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THE GREEN BAG
BOMBAY IN THE DAYS OF GEORGE IV BY PERCY A. ATHERTON. TO the reader this story of the conflict from England by the Crown, was any of the King's Court with the East India thing but enviable. The East India Com Company, and the struggle of the King's pany looked on him with distrust and dis Judges to curb the headstrong officials of favor; and the natives had not yet learned the company, seems well nigh inconceiv that a Judge could act with uprightness able. Respect for the authority of the state, and independence. The company regarded and respect for its judiciary, have come to the Sovereignty of India as its own private be today so much a part of daily life as property, and resented all interference with to pass unnoticed. Yet this life of Sir it by the British Parliament as an un Edward West, this defense of the right of warranted invasion of its rights. Under an English judge to administer justice, such conditions it was impossible for a under strange conditions and in the face of Judge, who did his duty as he saw it, not to great difficulties, throws an interesting come into collision with the traditions of the light on the strength and vigor of Anglo- company. He faced a European colony Saxon institutions. hostile to him, he lacked the moral sup Born in 1782, Edward West had the sturdy port of an independent public opinion, training of Harrow, and the opportunities and further, he had to apply Anglo-Saxon of University College, Oxford, a typical Eng theories of justice to native India condi lish education of the best sort. In 1814, at tions. Nevertheless, Edward West, married on the comparatively youthful age of 32, he was called to the Bar of the Inner Temple. the eve of his sailing for India, did not In the meantime he had been elected a hesitate for a moment. His entire work in Fellow of his college, and had done notable India was crowded into six brief years, work in economics. Eight years later, after first as "Recorder of Bombay," then as a moderate success at the Bar, he was "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of appointed recorder of Bombay and knighted Judicature" — the successor of the Re as Sir Edward West. corder's Court; yet, even then, he served India, at the end of the eighteenth longer than the average of the early Eng century, was governed by the East India lish judges in India. In the first quarter of Company, and administration of justice was a century of the King's Court not one at a very low ebb. Mere boys with little King's Judge lived to return to England, training or experience were sent by the and the average length of their service was company to India to sit in the Provincial a little over three years. Throughout his six years' service as a Courts, and matters had reached such a state that King's Courts were created in Judge West seems to have been in constant 1799 to curb the East India Company's conflict with the East India Company. He growing power, and to give to the native had scarce arrived in India when the new Supreme Court of Judicature was substi some degree of protection to life and prop erty — both endangered by the aggressive tuted for the old Recorder's Court, and he ness of the company. As may well be seen became its Chief Justice. That he proposed the position of a King's Judge, sent out to reform the Bench and Bar was evident from the outset. Within a month after he
- Memoir of Sir Edward West, A King's Judge
under the Company, by F. Dawtrey Drewitt, M.A., was sworn in as Chief Justice he dismissed the Master in Equity and the Clerk of M.D. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1907.
