of Company's extended for further terms by Acts of 17301 and 17442. Extension The price paid for the first extension was an advance to the State of £200,000 without interest, and the reduction of charter. the rate of interest on the previous loan from 5 per cent. to 4 per cent. By another Act of 17303 the security for the loan by the Company was transferred from the special taxes on which it had been previously charged to the aggregate fund,' the predecessor of the modern Consolidated Fund. The price of the second extension, which was to 1780, was a further loan of more than a million at 3 per cent. By an Act of 17504 the interest on the previous loan of £3,200,000 was reduced, first to 3 per cent., and then to 3 per cent. 6 Successive Acts were passed for increasing the stringency Provisions of the provisions against interlopers 5 and for penalizing any interattempt to support the rival Ostend Company 6. against lopers. 51718, 5 Geo. I, c. 21; 1720, 7 Geo. I, Stat. 1, c. 21; 1722, 9 Geo. I, c. 26; 1732, 5 Geo. II, c. 29. See the article on Interlopers' in the Dictionary of Political Economy. For the career of a typical interloper see the account of Thomas Pitt, afterwards Governor of Madras, and grandfather of the elder William Pitt, given in vol. iii. of Yule's edition of the Diary of William Hedges. The relations between interlopers and the East India Company in the preceding century are well illustrated by Skinner's case, which arose on a petition presented to Charles II soon after the Restoration. According to the statement signed by the counsel of Skinner there was a general liberty of trade to the East Indies in 1657 (under the Protectorate), and he in that year sent a trading ship there; but the Company's agents at Bantam, under pretence of a debt due to the Company, seized his ship and goods, assaulted him in his warehouse at Jamba in the island of Sumatra, and dispossessed him of the warehouse and of a little island called Barella. After various ineffectual attempts by the Crown to induce the Company to pay compensation, the case was, in 1665, referred by the king in council to the twelve judges, with the question whether Skinner could have full relief in any court of law. The answer was that the king's ordinary courts of justice could give relief in respect of the wrong to person and goods, but not in respect of the house and island. The House of Lords then resolved to relieve Skinner, but these proceedings gave rise to a serious conflict between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. See Hargrave's Preface to Hale's Jurisdiction of the House of Lords, p. cv. * Charter granted by the Emperor Charles VI in 1722, but withdrawn in 1725. Judicial charters of 1726 municipalities at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, and setting up or remodelling mayor's and other courts at each of thes and 1753. places. At each place the mayor and aldermen were to constitute a mayor's court with civil jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to the governor or president in council, and a further appeal in more important cases to the king in council. The mayor's court now also gave probates and exercised testamentary jurisdiction. The governor or president and the five seniors of the council were to be justices of the peace, and were to hold quarter sessions four times in the year, with jurisdiction over all offences except high treason. At the same time the Company were authorized, as in previous charters, to appoint generals and other military officers, with power to exercise the inhabitants in arms, to repel force by force, and to exercise martial law in time of war. The capture of Madras by the French in 1746 having destroyed the continuity of the municipal corporation at that place, the charter of 1726 was surrendered and a fresh charter was granted in 1753. The charter of 1753 expressly excepted from the jurisdiction of the mayor's court all suits and actions between the Indian natives only, and directed that these suits and actions should beermined among themselves, unless both parties submitted them to the determination of the mayor's courts. But, according to Mr. Morley, it does not appear that the native inhabitants of Bombay were ever actually exempted from the jurisdiction of the mayor's court, or that any peculiar laws were administered to them in that court.1 The charters of 1726 and 1753 have an important bearing on the question as to the precise date at which the English criminal law was introduced at the presidency towns. This question is discussed by Sir James Stephen with reference to the legality of Nuncomar's conviction for forgery; the point being whether the English statute of 1728 (2 Geo. II, c. 25) was or was not in force in Calcutta at the time of 1 Morley's Digest, Introduction, p. clxix. Nuncomar's trial. Sir James Stephen inclines to the opinion that English criminal law was originally introduced to some extent by the charter of 1661, but that the later charters of 1726, 1753, and 1774 must be regarded as acts of legislative authority whereby it was reintroduced on three successive occasions, as it stood at the three dates mentioned. If so, the statute of 1728 would have been in force in Calcutta in 1770 when Nuncomar's offence was alleged to have been committed, and at the time of his trial in 1775. But high judicial authorities in India have maintained a different view. According to their view British statute law was first given to Calcutta by the charter establishing the mayor's court in 1726, and British statutes passed after the date