Thomas Munro is the real author of the ryotwari settlement. He was a cadet in the Madras army, who landed at Fort St. George about the time that Hyder Ali was desolating the Carnatic. In 1792 he was employed in settling the revenue in Malabar and Canara, which had been ceded by Tippu to Lord Cornwallis; and there he formed his ideas of a settlement direct with individual landholders. The controversy between Madras and Bengal raged for years, but in the end Thomas Munro was victorious. He converted the Board of Control and Court of Directors to his views. He was knighted, and appointed Governor of Madras. He died in 1827, after having triumphantly introduced the ryotwari. The zemindars in the Telegu country still retain their estates with the proprietary rights of landlords. [Sidenote: Bombay: Mountstuart Elphinstone.] Meanwhile the Bombay Presidency had been vastly enlarged by the acquisition of the dominions of the Peishwa. Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the contemporary of Sir Thomas Munro, was appointed Governor of Bombay. He introduced the ryotwari settlement into the Mahratta country, and framed a code of laws which remained in force throughout the Bombay Presidency until 1860, when it was superseded by the Penal Code. [Sidenote: Madras collectorates.] Lord William Bentinck's system of commissioners of divisions was introduced into the North-West Provinces and Bombay; but the Madras Presidency was without commissioners or divisions, and was distributed into twenty large districts or collectorates, which on an average are as large as Yorkshire. In Bengal and the North-West Provinces the districts on an average are no larger than Devonshire. In each Madras district there was a collector, who might be described as a proconsul, and a civil and sessions judge, corresponding to those in the other Presidencies. The administration of the Madras Presidency, revenue and judicial, has always been distinguished by a larger element of Asiatic officials than either Bengal, Bombay, or the North-West Provinces. [Sidenote: Charter Act of 1833: India Thrown open.] §18. The last and most important changes in the rule of the East India Company were carried out during the administration of Lord William Bentinck, under the charter Act of 1833. Before, however, dealing with this radical reform, it may be as well to review the successive stages in the relations of the East India Company towards parliament and the crown. [Sidenote: Company and Crown, 1600-1688.]