The Common Law in India - College of Social Sciences and ...

82 The Common Law in Indiaattempt to solve the problems that came before themwherever Indian regulations or statutes contained noprovisions applicable to them by drawing upon thelearning on which they had been brought up and therules and maxims to which they had been accustomedfor a lifetime. This explains why from the earliesttimes the decisions of this tribunal in appeals fromIndia have resulted in a steady and continuousgrafting of the principles of common law and equityinto the body of Indian jurisprudence.The King's Privy Council is said to have drawninto its own hands for the first time under the Tudorprinces the right of the exclusive adjudication ofappeals from the foreign and colonial dependencies ofthe Crown and from the Channel Islands. It is saidthat appeals were first granted from Jersey in HenryVIII's reign; and the records of the Privy Councilin 1572 present the first instance of the exercise ofthis jurisdiction. The extent and importance of thejurisdiction retained by the Privy Council were pointedout by Lord Brougham in his celebrated speech onlaw reform in 1828. " They determine not only uponquestions of colonial law in plantation cases, but alsosit as Judges, in the last resort, of all prize causes.And they hear and decide upon all our plantationappeals. They are thus made the supreme Judges,in the last resort, over every one of our foreignsettlements, whether situated in those immense territorieswhich you possess in the East, where you anda trading company rule together over not less than70,000,000 of subjects." 38»» H. Cowell, Tagore Law Lectures, 1872, pp. 206-216.