succession of sub-collectors, landholders, tenants, and sub-tenants, is for ever closed. There are still, however, some lands, which, being held in farm, and therefore not included in the perpetual settlement, the collector is employed periodically to settle; but this office he executes under immediate and strict directions from the Board of Revenue. He has the farther duty of prosecuting for the resumption of lands in behalf of which the holders claim to be exempt from the payment of rents, where such lands are held on grants fictitious or otherwise invalid. He also provides, under the supervision of the Board of Revenue, for the management of the estates of landholders disqualified by sex, minority, or lunacy, and for the education of such as are minors. He superintends the division of joint estates. He apportions the assessment on lands ordered to be sold by the courts of judicature in discharge of an arrear of revenue. He procures lands, on the part of government, for sepoys invalidated in the service. He is charged with the payment of certain eleemosynary pensions, which, under the native government, had been granted to Bramins, Fakeers, or Mahomedan families in a state of decay, and which were made chargeable either on the territorial revenues or on the inland customs. He superintends the public embankments; an object of moment in a country extremely subject. to inundation. He collects the tax on spirituous liquors and drugs. He has, likewise, other du

ties of a subordinate kind, chiefly growing out of the functions already enumerated. That the Collector may have no interests separate from those of the public, he is not allowed to trade, nor to hold, directly or indirectly, a farm, nor to lend money to a landholder. Neither has he, like his predecessors under the native government, a judicial as well as a ministerial character; unless, perhaps, in the trifling case of deciding on claims to eleemosynary pensions, of the kind already described. Even in this instance, however, his jurisdiction vests only when the sum claimed is of a very small amount, and an appeal always lies from his decision to the Board of Revenue. Beyond this point he possesses no power, except that of bringing defaulters to trial before the regular courts of justice, to which, at the same time, he is himself amenable for irregularities committed in his official capacity.

The collector is obliged to keep a diary of all his proceedings, to correspond regularly with the Board of Revenue, to transmit to the Board periodically, or whenever he is required, all such accounts, papers, and information, as he can furnish, as well as registers of his receipts for payments of revenue, and his opinions on claims for pensions exceeding the amount on which he is authorized to decide.

The business of the Board of Revenue is to see that the revenues are punctually realized, to superintend, in all respects, the conduct of the col

lectors, and to suspend or report them, if they misconduct themselves. Neither the Board collectively, nor its members individually, are allowed to be concerned in any sort of trade, or in loans with any person responsible for the public revenue. The Board is a Court of Wards, to superintend the management of the estates of landholders disqualified by sex, minority, or lunacy, and the education of such as are minors. It possesses also jurisdiction in appeals from the collectors respecting claims to pensions. But, with these exceptions, it has no judicial authority, unless that appellation be affixed to its power of punishing its officers and servants, or compelling the landholders to produce their accounts.

The Board is obliged to keep regular minutes of its proceedings; to report every important matter to the Governor-General in Council, for his sanction, previously to a final resolution on it; to refer to government all cases, reported by the collectors, of claims for pensions beyond a certain amount, accompanied by the opinion of the Board itself on such case; to transmit to government a monthly report of its proceedings, and another copy of such report for transmission to the Court of Directors, and implicitly to comply with all the requisitions of government for such accounts, papers, or information, as it may have the power of furnishing.

The Board of Trade, taken in connexion with its appendages, is, in its constitution, proceed

ings, and arrangements for the conduct of business, as nearly similar to the Board of Revenue, as the difference of their respective provinces renders practicable; so nearly similar, indeed, that a separate description of its powers and mode of operation would be superfluous, even if a full consideration of them exactly fell within the compass of the present disquisition.

It is impossible, however, to quit this subject, without pointing out to the particular attention of the reader a distinguishing feature which, as the foregoing pages shew, pervades the whole administration of British India, from its central point at home, through all its numerous radiations. This is the obligation imposed on the members of every department in the service, to keep ample minutes of all their official proceedings, and to transmit such minutes regularly to the next highest authority. So universally is this practice enforced, that there is no official servant of the Company, however low his situation, or however remote his position from the seat of the local government, whose whole conduct is not stamped on documents placed in the hands of his superiors, and accessible at pleasure to the British parliament. Nor is this facility of communication more perfect, as to space, between distant parts of the system, than as to time, between the system at one period and at another. The office of every Collector of the Revenues, of every Commercial Resident, in short, of every public functionary, contains records, not

only of his own proceedings and correspondence, but also of those of his various predecessors; and all these it is within the competence of the government to demand, and thus to transport itself back to any former æra.

The habits of exactness and punctuality in the dispatch of public business, which this practice cannot fail universally to generate, constitute only its secondary merit. Its chief excellence consists in the intimate correspondence which it establishes between the head and different members of the state. Every separate authority, each in its place and order, is thus enabled to know and to watch over all the transactions that take place within its peculiar province, to appreciate accurately the merits of those employed under it, to check the less careful, and to promote, or point out for promotion, the deserving. The effects of this supervision on those over whom it is maintained, are, that, acting in a sort of light and publicity, they are kept in awe by the fear of punishment or disgrace, and impelled to exertion by the hope of credit or advancement. Farther, the records, being preserved, form a mass of embodied experience, by consulting which, the government has the means of understanding better the nature of those over whom it is appointed, and of combining, if necessary, plans of progressive alteration with that general consistency of proceeding, in which alone the foundations of improvement can be effectually laid.

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