The Sun.
London, England, 1831-05-27 00:00:00

TON AND OTHERS.

This case Was an appeal from a decision of the
Master of the Rolls. The bill was filed to establish
the right of the assignees of the late Marquis of
Hastings to what is commonly known by the name
of the Deccan prize-money. That right was con-
tested by Sir Thomas Hislop, who had the com-
mand of that division of the army by which the
conquest was achieved. The Master of the Rolls
having heard the case, had decided that Sir Thomas
Hislop's claim could not be maintained, and that the
parties who claimed through the Marquis of Hast-
ings were entitled in various proportions to the
fund. Before the argument commenced,
The LORD CHANCELLOR thought it right to ap-
prise the Counsel engaged in the cause, that he had
formerly been retained as Counsel in it himself.—
His assistance had been engaged by Sir Thomas
Hislop, he had been male acquainted with all the
facts and points in the case, and he believed he had
attended 40 or 50;consultations which had been held
in Sir Thomas Hislop's behalf; as, therefore, it
might be supposed that he had a bias in his favour,
he would, if the Counsel for the other parties wished
it, willingly call in the assistance of two of the
Judges to hear the cause.
Sir E. SUGDEN, for the phintiffs, was so con-
vinced of the law being in his favour, that he should
be perfectly satisfied with his Lordship's decision.
Sir C. WETIIERELL, for Sir Thomas Hislop, of
course could have no objection.
His LORDSHIP said that he should dismiss from
his mind all that had previously passed when he
was engaged in the matter. He was aware that
there had been a warrant of the Treasury in 1823,
it, favour of General Hislop, which had in some
degree been reversed by a subsequent warrant in
1826. He wished to know whether it would be
contended that this Court had jurisdiction, so :ar as
that reversal was concerned, notwithstanding the pre-
rogative of the Crown to deal with prize-money at
its discretion.

Sir C. WETnERELL said that he intended, as
Counsel for Sir Thomas Hislop, to contend that
the Court had jurisdiction, considering the relative
interests and the acts of the partie,, and he had no
doubt he should be able to satisfy the Court upon
that point. The Learned Counsel then proccded
to state the case of Sir Thomas Hislop. The prin-
cipal point to be decided was, whether Sir Thomas
Hislop or the late Marquis of Hastings was to
be regarded as the Commander-in-Chief of the
army whose victories subdued the Deccan.—
The present bill was filed by Mr. Alexander,
one of the assignees of any share of prize-
money of right belonging to the Marquis of
Hastings, and it was. filed against the Duke of Wel-
lingtona nd Mr. Arbuthnot, as agents or trustees of
the prize money appointed by the Crown, and
against Sir Thomas Hislop. The prayer was, that
the share of the sum of 45,7001. which had been
awarded to the Marquis of Hastings, should be
paid over to the assignee. The share in question had
been paid into Court, and Sir Thomas Hislop had a
claim upon it under a warrant of the Treasury of the
sth of February, 1823. That warrant constituted a
grant of prize money to him, and having once
passed under the King's hand and received the sign
manual, the Lords of the Treasury had no power to
alter it. The attempt, then, they had made to
alter it by their subsequent warrant was, he in.
sisted, wholly nugatory. The first proposition which
he relied on was, that the warrant granted in the
first instance vested a right in Sir Thomas Ilislop;
and his second was, that right being once vested,
could not be divested by any act but that of Sir
Thomas Hislop himself. This, then, gave the Court
jurisdiction, and according to the principles upon
which the Court had always hitherto acted, it
would be bound to respect the right conferred by the
first warrant. The case of two patents granted by
the Crown for the same object was an analogous one.
The first patent must be held to be in force until its
effect was determined by the decision of a Court of
Law upon a proceeding by scirc facias. The Lords of
the Treasury having adjudicated upon the claims be-
fore them, had no power to resettle those claims.
They had performed the whole of their office when
the warrant was first signed. Now the warrant of
1823 recited fully and formally that the claims of the
Marquis of Hastings, and those of Sir Thomas His-
lop, to this prize-money, had been preferred before
them ; that those claims had been heard and consi-
dered by their Lordships; and that the evidence ad-
duced by either party in support of them had also
been considered ; and that their Lordships, after all
this, were of opinion that the most equitable prin-
ciple to abide as much as possible by was that which
regulated all actual captures. At the period of the
war in the Deccan there were two armies in India,

