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
1
