Though the right of suspending officers from the service till the pleasure of the Court of Directors was known, is one that has been very properly vested in the local Governments of India, they possess no power which should be exercised with such extreme caution. It never can be wisely exercised in any cases but those of most clearly established guilt, where trial would either endanger the authority of Government, or expose its dignity to the highest insult and degradation; which is indeed one, and perhaps the most effectual, mode of endangering its existence. Every officer is conscious, when he enters the public service, that he subjects himself to military law, but not to arbitrary power. There are, however, (as has been shown), extreme cases, which create exceptions that interfere with his right to this jurisdiction: but when the ruling power is compelled to act contrary to usage, it is bound, in all such cases, to establish the necessity of its so acting, by an exposure both of the nature of the crime and of the proof of its having been committed[7]. The King of England may, no doubt, strike any officer's name out of his army without assigning any reason; but his adviser would incur serious responsibility; and an inferior authority exercising this great power should be still more cautious, lest the very purpose for which it was granted be perverted, by the destruction of that general confidence in the justice of their rule, upon which the power of departure (when the safety of the state absolutely requires it) from ordinary forms of law is grounded. No sense of expedience, or desire to strike terror, (by the mere display of arbitrary power,) can warrant the slightest deviation from principles so essential to preserve the temper and order of a military body under this alarming though legal departure from its usual rights and privileges.