that it would have been well if they had confined their legislation to such few modifications of the regulations of 1793 as the slowly progressive changes of Oriental life might have really rendered necessary. For very nearly thirty years the government of Bengal resisted the tempting facility of legislation incident to its position of entire and absolute power, and was content to rule upon the principles, and in general adherence to the forms, prescribed by those early enactments. The benefits resulting from this system were to be seen in a yearly extending cultivation, a growing respect for rights of property, and the gradual rise in the minds of the people of an habitual reference to certain known laws, instead of to the caprice of a ruler, for their guidance in the more serious affairs of life. The counterbalancing evils alleged against it were, the monopoly of all high offices by the covenanted servants of the East India Company; the accumulation of suits in the courts of civil justice-a result partly of that monopoly, and partly of the check imposed by our police on all simpler and ruder modes of arbitrement; and its tendency, by humouring the Asiatic aversion to change, to keep things stationary, and discountenance that progress without which there ought, in the opinion of many of our countrymen, to be no content on earth. Indeed, the very fact of the natives of Bengal being satisfied with such a system, would, we apprehend, be advanced as a reason for its abolition a contented frame of mind, under their circumstances, being held to indicate a moral abasement, only to be corrected by the excitement of a little discontent. But, in truth, there was nothing in the Cornwallis system to preclude the introduction of necessary amendments. The great reproach attaching to it was the insufficient employment of natives, and the exclusive occupation by the Civil Service of the higher judicial posts. Now, we hope to make it clear, by a brief explanation, that the correction of both of these evils might more easily have been effected under the Cornwallis system, than under that by which it has been superseded. There are, as we have remarked at the outset of this article, questions of difficult solution inseparable from conquest; among which, that of the degree of trust to be reposed in the conquered is perhaps the greatest. Where attachment can hardly be presumed to exist, some reserve in the allotment of power appears to be dictated by prudence; and to fix the amount of influence annexed to an office to be filled by one of the subjugated, so as to render its importance and respectability compatible with the supremacy of the ruling race, is far from being so easy as those imagine who, in their reliance on certain general principles of supposed universal application, leave national feelings and prejudices out of account in making up their own little nostrums for the improvement of mankind. Under the Cornwallis system, there was an office which, though then always filled by a member of the Civil Service, seemed, in the limitation as well as the importance of its duties, to be exactly suited for natives to hold. When the civil file of a district became overloaded with arrears, the government used to appoint an officer to be assistant or deputy judge. To him the regular judge of the district was empowered to refer any cases that he thought fit, though there his power ceased, as the appeal lay direct to the provincial court from the award of the deputy. The deputy being made merely a referee without original jurisdiction, was a wise provision for keeping the primary judicial power in the hands of the officer charged with the preservation of the peace of the district, while importance and weight were given to the office of the deputy, by making the appeals from his decisions lie to the Provincial Court, and not to his local superior. A single little law of three lines, declaring natives of India to be eligible to the office of Deputy Judge, would, by throwing a number of respectable situations open to their aspirations, have provided for their advancement, without any disturbance of institutions to which the people of the country had become accustomed and reconciled. Again, as to the monopoly of higher judicial office by members of the Civil Service, the Cornwallis system, perhaps, pro vided a readier means of abating even this grievance than will be found in that by which it has been supplanted. Nothing can be more extravagant than the scheme of sending out barristers from Westminster Hall, to undertake, without any intermediate training, the management of districts in Bengal and Hindostan. Sir William Jones himself, unintelligible as he was, on his first arrival, to the natives of India, would have failed if he had undertaken such a task. This visionary proposal has happily received its coup de grace from Sir Edward Ryan, the late Chief Justice in Bengal, in his evidence before the Commons' Committee; but it does not, in our opinion, follow that the aid of lawyers trained in England is therefore to be altogether discarded in providing for the administration of justice in India. Although the man fresh from England would be sadly bewildered if left by himself in a separate district, it does not follow that he should not, after some preparatory training, be able to co-operate vigorously with others. The horse will go well in double-harness, or in a team, who