HIGH COURT OF MADRAS. 



121 



At first and for some time subsequent to the publication of 

 the Charter the Court sat twice a week for the hearing of 

 causes and motions according to the practice of the Mayor's 

 Court, the members of which were associated as J udges in 

 the Court of the Recorder ; and it was endeavored to admin- 

 ister justice upon plain statements by the parties or their 

 advisers, and in a course divested as much as possible of 

 technical forms, pursuant to the advice of the Lord Chancellor 

 Rosslyn upon his being consulted by the Recorder on the 

 subject before he left England, viz. : in establishing a course 

 of proceeding under the Charter, to look neither to the one 

 side nor to the other side of Westminster Hall, but to keep 

 substantial justice, and that only, in view. Various causes 

 however militated against the persevering in such a course, 

 and it was soon found necessary, first, to adopt the established 

 forms of pleading according to the respective jurisdictions ; 

 secondly, to substitute terms. 



The succession of terms fixed by the first rule of the 

 Recorder's Court required the Court to sit in the months of 

 J anuary, June and July, but after the experience of a year 

 it was found that the overpowering heat of the land-wind 

 season made it desirable during the months of J une and July 

 to intermit all attendance in Court, and, upon the same 

 consideration of health, to reserve January for exercise. It 

 was therefore ordered that the first term in every year 

 should commence on the first of February, the second on the 

 1st of April, the third on the 1st of August, and the fourth 

 on the 1st of October ; 82 and the President of the Board of 

 Control was written to to obtain for the Court, according to 

 the provision of the Charter, His Majesty's sanction for the 

 alteration proposed. No answer had been received when 

 the Charter of the 41st George III, superseding the Court of 

 the Recorder and substituting the Supreme Court, arrived, 



82 Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 156, 187. 



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