Looking like a rude sort of anchor, it might excite the contempt of a sturdy English yeoman, or the surprise of the classical student who remembered the unmanageable instrument described by Virgil in a well-known passage of the Georgies. But this rude implement is suited to the means and capacity of the ryot, and to the bullocks which are to draw it. The price of this and other necessary tools may not be unacceptable to some of our readers. A very common thing is for the ryot to find his wood, baubul or mangoe, the former being preferred for its hardness, as well as the piece of iron for the share, and then to go to the carpenter of the village, who for a remuneration of four annas, will "fix" him a plough! It is usual too, to give this functionary a general retainer for the year, in the shape of a maund of rice in the husk, in consideration of which he is to make and repair the plough and other agricultural weapons; or the ryot may buy his plough ready made. In any case the whole expense will not exceed Rs. 1-4 or 1-8 for wood, iron, and workmanship; and the article may last one, two, or even three years. The prices of bullocks, which draw the plough or the cart, if the ryot is lucky enough to possess one, vary according to the size and strength of this animal. A young and vigorous bullock will fetch from eight to ten, twelve, and even sixteen rupees. Twenty rupees for a good pair is not an uncommon price. Weak and puny animals, or those whose best days are past, will cost four, five, or six rupees each. Eight rupees is about an average price. After the plough comes naturally the harrow. But this implement is a very different affair from the iron-toothed harrow of Europe. It is nothing more or less than two bamboos tied parallel to each other by cross pieces of wood, so as to form a regular ladder about eight feet long. The bullocks being harnessed, a couple of men take their stand on the ladder, so as to increase its weight, when it is dragged repeatedly over the field on which the seed has been cast, till every clod is pulverised, and the whole surface is perfectly smooth. We might term this a clod-crusher; the natives call it a bida or a bachara. It costs about two annas, and may be put together by the ryot himself. The instrument which resembles a harrow, in that it shews one single row of wooden teeth, is not employed till the seed has shot up some inches above the ground, when it performs somewhat of the duty which the scuffler' performs in England, preventing the soil from caking and hardening, without tearing up the young and tender plant. This instrument may be purchased for about six annas. Add to this a small hand-spud for weeding, which costs about three pyce; a fish basket to catch, rather than to carry fish, which costs about three annas; a triangular fish net, which is worth about five annas; a kodali or mattock, which, how

ever, is not universally needed, worth little more than a rupee; a dao or bill-hook worth about eight or ten annas,—and we have the complete stock in trade of a very considerable portion of the labouring population of Bengal.

So much for the implements of the ryot. His position and substance may not obscurely be indicated by the number of houses which he and his family occupy. If a ryot has but a single mat house, with a common thatched roof, it may be assumed that he has no cows, that he lives from hand to mouth as a day labourer, and that, unless he has some profitable employment or trade, he is generally in a bad way. A couple of houses, one of which serves as a cow or a cooking-house, is no very great evidence of well-being. Three houses constitute comfort; and it is the ambition of nearly every one to erect his four houses, one at each main point of the compass, the whole forming a snug court-yard in the centre, secure from the intrusion of casual wayfarers, and from the profane eye of neighbours. Where two families live in a joint mess, or where the owner may be a mahajun with stores of grain, let out at high interest, or a grihastha with a comfortable jumma; there is no saying to what extent the family residence may not increase by the addition of barns, cow-houses, store-houses, and separate sleeping apartments. There may be twenty together, forming a hamlet of themselves. A house may cost any sum between three and one hundred rupees. There is scarcely anything more primitive than the humblest style of dwelling, six bamboos for the posts, a dry kind of long jungly grass, which, however, is regularly sown and grown, for the roof, and a coarse mat for the sides, letting in air and water at the crevices, and the whole thing is complete. Nor on the other hand, are there many things much neater in their way than a well raised commodious ath-chala, or "eight-roofed " house. By the latter term it is not to be imagined that the house has eight coverings. The explanation is that the roof, besides covering the house on its four distinct sides, instead of on two sides, without the two gable ends, further covers the four verandahs, which, enclosed or open, run round the house on all sides. A house of this kind, with a raised mud floor at least four feet high, and neat windows, though perhaps without glass, barring its being somewhat too air-tight in the hot season, is habitable enough. A guardsman in the Crimea, or a pioneering civilian in a newly conquered province, would have highly prized such a gite. The ordinary style of house is, however, different from either extreme, and costs from about seven to twelve rupees. With occasional repairs to the thatch, and a new bamboo or two, it may last for some years, if spared such a visitation as the May gale of 1852, or if not in the centre of a large bazar, in which case it stands

a fair chance of being burnt down once in three years, in company with about a hundred others. To complete our picture of this part of a ryot's condition, we may add that in the matter of clothes, a poor working man must buy about three common dhooties in the course of a year, and a couple of decent ones which he keeps for special occasions: and that the expenditure on this head does not pass the limit, for each person, of 2 rupees or 2-8 a year. But when we consider the great par tiality, which all natives, even the most respectable, have for a state not far short of nudity, it may be allowed that the crying want' of the ryot is not an ability to expend more money on clothing himself.

