average of £2000 sterling a-year.

This sum, however, is un-

equally distributed among the whole body, as the following
calculation will shew. In 1842

The Uncovenanted servants consist of those Europeans, East
Indians, and Natives who are engaged by the local Government
without reference to the Court of Directors; and their allow-
ances are fixed on a lower standard, as their responsibilities are,
generally speaking, of an inferior class. The original appoint-
ment to the Civil Service is vested exclusively in the Directors;
but after the arrival of a Civilian in India, and his introduction
to the public service, his promotion depends entirely on the
local Government; no instance is known of an interference by
the Directors in the distribution of patronage among this body
in India.

The executive Government of Bengal is administered by the
Governor or Deputy-Governor, aided by one Secretary and
two Under-Secretaries. The duties annexed to it embrace the
entire control of the Civil, Magisterial, and Police branches of
the administration; of the land Revenues; of the Salt and
Opium Monopolies; of the Abkaree or Excise on Spirits; of
the Ecclesiastical, Marine, and Steam Departments, as well as
that of Public Instruction and the Post Office. It is also charged
with the management of the Ultra-Gangetic settlements of
Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. With the Legislative, the
Military and Political Departments it has no connection; they
belong exclusively to the province of the general Government.
The duties which are thus thrown on the Government of
Bengal have been supposed to exceed those which devolve on
the united Governments of Madras and Bombay, in which the
responsibility of deliberation is shared by two distinct Coun-
cils, and the labor of action is distributed
several bureaus.

among

W

In reference to the finances, however, the functions of the Bengal Government are strictly administrative. The funds collected through its instrumentality, are at the entire disposal of the Government of India, and are expended according to the arrangements laid down by it; and which can be modified only by its authority. The Governor of Bengal can make no alteration in the allowances of the public servants; he cannot establish a new school, or augment the pay of a Darogah to the extent of a Rupee, without a vote of the Council of India. But in the internal management of the whole of the administration, the Governor of Bengal is unfettered by the necessity of any reference to the Government of India. The vast patronage of the Covenanted and Uncovenanted Service is at his absolute disposal; and in the exercise of discipline, any appeal from his decision lies to the Court of Directors, and not to the GovernorGeneral in Council. He is constrained, however, by the most stringent injunctions to forward every petition of appeal against his own proceedings to the Home authorities.

Although the Military department is altogether distinct from the Government of Bengal, this sketch of the administration would be incomplete if we were to abstain from all reference to it. It reflects the highest credit on our administration, that during the last forty years it has not been found necessary to call out the Military in aid of the Police in Bengal or Behar except in a single case; and this solitary instance of military interference arose out of the outrages of a body of fanatic Mahomedans under Teetoo Meer, and not from any resistance of fiscal exaction or official oppression. The number of troops at this time cantoned in the populous provinces of Bengal among twentyeight millions of people does not exceed 11,000 Native troops and about 1,500 Europeans. The tranquillity of the whole province of Cuttack is maintained by a single Regiment, and the removal of it would give the Commissioner little disquietude. The troops in Behar, English and Native, amount to about 9000; but this large number, so disproportionate to its size and population, is rendered necessary, not by the prevalence of any spirit of disaffection in that province, but by the large army of the Nepaul Government on its Northern frontier, and by the menacing attitude which that Court has occasionally assumed when the British empire in the East was supposed to be in danger. If no larger military force was maintained than was necessary to preserve internal peace and to overawe opposition, in the two provinces of Bengal and Behar, they would be found to yield a larger surplus revenue than any other country in the world. After paying for the costly machinery of a European

Government, they would yield a nett income of four millions sterling a-year.

These provinces are divided into twenty-nine Zillahs; of which nineteen are in Bengal proper, in which Bengalee is the language of the cradle and the Court; seven in Behar, in which the Oordoo language prevails; and three in Cuttack, in which the Ooriya language is spoken. The usual Covenanted officers in a district are the Civil and Session Judge, with a salary of 30,000 Rs. a-year; a Collector with 23,000 Rs. per annum, except in one or two districts in which the salary does not exceed 18,000 Rs.; the Magistrate, whose pay has recently been reduced, under specific orders from home, to 10,800 Rs. a-year: and a Civil Surgeon on a salary of 3,600 annually. There are also in the various Zillahs eleven Joint-Magistrates and Deputy-Collectors on a salary of 8,400 Rs. each; and the Covenanted Assistants, as soon as they are emancipated from College and begin their apprenticeship in the public service, receive 4,800 Rs. In the districts of Dacca, Sylhet, and Chittagong, as well as in the three divisions of Cuttack, the office of Magistrate is united with that of Collector, and the officer receives a salary of from 24,000 to 28,000 Rs. These two offices are still united in Burdwan and West Beerbhoom, but the allowances are more limited. It should also be mentioned that, with the view of promoting the efficiency of the Police, and the convenience of the people, in seven instances smaller districts have been detached from those which were found to be unwieldy. The officer who presides in these minor districts is styled a Joint-Magistrate and DeputyCollector, and his salary varies from 12,000 to 18,000 Rs. annually; but the administration of Civil Justice in them is subordinate to the districts from which they have been separated for the object of Criminal jurisdiction. These solitary stations, which are among those least coveted by the service, contain but two Covenanted officers, the Magistrate, and the Doctor.

