INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 27 how vigorously the system was criticised by the opposition members of the Council and condemned as oppressive by the author of the Secr Mutagherin.' It was candidly admitted by the Resolution of April 6, 1786, that the establishment of faujdars and thinadirs “ has by experience been found not to produce the good effects inteuced by the institution’’. On the old division of authority between the Nazim and the Dewan, the executive power including criminal adminis- tration was allotted to the Nazim while the Dewan possess- ed the civil jurisdiction. The establis ment of two courts of justice, the Dewani and the Faujdari ‘Adalat, which were controlled by the superior Sadar Dewani and Nizamat ‘Adalats at the Presidency of Fort ধন [হি imi William, was made by the Regulations of the Committee of Circuit? chiefly on the basis on this old distinction. One of the effects of the Regulations referred to was to transfer the Courts of Appeal from Murshidabad to Caleutta and to give the Collector the right to preside over local civil courts and keep vigilance over the local criminal courts ; yet the crimi- nal jurisdiction of the Nawab was not taken away nor were miscarriages of justice and long-felt abuses removed by these Regulations. The establishment, for the Mayor’s Court, of the Supreme Court in Caleutta, to which Francis was so stoutly opposed, brought, again, in its train a number of notorious evils, and one need hardly recall Macaulay’s aceount of the high-handed proceedings of this Court. It was not until 1790 that the superintendence of criminal justice throughout the province was accepted by the English,* and judicial administration was not placed
- Seir Mutagherin, iii. p. 176-179. See Fifth Report, pp. 43 et. seq.
? Colebrooke, op. cit. 1-14; also quoted and discussed in Firminger, ‘op. cit. pp. cexxi et seq.
- ® Cornwallis’s Minute, December 3, 1790 ; also Regulation V and 1X
of 1793. Also Fifth Report, pp. 29-42 : Seton.Karr, Cornwallis, pp, 88-94.
