protection of person and property, the education of the people, the record of changes or transfers connected with landed property, sanitation, Local Public Works, and a number of minor branches of government. For official purposes they were grouped as follows: Jails, Registration, Police, Education, Medical Services (except 'Medical Establishments'), Printing (an enormous item in India), Roads, Civil Buildings, and various Public Works, Miscellaneous Public Improvements, and various minor services.
This well-jointed system of Provincial and Imperial Finance continues to be the basis of Indian Finance to this day. It has received further developments since Lord Mayo's time, but its principles remain unchanged. Sir John Strachey thus summarised the state of things which preceded it: —
'For many years before Lord Mayo became Viceroy, the ordinary financial condition of India had been one of chronic deficit, and one of the main causes of this state of affairs was the impossibility of resisting the constantly increasing demands of the Local Governments for the means of providing many kinds of improvement in the administration of their respective Provinces. Their demands were practically unlimited, because there was almost no limit to their legitimate wants. The Local Governments had no means of knowing the measure by which their annual demands upon the Government of India ought to be regulated. They had a purse to draw upon of unlimited, because of unknown, depth. They saw on every side the
