Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/94

88 and management, there depended the welfare of inhabitants who even in those epochs of forest waste and jungle, not seldom amounted to a half or one million of souls in a single district: together with the realisation of the State dues.

The Perpetual Settlement and the relegation of the Collectors to their proper and essential duties was now accomplished. But a great deal remained to be done before the Civil Service could be said to have entered on the entire executive and judicial administration of Bengal and Behar. The machinery for the detection and punishment of crime had been left, as already remarked, in the hands of the Nawáb Názim, who might be termed the titular sovereign of the country. The consequences were ruinous to property and life. The Faujdár of Húglí, a metropolitan district, received ten thousand pounds or a lack of rupees a year, and dakáiti, or gang robbery with violence, was rife in the very neighbourhood of Calcutta, on the confines of the Maráthá Ditch, and indeed all over the Lower Provinces.

Criminal trials were conducted by native Judges. It is true that there was already a Court of Appeal known as the Sadr Diwání and Nizámat Adálat, and that the English Collector of revenue was supposed to overlook the proceedings of the native magistrates in the districts; to see that witnesses were duly examined; and that the proceedings were conducted with some fairness and impartiality. But