would upset a gig, and kick it to pieces. If barristers chose to repair to Bengal, and, while there practising at the bar of the Supreme Court, would study the native languages, it appears to us that, on their proficiency being proved by an examination, they might have been advantageously admitted, under certain limitations as to number, into the now abolished Provincial Courts. Had these experimental provisions in favour of natives of India, and barristers from England, been found to succeed, their eligibility to every grade in the judicial branch of the service might have been proclaimed, and the most plausible of all the complaints against our system of Indian government would thus have been removed. But improvement without change was not to the taste of those by whom the last of our three administrative periods was ushered in; and in further confirmation of Mr Marshman's remark, already cited, on the parallelism of movement in England and in India, it was in the changeful years 1830 and 1831 that a revolution was effected in our system of internal administration, which has since given a colour and a bent to our whole policy in the East. In the course of those two years the magisterial power was detached from the office of the judge, and annexed to that of the collector; the Provincial Courts were abolished, their judicial duties being transferred to the district judges, and their ministerial functions of superintendence and control to commissioners, each with the police and revenue of about half a dozen districts under his charge. Two Sudder, or courts of ultimate resort, were established, one at Calcutta, the other at Allahabad in upper India; but all real executive power centred in the magisterial revenue department, presided over by two Boards, located, like the Sudder Courts, at Calcutta and Allahabad. One of the new provisions then introduced abolished the office of Register, or subordinate Judge, held by young civilians conjointly with that of Assistant to the Magistrate. This was a most serious change, for it abolished the very situation in which young civilians received their judicial training, and fitted themselves for the better eventual discharge of the higher duties of the judicature. The Registers used to have the trial of civil suits for property, if not more than five hundred rupees (£50) in value. The abolitionists urged the injustice of letting raw youths experimentalise upon small suits, to the supposed detriment of poor suitors. There was a show of reason in this mode of arguing; but those who used it did not give due weight to the consideration that these youths were to become the dispensers of justice to all classes, and that it was better for the country to suffer a little from their blunders at the outset, than to have them at last advanced to the highest posts on the judgment-seat without any judicial training whatsoever. But, in fact, the whole argument was based upon a mere assumption. The young Registers certainly committed occasional blunders, as old Justices and Aldermen, if we are to believe the daily papers, constantly commit them in England; but, on the whole, their courts were generally popular and in good repute among the natives. The young civilian had often a pride in his own little court of record, liked to know that it was well thought of, and was sometimes pleased to find parties shaping their plaints so as to bring them within the limits of his cogni sance. They thus often acquired a personal regard for the people, whom it was their pride, as well as their duty, to protect a feeling which has since, we fear, been too much weakened. The young civilians of the present day, though excellent men of business, and accomplished linguists, have seldom any individual feeling for the natives, whom they regard in a light for which no word occurs to us so happily expressive as the French term, "les administrés." Thus it happened that the abolition of Registerships proved almost the death-blow to the Cornwallis system, and shook, not merely the framework, but the very principles of judicial administration throughout the country. It was followed up by a series of measures, all calculated to lower the judicial department of the service, and to prove to the natives that the protection of the law, promised in the still unrepealed regulations, was thenceforward to prove illusory, wherever it was required to shield them from the encroachments of any new scheme or theory finding favour for the moment with an executive government ruling avowedly upon principles of expediency, and seeking every occasion to shake off the trammels imposed upon its freedom of action by the cautious provisions of the Cornwallis code. The people soon found in their rulers under the new system a scrupulous discharge of all positive duties, combined with a diminished consideration for native prejudices, a neglect of many punctilios of etiquette, and a stern hostility to every exceptional privilege exempting an individual in any degree from the operation of the rules of general administration. This last-mentioned tendency showed itself particularly in the case of the rent-free tenures, which had for some ten years previously been undergoing revision. These landed tenures were held under grants from former rulers, ex empting the grantee and his heirs from all payment on the score of revenue, though sometimes, as in our own feudal tenures, imposing