Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/192

184 into it by an ever-extending network of railways. Siedet aeternumque sedebit.

For his four great new provinces, the Punjab, Burma, the Nágpur territories, and Oudh, Dalhousie organised a mixed system of government, by which he endeavoured to unite military strength and promptitude with civilian exactitude of justice and vigilance in administrative details. This involved not alone a combination of civilian and military officers in the personnel of the local administration, such as I have described in my chapter on the Punjab. It also demanded a very careful reconsideration of the law and judicial procedure, suited to the requirements of each of the new territories. To suddenly introduce the elaborate judicial systems of the older presidencies, would have been alike impolitic and impracticable. It would have been impolitic, for it would have subjected the newly-annexed populations to a standard of civil discipline, to which they had been unaccustomed, and which might have proved a burden heavier than they could bear. It would have been impracticable, because the new administrative bodies, hastily put together from the youth of the Civil Service and the military establishment, could not have fairly been expected to master the multifarious details of the older and more exact procedures.