Page:The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India.djvu/26

 under which it was placed, without much avail. They were evidently aimed at keeping out an element dangerous to the stability of the Indian Empire, but, as time went on, and as the Indian Empire was consolidated by successive victories over the native princes, there was raised against these restrictions such a storm of indignant criticism that even those who had acquiesced in their virtue were forced to admit that they had outlived their purpose. While the British Parliament could not help abiding by the sentiments of the time, it refused to disregard the consequences which it thought would inevitably attend upon the free ingress of British subjects of European birth under the then existing system of government. It realized that a harmonious treatment of the immigrants and an effective control over them was absolutely essential. Parliament was afraid that the different governments armed as they were with co-equal and independent powers of legislation and administration by exercising these powers with regard to the immigrants entering their respective territories, with different views and according to inconsistent principles might integrate the whole mass of them into a disaffected body difficult to be dealt with. Besides the necessity of a harmonious treatment based on uniform principles, the fears of Parliament that the ingress of British immigrants would result in the revival of oppression on the natives were not completely allayed. As its recrudescence was felt to be a likely event, Parliament desired to subject them to a strong and uniform central control, so that the offender in one jurisdiction might not be able to find an asylum in another. Thus, whether considered from the standpoint of bringing about uniformity of laws or securing stringency of control over elements subversive of order, the then existing system of government with its divided jurisdiction was ill-suited for the purpose held in view. An all-powerful Central Government legislating for and controlling the affairs of India as a whole was deemed to be the only solution for the emergency. Accordingly there came to be enacted in 1833 that

"the Governor-General in Council (at Fort William in