ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

combine the objects of increasing at future periods the moderate and just demands of the Government, while reconciling the ryot, for his own sake, to devote his industry and the utmost of his small means to the improvement of his long holding.

8. It is, in my opinion, another good reason for not settling our land tax permanently, that there can be no doubt in any unprejudiced mind that the lands are not yet held, generally speaking, as they might without difficulty be declared to be held, on a title still more highly esteemed and cherished. However well satisfied the ryot may be with the security of his right of his occupancy under the Revenue Survey Settlement, the term meeras conveys to his mind a sense of ownership, which no assurance that so long as he pays the Government revenue he will not be disturbed in the possession of his fields can give him. This was recently illustrated to me in a forcible manner by an intelligent Patell, who, in answer to a question put to him, with the view of eliciting the estimation in which he relatively held his "meeras" and "ghatkoolee land,” replied : "The meeras is mine; the ghatkoolee is yours." And, again, as was emphatically said in my hearing, on another occasion, by a Native District Deputy Collector, and at the same time by an experienced mamlutdar, "they hold affectionately to 'meeras' (meeras ko bohut dil lugta)."

9. With reference also to the possibility of having hereafter permanently to impose new taxes, I object to the proposal for abandoning the right of Government to the improved value which increased prices should give to the right of the State to a share of the produce of

the fertile soil worked at small cost in money and labour-a right which has been reserved to it from ancient times, and which has, until recently, enabled it practically to exempt the people of this country from the burdens of taxation which press so heavily on the communities of Europe.

10. I shall lament to see a departure from this wise system, nor do I see the necessity of the proposed measure, for the agricultural classes are, on all hands, admitted to be improving, and to be becoming gradually possessed of some capital; and those works of irrigation, which must mainly be the mainstay to protect them in seasons of drought, can only be undertaken on an organised system, which no present Permanent Settlement would ensure being ever executed, but which it is the duty of the Government to undertake whenever it has available resources.

11. No legislative enactments have been found necessary in this Presidency to give effect to the thirty years' settlements now in operation, and none appears to be necessary.

APPENDIX M

SIR LOUIS MALLET'S MINUTE ON INDIAN LAND
REVENUE

There are some points in these papers which I cannot leave without comment.

It will, no doubt, be desirable, before deciding on the

M

course to be taken with regard to the present reference, to await the opinion of the Government of India, but incidental questions are raised in the correspondence, which are full of significance.

I refer to the apparent absence of any kind of common understanding or agreement between the local authorities (and I wish I could believe that it was confined to the local authorities) as to the relation of the Government to the occupiers of the soil.

Mr Robinson, in his Minute of 9th September 1873, refers to the controversies at the beginning of the century as to the nature and intention of the "ryotwari settlements, and evidently inclines to the opinion that they were meant to be limited and permanent.1

He speaks of the reaction which has since set in, and of the disposition in Madras to increase steadily the "ratio of demand upon the land."

He very wisely deprecates the disturbance in the market value of the whole landed property of a vast peasant proprietary by the operations of the Settlement Department, which, with more propriety, might be called the Unsettlement Department.

He concludes by expressing a fear that the course now being taken may be "seriously reducing the actual value of all landed property in the country, and shaking its credit in an investment."

Mr Sim accepts, if he does not approve, the principle deliberately asserted by the Home Government, viz., the re-assessment of the land every thirty years, on the basis of a moiety of its net produce, commuted into

' Even the exact meaning of these terms is full of doubt.

money, at an average of the prices ruling during a certain number of antecedent years; but he has apparently altogether forgotten the grounds upon which this principle was formulated, in an elaborate despatch from the Court of Directors, of the 17th December 1856, viz., that the "right of the Government is not a rent which consists of all the surplus produce, after paying the cost of cultivation, and the profits of agricultural stocks, but a land revenue only, which ought, if possible, to be so lightly assessed as to leave a surplus or rent to the occupier, whether he, in fact, let the land to others or retain it in his own hands," for, he goes on to speak of the Government as virtually the "great landlord," and the advantages of a "sound settlement of the demands upon the land, of which they are, in fact proprietors."

The Governor points out in a pithy sentence, "that, under explicit instructions from home, a costly machinery is maintained on the basis of half net profits" (I hope he means produce), “but, that practically, the rate of assessment is decided on much simpler considerations, the main one being that the cultivator should pay no more than he paid before," with, if any at all, a small additional percentage.

So much for the local authorities, and I think what I have said is enough to show the confusion of thought, looseness of expression, and uncertainty in action, which prevails in Madras in a matter which lies at the very root of all agricultural prosperity.

It would require far more research than I can undertake for the present purpose to view the inconsistencies

of the authorities at home, but I will refer to a few instances.

Lord Cornwallis's Permanent Settlement proceeded on the principle that the State was the proprietor of the soil. In that capacity it renounced its rights to a progressive share in the rental of the land. But it was the rent which was renounced, it was not revenue, and yet to this day we are told that the land of Bengal is to be exempted from all share in the taxation necessary for the purposes of government to all future time.

Mr James Mill, in his evidence before a Select Committee in 1831, speaks of the rent of land in India having always been considered the property of Govern

ment.

In a return to the House of Commons in 1857, on Indian Land Tenures, signed by Mr John S. Mill, I find the following general statement :—

"Land throughout India is generally private property, subject to the payment of revenue, the mode and system of assessment differing materially in various parts."

On the occasion to which I have already referred, viz., the correspondence with Madras in 1856, the Court of Directors emphatically repudiated the doctrine of State proprietorship, and affirmed the principle that the assessment was revenue and not rent; the revenue being levied upon rent, as the most convenient and customary way of raising the necessary taxation, which in a self-contained country, possessed of vast undeveloped agricultural resources, is perhaps the soundest, simplest, and justest of all fiscal systems.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »