of Lascars ; cockroaches ; crossing the Line.

Lady West's Journal (Oct. 1822-June 1823) -.—Incidents of the voyage; rain collected at sea ; arrival at the Cape of Good Hope ; vineyards at Constantia ; Lord Charles Somerset ; arrival at Point de Galle ; scenery of Ceylon ; Calicut sighted ; landing at Bombay ; official reception ; entertainments ; Bombay society ; alarming fires in the bazaar and fort ... 34 viii CONTENTS

Chapter IV Page

Sir Edward West labours to reform the administration of Justice — Misrepresentations in "Glimpses of Old Bombay" — Sir E. West's first Charge to the Grand Jury — Condition of the Jails — Case of Parsee rice merchant — Dismissal of William Erskine — Elphinstone's testimonial to Erskine — Libellous u Memorial " from the Bar : Barristers suspended : Attorneys as Advocates — Sir Charles Forbes — Newspaper war on the Erskine case.

Lady West's Journal (June- August 1823): — Sir E. West's judicial labours ; sudden death frequent ; flogging of untried natives ; cocoa-nut day .63

Chapter V

Treatment of untried prisoners and debtors — Sir Edward West's address to the Grand Jury — State of Bombay jail — Transportation to New South Wales desired by European soldiers — Insolvent Laws — Board of Control — Letter from Lady West on expedition to the Deccan, and visit to Sir Lionel Smith.

Lady West's Journal (September 1823- April 1824) :— Life in Bombay ; visit to Poona, Siroor, Karlee ; horse races ; social slights to Sir Edward West ; suspended Barristers return to Court 80

Chapter VI

The years 1818-1828 — Dark years for India as for England : both countries ripening for reform — Over-taxation — The Company's faulty administration — Power in Parliament — Monopolies— Suttee — Press Licensing Laws — Suppression of the Calcutta Journal — Liberal-minded Company's servants — Courtenay Smith's defence of natives — Impending expiration of the Company's Charter — Lord Lansdowne's speech — English merchants prepare for the abolition of the Company's monopoly

Chapter VII

The third Mahratta war and its results — The Pindarees — Mountstuart Elphinstone — His settlement of the Deccan, 1818-19 — Governor of Bombay — His great literary and social qualities, diplomatic skill, and Oriental profusion — Love of popularity his bane — His visit to the Deccan — Optimistic report on the condition of the country — Revelations of the official report of the administration of Bombay, 1893 — Case ofNarroba 113

CONTENTS ix

Chapter VIII Page

Ceylon : a contrast to India — Sir Alexander Johnstone's wise administration : slavery renounced ; loyalty of natives — Sir Stamford Raffles in Java — The island ceded to the Dutch — Rise of Singapore — Cession of Sumatra — Sir S. Raffles' brilliant administration : his natural history collections — Burning of the Fame 135

Chapter IX

Arrival of Sir Charles Chambers at Bombay — Establishment of the Supreme Court at Bombay — Mortality among the King's Judges — Deportation of Mr. Fair ; true cause of Elphinstone's action ; a side blow at the King's Judges.

Lady West's Journal (May 1824-March 1825) : — Prevalence of cholera ; trials of Europeans ; water famine ; deaths of Sir Christopher Puller, Sir Willingham Franklin, Sir Francis Bayley, Lady Franklin ; arrival of Sir Ralph Rice ; murder of Mr. Thackeray ; expedition to Goa ; return to Bombay 143

Chapter X

Bishop Heber at Bombay — Expedition to Bassein — Portuguese ruins— Death of Bishop Heber : and of his successor.

Lady West's Journal (April- October 1825) : — Details of Bishop Heber's visit ; foundation-stones of Central Schools laid ; expedition of the Governor, Hebers, Wests, Chambers, to Salsette, Tannah ; Kennery Caves, Bassein ; Elphinstone an excellent host ; Sir Ralph Rice ; murder trials ; embarrassing gifts ; illegal flogging 169

Chapter XI

Sir James Mackintosh on illegal punishments — Sydney Smith's sermon — Sir Edward West's Charge to the Grand Jury on illegal flogging and banishment ; their reply.

