Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/388

328 city, or town, shall become vacant, the judge within whose jurisdiction the place may be situated is ‘to recommend such person as may appear to him best qualified for the succession from his character and legal knowledge. The name of the person so recommended is to be communicated to the head cazy who, if he shall deem him unqualified for the office, either from want of legal knowledge or the badness of his private character, is to report the the same in writing.’ It is likewise ‘the duty of the head cazy to report every instance in which it may appear to him that the cazy of any city, town, or pergunnah is incapable, or in which any such cazy may have been guilty of misconduct in the discharge of his public duty or acts of profligacy in his private conduct.’ And a similar report is required to be made by the judges of the zillah, city, and provincial courts to the court of sudder dewanny adawlut, with whom it rests to confirm the appointment or removal of the cazies of cities, towns, and pergunnahs under Section 4, Regulation VIII., 1809.”

As far as I am aware, such continues to be in all essential particulars the legal position of the office of cazy, and I will now illustrate its practical working by a brief abstract of certain documents relating to a single district, that of Tirhoot, which I have been permitted to examine in the judicial department. From these documents it appears that there were in 1818 in that district eighteen cazies appointed to one hundred pergunnahs containing 8,431 villages, and discharging their duties by means of forty naibs or deputies. In that year their number was reduced to fourteen and their jurisdictions equalized. Those eighteen cazies, in virtue of their offices, held rent-free lands amounting to 352 bighas, and they received in the form of salaries or allowances from Government sicca rupees 4,398-1-6 per annum; but these disbursements were suspended at the time mentioned in consequence of its having been found on inquiry that they were altogether unauthorized by Government. It was, however, deemed probable that some allowance would hereafter be granted for their support. The amount of fees received by them for attesting deeds, entering them in their books, and granting copies, varied from four annas to two rupees for each deed. The inferior Musalman castes who employ the cazies at marriage ceremonies pay a fixed fee of one rupee, of which four annas are the understood perquisite of the cazy’s deputy, and the remaining three-fourths are received by the cazy himself. A similar division is probably made of the fees received by deputies for notarial acts. As the office of cazy at present exists, considerable abuse is practised. A fee of from one to five per cent. on the value of the thing transferred is exacted for affixing the seal to deeds of consequence. At the arbitrary will of the cazy a different rate is paid for malguzary and lakhiraj lands transferred, and it not unfrequently occurs that considerable delay and difficulty is made on the part of the cazy in