Friday, the 19th instant, having been fixed for the trial of the case of the Queen V. Long, for publication of certain libels in the celebrated pamphlet called Nil Durpan, the Court was crowded with Europeans of every class. Civilians of every grade from Secretaries of Government and Special Commissioners, down to the "unfledged eagles" of the Service, were there; a number of the missionaries too, to countenance their confrere in his "hour of trial"; and such numbers of the merchants, bankers, and traders of all classes, with here and there a stray Indigo Planter, that the remark was made that there could be nobody left to carry on the business of Calcutta. It was universally felt that not only the Reverend James Long, but the Government of Bengal, was on its trial; and the leaders on both sides were watching a struggle of fierce political action under the rigid forms of the Law. The late Secretary for Bengal was on the bench, almost beside a leading member of the Landholders' Association, at the Bar table the son of the Lieutenant Governor was opposite to the protesting member of the Indigo Commission; whilst Mr. Montresor, the late Special Commissioner to Nuddea, was surrounded by men of the Indigo Deputation, whose statements he had so broadly discredited; and the crowd was diversified by the stout figures of numbers of influential Natives. The presiding Judge was Sir M. L. Wells who entered the Court at 11 o'clock and commenced what we have already called the first of the Slate Trials of India under the Empire.
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