Page:The English Reports v1 1900.pdf/682

poration should have perpetual succession, and be chosen or appointed from time to time in manner therein mentioned; and that such Aldermen so chosen should continue in their offices during their lives, and should, with the Mayor, be invested with such powers as in the charter are mentioned. That coming to the knowledge of this charter, the appellant was induced to enter into, and did enter into the Company's service on the 6th of November 1759, under such deed of covenants as in the information mentioned, and continued to serve the Company for five years as thereby stipulated, and afterwards continued to serve the Company in India for two years more, or thereabouts, but without entering into any deed of covenants for that purpose, about which time he resigned the Company's service; and that having served the Company during the times before mentioned, greatly to the satisfaction of the President and Council of Fort William, he was about the time of his resignation appointed one of the Aldermen of the Mayor's Court at Calcutta, agreeably in all respects to the said charter, and afterwards officiated in the said office as such, and continued so to do.

The appellant further pleaded, that whilst he continued to act in the last mentioned capacity, the President and Council at Calcutta having concerted some cruel, unjust, and oppressive monopolies in trade, to their own private emolument, and being, as he believed, guilty of other enormities to the prejudice of the Company's interest, which they were apprehensive might be exposed by him, who had been for some time well acquainted with the trade and concerns of that country, the Governor and Council concerted various schemes for distressing him, and, in consequence thereof, proceeded to sentence him to banishment out of Bengal, and afterwards caused several of his mercantile agents in remote parts of the country to be seized and imprisoned for many months, and to abandon his effects to the amount of near £20,000 under their care, and refused their protection to him, and in particular with respect to his agents and the property so abandoned by them; and which, on account of the menaces of the Governor and Council, he was obliged totally to desert; and afterwards, in September 1768, they proceeded to sentence him to be removed from his office of Alderman, in an illegal and oppressive manner; the sentence having been since reversed, on an appeal to his Majesty in Council; and that in order to distress and ruin the appellant, the President and Council, shortly after making the said sentence of removal, in September 1768, caused his house in Calcutta to be surrounded by a number of armed seapoys in the Company's service, who suddenly seized him therein, and forcibly took him from thence and put him on board a ship, before he could secure his effects, amounting to £185,000 and sent him to England. The appellant also pleaded, that he was the son of William Bolts, deceased, who was a native of Heidelburg in Germany, and an alien; and that he the appellant was born beyond the seas, and out of the allegiance of his Majesty, and was, during his being an [427] Alderman of the Mayor's Court at Calcutta, and his subsequent residence there, a Protestant and an alien, and a subject of Germany, in amity with his Majesty.

On the 30th of May 1772, this plea came on to be argued before the Barons, when, after full and solemn debate, all of them were of opinion that the plea should be over-ruled, and made an order accordingly.

From this order the appellant thought proper to appeal, insisting, (J. Dunning, A. Macdonald) that his plea of alienage was a good and sufficient bar to the information; for that about the time of his resigning his office in the service of the Company, he was admitted an Alderman, or Judge, of the Mayor's Court at Calcutta, under that clause in the charter granted by King Geo. II. (commonly called The Charter of Justice) which enabled foreign Protestants, the subjects of any other Prince or State in amity with him, to hold that office; whereby the appellant was recognized as being, what he really was, the subject of a state at amity with Great Britain. That being thus contra-distinguished from a British subject, he did not come under any of the acts of parliament stated in the information; as those acts expressly regarded subjects of his Majesty, a description which did not apply to the appellant, at the time of his supposed transgression against them. The only ground on which the appellant could be brought within the description of a subject of his Majesty, was the temporary allegiance which he was supposed to have owed to the Crown of Great-Britain, at the time when this pretended illicit