crap. 11] THE POWERS OF THE GOVERNOR 113 
take further cognizance of them. It is to be observed that 
the sovereign authority conferred upon the East India Com- 
pany appears in Acts of Parliament, and therefore, without 
being pleaded, the courts would have judicial notice of it. 
Coming to the present plea, we find that, after stating that 
the defendant was Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief 
of the Island of Jamaica, the only averments in it are, that 
the acts complained of were done by him as governor of the 
island, and in the exercise of his reasonable discretion as 
such, and as acts of State. There is no attempt to show 
the occasion on which the seizure of the plaintiff's ship was 
made, nor the grounds on which that seizure, which is not 
in itself of the nature of an act of State, became and was such 
an act. The plea does not aver, even generally, that the 
seizure was an act which the defendant was empowered to 
do as Governor, nor even that it was an act of State. It 
would have been contended at the trial, if issue had been 
taken, that it would satisfy the averments of this plea to 
prove that the defendant assumed to make the seizure as 
Governor, and assumed to do it as an act of State, without 
showing that the act itself was an act of State, properly so 
called, and was within the limits of his authority. It was 
said that the plea should be construed as requiring, by 
implication, proof of these matters; but having regard to 
its nature and form as a plea of privilege, this cannot properly 
be held to be its meaning. Their Lordships cannot but think 
it was designedly pleaded in its present shape. It was 
a preliminary plea intended to raise the question whether 
the Governor, if acting de facto as such, and doing an act 
that he assumed and deemed to be an act of State, could be 
called on to show in the courts of the Colony that the seizure 
complained of was really an act of State, of the nature and 
class of those which, as governor acting on behalf of the 
Crown, he had authority to do. The object of the plea 
plainly was to stop the court from entering upon such an 
inquiry ; but upon the construction now sought to be given 
to it, this object would, from the first, have been frustrated, 
if issue had been taken, for the court must then have gone 
into the very inquiry which it was the manifest purpose of 
the plea to avert. It appears to their Lordships that the 
plaintiff could not have safely taken issue on it. He would 
have been met at the trial by the objection that it was a plea 
of privilege, pleaded as a preliminary plea to the jurisdiction, 
and neither was, nor was intended to be, an answer to the 
action. 
1279