of that charter did not apply to India, unless expressly or by necessary implication extended to it.1 Since the passing of the Indian Penal Code the question has ceased to be of practical importance. In 1744 war broke out between England and France, and in 1746 their hostilities extended to India. These events led to the establishment of the Company's Indian Army. The first establishment of that army may, according to Sir Forces. George Chesney 2, be considered to date from the year 1748, ' when a small body of sepoys was raised at Madras, after the example set by the French, for the defence of that settlement during the course of the war which had broken out, four years previously, between France and England. At the same. time a small European force was raised, formed of such sailors as could be spared from the ships on the coast, and of men smuggled on board the Company's vessels in England by the Company. An officer, Major Lawrence, was appointed by a commission from the Company to command these forces in India. During the Company's earliest wars its army consisted mainly, for fighting purposes, of Europeans. 1 Morley's Digest, Introduction, pp. xi, xxiii. 2 Indian Polity (3rd ed.), ch. xii, which contains an interesting sketch of the rise and development of the Indian Army. The nucleus of a European force had been formed at Bombay in 1669, supra, p. 18. Mutiny Act and War for Charters of 1757 It has been seen that by successive charters the Company had been authorized to raise troops and appoint officers. But the more extensive scale on which the military operations of the Company were now conducted made necessary further legislation for the maintenance of military discipline. An Act of 17541 laid down for the Indian forces of the Company provisions corresponding to those embodied in the annual English Mutiny acts. It imposed penalties for mutiny, desertion, and similar offences, when committed by officers or soldiers in the Company's service. The Court of Directors might, in pursuance of an authority from the king, empower their president and council and their commanders-in-chief to hold courts-martial for the trial and punishment of military offences. The king was also empowered to make articles of war for the better government of the Company's forces. The same Act contained a provision, repeated in subsequent Acts, which made oppression and other offences committed by the Company's presidents or councils cognizable and punishable in England. The Act of 1754 was amended by another Act passed in 1760 2. The warlike operations which were carried on by the East and 1758 India Company in Bengal at the beginning of the second as to half of the eighteenth century, and which culminated in booty and cession of Clive's victory at Plassey, led to the grant of two further territory. charters to the Company. A charter of 1757 recited that the Nabob of Bengal had taken from the Company, without just or lawful pretence and contrary to good faith and amity, the town and settlement of Calcutta, and goods and valuable commodities belonging to the Company and to many persons trading or residing within the limits of the settlement, and that the officers and agents of the Company at Fort St. George had concerted a plan of operations with Vice-Admiral Watson and others, the commanders of our fleet employed in those parts, for regaining the town and settlement and the goods and com1 27 Geo. II, c. 9. 2 I Geo. III, c. 14. 6 modities, and obtaining adequate satisfaction for their losses; and that it had been agreed between the officers of the Company, on the one part, and the vice-admiral and commanders of the fleet, on the other part, assembled in a council of war, that one moiety of all plunder and booty which shall be taken from the Moors' should be set apart for the use of the captors, and that the other moiety should be deposited till the pleasure of the Crown should be known. The charter went on to grant this reserved moiety to the Company, except any part thereof which might have been taken from any of the king's subjects. Any part so taken was to be returned to the owners on payment of salvage. A charter of 1758, after reciting that powers of making peace and war and maintaining military forces had been granted to the Company by previous charters, and that many troubles had of late years arisen in the East Indies, and the Company had been obliged at very great expense to carry out a war in those parts against the French and likewise against the Nabob of Bengal and other princes or Governments in India, and that some of their possessions had been taken from them and since retaken, and forces had been maintained, raised, and paid by the Company in conjunction with some of the royal ships of war and forces, and that other territories or districts, goods, merchandises, and effects had been acquired and taken from some of the princes or Governments in India at variance with the Company by the ships and forces of the Company alone, went on to grant to the Company all such booty or plunder, ships, vessels, goods, merchandises, treasure, and other things as had since the charter of 1757 been taken or seized, or should thereafter be taken, from any of the enemies of the Company or any of the king's enemies in the East Indies by any ships or forces of the Company employed by them or on their behalf within their limits of trade. But this was only to apply to booty taken during hostilities begun and carried on in order to right and recompense the Company upon the goods, estate, or people of those parts from whom they should |