Density of the popu lation, France and British India, therefore, supports a population much more than twice as dense as that of the Native States. If we exclude the outlying and lately-acquired Provinces of British Burma and Assam, the proportion is nearly three-fold, or 260 persons to the square mile. How thick this population is, may be realized from the fact that France had in 1876 only compared 180 people to the square mile; while even in crowded England, with wherever the density approaches 200 to the square mile it England. ceases to be a rural population, and has to live, to a greater or less extent, by manufactures, mining, or city industries.1 Throughout large areas of Bengal, two persons have to live on the proceeds of each cultivated acre, or 1280 persons to each cultivated square mile. The Famine Commissioners reported. in 1880, that over 6 millions of the peasant holdings of Bengal, or two-thirds of the whole, averaged from 2 to 3 acres a-piece. Allowing only four persons to the holding, for men, women, and children, this represents a population of 24 millions. struggling to live off 15 million acres, or a little over half an acre a-piece. Absence of large towns. Unlike England, India has few large towns, and no great manufacturing centres. Thus, in England and Wales 42 per cent., or nearly one-half of the population in 1871, lived in towns with upwards of 20,000 inhabitants, while in British India only 4 per cent., or not one-twentieth of the people, Population live in such towns. India, therefore, is almost entirely a rural entirely rural. Over crowded Districts. country; and many of the so-called towns are mere groups of villages, in the midst of which the cattle are driven a-field, and ploughing and reaping go on. Calcutta itself has grown out of a cluster of hamlets on the bank of the Húgli; and the term 'municipality,' which in Europe is only applied to towns, often means in India a 'rural union,' or collection of homesteads for the purposes of local government. men. We see, therefore, in India, a dense population of husbandWherever their numbers exceed 1 to the acre, or 640 to the square mile,-excepting in suburban districts or in irrigated tracts, the struggle for existence becomes hard. At half an acre a-piece that struggle is terribly hard. In such Districts, a good harvest yields just sufficient food for the people; and thousands of lives depend each autumn on a few inches more or less of rainfall. The Government may, by great efforts, feed the starving in time of actual famine; but it cannot stop the yearly work of disease and death among a steadily underfed people. In these overcrowded tracts the 1 Report on the Census of England and Wales for 1871. MOVEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE. 47 population reaches the stationary stage. For example, in Allahábád District during twenty years, the inhabitants increased by only 6 persons in 10,000 each year. During the nine years from 1872 to 1881, the annual increase was 8 persons, in 10,000. In still more densely-peopled localities upon the line of railway, facilities for migration have drained off the excessive population, and their total number in 1872 was less than it had been twenty years before. On the other hand, in thinly-peopled Provinces the inhabitants quickly multiply. UnderThus, when we obtained the District of Amherst in 1824 from peopled the king of Burma, it had been depopulated by savage native wars. The British established their firm rule; people began to flock in; and by 1829 there were 70,000 inhabitants. In fifty years the population had increased by more than fourfold, or to 301,086 in 1881. Provinces. mobile ' peasant. In some parts of India, therefore, there are more husband- The ‘immen than the land can feed; in other parts, vast tracts of fertile Indian soil still await the cultivator. In England the people would move freely from the over-populated districts to the thinlyinhabited ones; but in India the peasant clings to his hereditary homestead long after his family has outgrown his fields. If the Indian races will only learn to migrate to tracts where spare land still abounds, they will do more than the utmost efforts of Government can accomplish to prevent famines. The facts disclosed by the Census in 1872 and 1881 prove, Moveindeed, that the Indian peasant has lost something of his ments of the people. old immobility. The general tendency of the population in Bengal is south and east to the newly-formed delta, and north-east to the thinly-peopled valleys of Assam. In 1881, it was ascertained that out of a specified population of 247 millions, nearly 6 millions were living in Provinces in which they had not been born. But the clinging of the people to their old villages in spite of hardship and famine still forms a most difficult problem in India. Throughout many of the hill and border tracts, land is so plentiful that it yields no rent. Any one may settle on a patch which he clears of jungle, exhausts the soil by a rapid succession The of crops, and then leaves it to relapse into forest. In such tracts nomadic system no rent is charged; but each family of wandering husbandmen of huspays a poll-tax to the chief, or to the Government under whose bandry. protection it dwells. As the inhabitants increase, this nomadic system of cultivation gives place to regular tillage. Throughout British Burma we see both methods at work side by side; while on the thickly-peopled plains of India the wandering Labour and land century; husbandmen have long since disappeared, and each household remains rooted to the same plot of ground during generations. In some parts of India, this change in the relation of the in the last people to the land has taken place before our own eyes. Thus, in Bengal there was in the last century more cultivable land than there were husbandmen to till it. A hundred years of British rule has reversed the ratio; and there are now, in some Districts, more people than there is land for them to till. This change has produced a silent revolution in the rural economy of the Province. When the English obtained Bengal in the last century, they found in many Districts two distinct rates of rent current for the same classes of soil. The higher rate was paid by the thání ráyats, literally 'stationary' tenants, who had their houses in the hamlet, and formed the permanent body of cultivators. These tenants would bear a great deal of extortion