Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/197

Rh functions of the Deputy-Commissioner in Lord Dalhousie's Non-Regulation Provinces.

This division of duty, salutary and necessary as it has become in the present more complex state of native society, would have weakened the hands of the executive in the newly-annexed provinces. 'I want no such personage as a Sessions Judge here ,' wrote Mr. Commissioner John Lawrence in the Trans-Sutlej States, forty-four years ago. The judicial work in the Districts formed out of those States is now conducted with as much regularity and precision by Civil and Sessions Judges, as it is in the oldest British territories of Madras or Bengal. The Non-Regulation system devised by the genius of Dalhousie for the administration of his new provinces was not only perfectly effective for bringing them under British government. It also proved to have within itself the capacity of adaptation to the new wants and requirements of the people, as they prospered and multiplied under British rule.