Lady Wests Journal (October 18-December 31, 1825) : — Death of Mr. Peacock ; journey to the Ghauts ; tigers ; death of the Viceroy of Goa and of Mr. Adam ; a fracas ; Christmas celebration ; prisoners as labourers . . . 188

CONTENTS

Chapter XII Pagb

Bombay society in quarrelsome mood ; libels, assaults, and challenges — Attempt to inveigle the Chief Justice into a duel with the Governor — Correspondence between Sir Edward West and Mr. Elphinstone.

Lady Wests Journal (January 8-February 2, 1826) : — Sir R. Rice ; trials for assault and libel ; death of Col. Baker ; Col. Stannus calls on Sir E. West.

Sir Edward West's Memorandum on Mr. Warden's conduct 225

Chapter XIII

Mr. Elphinstone complains to the Directors of the conduct of the Chief Justice — Sir Edward West's Report to the Board of Control — The Directors forbid servants of the Company to own newspapers — Calcutta Press Regulation rejected at Bombay ; Silk Buckingham's comments — Sir Edward West consults natives, and adapts the new Jury Act to Bombay.

Lady Wests Journal (March-Dec. " 1826) :— Death of Hormajee Bomanjee ; death of Bishop Heber ; mournful cargo of widows returning ; arrival of Sir T. Bradford ; birth of Lady West's daughter ; Sir Hudson Lowe at Bombay ; the Deccan case ; flogging at Surat ; death of Amerchund . 239

Chapter XIV

Lady West's Journal (Jan. -Oct. 1827) : — Frequent deaths ; new house at Poona ; Sir R. Rice ; a nautch ; mutiny trial ; illness of Lady West ; death of Sir T. Munro ; the Courier attacks the King's Court ; newspaper war ; arrival of Sir John Malcolm ; death of Col. Chambers.

Sir John Malcolm, his career and character ; appointed Governor of Bombay ; his attack on the King's Court.

Lady Wests Journal (October 1827-February 1828) :— Appeal on the " Deccan case " received by the Privy Council ; eclipse of moon ; departure of Mr. Elphinstone ; farewell entertainments ; Sir J. Malcolm as host ; his personal courtesy to the Wests ; arrival of Sir John Peter Grant . 262

Chapter XV

Arrival of Sir J. Peter Grant of Rothiemurchus at Bombay; his strong and upright character — ' ' Memoirs of a Highland Lady."

Lady Wests Journal (Feb.-July 1828) : — Pleasant change in Bombay society; burning of the Tyne ; Sir J. Malcolm ; eclipse ; murder of native policemen ; Duke of Wellington,

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

premier ; sudden death of Mr. Bridgeman, Advocate- General ; journey to Poona in the rains.

Sir J. P. Grant's speech at Quarter Sessions on neglect of duty hy Magistrates — Sir Edward West's letter to Sir J. Malcolm on police regulations, and on idleness and incapacity of Magistrates ........ 279

Chapter XVI

Lady West's Journal (Aug.-Sept. 1828) : — Death of George Forhes ; illness and death of Sir Edward West ; funeral ; widespread manifestations of regret ; conclusion of Lady West's "Journal."

Death of Lady West — Letter from Sir J. P. Grant — General Order by the Bombay Government on Sir E. West's death — Newspaper appreciations — Sir John Malcolm's despatch — Address of condolence from native inhabitants of Bombay ; foundation by them of Scholarships in Sir E. West's memory — The great strength of English love of justice; its importance to India ........ 300

Chapter XVII

Renewed attack on the King's Court by Sir John Malcolm — Death of Sir C. Chambers — Bitter conflict between the remaining Judge Sir J. P. Grant and the Bombay Government— Civil War threatened — Court adjourned— Malcolm's overland despatch — Reaction in England — Two Judges favourable to the Company appointed by Lord Ellenborough — Malcolm leaves India — Sir C. Metcalfe's Minute — Comments on the situation — Eventual change in the system of legislature 323

