It is a remarkable fact, that the officers who had signed the charges against Colonel Munro, were, on reflection, and from learning the sentiments of the Judge-Advocate-General, so convinced that the charges they had made were either groundless or illegal, that they wrote to the Commander-in-Chief to suspend the prosecution of them. This certainly proves (if any proof was wanting) that there could have been no doubt of the result of a court martial, grounded on the state of general feelings, as far as that regarded the charges against Lieutenant-Colonel Munro; for if the accusers themselves had shown they distrusted the cause they had so rashly adopted, there could, assuredly, be no apprehension of the judgment of thirteen officers of rank (all of whom, if it had been thought necessary, might have been chosen from his Majesty's service) giving a biassed or unjust sentence. The Government of Madras, in their dispatch to the Court of Directors upon this subject, draw a directly opposite conclusion from this fact, which, they say, "proves in itself the inexpediency of their having had recourse to such a proceeding;" but they state no grounds for this conclusion. In the whole course of this affair they appear to have been much, if not solely, guided by the opinion of their law officers: and no man can peruse the letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Leith upon this subject, without a just respect for the talents and extensive legal knowledge of that public officer. But those that think great, numerous, and obvious evils resulted from the decision of Government on the case of Lieutenant-Colonel Munro, will not immediately perceive the necessity of its having been governed by rules of law in its decision on a question which clearly involved the most serious considerations of state policy. They will think, and with justice, this was a question not for lawyers, but statesmen; who, in the exercise of their legitimate discretion, are in the situation in which Mr. Burke has so well described legislators; and therefore, like them, "ought to do what lawyers cannot, for they have no rules to bind them but the great principles of reason and equity and the general sense of mankind; these they are bound to obey and follow: and rather to enlarge and enlighten law by the liberality of legislative reason, than to fetter and bind their high capacity by the narrow constructions of subordinate artificial justice."