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least foundation for it. The Commissioners, in answer to his statement clearly showing that he was within the prescribed age, had written back that he had 'admitted' that he was beyond it (a laugh), and they had declined to hear evidence upon the point.

The Lord Chief Justice: They say, in effect, 'Any evidence you may adduce we shall set at nought'.

Mr. Justice Mellor: They say, 'You are estopped by your statement at Calcutta', though it plainly appears that it is quite consistent with his present statement.

Mr. Justice Blackburn: They totally misapprehend his statement, and then they tell the applicant that upon their (mistaken) construction of it they consider it conclusive against him, whereas in reality it is not so.

Mr. Justice Hannen: They appear to represent it as imperative upon them to take the eastern mode of computation.

The Lord Chief Justice: Show us that we have jurisdiction, and I think there is no doubt we shall exercise it.

Mr. Mellish submitted that the jurisdiction was clear. The statute gave every native Indian subject a legal right to admission upon certain conditions prescribed by the Queen, all of which he contended that he had satisfied. The Commissioners proposed to deprive the applicant of this legal right upon grounds clearly untenable, and this without hearing his evidence. This was clearly contrary to those obligations of natural justice which were incumbent upon all tribunals, or upon all bodies which had legal duties to perform, however domestic the tribunal might be. Therefore the applicant was entitled to a mandamus to compel the Commissioners to hear and consider his evidence, and adjudicate or determine upon it, as to the actual truth of the matter of fact in dispute.

The rule was granted, but the Civil Service Commissioners did not wait to contest it. Their position was indefensible and their decision perhaps hasty; and before the case came on for hearing they wrote to Sripad Babaji Thakur and myself, re-instating us in our positions as selected candidates for the Indian Civil Service.

I won my case, but my father died before the news could reach him.

My father died on February 20, 1870. I was then living with my friend, Mr. K. M. Chatterjee (who afterwards became a Judge of the Calcutta Court of Small Causes) in lodgings in Gaisford Street, Kentish Town. The circumstances in which I received the news of my father's death were so peculiar and even extraordinary that they may perhaps be mentioned here. To the spiritualist, and the believer in the relations between the visible and the invisible world, they may perhaps lend countenance to their theories.