Chapter XVIII

1828, the year of darkness before dawn — Lord William Bentinck ; fearless reformer ; difficulties of his task ; experiences of his early career — Address of welcome from natives of Madras — Retrenchment — The new Provinces a neglected garden — Widow burning and organised assassination flourishing and increasing ; Bentinck's vigorous measures for their suppression — Abolition of Provincial Courts — Treaty with Runjeet Singh — India saved from bankruptcy — Bentinck's return 333

ILLUSTRATIONS

LADY WEST (Photogravure) Frontispiece

From a miniature.

HILLINGTON HALL IN 1850 .... To face page 16 From a water-colour drawing by Col. Wale,

HILLINGTON HALL IN 1907 . 24

From a photograph by A. E. Purdy, King's Lynn.

GATEWAY, HILLINGTON HALL „ 32

From a photograph by A. E. Purdy, King's Lynn.

PART OF A LETTER FROM SIR EDWARD

WEST TO HIS SISTER . . . Between pp. 36 and 37

PAGE OF A "SINGLE SHEET" LETTER OF

1822, WRITTEN BY LADY WEST . „ 46 and 47

GENERAL ORDER BY SIR JOHN MALCOLM „ 306 and 307 xiii

Introduction

Sir Edward West lived, and died, a champion of judicial integrity.

He brought to the service of India neither military skill nor subtle diplomacy, but that moral force by which England holds her vast Empire.

An able and just " King's Judge," sent to India by the Crown, he upheld on behalf of Parliament British honour and fair play against greed and injustice.

His faith, that what was morally wrong could not by any means be politically right, helped to keep the reputation of his country sweet in the rather close atmosphere of the Company's rule at Bombay.

Yet so little has been made public of Sir Edward West's life in India that the Dictionary of National Biography knows him only as a political economist, and devotes but a single sentence to his life as an Indian Judge.

The Johns Hopkins University Press at Baltimore, in a reprint of Sir E. West's Essay on " The Application of Capital to Land," quotes a short notice of its author in the " Annual xvi INTRODUCTION

Biography." But Dr. Jacob Hollander in the preface to the Essay says truly : " Bare details of West's personal life have come down to us . . . it is at least interesting to conjecture that had his life been prolonged, West's influence upon the development of English economic thought would have been considerable."

A memoir of him — a small pamphlet, signed " Scaevola," and probably written by Sir Charles Chambers — was published in Bombay soon after his death. Of this there is no copy in the British Museum or India Office libraries.

Mention, too, is made of Sir E. West in the biographies of Mountstuart Elphinstone, and of Sir John Malcolm. These notices betray so much bias on the side of the East India Company, and against the King's Judge, as to give false impressions.

An account of Sir Edward West and his times, though with obvious limitations, can be obtained from the newspapers and magazines of the period. Files of Indian Journals and like literature furnish materials for an interesting and continuous history of the social and political growth of British India. In them — in their daily record of events, letters to the Editor, extracts from Parliamentary and India House debates, in their very advertisements — a dead world of which England knows little, lives again. In the following pages use has been made of these sources of information.

INTRODUCTION xvii

Like other judges sent to India under the Regulating Act to check the irregularities of the Company, Sir Edward West soon died at his task. His death was immediately followed by that of his wife, and of his brother judge, Sir Charles Chambers. A daughter aged two years was the only member of his family left ; and thus opponents and their biographers have been — with little fear of contradiction — enabled to deal as they pleased with the dead judge's memory.

On the death of her parents, Sir Edward and Lady West's little daughter was brought to England, and afterwards married Colonel R. G. Wale, son of General Sir Charles Wale, K.C.B., Governor of Martinique until its restoration in 1815. Many documents which belonged to the Chief Justice, together with Lady West's Journal, have been lent to the author by Sir Edward West's granddaughters, Miss Fanny Lucretia, and Miss Mildred Wale. Mrs. Lane, to whom letters from Sir Edward and Lady West are addressed, was Sir E. West's sister, and wife of Capt. C. Lane. Their only daughter, who married R. D. Drewitt, died in 1860. The letters long since passed into the possession of the author — Mrs. Lane's grandson.

