HIGH COURT OF MADRAS. 



85 



dinate thereto, such Letters of Administration to be granted 

 to the next-of-kin ; or if there should be no such person re- 

 siding within the jurisdiction of the Court, then to the prin- 

 cipal creditor of the deceased ; and for want of any creditor 

 appearing, then to such other person or persons as should be 

 thought proper by the Court. 



In the following year all fines set upon any persons by the 

 Courts established by the last-mentioned Charter were granted 

 to the United Company by a Charter dated 17th November 

 1727 (1 Geo. II). 



The Court of Directors sent out with the Charter of 1726 

 a Book of Instructions with respect to the method of proceed- 

 ing in all actions and suits as well civil as criminal, and in 

 proving of Wills and granting of Letters of Administration 

 of Intestates' Estates, together with the forms of the several 

 oaths directed by the Charter to be taken, which book was 

 compiled with great care and with the advice and assistance 

 of the ablest lawyers in the several branches of business 

 therein treated of. 40 



It was probably in this Book of Instructions that the 

 doctrine was laid down that by the Charter of 1726 all the 

 common and statute law at that time extant in England was 

 introduced into the Indian Presidencies, and that all the 

 Parliamentary Enactments passed since that period were 

 excluded, unless their extension to India was specially 

 declared. * This doctrine has been frequently cavilled at, but, 

 so far as I am aware, has never been seriously disputed, and 

 has long been established beyond all question. 41 On the 27th 

 February 1765 Kadachund Muttra, a Hindoo Native of 

 Calcutta, was convicted of forgery by the Mayor's Court, and 



40 General Letter to Madras, 24th January 1753, para. 36, sending another 

 copy of the book. 



41 See the preface to Mr. Longueville Clark's Rules and Orders of the 

 Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal, Calcutta, 1829. 



