It is not asserted that this inquiry was not, with equal
precision of terms, specially committed, under particular regulations,
to the Court of Directors. I conceive, therefore, the Board of Control
had no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There is
nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence, if this be not
undeniably true, that when, a special authority is given to any persons
by name to do some particular act, that no others, by virtue of general
powers, can obtain a legal title to intrude themselves into that trust,
and to exercise those special functions in their place. I therefore
consider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downright
usurpation. But if the strained construction by which they have forced
themselves into a suspicious office (which every man delicate with
regard to character would rather have sought constructions to avoid)
were perfectly sound and perfectly legal, of this I am certain, that
they cannot be justified in declining the inquiry which had been
prescribed to the Court of Directors. If the Board of Control did
lawfully possess the right of executing the special trust given to that
court, they must take it as they found it, subject to the very same
regulations which bound the Court of Directors. It will be allowed that
the Court of Directors had no authority to dispense with either the
substance or the mode of inquiry prescribed by the act of Parliament.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25