Neither letters, diary, nor memoranda have been previously published. They are printed as they were written, and the old spelling of Asiatic names has been retained throughout.

xviii INTRODUCTION

The writing of this short memoir has involved the expenditure of time and trouble, but there must be many, who, like the writer, have discovered that the pleasure of putting handbooks of history aside, carefully exploring some small spot in the great human past; and seeing vividly one moment of "yesterday, its aim and reason," is in itself compensation for the trouble, and for the consciousness of imperfection in the result.

Lady West's letters and journal, written hastily, and without thought of publication, contain the usual mingling of events serious and trivial. To omit the trivial would be to rob the story of some of its pathos, and to render it less like life.

The Author is indebted to the courtesy of the India Office for the use of documents, and also to Mr. F. G. Stokes and other friends who have kindly examined proofs.

Chapter I

India eighty years ago — Suttee — Thuggee — The East India Company's government — The King's Law Courts — Unenviable position of the King's Judges — Sir James Stephen on the ' f Regulating Act" — The King's Judges of Bombay — Sir James Mackintosh as Recorder : his conflict with the Company — Sir Alexander Anstruther — Sir William Evans — Excessive mortality among the King's Judges : Sir J. W. Kaye's comment.

India — the land, whose story fills so large a volume of English history — the grave for the strongest of our race — must ever be so full of interest for us that no record of its past should be lost.

For this reason alone the letters contained in the following pages from Sir Edward West, Lady West, and Sir John Peter Grant,1 the memoranda made by Sir Edward West, together with Lady West's Diary, kept throughout her few years in Bombay, seem worthy of preservation. They tell a story full of pathos. They throw light on the social life of our predecessors in India, and they

1 Sir E. West's fellow judge — Sir John Peter Grant of Rothiemurchus, well known to readers of " Memoirs of a Highland Lady."

A bring before us the antagonism of the East India Company, with which all King's Judges had to contend, during the years immediately preceding those great reforms which range themselves round the coming of Lord William Bentinck in 1828, and the renewal of the Company's charter in 1833.

It was this opposition of the old order of society in India, especially in Bombay, with its old standards of public morality, which made the position of a King's Judge who remembered his oath, a difficult one ; and it is for this reason that the story of the short lives of Sir Edward and Lady West, of their devotion to what they believed to be their duty, of their early deaths, is of historical importance, though possibly not more pathetic than that of countless others.

For, through many generations, England has paid her yearly tribute of young lives to the East. On that hard condition the children of the dominant race, nursed in their island home, have gained, and still maintain, the mastery; maintain it — let us not forget — as much by high honour, and English love of fair play to all men, as by the sword. And justice should be done to those — whether King's Judges, or members of that small band among the shareholders and office-holders of the Company — who in the dark days at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century worked with higher aim than that of collecting gold in a poverty-stricken land.

INDIA EIGHTY YEARS AGO 3

More than a generation has now passed since India was at last taken out of the hands of the Company, to receive " her Magna Charta." Every year it becomes more difficult for us to realise the conquered, but ungoverned, India of the early part of the last century — the India through which bands of professional assassins moved with impunity 1 — in which thousands of wretched women, some leaving orphan children behind them, some mere children themselves, were burned alive under the warrant of the English magistrate, while the district police-officer looked on, and the Brahmin priest and the wretched woman's relations divided her jewels. It is difficult to imagine an India in which the majority of the East India Company were making their final attempt to keep out fellow-countrymen, and to escape criticism by abolishing the freedom of the press, and transporting at pleasure newspaper editors whom they disliked 2 — an India in which a local Governor could threaten to attack and deport the Commander-in-Chief of the King's troops if he should attempt to enforce the writ of the King's Judges ; 3 in which the oppressive taxes of newly-annexed

1 The Thugs, an association of men of various religions and castes, taught from childhood to consider robbery with murder their hereditary calling, were causing many hundreds of deaths at this time. See chapter xviii.

