Page:James Thomason (Temple).djvu/101

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THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR
93

by the Governor-General in Council and styled Regulations. They were binding on the Lieutenant-Governor for these Provinces in the main. But they did not apply to his Himalayan district of Kumáun nor to the Narbadá territories described in the last chapter, which were consequently styled non-regulation districts. The Courts of Justice, both civil and criminal, were in their action and decisions independent of him. Still he possessed indirectly much influence in the judicial department, because with him lay the appointment and removal, the leave and furlough, of all judges, under the rules of the service.

Even with these several limitations, the sphere of the Lieutenant-Governor was vast. He had the nomination, or the control over the nomination, to all civil appointments, whether administrative or judicial — the command of the magistracy in all its executive work, of the police, of the prisons, — the supervision of municipalities, of local funds and miscellaneous improvements, of the public health and sanitation, of national education such as there then was, of the post-office which had not yet been erected into an imperial department, — and the administration of the revenues.

The principal head of revenue consisted of the land tax. The administration of it, as sketched in the last preceding chapter, overshadowed in importance all other branches of the civil government. The tax itself touched closely, almost vitally, the welfare of every individual in a vast body of peasant proprietors,