All the other departmental services--Public
Works, Postal and the rest--were grouped together as uncovenanted. In
accordance with the Report of the Public Service Commission (1886-7)
the terms 'covenanted' and 'uncovenanted' have been disused.
3. The text refers to what was known as the 'customs hedge'. Before
the establishment of the British supremacy each of the innumerable
native jurisdictions levied transit duties on many kinds of goods at
each of its frontiers, to the infinite vexation of traders. Such
duties were gradually abolished in British territory, and few, if
any, are now enforced by native states. Salt cannot be manufactured
in British India without a licence, and the Salt (formerly called
Inland Customs) Department is charged with the duty of preventing the
manufacture or sale of illicit salt. In its later developments the
Customs hedge was used for the collection of the salt duty only. Sir
John Strachey took a leading part in its abolition. To secure the
levy of the duty on salt, he writes, 'there grew up gradually a
monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a
parallel in any tolerably civilized country.
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