2 See chapter vi.

3 After the death of Sir Edward West and Sir Charles Chambers, Sir John Malcolm made arrangements to seize and deport Sir Thomas Bradford, Commander-in-Chief at Bombay, on his preparing to enforce the writ of Sir J. Peter Grant, the surviving King's Judge. — e ' Life of Malcolm," p. 525. See also chapter xvii.

States were collected by torture ; * in whose unhealthy prisons men awaiting trial, innocent and guilty alike, were kept in chains for months, herded with convicted criminals, and on whose juries no Indian, no Eurasian, however well educated or respected, could serve.

The exiled Englishman in the India of those days, with no Simla 2 as a refuge, without quinine,3 without ice,4 could have found little relief from the heat, the sickness, the dull stifling monotony of the land. Small wonder that the hurried making of money became the aim of many; and that little thought was taken for the conquered Indian.5

1 ( ' Report of the Administration of the Bombay Presidency," 1892. Published by Bombay Government. See also p. 120.

2 In 1830, Lord William Bentiuck bought the greater part of the hill of Simla , and made it a summer health resort.

3 Quinine had been extracted from Cinchona bark in 1820, but had not come into use. In 1639 the Countess of Cinchona, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, introduced Cinchona bark into Spain. The live tree was not brought from the Andes until two hundred years afterwards. Many explorers tried, and failed, to obtain it. One was murdered. Jussieu, the French botanist, who on a voyage from Syria shared his daily allowance of half a glass of water with his young Cedar of Lebanon, procured plants in 1739. They were destroyed in a storm. In 1835, Dr. Royle and other doctors of medicine petitioned the East India Company to introduce the tree into India, without any success. In 1860 Sir Clements Markham brought plants from the Andes to the coast, but the custom-house officials detained them, while patriotic Peruvians poured boiling water on their roots. In 1862 he landed plants alive in India, and now happily, forests of Cinchona flourish in the Neilgherries. Quinine is within reach of all, and deaths from malaria have diminished 60 per cent.

4 The first ice was brought to Bombay in 1836. The coolies complained that it " burned " their backs.

5 Bombay society could nevertheless be generous to fellow-countrymen. Subscriptions announced in the Bombay Gazette in 1824, towards the relief of starving English Colonists at the Cape, amounted to 9014 rupees. During the previous year a large portion of the 70,000 rupees subscribed in India towards the distressed Irish fund came from Bombay.

ERRATUM

Page 5, line 22, for ' Sir William Bentinck read ' Lord William Bentinck.'

THE DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN 5

But if they were dark years, those years following the Mahratta wars, the darkness was only that which precedes the dawn. Wherever there are English men and women, some will be found working for justice, for freedom, and for the good of their fellow-men. It was at this very time, when the Mahratta war had been brought to a close, when the Peshwa's territories had been occupied, and the three Presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay had been united by continuous British possessions and dependencies,1 that the national conscience asserted itself, and an increasing number of our countrymen began to feel that it would be a nobler thing to govern India for the good of her swarming millions than for gold and glory.

Within a few years of the close of the period covered by this short history — thanks to Sir Charles Forbes, Joseph Hume, Silk Buckingham, and others at home, and to the few who bravely faced unpopularity in India, and prepared the way for the great work of Sir William Bentinck — widow-burning had been suppressed ; the Thug bands had been hunted down and annihilated ; 2

1 " The Mahratta war, undertaken upon grounds of very doubtful policy, has ended in establishing the uncontrollable influence of England from Lahore to Cape Comorin. Your map will help your memory to form some idea of the immensity of this Empire." — Sir James Mackintosh, "Life," vol. i. p. 226.

