Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/387

Rh authority. Properly regulated, such institutions as those at Kusbeh Bagha, at Bohar, at Chaughariya, and at Moorshedabad, would become centres of improvement, sending forth all sorts of salutary influence to the districts in which they are situated.

The reform of the office of cazy, besides other direct and collateral advantages, woald furnish Government with an extensive and cheap agency in every district for the improvement of Musalman institutions of education.

The following extract from the revised edition of the first volume of the late Mr. Harington’s analysis of the regulations will exhibit the rules in force for the appointment of city, town, and pergunnah cazies, together with the nature of the duties expected to be performed by those officers:—“The judicial functions which pertained to the office of cazy-ul-cuzat, or head cazy, and in some instances to that of inferior cazies, under the Mohammadan government, have been discontinued since the establishment of the courts of justice under the superintendence of British judges; and, with an exception to the law officers attached to the civil and criminal courts, the general duties of the present cazies stationed at the principal cities and towns and in the pergunnahs which compose the several zillahs or districts, are confined to the preparation and attestation of deeds of conveyance and other legal instruments, the celebration of Musalman marriages, and the performance of ceremonies prescribed by the Mohammadan laws at births and funeral and other rites of a religious nature. They are eligible, however, under the regulations to be appointed commissioners for the sale of property distrained on account of arrears of rent, as well as commissioners for the trial of civil causes, and are also entrusted by Government in certain cases with the payment of public pensions. It is, therefore, necessary that persons of character who may be duly qualified for the subsisting office of cazy should be appointed to that station, and encouraged to discharge the duties of it with diligence and fidelity by not being liable to removal without proof of incapacity or misconduct. The cazy-ul-cuzat, or head cazy, of several provinces under this Presidency, and the cazies stationed in the cities, towns, or pergunnahs within those provinces, were accordingly declared by Regulations XXXIX., 1793, and XLVI., 1803, not to be removable from their offices, except for incapacity or misconduct in the discharge of their public duties, or for acts of profligacy in their private conduct; and the rules subsequently enacted in Regulations V., 1804, and VIII., 1809, concerning the appointment and removal of the law officers of the courts of justice, were extended to the local cazies by Section 10 of the former Regulation and Section 4 of the latter. At the same time the office of cazy is declared (in Section 5 of Regulations XXXIX., 1793, and XLVI., 1803, respectively,) ‘not to be heriditary;’ and it is further provided in these regulations that when the office of cazy in any pergunnah,