The number of men in lower Bengal, who live wholly or partially by the soil, or who derive some benefit from it in some way, directly or indirectly, and who may be classed as ryots generally, is very large. No trade or profession, nor any number of trades, supports the same amount of persons. This is so obvious a truism to many that we feel an apology due for the remark. But many more, we believe, are not fully aware how great a portion of persons of all castes and occupations, of all ranks and grades, possess small portions of land, which they cultivate themselves or by others. The earth is pure to all, even to those who are above digging or delving. Besides those who cultivate their own plots and do nothing else, and those who simply till the ground for others, getting half the produce for their pains, small tenures or under-tenures are held by weavers and oilmen, by potters, and chamars, by palanquin bearers, and carters, by Brahmins, Mohammedans, and pariahs, and by the numerous class of men who have obtained service in various ways under planters, zemindars, or government, and by the class of men not quite so numerous, who are hungry for employment, and will dance attendance for weeks and months on any person possessed of any authority, and capable of advancing their fortunes. Indeed, the mere aspiring to, or possession of, a place, is in itself indicative of other resources. A man who leaves one district, in the hope of employment in another, or who hangs pertinaciously about the office, or estate, or factory, in which his father, uncle, or brother is employed already, enduring vexation and fed by vain hopes and vague promises, must have something on which to fall back. Take almost any one employed in the police, the revenue, the salt, or the excise, or the local agents, naibs, gomashtahs, rent-collectors, peons, &c. of land-owners, and it will be found that almost every individual has his under-tenure in one or two villages, or his thirty beegahs, or his small but independent talook. Two or three of a large family sharing the patrimonial estate, go forth from the homestead in quest of

service, while a couple remain at home to collect the rents, to supervise the cultivation, or to cultivate the land themselves. This was the case with Oude, which fed our army, as it is with Bengal, which supplies not only that province, but a very large part of the Upper-provinces, with writers and accountants. Another peculiarity about employments is the smallness of the salary attached. Government is blamed for the ridiculously inadequate pay, and the low scale of emolument, which it grants to its employés; but in nine cases out of ten the employé has other means of his own, and the scale of remuneration fixed by government is much higher than the average scale, by which the agents of zemindars are paid. A naib in his way is as important as a police darogah, yet the pay of the former is much less in amount. A gomastah in a flourishing bazar gets six rupees a month; a rent-collector, who has to collect between three and four thousand rupees in the year, the same; and a similar functionary, who collects about Rs. 800 or Rs. 1,000 a year, is constantly paid at Rs. 1-8 a month, or less than half the sum which a grass-cutter receives. Of course, these individuals, like men in the service of government, possess other resources; and they have the indefinite perquisites and pickings of office. Nor again are we disposed to maintain that the service of government should not be rendered more honorable and attractive than that of any other potentate, or to say that it already commands the greatest amount of talent and respectability. All we say is, that hitherto the salaries paid by government have been as high as the average of similar unofficial salaries: that in the greater number of instances, such are not the only means of support which the public officer possesses: and that the want of honesty observable has not invariably proceeded from their scantiness of remuneration. The service of government has, in some respects, resembled hitherto service in Her Majesty's army; an honourable service, affording occupation, conferring or augmenting respectability, and bringing in a certain scale of salary, and an uncertain amount of waifs and strays, with a prospect of a pension in old age, under the only eastern dynasty that ever thought a worn-out servant fit for anything else but to die on a dunghill. The service of Government has, in fact, hitherto been one which an absolutely poor man, living from hand to mouth, has had no chance of entering. And thus it is that we do find advertisements for treasurers, who shall deposit a lakh of rupees as security, and who shall be paid only 150 rupees a month, to be constantly answered, and to be even sought for by competition. We do not say that the salary might not be doubled with advantage. But we do say that

the office being decent and gentlemanly, and conferring a power of providing for friends and dependents in many ways, it is an object of ambition; and that the treasurer has no right to complain that he was tempted to embezzle a few thousands, owing to his low scale of salary, when it is notorious that he is rich in houses, lands, and in Company's securities, and that he could buy ten times over, the present, or the possible future property of any two collectors, who ever held with him the joint keys of office.

We return from this digression to our main subject, the condition of the ryot. A considerable portion of this class, as we have stated, live solely by the land, and have no other resources. Let us take the common case of two or three joint sharers, who have, between them, thirty or forty beegahs of land, paying about fifty rupees of rent. We do not say, with some writers, that such men are "poverty-stricken creatures, constantly toiling from morn till night," because there is a certain portion of the year, when there are no crops on the ground, and consequently nothing to toil for; and because ryots are averse to working all day; but we do say that in the worst of seasons, a cultivator is reduced to borrow, at exorbitant interest, money to buy food to put into his mouth, and that in the best seasons, he can do little more than pay his rent and his debts, and live himself, without any hope of laying anything by: and that it is next to impossible that any combination of circumstances can ever raise him one single step in the social scale. There is a hopelessness in the dull uniform routine of successive generations of such men. The rice crops, early and late, from May to December, with the addition of the cold weather crop from October to February and March, absorb all their thoughts. There may be days when a man needs not work, and brief periods of rejoicing, when a crop has been safely gathered in or he may have an acre of profitable garden-land to look after but the prospect of bettering himself is absolutely denied him. A good season in two or three contiguous districts gluts the markets, and consequently lowers the price of what he sells; so that, though he may keep enough rice of his own growing to live on during the year, he will make less in hard cash, wherewith to pay his landlord and besides, the profits of a good season are constantly devoured by the debt which has been incurred during two or three preceding bad ones. We believe that this will be the case in many places in this very year, when the size of the crops, and the general prospects of the harvest are of as good augury as they have been for a long time. Then, in addition to this mere life of digging and weeding, which is never varied, owing to prejudices of caste or to mere hereditary inexperience, by any

SEPT., 1857.

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