The rule of these village-dotted plains is the main daily business of the Indian Government. A great Province like Bengal is divided into Districts, each of them about as large as the English county of Lincolnshire or a little larger. On the average each of them contains from half a million to a million and a half of population. There are some 250 of such Districts in British India, that is to say in that greater part of India which is administered directly by British officials. In each District there is a chief executive officer, styled the Collector or Deputy Commissioner. He is the head of the District administration, and he is also the principal Magistrate in the District. Under the Collector there is a staff of Executive Officers, British and Indian, of whom the chief are the Assistant Collector, the Deputy Collector, the Superintendent of Police, the Engineer, and the Civil Surgeon. The Collector is so called because in the days of the old East India Company his main function was to collect revenue. In his other capacity of Magistrate, he is the head of the Magisterial Courts of the District. The laws which he and his assistants administer are made by the Viceroy in Council, and in a subordinate way by the Lieutenant-Governors and their Councils in the various Provinces. The Collector does not decide civil suits. These, as well as all serious criminal cases, come before Civil Judges of different grades, who are independent of the Collector. Therefore we find in India that essential division of the Legislature, Judicature, and Executive which is the chief security of freedom in all British communities. Subject to the law and to the instructions of the superior Provincial Officers, the District Collector is, however, supreme, except in the Civil Courts of his District. He it is who alone for the vast majority of the Indian population represents the Raj or Rule of the King-Emperor. Between the Collectors and the Lieutenant-Governors are intermediate controlling officers known as Commissioners, who superintend Divisions or groups of several Districts. The Higher Civil Service of India, recruited by competitive examination in England, consists of some twelve hundred officials—the Commissioners, the Collectors of the Districts, and some of the Assistant Collectors. The seniors of the Civil Service man the Provincial and Supreme Governments of India. Only the Governor-General and the Governors of Madras and Bombay are selected from outside the Indian Civil Service and sent out from Britain.