Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/272

232 unity of action were all-important, every order was arguable, and where opinions differed, no measure passed without violent controversy. Moreover, the boundaries between the executive and judicial powers were also left to be discovered by incessant conflict, producing a kind of border warfare in which each party made encroachments and reprisals. In the midst of all this turmoil, the sovereign power remained ambiguous and formally in abeyance, and Parliament, the only umpire acknowledged by both sides, was at the distance of a six months' voyage.

Thus the main obstacles to the smooth working of the new constitution were, first, the entire dependence of the Governor-General on the votes of his Council; secondly, the conflict of jurisdictions; and lastly, the want of a supreme legislative authority, nearer than England, to arbitrate in these quarrels and to mark off the proper sphere of the executive and judicial departments. The Governor-General could make no laws that the judges condescended to notice. On the other hand, the judges claimed, upon one ground or another, a general power of entertaining complaints against the acts of the executive government and its officers, and of issuing orders tending to reduce the administration to the status of a subaltern agency, whose proceedings might be reviewed by the judges at their discretion.

The capital question of sovereignty stood open to be explained theoretically according to the interests or contentions of either side. It might be colourably