LIMITATIONS OF PROVINCIAL FINANCE 185
These rules were laid down on various occasions during the interval between 1870, when the scheme of Provincial Finance came into being, and 1912, when the scheme reached through an evolutionary process its final and permanent stage, in the form of Resolutions of the Government of India in the Department of Finance. The rules framed in 1870 [1] were few and simple. Nor was there any necessity for a complex code to govern the operation of the very meagre budgets which were then constituted. Many supplementary rules were issued afterwards to dispose of unforeseen cases of order and procedure; but it was not till 1877 [2 ] that we come across a most elaborate set of rules and regulations governing the financial transactions of the provincial Government. The Rules of 1877 were the basis of all those that were subsequently issued. With very small addenda or corrigenda they remained in force for a period of fifteen years, when they were superseded by a new series of Rules promulgated in 1892. [3] But only within a short span of a quinquennium this series was replaced by another issued in
1897, [4] and the latter formed the governing body of Rules till the year 1912, when a new series was brought out to regulate the working of the permanent settlement made in that year. [5] The same was reissued in the Financial Department Resolution No.
361 -E-A. dated July 24, 1916. But as the alterations therein were not in any sense consequential, the series of 1912 may be taken as laying down the final regulations of Provincial Finance.
Recognize as we must the necessity for analysing the rules, we must determine beforehand the point or points of view from which to conduct the analysis. It must be premised at the outset that the object of entering upon the examination of the Rules is twofold : (1) to know what limitations there were and (2) why they were placed. Our immediate interest, it is true, is to state what limitations there were, but this is only a preliminary, if not a minor, object. The second is really the more important of the two. It is only as an aid to the proper understanding of the causes of the necessity for these limitations that a knowledge of them is to be sought. While keeping in our mind the immediate object of stating the limitations, it will be unimaginative not to foresee that in the following chapter,
1 Financial Department Resolution No. 3334 dated December 14, 1870.
2 Financial Department Resolution No. 1709 dated March 22, 1877.
3 Financial Department Resolution No. 1142 of March 17, 1892.
4 Financial Department Resolution No. 3551 dated August 11, 1897.
5 Financial Department Resolution No. 249-E.A. dated July 15, 1912.