THE NATURE OF PROVINCIAL FINANCE 201
the expenditure which it retains under its own control, and it hands the rest over to Local Governments, with the obligation to meet out of it certain necessary expenditure.... But it cannot bind itself to this proportion for ever, because the calculation must necessarily be a rough one, and is liable to be vitiated by unforeseen failure of resources, or growths of charges, whether in the share of financial administration which it retains or in that which it delegates. An examination of the appropriation and a readjustment of it in any particular found necessary are indispensable. A surrender of the right to this would be analogous in its nature and effects to the Permanent Settlement of Bengal.”
Although anxiety was expressed for the provinces the revisions were primarily conducted in the interests of the Imperial Government as the resumptions incontrovertibly proved, and the Permanent Settlement was delayed because the Government of India did not desire to relinquish its control over its revenues. Under the quinquennial settlement the usufruct was permitted to be undisturbed for five years only. But how tentative was this surrender, which, even for five years, was looked upon as highly impolitic by the Secretary of State, [1] was proved by the Government of India, which did not take back to exercise its inherent right to resume the usufruct of its revenues at any time it liked as is indicated by the not too uncommon levies or benevolences, as they were called, which it forced upon the provincial balances. Not even the Permanent Settlement can be interpreted to mean that the revenues settled upon the different Provinces became their revenues in anything like a legal sense, for in the eye of the law all revenues including those provincialized still remained the constitutional possession of the Government of India. Whether the Government could have effected a legal separation by ivesting itself of the revenues of India in favour of the Provinces is doubtful. The Parliamentary enactment which vests the revenues of India in the Government of India had limited the legislative powers of the Government of India by a clause which prevented it from
“making any laws or Regulations which shall in any way repeal, vary, suspend or affect any of the provisions of this Act (of 1833).... or the Prerogative of the Crown or the Authority of Parliament.”
1 Cf. Despatches to the Government of India No. 51, dated February 16, 1882, and No. 208, dated July 6, 1882.