turists suffer, proceed from their own carelessness, apathy, and extravagance, whenever they have anything to spend. But we consider that, on one point extracted by the Lieut.-Governor from the petition, every additional information thrown, may be of some value. That point is No. 4, in Mr. Halliday's enumeration of the eight subjects. "The resources and earnings of the labouring classes, and the proportion which these bear 'to the rent that they are compelled to pay." And to this, and to a few other material and incidental points, we earnestly invite the attention of our readers in the following pages. : The portion of Lower Bengal, to part of which the memorial certainly refers, and from which our materials are drawn, is not unfitted for generalisation. We shall take the population of a part of a large tract, fertile, cultivated, and populous with fair communication by water, and moderate but improvable communication by land a tract containing powerful zemindars and energetic planters: one productive of rice, of sugar, of indigo, and of various agricultural products: and finally a tract of country not so close to the civilization of Calcutta on the one hand, as to be an unfair specimen of the remainder of the mofussil, nor one so far removed amongst the backwoods and jungles, as to be below the standard in general enterprise and intelligence. That the majority of the ryots are poor, in the sense of living from hand to mouth, without ability to lay by anything after provision for daily maintenance, and that they are mainly occupied in the cultivation of rice, are facts about which there is no dispute. On the cultivation of the staple food of the lower provinces, and on the various crops sown after the early rice has been gathered in, as well as on the general appearance and condition of the successive umbrageous villages, wide plains, and deep or rapid rivers which make up lower Bengal, a good deal has been already written in this Review; and for a general description of the alluvial soil of lower Bengal, we venture to refer our readers to Art. I. Vol. IX. We shall therefore be brief in our remarks on the staple cultivation, and somewhat more prolix as to those who cultivate. The early, or aous rice is sown generally on high, light, and sandy soils from March to May, as showers may be favorable. It is cut variously from the end of July to the middle or end of September, and in six weeks' time, it is succeeded by what is known as 'cold weather' crop, which may be mustard, vetches, pulse, millet, sola, or gram, barley, oats, and the like. The aumon rice is sown in rich, deep, and loamy soils from April to June, and is reaped any time between the beginning of December and the end of January. It is a richer, stronger, and every way a better crop than the aous, but it is more exposed to inundation, and is not followed by any second crop within the year. Occasionally the early and the late crops are sown on the same land, and cut without injury to each other at different periods. A large part of the late rice is planted with the hand in rows, on land carefully ploughed, cleaned, and smoothed for the purpose. It is everywhere known as the roa, and yields an abundant harvest. A third kind of rice, unknown in high and dry tracts of country, but very common in extensive marshy districts, is called the boru, and, from its proximity to water, is sown and grown from the month of January to the end of May. It is cultivated in places where there is too great a depth of water during the heavy rains, and consequently abundance to keep the plant moist during the fierce heat of summer. The early rice, in the most favourable season, from both grain and straw, cannot give more than five rupees per beegah. In bad seasons it may not yield more than one rupee. As much as ten or even fifteen rupees may be got from the aumon crop in good seasons; but when heavy rains, or unexpected inundations from large rivers, drown the young plants, as was the case during 1855 and 1856, and may be the case again at any time, the return is positively nothing. The boru rice may be expected to yield seven or eight rupees per beegah. And on these three crops, over some hundreds of miles, the hopes and anxieties of some millions hang for a large part of the year. About the crops, there can be little dispute. The condition of those who live by such crops, we have found to be as follows:Take a large plain, a crowded bazaar on market day, or a high road between two towns or villages of any importance, and it will generally be found that the men at work on the one, or buying and selling in the other, or sturdily strutting along the third, have some title, or right, or interest, or occupancy in the soil. Nearly every man has his jumma, which, in plain language, is his tenant-right of oceupancy, or of proprietorship. The extent of this jumma is, in conversation, and for all practical purposes, indicated not by the acre-age, for few can tell the area of their possession, but by the rent demanded, for every man well knows how much he is expected to pay. A jumma or jote may then vary from five to one hundred rupees. It will usually be found to be from about twelve to thirty. Obviously, the possibility of a man's paying such rent, and yet finding enough to support him, will depend, apart from all fluctuations of climate, on the rent, compared to the productiveness and extent of the tenure, on the number of mouths which he has to support in his own homestead, and on the number of sharers who have a joint hold on the land. The shareholders in a large jumma of eighty or one hundred rupees we have known to reach to ten, and there are often as many as four or five on a small holding of twenty rupees. This is an inevitable consequence of the law of subdivision; but it is remarkable, how constantly this terminates, after two or three generations, in a separation of cousins, and a division of the inheritance into two or more shares, no longer to be held in common: and it is still more remarkable how this universal custom is rudely set to rights by the progress of disease, by fever, cholera, small-pox, and other scourges, which clear off whole families, and cause the inheritance to revert to the hands of a single member. If on the one hand, numerous instances may be found of families branching out, till they seem to weigh down the minute holding,-on the other, cases as frequent will occur, where father, and uncles, with their offspring, have all been swept away, and the patrimonial inheritance has reverted to a single individual, with it may be the surviving female relations all dependent upon his exertions for bread. The jumma or holding will naturally be divided between a homestead, or beeta, with, it may be, some garden land attached to it, and the outfield in the plain, with its early or late rice, or both. The possession of a garden seems to confer no small pleasure on the possessor, the term including land on which mangoe, date, jack, cocoanut, betelnut, or other fruit trees grow, as well as bamboos, and land on which brinjals, hemp, and common vegetables may be planted, and cows may be tethered to