Before we proceed to detail the nature of those establishments through which the civil and criminal laws are administered, and the public revenue is collected, it appears advisable to glance at their origin and progression. For them we are originally indebted to the genius of Warren Hastings, to whose extraordinary merits as a statesman, adequate justice has never yet been rendered. Clive created the British empire in the East; and Hastings created its institutions. In 1765, Clive obtained the grant of the Dewanny; which transferred to us all the powers of civil government through the three Soobahs. But, owing in some measure to his dread of the effects of a sudden and violent change, and in some measure also to his entire ignorance of the

state of the country, and of the mode in which the internal administration had been conducted, he left the management of the civil, criminal, and fiscal departments as he found them, in the hands of the Nabob's Ministers, and limited the duties of our Government to the receipt of revenue, and maintenance of order and quiet through its military power. This was that scheme of a double Government, forced on him by the exigency of the times, which has been repeated by his successors in other parts of India, without the same excuse, and given rise to such unexampled misery. By it, the power of oppression in its most terrific form is entrusted to men, pre-eminent above all other Asiatics for the abuse of power, while the remotest chance of resistance is effectually taken from the people by the presence of our forces. The consequence of this double Government as established by Clive was, that civil justice was openly bought and sold; the roads were rendered impassable by highwaymen; the Company's exchequer was kept empty, and the most extensive alienations of the land revenue were unblushingly made by the natives entrusted with the collection of it, to the permanent injury of the public interests. After this flagitious and wasteful plan had been tried for four or five years, it was found impossible to carry on the Government any longer under it, and the Directors resolved to " stand forth as Duan;" that is, to take the management of the country into their own hands, and administer its affairs through their own servants. The accomplishment of this plan was entrusted to Warren Hastings, who was expected to reduce the chaos to order and efficiency. There was nothing in the history of other conquests which might serve him as a guide in this difficult and untrodden path. Never before had thirty millions of people been suddenly transferred to the dominion of any of the civilized nations of Europe, and he was called for the first time to create establishments for the collection of the revenue, and the administration of civil and criminal justice, without any pattern. His own letters shew the difficulties which he experienced in the performance of this herculean task, from the want of local experience, from the inefficiency and opposition of a most refractory civil service, and the venality and villainy of his native agents. After seventy years of improvement, however, we still look back on the original model of our institutions, as it was formed by his creative genius, with surprise and admiration. Though all his arrangements, have been modified by subsequent experience, to him belongs the glory of having given form and consistency to our civil polity in this country; nor should the gratitude due to Lord Cornwallis for the consolidation, nor to

Lord William Bentinck for the improvement, of our establishments, induce us to forget the praise we owe to Hastings for having originated them.

In 1793, Lord Cornwallis gave a fixed character to these establishments, and defined with the nicest accuracy the function of the different offices, their mutual connection, and their mode of operation; and his system was perpetuated, without any material alteration, for nearly forty years. The leading principle of his scheme was to work the administration almost exclusively by European agency. It contained no adequate provision for the employment of native talent in the Government of the country. No scope was allowed for the aspirations or ambition of the native community. The duties committed to them were trifling in their nature; and the allowances granted to the highest native official were contemptible and unjust when viewed side by side with the colossal salaries of the Covenanted European service. In process of time, this unnatural system of Government was found to be as inefficient as it was exasperating: it was felt that to exclude the natives systematically from all the higher departments of the public service, must be a source of constant dissatisfaction. It was perceived that our efforts to impart superior instruction to the upper classes of natives must be accompanied with provision for their official employment, or the movements of Government would be embarrassed by growing discontents. The truth was at length admitted, that our administration must be nationalized and strengthened by the admission into the public service of those whom we have elevated in knowledge. The leading object of Lord William Bentinck's Government, therefore, was the development of native talent, and its adoption into the service of the state and it is on this ground that the natives so justly regard his memory with affectionate veneration and that his administration will be considered by the future and impartial historian as forming a most important era in our Indian history; the era of conquest-not indeed the conquest of the country, but of that which was perhaps more difficult, the conquest of our own prejudices.

By the arrangements of Lord Cornwallis's Government, the cognizance of the suits of the poor and the helpless, was entrusted-rather we should say abandoned-to a class of inefficient and ill-paid judges, though dignified with the high sounding title of Native Commissioners,' generally called Moonsiffs. The system was subsequently expanded, and their jurisdiction and allowances were somewhat increased. A superior grade of officers styled Sudder Ameens was also instituted; but the