upon him obligations of suit and service in some form or other. When the framers of the Cornwallis code, in 1793, determined on recognising the validity of every such tenure as was held under an authentic and sufficient grant, a provision was at the same time made for their being carefully recorded and registered. This duty of registration was, however, either totally neglected or very imperfectly performed, and the consequence was, that by collusive extensions of their limits, and other means, such as it would be tedious to explain, the rent-free tenures were gradually eating into the rent-paying lands forming the main source of the revenues of the state. Careful revision, therefore, became necessary, and was in fact commenced so far back as the year 1819. The inquiry was intrusted to the officers of the revenue department; but for some time permission was left to those discontented with their award, to bring the question at issue between them and the Government before the regular courts of justice for final decision. This process proving too tardy, in about ten years afterwards a sort of exchequer court, called a Special Commission, was erected for the trial of appeals from the decisions of the revenue authorities on the validity of rent-free grants. This commission was filled by officers of the judicial branch of the service, and their proceedings, carried on in strict conformity with the practice of the courts of civil justice, gave no offence, and created no alarm, notwithstanding that extensive tracts were brought by their decisions under the liability of paying revenue to the state. But not long after the country had entered into the third period of its administration, the revenue authorities got impatient of all restraint, and sought to break through the impediments of judicial procedure and rules. The primary proceedings, being intrusted to young deputy-collectors, were carried on with a rapidity which rendered due investigation utterly impossible, and all real in quiry must have been deemed superfluous by juniors, who saw their superiors gravely pronounce, even in official documents, that the very existence of a rent-free tenure was an abuse, and ought to be abated. We have said that the forgeries practised by some, and the extension of their privileges by others of the holders, rendered strict investigation of rent-free tenures an immediate necessity and a duty. Still, it was to be borne in mind, that our faith was pledged to the recognition of all genuine grants, and that, in the larger of these tenures, the fallen nobility and gentry of the land found their solace for the loss of power, place, station, hope of advancement, and all that gives a zest to the life of the upper classes in every part of the globe; while the smaller tenures of the kind constituted, in many instances, the sole support of well-descended but indigent families. There was something to move the compassion even of a universal philanthropist, in the thought of the humble individuals of both sexes to whom a sweeping resumption of all such tenures was in fact the extinction of almost every earthly hope. The Indian government itself, though_at_that period described by Mr F. H. Robinson (p. 12) as "a despotism administered upon radical principles," became startled at the havoc which the zeal of its subordinates was committing among this class of sufferers, and in terfered to mitigate the severity of their proceedings. Many of the "soft hearted" seniors of the Civil Service rejoiced at a resolution which relieved them from an odious and painful duty. But thus reasons a strong-minded junior on what he regards as a feeble concession: "Unfortunately the long delay in making the investigations had established in their seats the fraudulent appropriators of the revenue; and when it came to be taken from them, the measure caused great change and apparent hardship to individuals in comfortable circumstances; hence arose a great cry of hardship and injustice. We were still most apt to view with sympathy the misfortunes of the higher classes; many soft-hearted officers of Government exclaimed against the sudden deprivation; and some of the seditious Europeans, who find their profit in professional attacks on Government, raised the cry much louder. But the worst of the storm had expended itself; a little firmness, a little voluntary benehave ceased; and the temporary inconficence to individual cases, and it would venience to fraudulent individuals would have resulted in great permanent addition to the means of the state; but the Bengal Government is pusillanimous. Since Warren Hastings was persecuted in doing his duty, and Lord Cornwallis praised for sacrificing the interests of Government, and of the body of the people, it has always erred on the side of abandoning its rights to any sufficiently these resumptions. It let off first one strong interested cry. It wavered about kind of holding, then another, then all holdings under one hundred beegas (about seventy acres), whether one man possessed several such or not: life-tenures were granted where no right existed. Finally, all resumed lands were settled at half rates in perpetuity, and the Board of Revenue intimated that they 'would be happy to see all operations discontinued.' The result therefore is, that the Governabuse of the measure, have given the cry the end have got not half so much remore colour by so much yielding, and