Before discussing the present amount of and mode of levying the land-tax of India, I will place before the reader a general statement of the revenues of the three Presidencies, from which he will at once perceive that the tax above alluded to forms by far the largest item of the whole income of the government. The following table presents a comprehensive view of the entire taxation of British India as it exists at the present time, the amount being stated in pounds sterling for convenience sake, taken at 28. the rupee.

It is thus seen how large an item is formed by three of the leading taxes of India, viz. on land, opium, and salt, whence, indeed, are derived about eighty-five per cent of the entire revenues.3 Deducting the sum received from native states in payment of military protection afforded them, we have a round sum of twenty-two millions sterling as forming the revenues of India at the present moment. By reference to the tables in the Appendix, it will be seen in what proportion this is derived from the several divisions of the country, and in what marked contrast the charge of each presidency stands as against their income.

So much has been said and written about the taxation of British

1 Of this sum, 566,6947. are receipts from native states towards the support of British troops for their protection.

2 Cost of collection charged against general revenues, and said to be equal to the gross amount collected; actual nett revenue from these would therefore be nil.

BRITISH AND INDIAN TAXATION.

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India, that it will be well, before proceeding any further, to examine the bearing which the above amount must have upon the actual resources of the people. The taxation of a country may be vicious in two very different shapes,-either by its excessive amount, or, being moderate, by the mode in which it is levied.

The bulk of the people of India, unfortunately, suffer from both these evils. Taking the gross revenue of the country, and deducting from that sum the amount of the opium-tax as really paid by foreigners, and the sums received from native princes for military protection, we have a total amount of 22,000,000l. levied upon the inhabitants of the three Presidencies. The population of British India at the present time is, in round numbers, one hundred millions. These figures will therefore give an average of nearly 48. 5d. a-head; not a large sum in itself, but when compared with the earnings of the great mass of people, a heavy and oppressive load.

To

In Great Britain the taxation gives, as nearly as possible, 33s. per head of the population, about seven times that of our Indian fellowsubjects. But the paying powers of the two nations widely differ. Fifteen shillings a week is a fair average, in the present day, for the earnings of the English labouring classes; accordingly, they appear to be taxed to the extent of thirteen days' labour in the year. estimate the actual earnings of the great mass of Hindoos, wages in the cities and towns must not be taken as a criterion; for whilst in England the townspeople are the greater tax-payers, in India 70 per cent of the taxation falls upon the mass of the people not dwelling in towns. Some reliable official documents on this subject, fortunately, leave no doubt upon the matter. These statistical returns shew, that in a rural district (that of Cawnpore) fairly representing the average of the agricultural part of the country, the greater portion of the cultivators realise but 51. per annum; from this, one-fourth, at the lowest calculation, must be taken for government land-tax, and onefourth as rent to the proprietor, leaving 27. 10s. to defray cost of seed, tools, &c., and support the ryot and his family during the year. With the calculation of four persons to a family, and without any deduction for seed, tools, &c., we have something over twelve shillings per annum to support each individual! These are not extreme cases, but actually represent, I regret to say, the present condition of a very large portion of the agricultural population of British India. Striking an average between these figures and the wages of natives in the See Blue Book, 1852, p. 339.

towns, a greater sum than 17. 10s. a year, or one penny a day, cannot be taken as the general average earnings in India. It appears, therefore, that whilst the Englishman contributes sixteen days' labour in each year to the maintenance of institutions which provide him with the utmost security to life and property, the Indian ryot contributes an equivalent to the labour of fifty-three days for the support of institutions which, so far as they tend to afford him any security from oppression, or in any way to ameliorate his social condition, might as well be swept from the face of the earth, deep into the Indian Ocean.

If that unhappy land suffers from the amount of her taxation, the mode in which that revenue is raised presses with still greater severity upon her industry. The taxes which will now be examined are those on land and salt. The opium-tax is felt but little by the natives of India, and that only within certain districts, where the evil arises more from the temptations to smuggle, and the consequent vexatious nature of the government supervision.

In the early part of this chapter I have endeavoured to shew the nature of the tenure under which land was held in India and was assessed to the sovereign, as also the system which prevailed under the Mahomedan rulers of India. The former is still working to perfection, not only in the many native states of Hindostan, but in our own north-west provinces and the Punjab, where the Company did not feel it safe to overturn the existing order of things, as they had done in earlier acquired territories. In those districts, we are assured by a writer well qualified to give an opinion, that the old native system works admirably. The people are thriving, the tax is easily collected, and there are no complaints.

It may be said that experience has taught the Indian executive wisdom, and they are giving the newly-acquired territories the benefit of it. An impartial mind might be inclined to think that it would be as well if some of the older provinces reaped a share of the advantage, especially as it has been purchased at their expense.

