good. At last the long enquiry ended in an acquittal, which the Court of Directors subsequently confirmed. The victim of their rashness and Nanda-Kumár's hate was restored ere long to much of his former eminence. More fortunate than his fellow-sufferer, he lived to hold high office under the Government of Bengal, and to see his old traducer doomed to a felon's death.
Some further changes in the machinery of government were soon to occupy Hastings' attention. The new class of English collectors were found unequal to their new duties; and in 1774 their powers were transferred to native Diwáns and Amils, controlled in fiscal matters by a Committee of Revenue, which sat daily in Calcutta to hear complaints from ráyats and other aggrieved persons. The collectorates were grouped into six divisions, each administered by a Provincial Council of five, whose duties ranged from the hearing of appeals in civil suits to a careful enquiry into land tenures and a general supervision of revenue accounts. A few gentlemen, the pick of the Company's service, were sent on a roving commission to visit 'such districts as might require a local investigation[1].'
Hastings had given Bengal a judicial system which, however rude and imperfect, aimed at dealing equal justice on fixed principles to all alike. This boon he determined to better by drawing up a code of Hindu and Muhammadan law for the guidance of the new
- ↑ Auber.
