Sarup Chand's Case, 1777

What the Company's own attorney did

This is the detail that decides how the case should be described, and it comes from the Company's own papers.

The matter was referred to the Company's attorney, who wrote to the Governor-General and Council on 31 August 1777. He said that he had shown the judge, Mr Justice Hyde, "such part of the proceedings as I thought were proper for him to see". He had not chosen to show him the part where the Board resolved to confine Sarup Chand for the balance due as treasurer, because it was not clear to him that the Board was authorised to do that. He added that he could have wished that the ostensible reason for the confinement should be stated as the Rs 10,000 due for revenue.

In plain words: the Company's attorney kept back from the court the true reason for the imprisonment, and wished the Company's servants to give a false account of their conduct.

What the Court decided

Mr Justice Le Maistre delivered an elaborate judgment, which in the end did no more than allow Sarup Chand to give bail. In it he restated the principles Impey had laid down in Kamaluddin's case, and added two propositions that are the substance of the case.

A body cannot be judge in its own cause. As regards the debt due from Sarup Chand as treasurer, the matter in dispute was one of contract, and the Council ought not to be judges in their own cause, nor to enforce what they regarded as their rights by the arbitrary imprisonment of their debtor.

A body claiming a power to imprison must claim it in a name the law knows. Le Maistre observed that a man "might as well say that he was commanded by the King of the Fairies" as by the chief and Provincial Council of Dacca, because that body was not a corporation known to the law. James Mill censured the remark as flippant, and Stephen defends it: there is a clumsy attempt at playfulness in it, but the meaning is clear and is good sense. When a person asserts a right to imprison another, he must claim it either in his own name or in some corporate or official name that the law recognises. The Provincial Council of Dacca was an administrative arrangement of the Company, not a body with legal personality, and it could not point to any instrument that gave it a power to imprison.

A worked example

Set the case out as a modern lawyer would.

• Who detains? The Chief and Council of Dacca.
• Under what authority? None that they can name. They are not a corporation, they hold no commission to imprison, and the statute vests the revenues in the Governor-General and Council at Fort William, not in them.
• For what? Two sums. One is a revenue arrear; the other is a contractual debt to the Company as banker.
• Is the second within their competence at all? No. It is a claim in contract, and the claimant is themselves.
• Is the claimant impartial? No. The member whose loan created the shortfall sat on the board that ordered the imprisonment.
• What relief? Not liberty outright: the Court allowed bail, which leaves the Company's claim intact and takes away only the imprisonment.

Notice how modest the relief is, and hold that thought when you read the Council's complaints of interference.

What the case shows

Stephen's own summary is the sentence to remember: this case shows that there were grievous scandals to be remedied among the provincial Councils, and that their complaints of the interference of the Court were much more natural than justifiable.

That is a precise formulation and it is worth copying. The Councils' irritation was natural: they were being sued, examined and overruled by a court that had arrived from England three years earlier and did not understand revenue administration. It was not justifiable: the thing the Court stopped them doing was imprisoning a man to recover a private debt owed partly to one of their own members, on no authority they could name.

What beginners get wrong

"The Court released Sarup Chand." It allowed him to give bail, after an elaborate judgment. The relief in these habeas corpus cases is consistently narrower than students assume.

"The Council imprisoned him for revenue arrears." For two things: an arrear of revenue as surety, and a balance as treasurer. The second is the one that mattered, and it is the one the Company's attorney kept out of the judge's sight.

"The King of the Fairies remark shows the judges were contemptuous of Indian institutions." It was said about a Provincial Council of the Company, that is, about a body of Englishmen, and its point was legal: a body that is not a corporation known to the law cannot claim a power to imprison. Mill's criticism of the phrasing is fair; the criticism of the substance is not.

Limits and criticism

The case is the best available answer to the charge that the Supreme Court was simply oppressing the Company's administration, and a student should use it that way.

But it also shows the structural problem from the other side. The Court could correct a particular abuse in a particular case, at the instance of a man rich enough and bold enough to come to Calcutta and hire counsel. It could not reform the Provincial Councils, which is what was actually needed, and it had no way of knowing how many Sarup Chands there were in Dacca, Patna and Murshidabad who never applied to it.

That is the argument for the answer eventually adopted in 1780 and 1793: not a court supervising an unreformed administration case by case, but an administration reorganised so that the officer who collects is not the officer who judges. Sarup Chand's case is the strongest evidence for the need, and the weakest possible remedy for it.

Quick revision

• 1777, Dacca. Sarup Chand, period spelling Seroop Chund: malzamin, surety for revenue, Rs 10,000; and kazanchi, treasurer to the Dacca Council, Rs 66,745.
• He could not pay because he had lent the Company's money to the Company's servants, including Rs 10,000 to Mr Shakespeare, a member of the Dacca Council.
• The Board ordered him confined; Shakespeare sat on the board that ordered it.
• The Company's attorney withheld from the judge the part of the proceedings showing the true reason, and wished the ostensible reason to be the revenue arrear.
• Le Maistre J.: the Council may not be judge in its own cause in a matter of contract, and a body claiming a power to imprison must claim it in a name the law knows, the Dacca Council being no corporation known to the law.
• Relief: bail.
• Stephen: the Councils' complaints of interference were more natural than justifiable.

Test yourself

1. In what two capacities was Sarup Chand liable, and for how much? As malzamin, surety for the payment of revenue, for Rs 10,000; and as kazanchi, treasurer to the Dacca Council, for Rs 66,745.

2. Why could he not pay the treasury balance? Because he had lent a considerable part of it to servants of the Company, including Rs 10,000 to Mr Shakespeare, a member of the very Council that ordered his confinement.

3. What two principles did Le Maistre state? That a body may not be judge in its own cause and may not enforce what it regards as its rights by arbitrarily imprisoning its debtor, the matter being one of contract; and that a body claiming a right to imprison must claim it in its own name or in a corporate or official name known to the law, which the Provincial Council of Dacca was not.

4. What did the Company's attorney do, and why does it matter? He showed the judge only part of the proceedings, deliberately withholding the resolution to confine Sarup Chand for the treasury balance because he doubted the Board's authority to do it, and wished the revenue arrear to be given as the ostensible reason. It matters because it shows that the Company's own legal adviser knew the imprisonment could not be justified.

5. How should the case be used in an answer about the conflict between the Court and the Council? As the clearest evidence that the Councils' complaints of interference were, in Stephen's words, more natural than justifiable: the interference complained of consisted of stopping an imprisonment ordered without authority by a board that included the debtor whose loan had caused the shortfall.