§ MAJOR GENERAL FORESTERasked the First Lord of the Treasury, with reference to a statement made by him that the phrase "Political Plea" was not known at the India Office, Whether his attention has been drawn to the case of the Soosung Rajah of Bengal, who having in 1856 been deprived by the Indian Government of part of his possessions, by an inaccurate line of survey, instituted a suit against the Government, and after three successive judgments given in his favour, the last by a full Bench of the High Court of Calcutta, the Government lodged an appeal to the Judicial Committee of Privy Council on the 17th of August 1868; nevertheless they took the step, while that appeal was still pending, and in which they were defendants, of introducing a Bill in the Legislative Council of India to remove the lands in question altogether from the estate of the Soosung Rajah, thus rendering the judgments given in the Rajah's favour null and void, and depriving him of the property he had acquired under them, the reason assigned being "Political Necessity;" and, whether he will grant a Committee to investigate the question of the administration of justice, or bring in a Bill for the better administration of justice in regard to that portion of Her Majesty's Indian subjects who are exposed to such rules of procedure?
MR. GLADSTONE, in reply, said, the hon. and gallant Gentleman had taken great pains to state his question with great particularity, but he doubted whether the House would follow a detailed answer if he went into the case at large. It was needless to do so, because the question of the hon. and gallant Gentleman was summed up by the closing words. On the question itself, his attention had been called to the subject. The hon. and gallant General appeared to him to overlook the distinction between that to which he had originally 1688 referred in the discussion of this subject—namely, the use by the Executive Government of the "Political Plea" in the Courts of Law as a means of anticipating the operation of law on behalf of those with whom they might be in litigation—and the founding of legislative measures on political expediency. The case to which he had referred was evidently not of Executive but of legislative procedure. With regard to the other part of the Question, as to the appointment of a Committee, he might say it had not been in his power to procure adequate information from the Indian Department since notice of this Question had been given; but he had made it known to the Secretary of State for India, and would inform the hon. and gallant Gentleman of the conclusion he had arrived at.