Star.
London, England, 1810-09-07 00:00:00

the Judge Advocate General, tis constituted legal
adviser, that those charges were ht their nature ille-
gal, did, on the 20th January, 1809, put Lieutenant-
Colonel Munro under arrest, with the intent that he
should be brought to trial upon them.
24. The obvions reasons on which we have groun-
ded our censure upon the officers for bringing for.
ward those charges, might well be expected to have
occurred to the mind off' Lieutenant-General Mac-
dbwall, and to have determined his conduct with re-
spect to them. But, in addition to those reasons, the
report which had been made upon them by the Judge
Advocate General, on the 7th of November, 1808,
proved so unanswerably their impropriety and illepk-
lity, and furnished such strong greunds for consider-
ing them as an unwarrantable attempt to controul
the Councils of Government, through the medium of
bringing one of its official advisers to trial, that it be.
came the clear duty of Lieutenant-General Mac-
dowall to have returned those charges to the Officers
who had signed them, with marks of his high dis-
pleasure.
25. The officers who gave in the charge against
Lieutenant Colonel Muaro having in their subsequent
Memorial desired that the Commander in Chief
would postpone the prosecution of them, you have, in
the 30th paragraph of your letter of the 29th of Ja-
nuary, 1809, remarked, that it furnided additional
General
in aid of all the other objections to Lieutenant
General Macdowall's refraining from bringing Colo-
nel Munro to trial upon them. In this observation,
we entirely concur. It would indeed have been a
high aggravation of the impropriety of Lieutenant-
General Macdowall's conduct, in putting Lieutenant
Colonel Munro under arrest, on charges which the
Judge Advocate General had declared to be inad-
missible„ if he persevered in subjecting the Quarter.
Master general to a trial, after the authors of those
charges had themselves acquiesced in the opinion of
the Judge Advocate General, and requested that the
procCedtngs might be suspended.
2G. But we observe that Lieutenant General Mac-
dowall, in his letter of the 28th January, 1809, cover-
ing that Memorial of the officers, took occasion dis-
tinctly to remark, that it was not before him when he
put Lieutenant Colonel Munro in arrest on the 20th
of that month.

27. As, however, a !leper of that description, which
was to be circulated for signature, was likely to be-
come known whilst in preparation, it would have been
more satisfactory to us to have been informed, that no
intimation whatever concerning it had retched Lieu-
tenant-General Macdowall, when be put Lieutenant-
Colonel Mulro under arrest.

28. Waving this circumstance, however, we pro-
ceeded to observe, that Lieutenant-General Mac-
dowall, instead of censuring and suppressing those
charges, as we think it was the duty of the Com-
mander in Chief to have done, adopted them and
pursued their object, by subjecting Lieutenant-Colo-
nel Munro to the ignominy of an arrest, with
a view to his being brought to trial upon them.
—Tt became then, in our opinion, the buunden duty
of our Governor in Council at Fort St. George
to interpose the direct authority of Government for
the protection of Lieutenant-Colonel Munro, by re-
quiring the Commander in Chief to release that Offi-
cer 'ront the arrest in which he had placed him.
29. To have permitted Lieutenant-Colonel Munro
to be brought to trial, for sentiments and statements
delivered by him in his official capacity, in obedience
to the orders of our former Commander in Chief at
Madras, Sir John Cradock, by whom they were
adopted as his own, as they were also approved, sanc-
tioned, and enforced by the local and supreme Go-
vernments, would have been, not merely to withhold
protection from a meritorious Officer, in the discharge
of his indispensable duties, but to have brought into
question, and in fact subjected to trial, the character
and acts of the former Commander in Chief, Sir John
Cradock, and even those of the Governments them-
selves.

30. We consider the General Order left by Lien-
tenant-General Macdowall for publication, on his
quitting Madras, as a high aggravation of his pre-
vious misconduct, of having put Lieutenant-Colonel
Munro under an arrest, upon charges in so many
ways objectionable; which his constituted law ad-
viser had told him were illegal, and which the accu-
sers themselves had desired to withdraw.

31. This order, left by Lieut.-General Macdowall,
for publication after his departure, conveys a severe
reprimand to Lieutenant-Colonel Munro, for having
appealed to your Government on the occasion of his
arrest; a measure necessarily imposed upon him by
the conduct of Lieutenant-General Macdowall him-
self; this appeal had been sanctioned and acted upon
by your Government. A reprimand, therefore, to
Lieutenant-Colonel Munro for having made it, be-
came, by necessary inference, a reprimand on the
Government itself.

SI That supreme Civil and Military power, which
in all Governments must reside somewhere, is, in the
presidency of Fort St. George, vested by Act of Par-
liament in the Governor in Council of that Presi-
dency, subject to the control of the superior authori-
ties in India and Europe, as described by that act ;
and other authorities and powers are to be held and
exercised in subordination to that supreme authority.
33. To contend that any authority can exist sepa.
rate, independent, and in contradiction to that su-
preme authority, can only be considered to be an at-
tempt
to pervert the usual practice of conducting pub-
lic business, in certain specified and habitual channels,
into a means of checking, resisting, and controuling
the Government itself.
• 34. Any Military Officer addressing himself di-
rectly to the Government, and otherwise than through
the usual and o: Binary channels of communication,
certainly does it at his peril ;• and it is incumbent
upon him in his own justification, to chew either that
the usual channels of application were obstructed or
refused to him, or to state other and satisfactory
causes for the irregularity of his Address. It then
becomes the duty of the Government to decide how
fair the peculiar circumstances of 'the case authorise
and justify the irregularity of application.
35. It the Government shall, formally, by its de-
clarations, or virtually by its acts, sanction such ap-
plication and appeal, by acting on the information
conveyed in it, and without censuring the mode in
which it was received; it then becomes the duty of
the commanding officer, or Commander in Chief,,
through whose channel the application or appeal was
originally offered, to submit his opinion to that of
the Governnient.—ab continsied.4