Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/92

86 Collectors from the time of Warren Hastings, besides being responsible for the revenue, were vested with certain judicial powers in civil cases. Cornwallis goes so far as to state that the Civil Courts of justice throughout the whole of the Company's Provinces had been for many years in the hands of the Company's servants. The Collector, in addition to his revenue duties, held in this capacity what was termed a Mál Adálat, or court in which he decided all cases regarding the rights of the landholders and cultivators, and all claims arising between them and their servants. It was resolved to abolish these Mál Adálats, in which the civil servant was Judge as well as Collector, and to transfer all judicial powers and the decision of all rights and all civil suits to regular judicial tribunals. It may here be mentioned by anticipation that six years after the departure of Cornwallis, Collectors were again vested with power to settle, in a summary enquiry, all claims for the rent of the current year due from ryots to Zamíndárs.

But with this exception the Collector, after 1793, was confined to his proper functions, which were quite sufficient to occupy his attention and to increase his store of official knowledge. The districts over which such Collectors presided were enormous in extent. The district of Jessor touched the Twenty-four Parganás on one side and the Rájsháhí District across the Ganges on the other; and it was not for thirty or forty years afterwards that the size of these and