Nor have the passport regulations reduced the number of vagrants for ever on the tramp, who can show no papers, and yet are seldom interfered with. When the authorities awoke suddenly to the need for enforcing the rules in some of the more remote towns, such as Tiflis and Odessa, there was a general exodus of the working population, and the well-to-do people were left without the servants, small tradespeople, and others who had ministered to their wants.
The passport regulations oppress all classes. The well-to-do Russian who would go abroad must pay for the privilege; the tax is at present ten roubles (about thirty shillings), but in the days of Nicholas I. it was five hundred roubles, and some are in favour of reviving this costly tariff. When the police are stirred up by some Nihilist outrage, a high price must be paid to obtain a travelling passport, but it can be got, as can almost anything in Russia, for money. The burden, however, weighs heaviest on the poorer classes, who are constantly liable to be bullied by the police to produce passports, and imposed upon by the communal authorities when renewal is sought. Passports are often lost by their holders, more often stolen from them. When this happens, the loser, if he is a stranger from a rural district residing in a city on sufferance, may find himself in sore straits. It is an expensive and tedious business to obtain another passport, and to be without one is to run perpetual risk of trouble with the police. The man without a passport is thus often thrown into the arms of the revolutionary party, who, if he will accept their tenets, readily obtain him a false passport, and find him the work he could not get without its production. Again, it is known that many peasants residing in towns suffer from the dilatoriness or unconcern of the authorities whose duty it is to renew their passports. Cases are on record where the fear of police persecution while passportless has driven men to suicide. A village girl killed herself in 1879 because she could not get her papers renewed and the family in which she was working would not re-engage her.
The passport arrangements appear to be more stringent in connection with natives than with visitors, but the latter are denied the comparative freedom they once enjoyed. At one time a visitor might remain a month in the country without inquiry or interference; now it is necessary to register the passport for a stay of anything over three days; the document is lodged at the police office, and the hotel-keeper, landlord, or host becomes responsible for the traveller. It is the same with any driver of a post-chaise in the country districts, who has to produce his passenger at every station. Letters are only delivered after registration of the passport, and then on a certificate filled in by the chief of police of the district. Passports are taxed, and bring in a considerable revenue to the Government; at one time a visitor paid £12 for registration, but the fee has been considerably reduced. During the reign of Nicholas I. it rose as high as £40.
CHAPTER XI.
MODERN POLICE (continued): INDIA.
The New System Compared with the Old—Early Difficulties Gradually Overcome—The Village Police in India—Discreditable Methods under the Old System—Torture, Judicial and Extra-judicial—Native Dislike of Police Proceedings—Cases of Men Confessing to Crimes of which they were Innocent—A Mysterious Case of Theft—Trumped-up Charges of Murder—Simulating Suicide—An Infallible Test of Death—The Paternal Duties of the Police—The Native Policeman Badly Paid.
THE regular police of India, as it is now constituted, dates from the disappearance of the East India Company. Under the old system, taking Bengal for our example, the district magistrate, a member of the Civil Service, was the head of the district police. He had under his orders a certain number of constables, fifty or more, who were called burkundazes; they were distributed among the various stations or thannahs, each of which was under a thannadar, who was more commonly called a darogah, and was practically a police superintendent. This officer was responsible to the magistrate only, just as the magistrate was directly responsible to the supreme Government. But after 1859 the police throughout the province of Bengal, and eventually throughout India, was constituted into a special department; the regular force became a species of Government constabulary, under the central authority of an Inspector-General seated at Calcutta, with Deputy-Inspectors and Superintendents in charge of divisions and districts respectively. The senior police official in every district, generally a military officer, was associated with and subject to the orders of the magistrate in all executive duties, such as the repression of crime and the maintenance of peace and good order; but as regards administration, in all questions of pay, clothing, promotion, and so forth, the chief police officer looked to his police superior, the Inspector-General.
Nevertheless, the character of the new police was as little military as
