as if it were a province in
Great Britain. Your Committee have long had the constitution and conduct
of this court before them, and they have not yet been able to discover
very few instances (not one that appears to them of leading importance)
of relief given to the natives against the corruptions or oppressions of
British subjects in power,--though they do find one very strong and
marked instance of the judges having employed an unwarrantable extension
or application of the municipal law of England, to destroy a person of
the highest rank among those natives whom they were sent to protect. One
circumstance rendered the proceeding in this case fatal to all the good
purposes for which the court had been established. The sufferer (the
Rajah Nundcomar) appears, at the very time of this extraordinary
prosecution, a discoverer of some particulars of illicit gain then
charged upon Mr. Hastings, the Governor-General. Although in ordinary
cases, and in some lesser instances of grievance, it is very probable
that this court has done its duty, and has been, as every court must be,
of some service, yet one example of this kind must do more towards
deterring the natives from complaint, and consequently from the means
of redress, than many decisions favorable to them, in the ordinary
course of proceeding, can do for their encouragement and relief. So far
as your Committee has been able to discover, the court has been
generally terrible to the natives, and has distracted the government of
the Company without substantially reforming any one of its abuses.

This court, which in its constitution seems not to have had sufficiently
in view the necessities of the people for whose relief it was intended,
and was, or thought itself, bound in some instances to too strict an
adherence to the forms and rules of English practice, in others was
framed upon principles perhaps too remote from the constitution of
English tribunals. By the usual course of English practice, the far
greater part of the redress to be obtained against oppressions of power
is by process in the nature of civil actions. In these a trial by jury
is a necessary part, with regard to the finding the offence and to the
assessment of the damages. Both these were in the charter of justice
left entirely to the judges. It was presumed, and not wholly without
reason, that the British subjects were liable to fall into factions and
combinations, in order to support themselves in the abu