It will neither interest the reader nor serve any good purpose to dwell upon the many patchwork experiments, the numberless fiscal tinkerings, which the unhappy land was made to undergo from the time of the first British occupancy of India until the famous "permanent settlement" of Lord Cornwallis in 1793, a year fatal to the peace and welfare of millions of industrious cultivators.

His lordship was one of those amiable men who contribute largely 7 Campbell's Modern India, chap. viii.

THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT.

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of a

to the stock of "good intentions" which are said to pave the way certain region; and truly his "intentions" have paved the way to beggary and death for myriads of Hindoo ryots.8 In his endeavour to fix the land-revenues of Bengal upon a firm and profitable footing, Lord Cornwallis perpetrated one of the greatest wrongs, committed one of the most enormous blunders, that is to be found on record. He propounded a scheme by which the proprietary right in the whole soil of Bengal was to be vested in the zemindars or hereditary superintendents of land, not for one year, or ten years, but for ever. They had been the farmers of the land-tax for years past; they stood in that capacity between government and the village proprietors and cultivators; but to suppose that therefore they possessed any claim to the land yielding that tax, was a monstrosity reserved for the conception of this very amiable nobleman. The scheme, hollow and unrighteous as it was, seemed to promise such security to the revenue by creating this large class of landed aristocracy by a mere stroke of the pen, that the authorities at home were deceived into compliance, and the fiat went forth by which twenty millions of small landholders were dispossessed of their rights, and handed over, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of a set of exacting rack-renters.

The injustice of this gigantic robbery, great though it seems, was not by any means the whole of the cruelty. Wrong upon wrong was committed; fraud upon fraud. It was ordered that the amount of the assessment should be made in conformity with the average yield of former years; but it was in reality laid at such a rate as would suffice to meet the pressing wants of the government, and that rate was above fifty to sixty per cent of the produce of the soil! More than this; although the regulations of 1793 expressly determined the rate to be paid by the newly-created Cornwallis-aristocracy as above stated, not one word was said, as to the amount they might levy on the ryots. What that amount has been, there is unfortunately but too little doubt.* The only limit to the exaction seems to have been the utter inability of the wretched people to pay any more. Lord Brougham, in speaking of this celebrated settlement, said that it wrung from the ryot eighteen shillings out of every twenty. His assertion was laughed at as a figure of speech; but unfortunately he spoke literally within the mark. Mr. Colebrook, well acquainted with the resources of the country, states?

8 "The 'permanent settlement' has produced more distress and beggary, and a greater change in the landed property of Bengal, than has happened in the same space of time in any age or country by the mere effect of internal regulations."-Fifth Report of Finance Committee of Bengal. Appendix C.

that a cultivator paying half his produce in tax is worse off than a hired labourer in the same field at three pence a day. The condition, therefore, of those from whom eighty and ninety per cent are wrung may be readily imagined.

The zemindars did not fail to use the new power given to them to the utmost stretch. Summary process was allowed them against the ryots, and this begat such misery, strife, and litigation, that the lawcourts were literally overwhelmed with land-cases. In a single season there was in one district, that of Burdwan, thirty thousand suits of zemindars against ryots 10 It is true the government regulations stipulate that the former shall not exact from the latter more than the local rate; but the difficulty is to determine what is the local rate, though that point is always settled against the poorer suitor, to his utter ruin.

Under this zemindari system the oppression of the ryots is aggravated by the custom of sub-letting the land-tax to various grades of middlemen, who, interposing between the zemindar of the district and the cultivator, adding their own shares of profit to that of the great man, and having no sort of interest in the matter beyond extorting as much as possible in a given time, press upon the means of the wretched tiller of the soil, until his case is so hopeless, that, worn out by years of toil and oppression, he flies from the scenes of his misery, and if he has not heart enough left to turn docoit (gang-robber), in all probability dies of starvation in the jungle.11

Ever in poverty, the ryot is compelled to seek aid from the mahajun or money-lender. This man will usually be one of the sub-renters of the land-tax; and availing himself of that position, demands whatever rate of interest he pleases, and which often amounts to one per cent per week-fifty-two per cent per annum. More than this, the accounts of these advances are kept only by the lender, who, aware of the utter ignorance of the ryots, falsifies his books without the least fear of detection. Thus at the end of the year, however favourable the season may have been, whatever the amount of crop, the mahajun, uniting his

9 Remarks on the Husbandry of Bengal.

10 Calcutta Review, vol. vi. p. 318.

"That I am not dealing in fiction may be ascertained by reference to the evidence on this subject given before the Parliamentary Committee in 1830 by Mr. H. C. Christian, of the Board of Revenue of Lower Bengal; Mr. F. Fortescue, Commissioner for Civil Affairs at Delhi, and others equally beyond suspicion of overstating the case against the government system. The following evidence given on that occasion by Mr. Mill, the Company's historian, is worth noting. "They (the zemindars) take from them (the ryots) all they can get in short, they exact whatever they please. They (the ryots) have no defence whatever but that of removal; they must decline to pay what is exacted and quit the land."