Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/193

Rh Lord Dalhousie devised, therefore, a system of judicial and revenue administration for his new provinces made up from two sources. First, the local usages and customs which previously had the force of law in the individual territory annexed, so far as those usages and customs were consistent with public policy, and did not contravene the fundamental principles of humanity. Second, the simpler class of our own laws, enactments and regulations, for the judicial and revenue management of the country and for its police, culled from the systems at work in the older presidencies. The indigenous customs and usages of the individual territory formed the ground-work of the whole, while the super-structure was shaped with a considerate hand upon the models at work within British India.

Such was the leading idea of Lord Dalhousie's plan of administration, adopted for what were long known as the Non-Regulation Provinces. Examples of the system existed on a small scale before the time of Lord Dalhousie. Nor was it till after Lord Dalhousie's time that the system obtained the full development which I have indicated in the last paragraph. Indeed, it must be remembered that Oudh was added to the Empire in the last weeks of his rule. Yet it may be fairly stated that the Non-Regulation system of India was the child of Dalhousie, devised by his swift and comprehensive mind for his conquests and annexations.