—one of them commanded by Sir Thomas Hislop,
and this was the force actually engaged in the victory
over and the pursuit of the Peishwa ; and the other,

which was distant from the seat of sear more than
300 miles, was under the command of the Marquis
of Hastings, who was also Governor-General. The
right which the Crown would have had to the prizes
made in this war had been relinquished, and vested
it in the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Arbuthnot,
to be by them distributed conformably with the
principle laid down in the warrant. It was after
this impossible for the Lords of the Treasury to
make an order divesting them of the property, or
allowing them to apply it according to any other
principle of distribution. But in June, 1825, the
trustees had addressed a letter to the Lords of the

Treasury, complaining of difficulties they met with in
executing their commission, and stating that the
decision of 1823 could not be carried into effect.
They alleged that there had been no booty at a
place called Nagpoor,—that the amount of some
portions of the prize-money was incorrectly stated—
that some of the money directed to be distributed
had not been reduced into possession, and that their
Lordships had acted upon inaccurate information.
These objections he contended had nothing to do
with the principle upon which the trustees were to
act. But they proceeded to say that the actual
captors could not be satisfactorily ascertained, and '
they therefore recommended that certain portions of
the booty should be considered as the general acqui-
sition of the war, and be distributed among the
whole of the Indian army, by which means the Mar-
quis of Hastings, as Commander-in-Chief of the
grand army, would be entitled to an eighth of the
booty taken at Nasser, and some other places, where
neither he nor his army had actually ever been. This
recommendation had led to a minute or warrant of
the Treasury, in 1826, by which it wa. adopted;
but the Learned Counsel contended, that the fact of
the Marquis of Hastings being Commander-in-Chief
in the Deccan ought first to have been put in issue,
as well as the usage of the Indian slimy in respect
to prize-money ; and the second warrant not being
iiristc,or,4lf,horicmhityhal y
over his property in question, must be trewed as a
nullity, and the Court must award to Sir Thomas
lai
Hislop the full amount of his claim, or direct an
th
divestedthe
t he
Crowni in
righttl-le
first downof its
issue for the purpose of settling those matters of
fact which the trustees had taken upon themselves
to decide without due investigation.
At five o'clock the Court rose, and his Lordship
directed the argument to be continued to-morrow.

COURT OF ICING'S BENCH, 211,ir 26.
LANDSEER AND WIFE V. ROBINSON.
The ATTORNEY•GENERAL WUB instructed to move

