ic of bad men often produce a tremendous effect. The English
papers here might be infinitely more seditious than the most seditious
that were ever printed in London without doing harm to anything but
their own circulation. The fire goes out for want of some combustible
material on which to seize. How little reason would there be to
apprehend danger to order and property in England from the most
inflammatory writings, if those writings were read only by Ministers of
State, Commissioners of the Customs and Excise, Judges and Masters in
Chancery, upper clerks in Government offices, officers in the army,
bankers, landed proprietors, barristers, and master manufacturers! The
most timid politician would not anticipate the smallest evil from the
most seditious libels, if the circulation of those libels were confined
to such a class of readers; and it is to such a class of readers that
the circulation of the English newspapers in India is almost entirely
confined."

The motive for the scurrility with which Macaulay was assailed by a
handful of sorry scribblers was his advocacy of the Act familiarly known
as the Black Act, which withdrew from British subjects resident in the
provinces their so-called privilege of bringing civil appeals before the
Supreme Court at Calcutta. Such appeals were thenceforward to be tried
by the Sudder Court, which was manned by the Company's judges, "all of
them English gentlemen of liberal education; as free as even the judges
of the Supreme Court from any imputation of personal corruption,
and selected by the Government from a body which abounds in men as
honourable and as intelligent as ever were employed in the service of
any state." The change embodied in the Act was one of little practical
moment; but it excited an opposition based upon arguments and assertions
of such a nature that the success or failure of the proposed measure
became a question of high and undeniable importance.

"In my opinion," writes Macaulay, "the chief reason for preferring the
Sudder Court is this--that it is the court which we have provided to
administer justice, in the last resort, to the great body of the people.
If it is not fit for that purpose, it ought to be made so. If it is fit
to administer justice to the great body of the people, why should we
exempt a mere handful of settlers from its jurisdiction? There certainly
is, I will not say the reality, but the semblance of partiality and
tyranny in the distinction