PART I
PROVINCIAL FINANCE : ITS ORIGIN
CHAPTER I
THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM
ITS GROWTH AND ITS BREAKDOWN
The Imperial system of Government in India dates from the year 1833.
Of the two chief motives which led Parliament to establish it, one was to replace the existing multiplicity in the systems of justice and police by a uniform system of the same, common as far as possible to the whole of India with its varieties classified and systematized. Under the existing system then prevailing such multiplicity was inevitable, for not only the civil and military government and the ordering and management of the revenues of each of the three Presidencies, Bengal, [1] Madras, [2] and Bombay, [3] were vested in their respective Governors in Council, but each Governor in Council was also empowered to make and issue such rules, ordinances and regulations for the good order and civil government of the territories he individually commanded, provided that they were just and reasonable and not repugnant to the laws of the British realm. To the codes of law promulgated by these authorities must be added the whole body of English Statute law introduced in India so far as it was applicable, by the charter of George I in 1726 and such other English Acts subsequent to that date as were expressly extended to particular parts of the country.
The work of administering such a diverse body of laws proved so embarrassing that it was the view of the supreme Court of Calcutta that
“no one person can pronounce an opinion or form a judgment... upon any disputed right of persons, respecting which doubt and confusion may not be raised by those who may choose to call it in question; for very few of the public or persons
1 13 Geo. III, c. 63. s. 36.
2 39 and 40 Geo. Ill, c. 79, s. 11.
3 47 Geo. Ill, Sess. 2, c. 68, s. 3.