Page:John Russell Colvin.djvu/178

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170
JOHN RUSSELL COLVIN

of murderers, such for example as Thugs, were hunted down with unwearying patience. Registers of habitual criminals were established in each district. Character books for the several members of the Police force were established. A small number of the force in each district were trained to the use of firearms for the purposes of escort and guard. A model was prescribed for police stations. 'so as to take away from them the character of enclosed buildings, removed from public observation,' and they were brought into the immediate vicinity of the sub-district Revenue offices. The mists of time have obscured the origin of much which is now familiar, in their Police system, to North-West district officers, and which many probably imagine to date from some period after the Mutinies. But, in the Report above referred to, all this and more will be found.

Road communications, elementary and higher education, jails, all the incidents of active internal administration passed under Mr. Colvin's scrutiny and review. Those were not days of decentralization; and it is instructive to see that the sanction of the Court of Directors had to be obtained before a branch of the Grand Trunk Road could be carried from Meerut to Rúrki at a cost of £22,000. Now the railway has in its turn superseded the Grand Trunk Road; and the great thoroughfare of 1855 has, in 1894, become obsolete. In railways Mr. Colvin took the keenest interest. What is now the East India Railway was in course of construction. We find him, in