History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. V.] AN ENGLISH OPINION. 239

therefore do not respect its authority or its decisions ; and as it has hitherto been our pride and almost the wonder of surrounding people that so large a body as the Parsis now comprise should be self-governed, we are led thus most urgently to pray that your Lordship will invest the Panchayet with an efficient authority to control the vicious and encourage the virtuous.”

Before the memorial was transmitted to the Supreme Government it was referred by the local authorities to the judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay, and the opinion they expressed was unfavourable to the creation of the authority solicited by the Panchayet. They wrote :—

“We concur in their (petitioners’) wishes in regard to the Panchayet so far as to think it highly desirable that there should exist a tribunal satisfactory to themselves, and authorised to decide matrimonial and some other questions where Parsis only were parties to them. But we fear the difficulties are much greater than they apprehend. If its authority were compulsory, questions might arise as to the legality and regularity of proceedings before it; besides that, no longer depending for their force on general consent, its decisions would be much less likely, in the absence of any authentic standard of law, to give general satisfaction.

“ But we conceive the inevitable consequence would be, that, unless they had a lawyer as an assessor, which probably they would by no means desire, the Parsi community would be greatly harassed by collision between that Court and the Supreme Court. If once its jurisdiction were established, its exercise in proper cases would be a matter of right which must, if withheld, be enforced by a writ of mandamus from the Queen’s Court. If the limits of its jurisdiction, which it would be most difficult accurately to define, and the definition of which would with great difficulty be applied (particularly by persons of totally different habits of thinking) to particular cases as they occurred, were exceeded, writs of prohibition would be the necessary consequence.