law, for trying in the first instance persons charged with crimes or misdemeanors, and enabling the Governor-General and the members of the Supreme Council to sit in the Nizámat Adálat (which were for that purpose again removed to Calcutta) and superintend the administration of criminal justice throughout the provinces. These Regulations, with the subsequent amendments, are now re-enacted with further alterations and modifications[1].'
The above quotation from the new Code of this time, with other like deliverances, is illustrative of the extreme caution with which the Government proceeded to assume its responsibilities and to carry out reforms. These changes to readers and administrators of the present generation seem easy and natural. Collectors who could only advise native Judges — English magistrates who might apprehend and yet not try criminals — a Government which
- ↑ The author of this memoir in his early years of service discovered some of the old records of those very Criminal Courts, presided over by these Faujdárs, still in existence, and on inspecting them he found what is known as the Rúbakárí, or finding and sentence of the Court. It was very brief and concise, and ended with the direction that the prisoner kaid bashad: in other words, that he was to be sent to prison. No term whatever was specified, and there was a tradition amongst the older native employés of the magistrates' office as late as the year 1845, of an individual who, having been sentenced to indefinite imprisonment for stealing some of a neighbour's rice crop, remained in durance for many years. It must be added that the rules of prison discipline were neither then, nor for many years afterwards, of a strict nature. Prisoners were locked up at night, but during the day they had a good deal of liberty, walked about the bázárs, did or pretended to do a little work in repairing the roads and clearing out the ditches of this Station, saw their friends, and often obtained tobacco, sweetmeats, and other indulgences.
