Introduction
I was prompted to undertake this work on Criminal Administration of Bihar in 1957 by Dr. B. B. Misra, the well-known author of the Central Administrator of the East India Company under whom I had the privilege of working as a research assistant. The idea was approved of and encouraged by Dr. K. K. Datta, the eminent historian who then held the chair of History in the Patna Univerrsity (now Vice-Chancellor of the Magadh University). He cheerfully undertook to guide and supervise me in this venture. It was at his instance that the period of study was fixed from 1765 to 1861, that is, from the commencement of the British Rule to the time when the Indian Penal Code (Act. XLV of 1860), the Code of Criminal Procedure (Act XXV of 1861) and the Indian Police Act (V of 1861) gave to the criminal administration of the country its modern shape. As the administration of Bihar and Bengal during that period was under the same executive head and the same pat tern of internal government operated in both the parts, it was settled on the advice of the Supervisor that the thesis should bear the heading 'Criminal Administration of Bihar and Bengal, 1765-1861'.
I must confess here that at the time I started the work I did not fully appreciate the magnitude and ramifications of the subject. This circumstance will explain the reason why in spite of full five years' strenuous labour I could not carry the story to its full logical length, and was obliged to stop short in 1835-36, the years in which Macaulay commenced the Indian Penal Code; the years in which the Acting Governor-General, Metcalfe, strongly realised that 'it was very objectionable that the weakness of civil power should be exposed to all classes of the people, and that military aid which ought to be the last reasort of the Magistrate should be required upon occasions of trivial moment for the assertion of the first principles of law and social order (Metcalfe's Minute, 22 December, 1835); the years in which authorities in England at the instance of Robert Peel, the Prime Minister and the father of the London Metropolitan Police, sent positive orders to reform the Bengal police on the principle of London police, observing that no financial consideration should be allowed to stand in the way of the proposed reform 'for none is of a superior or more pressing importance' (Judicial letter from Court to Bengal, 20 January, 1836). The entire separation of police from all other executive and judicial functions undoubtedly formed the basis of the great success and popularity of the London police, and the principle was well nigh recognised all over the Western World. The reform in Bengal was, however, delayed for a long time because the top civilians who then ruled the country were not yet mentally prepared for such unorthodox changes. W. W. Bird, Senior member of Lord Auckland's Council, who presided over the Police Committee of 1837 which was appointed to work out these reforms, frankly stated, "To attempt to transform native peons into anything like the London Police, has always appeared to me to be very much the same as setting about to raise a superstructure without a foundation. The wood out of which such officers are cut does not grow in India, nor do the character, the habits or the manners of the people of the two countries in any respect correspond" (Home Judicial Progs. 9 Sept., 1839). This psychology which preferred to govern this country on supposed Oriental methods, which favoured despotism, and kept liberal reforms strenuously at bay so long as this could be done, expressed itself most characteristically on the subject of internal administration in the following words of F. J. Halliday, the Lt. Governor of Bengal, once an uncompromising liberal criminal administration in Bihar and Bengal (1765-1861).
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