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lity, which can be removed, if at all, only by the general progress of knowledge and that part again arises as certainly from a deficiency in the laws, or in their administration, or from a weak executive and other defects, which it is in the power of the Government to remedy; and that finally his position as a tenantholder of land is by no means so secure as it ought to be, as it was the intention of Lord Cornwallis that it should be, or as it can even now be made. After this brief sketch of a very large subject, we proceed to the remedy ;-for a few pages descriptive of the social state of the rice-growers, or a few speculations on their moral condition, though all well in their way, should be followed by something of utilitarian theory, or direct and practical reform.

The remark of Mr. Campbell, that different rights in one and the same subject can exist together, and be retained by different persons, without clashing, has always appeared to us very sound, as well as explanatory of the puzzling question, to whom does the land belong in India? To the Government, the Zemindar, or the Ryot? It seems to us no invasion of the rights. of the two former parties, to say that the ryot is entitled, by the common law and custom of the country, as well as by the intent of the legislature, whether carried out or not, to retain his holding of twenty or thirty beegahs, without fear of dispossession, so long as he continues to pay the rent, which consent, or custom, or good law has fixed upon it. There can be no question that while he performs his part of the contract, he may grow what crops he pleases, cut his bamboos, cultivate his date trees, and add another and another house to the cluster which forms his family nest. If he wishes to quit, he is bound to give notice to the landholder: and if he alienates any part of his property, his successor must be duly entered on the records of the zemindary. The whole tenor of our revenue laws in Bengal proper has been to increase the value of land, provided that the proprietary right of government, that is the right to revenue, be duly secured; and there is a similar safeguard vouchsafed to the right of the Zemindar, which is the right to rent on a certain area. There is to be no check to the currency of estates in the markets, provided that in alienation, or transfer, or division of inheritance, the lien of the government on the land shall not be imperilled; and there is no legal right of interference in the agricultural business of the ryot on the part of the Zemindar, provided that this latter person has due security for his rent. Thus the government look to the land for revenue, the zemindar for rent, and the ryot, we regret to say, for little more than sustenance. But let the land-holders clamour as they may about vested rights and heavy burdens, and corresponding

privileges, it is indisputable that to them there is something remarkably attractive in that virtual possession of the land which the ryot holds, and which our quaint English maxim tells us, is nine points of the law. Those who have watched the proceedings of rich and influential Zemindars, are aware that to obtain possession of the actual ryot's tenure The is one of the dearest objects they have at heart. motive may be pardonable or even praiseworthy. The Zemindar may want some lands for a pleasure garden, or a dwelling house, or a factory, to be held by him for the simple security that, in all changes of proprietorship, his possession may be maintained by mere payment of rent. Without such possession, no man could lay down his walls and terraces, or erect his granaries, or build his vats. Again, the motive for taking land may be the far different one of establishing a rival bazar, or getting a pied à terre in a village, so as to annoy an adversary, and gradually, by influence and intimidation, acquire the whole of the hamlet. But in most cases, the tenure is usually taken in the name of some dependent, under the universal but shameful system of secret trusts, which the missionaries so rightly condemn. No one would wish to restrict Zemindars, any more than any other individuals, from acquiring that title to land, which is essential to mercantile enterprise, to the improvement of their estates, or to their mere luxury or convenience. We may go a step further, and say, that no hindrance ought to be placed in the way of men openly acquiring any rights in land, which are to be parted with, even though they should turn their acquisitions to purposes of enmity and avarice. Our argument at present is not with the defective state of the law, under which any man who buys the ryot's tenure in a few acres of land, may set up a new bazar, drive the old established one out of the field, hail unwilling purchasers to his own shops, and finally ruin his rival. Nor is it with the state of society in which a powerful individual, acquiring in the name of some ready unscrupulous dependent, one single holding in a village, manages in the course of a few years, like a Triton among the minnows, to swallow up the surrounding tenures and become lord of all. Our argument is simply this. If the tenure of the Zemindar, or of the middle man, were quite sufficient, why should rich men descend and purchase the tenure of the ryot? A Zemindar, whatever be his rent-roll, his name, or his influence, when he makes such purchases, becomes a ryot in fact and in law. His own name or that of his favourite servant is entered in the records of the zemindary. He is liable to have his holding measured for definition of boundaries, or assessed, by a regular law-suit, at the pergunnah rates. It must be admitted that a man would not

place himself in this position, if he had not some object to gain thereby, which he could not gain otherwise. A Zemindar would not so eagerly seek the liabilities of a ryot, were he not convinced that a ryot's position and title conferred, for some purposes, what even a zemindary could never give. It may be easily conceived that the great man Munshi Dunga Fasad, with his influence, his skill in the management of estates, his extensive and accurate knowledge of the Regulations, his wonderful knack of ever keeping on the windy side of the law, his ample resources, and his fertility in devising shifts and expedients, is in a very different position as holding a ryot's tenure to that of Kinu Mundul, the humble agriculturist, who knows nothing of law except from the summary suit against him, which was decided ex parte, and from the memorable bond case brought by the money lender, which he lost in the Moonsiff's court. The former knows the exact value of the rights which he has purchased, can defend, improve, fortify and assert them in court and out of it. The latter, though fully sensible of their inestimable value to him and his family, may, from mere weakness or want of skill, be unequal to the retention of his lawful position. Why then should not the legislature step in, and assure to the small cultivator by all the authority of law, that position, which all men value, but which only those who command wealth, exercise ingenuity, and understand the Regulations, are now able to keep?

