L106 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II 
Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the island of 
Jamaica and its dependencies, and was and still is as such 
entitled to the privileges and exemptions appertaining to 
such office and to the holder thereof, and that the acts 
complained of in the said declaration were done by him as 
Governor of the said Island of Jamaica, and in the exercise 
of his reasonable discretion as such, and as acts of State ; 
and this the defendant is ready to verify, wherefore he prays 
judgment if he ought to be compelled to answer in this 
action.’ 
The plaintiff demurred to this plea, and the present appeal 
is from the judgment of the Supreme Court allowing the 
demurrer, and ordering the appellant to answer further to 
She writ and declaration. 
The plea is in form a dilatory plea, and does not profess 
to contain a defence in bar of the action. It was advisedly 
pleaded as a plea of privilege, with the object of raising the 
question of the immunity of the appellant as Governor from 
being impleaded and compelled to answer in the courts of 
the Colony. That this was so is plain not only from the form 
of the plea, but from an arrangement come to between the 
parties before the argument of the demurrer. In an inter- 
locutory proceeding to set aside a judgment of non pros. as 
irregularly obtained, an order was made by consent that 
all pleas of the defendant, Sir Anthony Musgrave, except 
the plea of privilege by attorney, be struck out, together 
with replications and entry of judgment of non pros. with 
liberty to the plaintiff to demur, it being arranged that the 
demurrer be set down for hearing at the present term, and 
if a judgment respondeat ouster the defendant, Sir Anthony 
have liberty to plead not guilty by statutes.’ 
The decision of the Supreme Court was accordingly given 
upon the plea, as a plea of privilege, and altogether upon 
this aspect of it, the judgment being one of respondeat 
ouster. 
Upon the hearing of the present appeal the Attorney- 
General, on the part of the appellant, whilst not giving up 
the plea in the shape in which it was pleaded, insisted that 
if it disclosed a good defence in substance to the action, as 
he contended it did, its form and the arrangement of the 
parties might be disregarded, and a general judgment given 
for the defendant; and, though under protest from the 
respondent’s counsel, the discussion at their Lordships’ bar 
was allowed to take the wider scope which the Attorney- 
General’s contention introduced into the case.