Under such circumstances British ideas of justice gradually superseded Mohammedan usages. Indeed it was impossible to maintain the criminal law of the Mohammedans in courts controlled more or less by British judges. Under Mohammedan law theft was punished by mutilation, adultery was punished by death, or not punished at all unless four eye-witnesses could be produced; whilst the most atrocious murderer might escape from justice by the payment of a blood fine to the kinsmen of his victim. Cazis and muftis might be nominally independent, but practically they yielded to British influences; and British judges administered justice in a patriarchal fashion, which might be condemned by trained lawyers, but was far better suited to the condition of the masses than British courts of law in the last century. [Sidenote: New members of Council and barrister judges.] §8. Whilst carrying out these reforms Warren Hastings was taken somewhat aback by the appointment of three English gentlemen, not in the service of the Company, to seats in the Calcutta Council. At the same time four barrister judges, equally independent of the Company, were sent out from England to form a Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta for the administration of English law, civil and criminal. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court was to extend to all British subjects, and to all Asiatics who were servants of the Company or had dealings with British subjects. The Chief Justice was Sir Elijah Impey, who was known to Hastings, as the two had been schoolfellows together at Westminster. The three other barristers were puisne judges. [Sidenote: Regulating Act of 1773.] The three new members of Council and the four new Supreme Court judges had been appointed, not by the East India Company, but by Parliament and the Crown. The public mind in England had been greatly stirred by reports of maladministration, and in 1773 a "Regulating Act" had been passed to bring the administration of merchant rulers under some control independent of that of the East India Company. No offence was intended to Warren Hastings; on the contrary, he was raised by the same "Regulating Act" to the post of Governor-General, with a controlling power over Madras and Bombay on all questions of war and peace. He filled the chair as President of the Council, but besides him there was only Mr. Barwell, who belonged to the Company's service. The three remaining members were the three strangers and outsiders--General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Philip Francis, the reputed author of the _Letters of Junius_. [Sidenote: Warren Hastings and Philip Francis.]