The third object was a new judicial arrangement, the chief purpose of which was to form a strong and solid security for the natives against the wrongs and oppressions of British subjects resident in Bengal.  An operose and expensive establishment of a Supreme Court was made, and charged upon the revenues of the country.  The charter of justice was by the act left to the crown, as well as the appointment of the magistrates.  The defect in the institution seemed to be this,—­that no rule was laid down, either in the act or the charter, by which the court was to judge.  No descriptions of offenders or species of delinquency were properly ascertained, according to the nature of the place, or to the prevalent mode of abuse.  Provision was made for the administration of justice in the remotest part of Hindostan 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