in this case, on the part of the defendant, for a rule
to spew cause why the verdict obtained by the plain-
tiffs should not be set aside and a new trial granted.
The action had been brought for the publication of
various libellous letters, written by the defendant,
imputing to Mrs. Landseer that she had had criminal
intercourse with him. Some of the letters had been
addressed, to Mrs. Landseer, and some to her
husband, and on those letters being tendered in evi-
dence as the trial, Lord Tenterden was of opinion
that they were inadmissible, as they could not be
made the subject of an action for libel, without some
proof that the defendant intended them to be seen
by other persons besides the plaintiffs, to whom they
were addressed, and that by the course which he
.adopted they had actually fallen into the hands of
other persons. To make out, therefore, the publi-
cation of these letters, so as to sustain the action,
his Learned Friend, Sir J. Scarlett, bad adopted a
very ingenious mode of bringing them before the
Jenny, by assuming that the defendant had put them
in a course of publication. his argument was that
the defendant having in the first instance addressed
to some members of the plaintiffs' family a letter
of a similar description to those which he after-
wards sent to Mrs. Landseer herself, clearly in-
tendedthat those letters (theletters to Mrs. Landseer)
should fall under the eve of her husband's brothels
and sisters, or some other members of the family ;
and this fact he (Sir J. Scarlett) had proposed to
make out by means of an anonymous letter which
had been addressed to Mr. Landseer's brother, as
from a friend of the family, stating that too great an
intimacy subsisted between Mr. Lucius Hooice Ro-
binson, the defendant, and Mrs. Landseer, and sug-
gesting the propriety, for the honour of the family,
of keeping a strict watch upon the parties. This
letter was sent in the absence of Mrs. Landseer,
who was on a visit at her father's in Kent, and it
was followed in the course of a day or two by a
letter addressed to Mrs. Landseer herself, at the
house of the family in town to which the anony-
mous letter had been sent. His Learned Friend
nad said that the defendant was sure that this
letter would be opened by some of the members of
the family (the anonymous letter having previously
come to their hands), and be (the Attorney-Ge-
neral) certainly felt that provided the evidence
could be considered as suflicint to convict the de-
fendant with the anonymous letter, there was enough
to justify a reasonable inference that the intention
was that the letters addressed to Mrs. Landseer
should fall into the hands of, and be opened by,
some of the members of the family; and that un-
doubtedly might be considered as sufficient proof
of publication. Under these circumstances, it
having been sworn that the anonymous letter was
in the handwriting of the defendant, the other let-
ters—those addressed to Mrs. Landseer—had been
allowed to be read. The witness who had been
first called to prove the defendant's handwriting
to all the letters, on being shown the anony-
mous letter, could forms no belief one way
or the other, as to whether it was written by
the defendant. The other witness, Miss Caroline
Pocock, a sister of Mrs. Landseer, after looking at
the letter, which was a very long one, for some
time, said she believed it was the defendant's hand-
writing, and, being asked the ground of her belief,
she said it was from a similarity in the formations of
two or three of the letters. She stated this without
hesitation, but there was a striking contrast between
her ready knowledge of the defendant's handwriting
to the anonymous letter, and the doubt she threw
upon the handwriting of her sister, Mrs. Landseer,
to some letters written by her.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL proceeded to say, that
the Jury found a verdict for the plaintiffs for 3001.
That verdict, he observed, was founded upon the
evidence as to the anonymous letter, and the letters
addressed to Mrs. Landseer, coupled with proof of
other letters written by the defendant—one ad-
dressed to Captain Pocock, Mrs. Landseer's father,
and one to the plaintiff's attorney, Mr. Evans.
eLf
Theeord ofi ENT, eeorTuyeNs
r_e_eNGr
ATTORNEY-GENERAL.
itao t
comtieti
rdi
ft arhot
that
siey
tsthosehee
alnetotielyrs.
mous letter and the letter addressed to Mrs. Land-
seer, and could not, he thought, of themselves have
led to the verdict which the Jury found. He had
now to state to the Court, that the defendant was
very sensible of the odium which was cast upon him
by being supposed to be the author of the anony-
mous letter, and although he had certainly been
guilty of a good deal of indiscretion in other re-
spects, yet this charge stood upon so very dif-
ferent a footing from all the rest, that it was
by no means unnatural he should wish to re-
lieve himself from it. The Learned Counsel
went on to say that the defendant now stated
in his affidavit that he had never seen the anony-
mous letter : he swore positively that it was not in
his handwriting, and he had no doubt if he were
now allowed an opportunity of inspecting it, that
he should be able to bring forward witnesses to
speak to their belief that it was not written by him.
Under these circumstances, he hoped their Lord-
ships would feel, as the case was one of such a re-
msrkable nature, that the defendant was well justi-
fied, for the purpose of his character, in muking the
present application.
After his Lordship had conferred with the rest of
the Court for a few minutes, he added that, sup-
posing the anonymous letter not to be receivable in
evidence, still the plainliffs would have been en-
titled to a verdict on proof of the letter to Captain
Pocock, and the two letters to the attorney, Mr.
Hugh Evans, of Gray's-inn. It was possible that
the anonymous letter might have had the effect of
increasing the damages, but as the verdict must at
all events have passed for the plaintiffs, the Court
did not think they ought, in a case of this kind, to
set the example of granting a new trial, merely on
the defendant's affidavit that he was not the author
of a letter which was proved by one of the wit-
nesses to be in his handwriting. The witness who
was first called had said that the letter was in a
" disguised hand," and that might be a reason why
Miss Pocock at first hesitated in speaking to it.
The Learned Counsel therefore took nothing by
his motion.

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