JUDGMENT

W. Comer Petheram, C.J. - The question we have to consider is whether the executor appointed by a Hindu testator who made his will in 1889, and died in 1891, can, after he has obtained probate, transfer the estate, effects and interests, vested in him by virtue of such probate, to the Administrator-General u/s 31 of the Administrator-General's Act (II of 1874). Mr. Justice SALE has come to the conclusion that he cannot, as he thinks that the estate of a Hindu is not within any of the provisions of the Act, except Sections 17 and 1.8, which are expressly made applicable to such estates. The argument on both sides has dealt, not only with the Act upon which we have now to put a construction, but with the history of the office of Administrator-General, and with the conditions under which the various Acts by which it has been constituted have been passed, and in what I have to say on the subject I propose to follow the same course.

2. The office was first constituted by Act VII of 1849 to supersede that of Ecclesiastical Registrar, and that Act deals exclusively with the estates of British subjects dying within the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal. Act VIII of 1855 was on th