India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    138/552 page 108
    Until the year 1836, European British subjects were under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Courts alone. It was then decided, by Act XI. of 1836, that they should be made amenable to the civil courts of the Company, and that in this respect no distinctions should be main- tained between them and the Natives of India. This measure, commonly known as the “ Black Act,” was received in Calcutta with the furious opposition described by Lord Macaulay, the history of which is familiar to the readers of his life. Lord Macaulay was then a member of the Governor-General's Council, and to him is mainly due the honour of having insisted upon pass- ing this wise and necessary law. The opposition of the Europeans, although to the last degree violent, was virtually confined to Calcutta, and as the number of the English outside the Presidency towns was then comparatively small, the outcry against the Government was less formidable than that of 1883. I quote from a minute of Lord Macaulay the following description of the state of things that then prevailed :— “Till the passing of Act XI. of 1836 an Englishman at Agra or Benares who owed a small debt to a native, who had beaten a native, who had come with a body of bludgeon-men and ploughed up a native’s land, if sued by the injured party for damages, was able to drag that party before the Supreme Court of Calcutta (a distance perhaps of 1000 miles), a court which in one most important point—the character of the judges—stands as high as any court can stand, but which in every other respect I believe to be the worst in India, the most dilatory, and the most ruin- ously expensive. . . . The expenses of litigation in England are so heavy that people sit down quietly under wrongs and submit to losses rather than go to law, and yet the English are the richest people in the world. The people of India are poor, and the expenses of litigation in the Supreme Court are five times as great as the expenses of litigation at Westminster. An unde- fended cause which might be prosecuted successfully in the Court
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