pasture in the rains. On a garden like this, very little care is expended, except it be a date garden. The blossoms come forth, and the fruit is formed and ripens, with none of the digging, manuring, and watering, which in any climate are essential to rich produce, and cannot be dispensed with even under the powerful sun and fertilizing rains of Bengal. The over-crowding of fruit trees, their injury from insects and birds, their want of pruning, the entire absence of the commonest rules of scientific gardening, must be familiar to any one who has ever studied a Bengali village. Half the fruits are in consequence stunted in growth, damaged by insects, and injured in the gathering. But it is something for the ryot to have a garden which is growing while he is sleeping, or working elsewhere, and which gives him the useful bamboo, applied to so many common purposes, and which yields fruit, without previous expenditure, to relieve the monotony of his regular fare, or to increase his "resources and earnings," when sold at the weekly haut. The main question relative to outfield and infield will, of course, be the average amount of rent. We have said that few ryots know the extent of their holdings in actual beegahs. This is the case, in many instances, where the land has never been measured, when it will be loosely stated at twenty or thirty beegahs; but where it has been measured, the ryot unluckily knows its extent but too well. There is in every pergunnah a variable rate of assessment, but one well understood. In pergunnah Insafnuggur it is one thing; in pergunnah Zalimpore it is another. There is, we say, a general understanding, expectation, or regular consent, given or implied, that it shall not be enhanced without some very special reason. And the question to which we now come, and which is one of the last importance, is, what is the usual average, and is it a fair one? On this point, custom and opinions vary so much, in different places, and according to the different views of payers and receivers, that it is with some difficulty, and after a great deal of research, that we have arrived at a definite conclusion. The large rent paid by shopkeepers, or mere householders in marts, bazars, and the principal stations of districts, should no more be taken as a criterion of the average, than the return of a crop of sugar-cane, or of indigo sown for seed only, should be taken as the average of the produce of the land. Where wealth accumulates, and the commodities of the country are collected together, ground naturally rises in value, just as it does in the Chitpore bazar, or within two or three streets of St. Paul's. We have known as much as eleven rupees ground-rent paid for a beegah of land, by a shopkeeper in a thriving bazar, and three and four rupees for a shop with a single house attached to it: the two latter not covering more than eight cottahs in extent. A regular assessment of one rupee and four annas for each shop in a long line of shops, built nearly on the same model, and taking up about the same space, is not immoderate. The mudi, the dealer in brass pans, and the cloth-seller, harassed by no processes, exposed to no vicissitudes of climate, can well afford to pay such a rate as this. Even in villages, a higher rate on the homestead and the garden, is universal. It may be as low as Rs. 2, or as high as Rs. 3-8 or Rs. 4, but the average may be taken as Rs. 2-8 or Rs. 2-12. Such a rate, in itself, is nothing intolerable. Those who follow a profitable occupation, such as sugar-baking, oil-pressing, weaving, the carpenter, the blacksmith, the potter, and others, whose existence and trades are essential to the rice-growing community generally, can save this amount from their yearly earnings: and the ryot who looks to the land alone, can afford to pay it from the returns of his riceland, if this latter be not too highly assessed. But this, as we have just said, is the very gist of our enquiry. What is a fair rent for the land which yields one splendid crop, or two average crops in the year? We find that rent for this land varies from as low as 8 annas a beegah to Rs. 2-12 and even Rs. 3, which is pretty much the same as saying that rent in England ranges from eighteen shillings or one pound an acre to fifty and fifty-five shillings. In Bengal the extremes are rare. The land may be too sandy, or too low, or too sterile, or impregnated with salt, or culturable only after a rest for a year or ten months, and in these cases, a rate of from ten to fourteen annas is quite as much as it can bear. If rich and loamy, it may well bear from eighteen annas to Rs. 1-4. But repeated investigation has satisfied us, that a ryot holding a jote of twenty beegahs, composed of homestead, high land, and deep land, pays on the whole a higher rate than this. Were the whole of the twenty beegahs assessed at no more than a rupee per beegah, we should have little to say in favour of a reduction. But when the homestead pays Rs. 2-8 or Rs. 3, the deep rice land Rs. 1-8, Rs. 1-12 or Rs. 2, and the lighter soils from twelve annas to Rs. 1-2, as we have found that they do pay repeatedly, it is clear that the ryot has a burden laid on him, which it requires constant exertion, without intermission from sickness, litigation, or any other cause, as well as a succession of favourable seasons, to enable him to support. In round numbers one rupee a beegah, or Rs. 1-2, and perhaps Rs. 1-4 in very favourable localities, would be a fair and equitable assessment. But we find in some pergunnahs, that Rs. 1-4, and in others that Rs. 1-6, and Rs. 1-12, or Rs. 2 are the regular rates. Add to this occasional cesses, with an increasing family, and the families of other shareholders increasing as well, and it is very conceivable that the ryot has no easy task to perform. We have found zemindaries where the best soils were taxed at no more than Rs. 1-2 a beegah, and the worst as low as eight annas. We can point to others where the same soils are taxed respectively at Rs. 1-4 and Rs. 2-8. The difference between the condition of the cultivator, in each instance, is almost as easy to compute as the difference of the above sums. If, as Mr. Macaulay said in 1851, the varying abilities of Collectors can be read at a glance in the very faces of the ryots, if all is peace and plenty where the screw has been loosened, and the land returns to jungle where it has been drawn tight, it is not nearly so rhetorical to say that the character of the Zemindar can be discovered in ten minutes' conversation with a small knot of villagers who will speak truth under the village tree. But taking a number of instances together, the hard master and the lenient, the soil that lies too low and that which lies too high, with the general run of the seasons, with the earnings of the ryot from the land, and his extra resources, if any, we do not think it too much to say that a reduction of the assessment on the cultivators of from four to eight annas a beegah, in two-thirds of the zemindaries, would improve the condition of the cultivators generally, without at all impairing the position of the receivers of rent. But we are |
