resulted from this state of things is afforded by a contemporary account of the condition in 1789 of the port of Coringa, then a busy place. There, owing to the number of ships and sailors that visited the port and the 'general want of police,' fighting, thefts and murder were common. 'When any wrong is done the injured party has no one of sufficient authority to apply to for redress. Every one here is judge of his own cause. The Honorable Company's Resident lives at Comprapollam (Sunkarpálaiyam near Injaram), eight miles off; and when applied to on such occasions urges want of due authority to remedy abuses and to take cognizance of offences.'1[1]
The beginning of the last century witnessed a salutary change in the state of things. The supine Chiefs and Councils had been replaced in 1794 by Collectors; and in 1802 Lord Cornwallis' system of judicial administration was introduced into this Presidency and a Zilla Court was established at Rajahmundry. It was subordinate to a peripatetic Provincial Court at Masulipatam, the judges of which used to come on circuit from time to time and hold criminal sessions. In the same year (1802) native commissioners were appointed to hear petty civil suits. A few years later they received the designation of district munsifs, which, though their powers have been much increased, they still bear. In 1827 Auxiliary Courts were established and native judges (later called Principal Sudder Amins) were appointed with extensive authority. In 1843 the Zilla and Provincial Courts were abolished and a Civil and a Subordinate Court were created in their stead at Rajahmundry. The latter was abolished in 1859; but in 1873, when the existing District Courts Act became law, the name of Subordinate Courts was given, as elsewhere, to the courts of the Principal Sudder Amins, and the chief court in the district was designated the District and Sessions Court. The Sub-Court at Rajahmundry was temporarily abolished in 1877.
In the Agency, both civil and criminal justice are differently administered. This tract consists of the deputy tahsildars' divisions of Pólavaram, Yellavaram and Chódavaram and the taluk of Bhadráchalam, all of which are remote tracts covered with hill and jungle, sparsely provided with communications, shunned by the dwellers in the plains, and inhabited by backward tribes who are most illiterate and ignorant of the ways of the world, and yet ready to go out on the warpath if once any of their many peculiar
- ↑ 1 Selections from the Records of the Madras Government (Madras, 1855), xix, 24.