2 Between ^ 1830 and 1835, 2000 Thugs, in whose existence the Company's magistrates had disbelieved, had been arrested. — Wilson's "History," vol. ix. p. 304. See last chapter of this book.

the Company's Provincial Courts of Appeal and Circuit proverbial for dilatoriness and incapacity had been abolished ; natives had been admitted to juries, to judgeships, and to many offices of State ; the cruel system of appointing unsupported King's Judges as buffers between the Company and the Crown had been changed ; and a new legal member, independent of the Company, had been added to the Council. The barbarous and insanitary jails of Bombay had been rebuilt ; the heavy taxation of Mahratta Territory, resulting almost in depopulation, had been lessened. The Company, though granted a new lease of life, had for ever lost its monopoly ; Englishmen were no longer excluded from England's most important possessions ; a new order had begun ; and in future the governing race was destined to govern India, not for gold, but for the good of the governed.

The King's Judges — notably Sir Edward West, the last of the Recorders and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Bombay — were among the pioneers of the coming change, and seem to have met that fate which awaits reformers, the advance guards of our growing civilisation, on whose memories we now lightly trample, having found them stepping-stones to a more enlightened rule.

Decent justice has never been done to these Recorders of Bombay, and other King's Judges,

ORIGIN OF THE KING'S COURT OF LAW 7

who were sent out from England to undertake the thankless task of protecting the natives of India against the Company, and who died at their posts one after another, to be followed to their hastily-dug graves by the ill-will, not only of evildoers, but of many an official.

The history of the creation of the King's Courts is well known. At the end of the eighteenth century, under the Company, justice in India was most imperfectly administered. Magistrates there were, who, in spite of the difficulty of their task, did their duty : but the average Company's lawcourt was almost useless. Not only had the magistrates larger districts than they could administer, but as men they seem to have been inferior to magistrates at home.1 They were sent to India as mere boys, grew up without the higher training, the restraints, and the unconscious acquirement of knowledge, and of good feeling, which come to those who live among equals in England. Their vanity flattered by subservient Indians, their weaknesses studied and indulged, they naturally fell into the hands of unscrupulous native officials, who, as their master's energy diminished, used their power over their fellow-countrymen for every form of blackmail and corruption. Native spies were trusted who lived

1 cc A system which allowed the veriest dolts to be sent out to India to discharge duties of the highest importance had a large share in bringing about these scandals." — Sir T. Colebrooke in "Life of Elphinstone/' vol. i. p. 79.

by sacrificing innocent people ; one informer alone being thus able to cause the imprisonment by his magistrate of a hundred and ninety-two innocent persons.1 " The Provincial courts, too, proved inadequate to the demands of public justice, and while the causes had been suffered to fall into almost hopeless arrear, the periods fixed for the regular gaol deliveries had been protracted beyond the legal limits, and persons had been detained in confinement without trial for a length of time which was equivalent to the punishment, even although undeserved." 2

This was the court of law with which Mountstuart Elphinstone was best acquainted. He had been in Provincial India since boyhood, and he was fond of telling a story illustrating the reputation of the local courts, and the dread they inspired among the natives. During the progress of our conquests in the north-west the inhabitants were observed to be flying in considerable numbers from the territory we had acquired. "Is Lord Lake coming ? " was the eager inquiry : " No," was the reply, " the Adawlut " (the Company's law court) " is coming, which is ten times worse ! " 3 In 1773, after much opposition from the Directors of the Company and to the consternation of many of them, an Act for introducing "Regulations

1 Sir H. Strachey, Judicial Records, 70.

2 Wilson, " History of British India," ix. p. 260.

3 The story is given in Colebrooke's "Memoir of Elphinstone," " Life of Elphinstone," and in Cotton's "Elphinstone."

THE COMPANY'S DISLIKE OF KING'S JUDGES 9

for the better Management of the affairs of the Company " was passed. A Supreme Court of duly qualified judges, appointed by the Crown itself, was established in the town of Calcutta, and subsequently, in Madras ; and in 1799, a Recorder's Court, consisting of Sir William Syer and a mayor and aldermen, took the place of the old Mayor's Court of Bombay, where the magistrates were too closely connected with the trade of the country to act as any sort of check on doubtful commercial transactions.1