Your Committee, on full inquiry, are of opinion _that the use of juries
is neither impracticable nor dangerous in Bengal_.
Your Committee refer to their report made in the year 1781, for the
manner in which this court, attempting to extend its jurisdiction, and
falling with extreme severity on the native magistrates, a violent
contest arose between the English judges and the English civil
authority. This authority, calling in the military arm, (by a most
dangerous example,) overpowered, and for a while suspended, the
functions of the court; but at length those functions, which were
suspended by the quarrel of the parties, were destroyed by their
reconciliation, and by the arrangements made in consequence of it. By
these the court was virtually annihilated; or if substantially it
exists, it is to be apprehended it exists only for purposes very
different from those of its institution.
The fourth object of the act of 1773 was the Council-General. This
institution was intended to produce uniformity, consistency, and the
effective cooeperation of all the settlements in their common defence.
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