rather than forsake the lands on which they had expended labour and capital in digging tanks, cutting irrigation channels, and building homesteads. They were oppressed accordingly; and while they had a right of occupation in their holdings, so long as they paid the rent, the very highest rates were squeezed out of them. The temporary or wandering cultivators, paikhást rayats, were those who had not their homes in the village, and who could therefore leave it whenever they pleased. They had no right of occupancy in their fields; but on the other hand, the landlord could not obtain so high a rent from them, as there was plenty of spare land in adjoining villages to which they could retire in case of oppression. The landlords were at that time competing for tenants; and one of the commonest complaints which they brought before the Company's officials was a charge against a neighbouring proprietor of 'enticing away their cultivators' by low rates of rent. and at the present day. This state of things is now reversed in most parts of Bengal. The landlords have no longer to compete for tenants. It is the husbandmen who have to compete with one another for land. There are still two rates of rent. But the lower rates are now paid by the 'stationary' tenants, who possess occupancy rights; while the higher or rack-rents are paid by the other class, who do not possess occupancy rights. In ancient India, the eponymous hero, or original village founder, was the man who cut down the jungle. In modern India, special legislation and a Forest Department are required to preserve the trees which remain. Not only has the country been stripped of its woodlands, but in many ITS PRESSURE ON THE LAND. 49 Districts the pastures have been brought under the plough, to the detriment of the cattle. The people can no longer afford to leave sufficient land fallow, or under grass, for their oxen and cows. It will be readily understood that in a country where, almost Serfdom down to the present day, there was more land than there in India. were people to till it, a high value was set upon the cultivating class. In tracts where the nomadic system of husbandry survives, no family is permitted by the native chief to quit his territory. For each household there pays a poll-tax. In many parts of India, we found the lower classes attached to the soil in a manner which could scarcely be distinguished from prædial slavery. In spite of our legislative enactments, this system lingered on during nearly a century of British rule. Our early officers in South-Eastern Bengal, especially in the great island of Sandwip, almost raised a rebellion by their attempts to liberate the slaves. Indeed, in certain tracts where we found the population very depressed, as in Behar, the courts have in our own day occasionally brought to light the survival of serfdom. A feeling still survives in the minds of some British officers against migrations of the people from their own Districts to adjoining ones, or to Native States. If we except the newly-annexed Provinces of Burma Unequal and Assam, the population of British India is nearly three pressure of the populatimes more dense than the population of Feudatory India. tion on the This great disproportion cannot be altogether explained by land. differences in the natural capabilities of the soil. It would be for the advantage of the people that they should spread themselves over the whole country, and so equalize the pressure throughout. The Feudatory States lie interspersed among British territory, and no costly migration by sea is involved. That the people do not thus spread themselves out, but crowd together within our Provinces, is partly due to their belief that, on the whole, they are less liable to oppression under British rule than under native chiefs. But any outward movement of the population, even from the most denselypeopled English Districts, would probably be regarded with pain by the local officers. Indeed, the occasional exodus of a few cultivators from the overcrowded Province of Behar into the thinly-peopled frontier State of Nepál, has formed a subject of sensitive self-reproach. In proportion as we can enforce good government under the native chiefs of India, we should hope to see a gradual movement of the people into the Feudatory States. There is plenty of land in India for the whole VOL. VI. D Census of 1881. population. What is required is not the diminution of the people, but their more equal distribution. The Census, taken in February 1881, shows an increase of 15 millions for all India, or 6'4 per cent., during the nine years since 1872. But this general statement gives but an imperfect insight into the local increment of the people. For while in the southern Provinces, which suffered most from the famine of 1877-78, the numbers have stood still, or even receded, Increase of an enormous increase has taken place in the less thicklythe people. peopled tracts. Thus, the British Presidency of Madras shows a diminution of 14 per cent.; while the Native State of Mysore, which felt the full effects of the long-continued dearth of 1876-79, had 17 per cent. fewer inhabitants in 1881 than in 1872. The Bengal population has increased by 11 per cent. in the nine years, notwithstanding the milder scarcity of 1874. But the great increase is in the outlying, under-peopled Districts of India, where the pressure of the inhabitants on the soil has not yet begun to be felt, and where thousands of acres still await the cultivator. In Assam the increase (1872-81) has been 19 per cent.-largely due to immigration; in the Central Provinces, with their Feudatory States and tracts of unreclaimed jungle, 25 per cent. ; in Berar (adjoining them), 20 per cent. ; while in Burma-which, most of all the British Provinces, stands in need of inhabitants—the nine years have added 36 per cent. to the population, equivalent to doubling the people in about twenty-five years. The following table compares the results of the Census of 1872 with those of the Census of 1881. It should be borne in mind, however, that the Census of 1872 was not a synchronous one; and that in some of the Native States the returns of 1872 were estimates rather than actual enumerations.1 1 The figures for 1872 in the above table are taken from the finally revised statements, after allowing for transfers of territory and the restoration of Mysore to Native rule. How far the increase in the French and |