(3) The person charged may deliver his defence in writing, with a list of such witnesses as he may desire to be examined in support thereof.

(4) The witnesses in support of the charge and of the defence shall be examined and cross-examined on oath in the presence of the person charged and their depositions and examination shall be taken down in writing.

(5) If, notwithstanding the defence, there appear to the GovernorGeneral in Council or Governor in Council reasonable grounds for the charge and for continuing the confinement, the person charged shall remain in custody until he is brought to trial in India or sent to England for trial.

(6) All such examinations and proceedings, or attested copies thereof under the seal of the high court, shall be sent to the Secretary of State as soon as may be, in order to their being produced in evidence on the trial of the person charged in the event of his being sent for trial to England.

(7) If any such person is to be sent to England, the Governor-General or g vernor, as the case may be, shall cause him to be sent at the first convenient opportunity, unless he is disabled by illness from undertaking the voyage, in which case he shall be so sent as soon as his state of health will safely admit thereof.

(8) The examinations and proceedings transmitted in pursuance of this section shall be received as evidence in all courts of law, subject to any just exceptions as to the competency of the witnesses.

127 (1) If any person holding office under the Crown in India commits any offence under this Act, or any offence against any person within his jurisdiction or subject to his authority, the offence may, without prejudice to any other jurisdiction, be inquired of, heard, tried and determined before His Majesty's High Court of Justice, and be dealt with as if committed in the county of Middlesex.

(2) Every British subject shall be amenable to all courts of justice in the United Kingdom, of competent jurisdiction to try offences committed in India, for any offence committed within India and outside British India., as if the offence had been committed within British India.

128. Every prosecation before a high court in British India in respect of any offence referred to in the last foregoing section must be commenced within six years after the commission of the offence.

129. If any person commits any offence referred to in this Act he shall be liable to such fine or imprisonment or both as the court thinks fit, and shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be adjudged to be incapable of serving the Crown in India in any office, civil or military; and, if he is convicted in British India by a high court, the court may order that he be sent to Great Britain.

CHAPTER IX.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.

I. The Village System.

The subject of local government, though not introduced in the main Act, is yet too important to be left out in any work on Indian administration. The principle of local Government is far too deeply established on the Indian mind to need any historical sketch. In common with the other offshoots of the Aryan race, the Hindus had a form of free local self-government long before they had a centralised state. Every village in ancient India was an autonomous political unit. The officers of the central government, when it came into existence, were content to accept the village collectively as a unit for such of their administrative duties as had reference to the inhabitants of the locality. It was of such villages that Sir Henry Maine speaks in his village communities, which endured in spite of wars and changes of dynasties, in spite of every revolution in the principles of government.

But this old-time independence and autonomy is a thing of the past. The village tribunal of local elders no longer distributes justice, for are there not the King's Courts of Law? The village chaukidar and his assistants are no longer the amateur detectives who traced criminals by their foot-prints and professional watch keepers-who went on crying 'Khabardar' at every hour of the night, for has not the State established a new police organisation? The village council no longer estimates and assigns the local burdens, for the settlement officer has learnt the value of individual assessment. The powers which made the village organisation effective and efficient have been destroyed by the roads and the railways which would tolerate no isolation, however inoffensive, which would respect no passivity however ancient.

And yet the village remains-even to-day-the first unit of administration. True, the principal village functionaries, the

headman, the accountant, the watchman, have become in ever increasing numbers the subsidised officials of a central government. Their functions in the administration of the village have also been altered by law. Their natural, traditional, independence has been stultified by artificial organisationssuch as the Union Punchayets of Madras-which are formed to discharge specific duties. Notwithstanding all this the

village endures as a unit of administration.

Even in the severalty or Raiyatwari" village, where the revenue is collected from individual cultivators, and where there is no joint responsibility of the village as a whole, government is vested in the Patel or Reddi, who is responsible for law and order, and who collects the government dues. In the joint or landlord village a certain amount of collective responsibility still remains. The village site is owned by the proprietory body, where permission is necessary for the settlement in the village of artisans, traders, or others. The waste land belongs to the village, and, when required for cultivationis partitioned among the share-holders. The government of such a village, used to be by a punchayet.

Desiring to rehabilitate this ancient Indian institution of Local Self-Government the Royal Commission on Decentralisation recommended:

While, therefore, we'desire the development of a punchayet system, and consider that the objections. urged thereto are far from insurmountable, we recognise that such a system can only be gradually and tentatively applied, and that it is impossible to suggest any uniform and definite method of procedure. We think that a commencement should be made by giving certain limited powers to punchayets in those villages in which circumstances are most favourable by reason of homogeneous conditions, natural intelligence, and freedom from internal feuds. These powers might be increased

gradnally as results warrant, and with success here, it will become easier to apply the system in

other villages.

In accordance with this recommendation an Act was passed in 1912 to provide for the establishment of the punchay ets in the Punjab. But in that province, the ancient home of the Indo-Aryans, the ideal of village self-government has never been abandoned. Custom has vested the village organisation there-even under the present regime of centralisation-with a degree of independence which is almost unknown in other provinces.

For the country as a whole, the Government of India reaffirmed the policy by their Resolution of May 28, 1915:

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Where any practicable scheme can be marked out in co-operation with the people concerned, full experi ment must be made on the lines approved by the local government or the administration con

cerned "

The Joint Report on Constitutional Reforms observes, on this topic:

"It is recognised that the prospect of successfully developing Punchayets must depend very largely on local conditions, and that the functions and powers to be allotted to them must vary accordingly; but where the system proves a success, it is contemplated that they might be endowed with civil and criminal jurisdiction in petty cases, some administrative powers as regards sanitation and education, and permissive powers of imposing local rates." (para 196 of the Report).

They leave it, however, to the reformed provincial governments to work out the details of a resuscitated village system by a modernised form of the village punchayet; and, up-todate, the results have been thus summarised:

"In the Punjab, U. P. and Bihar experimental measures creating village councils have been set afoot; but in general, the new councils or punchayets have not won universal approval. The explanation may be that the new village councillors are unwilling to tax themselves even for projects of strictly local utility, or that the powers and functions even now available to the village elders are by no means so extensive or important as to tempt the best local talent to shoulder the task of village improvement."

II Rural Local Self-Government.

Institutions of rural local self-government on a scale larger than that of a village are of much recent creation. Before 1858 there were no such institutions, though there were some semi-voluntary funds in Madras and Bombay for local improvements, while in Bengal and the United Provinces there were consultative committees to assist the district officers in the use of funds for local schools, roads, and dispensaries. In 1865 Madras led the way by a law to impose cesses on land for such purposes, and Bombay followed the lead in 1869. Two years later came the financial decentralisation scheme of Lord Mayo; and, in consequence, various Acts were passed in the provinces for the levy of rates and the creation of local bodies-here and there with some tinge of the elective principle-to administer those funds. Under Lord Ripon's Resolution of 1882 the existing local committees came to be replaced by local boards extending all over the country. The principle observed in the creation of these boards was that the lowest administrative unit was to be small enough to secure local knowledge and interest on the part of each member of the board; the various minor boards of the district were to be