in venue as they ought to have had. There has been an addition of about £300,000 to the annual revenue, at an expense of £800,000.” * ment have incurred all the odium and lation, a stricter enforcement of the According to Mr Campbell's calcuresumption laws might have doubled the above sum; but as only the smaller tenures were let off, it is scarcely possible that more than half as much again as was actually realised could have been wrung out of the remnants to which the Government so timidly, as he asserts, abandoned its rights. An addition, therefore, of about £450,000 to our annual income would have been all that we should have gained by a measure violating the most solemn pledge given to the people that every VALID grant should be respected, reducing many families to ruin, and shaking the general confidence in our honesty and good faith. Though the passage cited is open to many objections on the score of arbitrary assumption and false reasoning, it is to its * Modern India and its Government, by G. CAMPBELL, Esq.; pp. 316, 317. hardness of tone that we would chiefly draw our readers' attention, as strongly confirmatory of the following remark, taken from Mr F. H. Robinson's pamphlet : Again, there are many in England who would gladly reduce the landed possessions of great proprietors, like the Duke of Buccleuch and others, to more moderate dimensions; but they "I have said enough, I think, to de- hardly venture to put forth specula monstrate that the disaffection which exists is traceable to the despotic character our administration has of late years assumed, simultaneously with its sedulous diffusion of liberal doctrines; to the unhappy dislike of natives, as natives, which has crept in among the servants of Government; to the many acts of abuse, oppression, and arbitrary misgovernment, arising as much from misguided zeal as from evil intention, which, on the part of the administrative officers, harass and vex the people."—(P. 31). We have already recorded our assent to Mr Marshman's remark on the thoroughly English character of our Indian empire and its administration; but we have, moreover, to observe, that, in the application of new principles even of European growth, India often outstrips the mother country That which in England is still theory has in India become practice. There are not wanting in England people to maintain that all grants of olden times ought to be forfeited, and their proceeds applied to the purposes of general government. If these people had their way, they would certainly resume the lands of the deans and chap, ters, probably those of the schools and colleges, and possibly such also as are devoted to the support of almshouses, and other charitable institutions scattered over the face of the country. These speculations in England evaporate in pamphlets, and cannot for a long time assume any more positive form than that of a speech in the House of Commons. But the following passage in Mr F. H. Robinson's pamphlet shows us how differently such matters are ordered in India : "The Government have systematically resumed, of late years, all religious endowments; an extensive inquiry has been going on into all endowments, grants, and pensions; and in almost every one in which the continuance of religious endowments has been recommended by subordinate revenue authorities, backed by the Board of Revenue, the fiat of confiscation has been issued by the Government."—(P. 17). tions upon a measure which, in India, has been carried into positive and extensive execution. The fourth chapter of Mr Kaye's work contains a clear and admirable account of the recent settlement of the provinces of the Upper Ganges, in the course of which the reader will meet with the following passage: "There was a class of large landed proprietors, known as Talookedars, the territorial aristocracy of the country. The settlement officers seem to have treated these men as usurpers and monopolists, and to have sought every opportunity of reducing their tenures. It was not denied that such reduction was, on the whole, desirable, inasmuch as these large tenures interfered with the rights of the village proprietors. But the reducand arbitrary a manner; and the Court tion was undertaken in too precipitate of Directors acknowledged that it had Government, against whom numerous caused great practical embarrassment to suits were instituted in the civil courts by the ousted talookdars, and many decided in their favour."-(P. 265). The redress afforded by these decisions of the civil courts has not, we fear, been sufficient to avert the ruin of such members of the "territorial aristocracy" as had the hardihood to withhold their adhesion to a scheme for their own extinction. The principle of that scheme was to grant, in the form of a per-centage on the revenue realised from the village communities of what had been his domain, a pension to the talookdar who was willing, for such a consideration, to give up all the other advantages of his hereditary position. Many of these men, or their immediate predecessors, had rendered us great service in the war by which we acquired the country; but they stood in the way of a favourite scheme, and before its irresistible advance they were compelled to retire. The provision made for their future wants may have been a liberal one; but how would the Duke of Buccleuch or the Marquess of Westminster like to be thus pensioned off? |