Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/34

 ordinates should exercise any magisterial powers whatever. The police duties should, he considered, be performed by the several grades of the Collector's subordinates, men well in touch with the population, and possessing influence as representing the supreme authority in all departments ; while the Collector, as head of the District police, should be responsible, through the Inspector-General, to the Government for the repression of crime and the general peace of his District. The ordinary magisterial work of the District would be entrusted to Honorary Magistrates and Subordinate Judges of the various grades, working under a Stipendiary Magistrate, from whom an appeal would lie to the Sessions Judge. This scheme provided for the complete separation of police and judicial functions which still remains a pressing need at the present day ; and it must also strongly commend itself to those who hold that the Collector should be the responsible embodiment of the "Sirkar," in all branches of the administration within his own district, and lament the present destruction of his authority by the encroachments of the centralized departments.

(3) "Abkaree" — The "Wages of Sin." Similarly, as regards the Liquor Traffic, he reported, 14th September i860, that the orders of the Government had been carried out, producing an increase of receipts, Rs. 1858 in excess of the previous year, and Rs. 5251 in excess of the average collections of the past ten years ; but at the same time he did not hesitate to express, in the strongest terms, his abhorrence of such a source of revenue : "Financially speaking," he wrote, "bearing in mind the almost unexampled distress in the face of which this settlement was concluded, it may be regarded