And this question brings us to a very excellent little work by the late Mr. Francis Horsley Robinson of the Bengal civil service, in which we have found a practical solution to the question above put. Mr. Robinson, however men might be found to differ from his views, is admitted to have had a complete knowledge of the working of the revenue in the Agra presidency, as well as a comprehensive view of Indian revenue generally. No one can doubt his earnestness, his independence, and his intimate knowledge of the feelings, habits, and conditions of the peasantry. And applying his knowledge of the principles which are admitted to have worked admirably in the Doab of Hindustan, with some necessary modifications, to the system of Bengal proper, Mr. Robinson, in the work published very shortly before his death, has left behind him some excellent suggestions on this important subject, as follows :-

"It seems that the amount of assessment cannot, in justice, be touched. The Government, with a view to reclaim the country, by giving full scope to the enterprise of proprietors, limited their assessment in perpetuity, and they are at this moment reaping the full benefit they expected from the sacrifice, in the complete cultivation of the country, the increase of its wealth, and a constant

But

gradual rise in the customs, and other branches of revenue. the Government never made it any part of their bargain that the ryots should be rack-rented and ground to the dust. They had not the right, any more than the intention, to make such a bargain, as Lord Hastings, in discussing this question, very justly observed. No Government can part with the obligation to do right and justice to any part of its subjects.

"Far from doing so, Lord Cornwallis's settlement provided that the ryots should not pay higher rates of rent than the purgunnah rates, which any man, thoroughly versed in Indian revenue, knows to be a technical term, not for a specific table of rates, which has been idly sought for, but the customary, though variable rates of rent on particular soils and products existing in the district or tract where any village is situated, sometimes even in a particular village or estate, and not in others.

"These amounts of rent, when disputed, and the terms of occupancy, when those were disputed, (for occupancy came also within the scope of the technical term, purgunnah rates,) it was the office and duty of the authorized accounts of Government to settle. Lord Cornwallis also provided, that beyond the rent, the ryots should pay nothing. These laws are still in the Statute book, though, to the great detriment of the country, they have not, from the want of sufficient machinery, and sufficient knowledge in the early administrators of the system, been carried out. It will be remembered, that a minute revenue survey is now going on in Bengal, and the thought forces itself on one, that this affords the necessary basis for settling, as has been done effectually in the North-west Provinces, the amount of fair rent, and the terms of occupancy. If it be urged that the undertaking for Bengal is too gigantic, allowing, for argument's sake, this to be so, although the same thing was vainly said, and failure as vainly prophesied of a similar undertaking in the North-west Provinces, yet something may be done to stop a system which involves so much social evil as exists in Bengal. Without aiming at the reconstruction of the village communities, or the rehabitation of sub-proprietors in the soil, however iniquitously or mercilessly they have been swept away, might not a law be enacted, restoring the former limitation of rents to purgunnah rates, defining the term as above, and stating the determination of Government to enforce the spirit of the law; declaring that, while no interference would take place between parties agreeing among themselves, further than to record in the collector's office a rent-roll shewing the occupant, the fields by the numbers in the maps, and the terms of the lease; yet that every resident, or Chupper-bund ryot should have the right to apply to the nearest deputy collector to have his fair rent assessed for a period of say ten or twenty years; and that the deputy collector should replace, with costs or damages, any resident ryot who should appear to have been ejected without having incurred a balance on the rent recorded by the officers of Government, and award heavy damages against any one exacting more than the recorded rent from a cultivator."

We trust that there are few genuine reformers who will not endorse most of the above. We are quite prepared for a long howl on the subject, from those whose power of oppression and exaction, or of indefinite aggrandisement, would be materially curtailed by any such law. There may come a cry of want of faith on one side, and of great expense and trouble on the other. But the charge of violated faith, which cannot be supported, will come with a bad grace from those who form but a fraction of the population, and who have not kept faith with the terms of the contract by which so much was conceded to them, on the understanding that they should concede something to others in their turn. And the expense and trouble to government and its officers, will be little or nothing, as the work of collectors themselves has been gradually decreasing, and as officers, with the powers of a deputy collector, are already scattered over a district by twos and by threes.

Moreover, the principles of the solid reform which Mr. Robinson sketched, and which we put forward as the main reform of which Bengal stands in need, have in several other ways been recognised by the government. This principle is simply that the cultivating proprietor, or the hereditary occupant and resident for one, two, or three generations, should have the right to have his land assessed for a period of years on a summary enquiry. The propriety and legality of this maxim have been avowed and acted on by government in the law for the security of the opium monopoly. The benefits of the cultivation of the poppy are reserved by law for the ryot of Behar or Ghazipore, who receives the advances, cultivates the plant, and takes the raw juice to the government factory. The Zemindar is, by law, specially prohibited from enhancing the rent of such portions of his tenant's land as are devoted to this species of produce. Hence the display of spurious liberality which we have seen occasionally in petitions to government or Parliament on the subject of the monopoly, as one pressing heavily on the ryot. Not a farthing of the profit ever comes to the pocket of the Zemindar, who has the mortification of seeing his ryots clamorous for advances on a larger extent of soil, and partners to an account with government, annually adjusted with a balance in favour of the cultivator, from which no third party can derive the smallest advantage. Why should government hesitate one moment to carry out a system for the benefit of a large and oppressed class, which it has already carried out for the preservation of its own particular interests? If we be told that any such attempt would be an infringement of the perpetual settlement, or a defiance of the laws of political economy, we should reply on the first head that the measure, so far from

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