GRAVE FAULTS OF THE NEW SYSTEM 233
argued, on the part of the Company, that they held
the country by grants from the Delhi emperor and
treaties with native princes, whereby the jurisdiction
of the judges appointed by the Bang of England was
greatly restricted and, as it were, cut off at the base.
Or it might be maintained that all the possessions of
the Company fell naturally to the Crown, whence it
followed that the writs of the Supreme Court ran wher-
ever the Company exercised public authority, that the
judges at Calcutta could control the native courts, and
that the procedure of Westminster Hall was applicable
to every Bengali landholder. For since jurisdiction was
given by the statute over all servants of the Company,
it was held by the Court that the whole body of land-
owners in Bengal, who collected the land revenue and
paid over the state's share to the Company, might fall
within their purview. At any rate, if any one demurred
to the jurisdiction, he was held bound to appear to
plead his objection before the judges, although the cost
and trouble of answering a summons to Calcutta might
be ruinous to a native at a distance in the interior
districts and totally ignorant of these technicalities.
With a prolix and costly procedure, with strange
unintelligible powers resembling the attributes of some
mysterious divinity, the Supreme Court was soon re-
garded by the natives as an engine of outlandish oppres-
sion rather than as a bulwark against executive tyranny.
" So far," says Burke 's Report, " as your Committee
have been able to discover, the Court has been generally
terrible to the natives, and has distracted the govern-
