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That, from that time to 1765, invasions, usurpations, and various revolutions took place in the government of Bengal, in consequence of which the country was considerably reduced and impoverished, when the East India Company received from the present Mogul emperor, Shah Allum, a grant of the dewanny, or collection of the revenues.
It is expressly said in that body of regulations to which I allude, that the office and situation of a judge of the Dewanny Courts of Adawlut is to be filled by the junior servants of the Company; and as the judicial emolument is not substantially equal to that of other situations, the office of a judge is to be taken, as it were, in transitu, as a passage to other offices not of a judicial nature.
Mahomed Reza Khân, by orders of the Company, was turned out of all his offices, and turned out for reasons and principles which your Lordships will hereafter see; and at last the dewanny was entirely taken out of the native hands, and settled in the Supreme Council and Presidency itself in Calcutta; and so it remained until the year 1781, when Mr.
He suffered for a crime of forgery which he had committed in a private trust that was delegated to him, and for which he had been prosecuted in the dewanny courts of the country before the institution of the Supreme Court of Judicature.
The dewanny, or high-stewardship, gave to the Company the collection and management of the revenue; and in this modest and civil character they appeared, not the oppressors, but the protectors of the people. This scheme had all the real power, without any invidious appearance of it; it gave them the revenue, without the parade of sovereignty.
VIII. That as in the increase of the revenue the said Mahomed Reza Khân was employed as a person likely to improve the same without detriment to the people, so, when the state of any province seemed to require a remission, he was employed as a person disposed to the relief of the people without fraud to the revenue; and this was expressed by the President and Council as follows, with relation to the remissions granted in the province of Bahar: "That the general knowledge of Mahomed Reza Khân, in all matters relative to the dewanny revenues, induced us to consent to such deductions being made from the general state of that province at the last poonah as may be deemed irrecoverable, or such as may procure an immediate relief and encouragement to the ryots in the future cultivation of their lands."
I. That it was the declared policy of the Company, on the acquisition of the dewanny of Bengal, to continue the country government, under the inspection of the Resident at the Nabob's durbar in the first instance, and that of the President and Council in the last; and for that purpose they did stipulate to assign, for the support of the dignity of the Nabob, an annual allowance from the revenues, equal to four hundred thousand pounds a year.
Your Lordships will see by the allowance for the office, even reduced as it was, that they expected some man of great eminence, of great consequence, and fit for those great and various trusts. They cut off the dewanny from it, that is, the collection of the revenues; and having lessened his labors, they lessened his reward.
As to their other powers, the Company derives them from the Mogul empire by various charters from that crown, and from the great magistrates of that crown, and particularly by the Mogul charter of 1765, by which they obtained the dewanny, that is, the office of lord high-steward, of the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa.
As to the Bengal provinces, he did not take for the Company the viceroyalty, as Mr. Holwell would have persuaded, almost forced, the Company to do; but, to satisfy the prejudices of the Mahomedans, the country was left in the hands nominally of the Subah, or viceroy, who was to administer the criminal justice and the exterior forms of royalty. He obtained from the sovereign the dewanny.
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