Chapter ACHÁR toADAWLUT of A by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

1774 the Collectors were recalled, and native ’Amils (Aumil) appointed in their stead. Provincial Councils were set up for the divisions of Calcutta, Burdwan, Dacca, Moorshedabad, Dinagepore, and Patna, in whose hands the superintendence, both of revenue collection and of the administration of civil justice, was vested, but exercised by the members in rotation.

The state of things that existed under this system was discreditable. As Courts of Justice the provincial Councils were only “colourable imitations of courts, which had abdicated their functions in favour of their own subordinate (native) officers, and though their decisions were nominally subject to the Governor-General in Council, the Appellate Court was even a more shadowy body than the Courts of first instance. The Court never sat at all, though there are some traces of its having at one time decided appeals on the report of the head of the Khalsa, or native exchequer, just as the Provincial Council decided them on the report of the Cazis and Muftis.”²

In 1770 the Government resolved that Civil Courts, independent of the Provincial Councils, should be established in the six divisions named above,³ each under a civilian judge with the title of Superintendent of the Dewanny Adawlut; whilst to the Councils should still pertain the trial of causes relating to the public revenue, to the demands of zemindars upon their tenants, and to boundary questions. The appeal from the District Courts still lay to the Governor-General and his Council, as forming the Court of Sudder Dewanny; but that this might be real, a judge was appointed its head in the person of Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, an appointment which became famous. For it was represented as a transaction intended to compromise the acute dissensions which had been going on between that Court and the Bengal Government, and in fact as a bribe to Impey. It led, by an address from the House of Commons, to the recall of Impey, and constituted one of the charges in the abortive impeachment of that personage. Hence his charge of the Sudder Dewanny ceased in November, 1782, and it was resumed in form by the Governor-General and Council.

In 1787, the first year of Lord Cornwallis’s government, in consequence of instructions from the Court of Directors, it was resolved that, with an exception as to the Courts at Moorshedabad, Patna, and Dacca, which were to be maintained independently, the office of judge in the Mofussil Courts was to be attached to that of the collection of the revenue; in fact, the offices of Judge and Collector, which had been divorced since 1774, were to be reunited. The duties of Magistrate and Judge became mere appendages to that of Collector; the administration of justice became a subordinate function; and in fact all Regulations respecting that administration were passed in the Revenue Department of the Government.

Up to 1790 the criminal judiciary had remained in the hands of the native courts. But this was now altered; four Courts of Circuit were created, each to be superintended by two civil servants as judges; the Sudder Nizamut Adawlut at the Presidency being presided over by the Governor-General and the members of Council.

In 1793 the constant succession of revolutions in the judicial system came to something like a pause, with the entire reformation which was enacted by the Regulations of that year. The Collection of Revenue was now entirely separated from the administration of justice; Zillah Courts under European judges were established (Reg. iii.) in each of 23 Districts and 3 cities, in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa; whilst Provincial Courts of Appeal, each consisting of three judges (Reg. v.), were established at Moorshedabad, Patna, Dacca, and Calcutta. From these Courts, under certain conditions, further appeal lay to the Sudder Dewanny Adawluts at the Presidency.

As regarded criminal jurisdiction, the judges of the Provincial Courts were also (Reg. ix., 1793) constituted Circuit Courts, liable to review by the Sudder Nizamut. Strange to say, the impracticable idea of placing the duties of both of the higher Courts, civil and criminal, on the shoulders of the executive Government was still maintained, and the Governor-General and his Council were the constituted heads of the Sudder Dewanny and Sudder Nizamut. This of course continued as unworkable as it had been; and in Lord Wellesley’s time, eight years later, the two Sudder Adawluts were reconstituted, with three regular judges to each, though it was still ruled (Reg. ii., 1801) that the chief judge in each Court was to be a member of the Supreme Council, not being either the Governor-General or the Commander-in-Chief. This rule was rescinded by Reg. x. of 1805.

The number of Provincial and Zillah Courts was augmented in after years with the extension of territory, and additional Sudder Courts, for the service of the Upper Provinces, were established at Allahabad in 1831 (Reg. vi.), a step which may be regarded as the inception of the separation of the N.W. Provinces into a distinct Lieutenant-Governorship, carried out five years later. But no change that can be considered at all organic occurred again in the judiciary system till 1862; for we can hardly