Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/195

Rh English judge was as much interested in doing justice as the litigant was in obtaining it. In dealing with our revenue officers the peasants exchanged the old uncertainties of heavy demands irregularly enforced, and further mitigated or intensified by the venality or extortion of the tax-gatherer, for a fixed but moderate sum, which they knew they had to pay upon a definite date.

The essential feature of Lord Dalhousie's system, from the high political point of view, was that the new provinces remained under the direct control of the Governor-General in Council. No semi-independent Local Government, with a Governor or Lieutenant-Governor at its head, was created. Even in the case of the Punjab, in which Lord Dalhousie for special reasons established a Board, the control was retained directly, and in every important question, by the Government of India. Except in that special and temporary case, the local administration was presided over by a Chief Commissioner or Commissioner, immediately under the direction of the Governor-General in Council.

The essential feature of the system from the practical administrative point of view, was the concentration of all powers, judicial, executive, revenue and police, in the hands of the District Officer. In the older presidencies, the separation of the judicial and executive functions had gone on steadily in the Districts since before 1793. A