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out of measures adopted from time to time to meet temporary exigencies. Yet, whatever its merits or defects, it undoubtedly has these two qualities, that it is pretty firmly rooted, and it is consistent with a high degree of material prosperity. We have no right, therefore, to speak disrespectfully of drifting. It is as likely to conduct India to a safe issue as England.

In the draft to Madras, therefore, though it ought to be framed with the utmost consideration for Lord Hobart, I would abstain from any detailed discussion of general principles, nor would I give any corroboration to his premature declaration in favour of a fixed land-payment. At the same time, I think we may fairly discourage any scientific refinements in the work of assessment, which are a natural exercise of the intellect in highly cultivated officers, but which worry the ryot, distribute the burden of the State with needless inequality, and impose a costly machinery on the State. SALISBURY.

26th April 1875.

Lord Hobart died the day after this paper was written. I circulate the various minutes because the subject is one that will probably recur; but for the present I should recommend a draft noting that half the Madras Council has been changed, and saying that we should be disinclined to enter upon the discussion of any proposed changes until the new Government should have had an opportunity of examining them.

29th April 1875.

S.

APPENDIX P

MR JAMES CAIRD, C.B., MEMBER OF THE FAMINE COMMISSION OF 1878, ON THE CONDITION OF INDIA

[Extract.]

3 ST JAMES'S SQUARE, 31st October 1879.

MY LORD,—In a letter of Lord Salisbury to the Home Secretary, in reference to my appointment as a member of the Famine Commission, he said that (apart from my special duties as a member of that Commission) advantage to the Indian cultivator might be anticipated from my inquiries, and from the advice which I should be in a position to tender to the Government. It is, therefore, my duty to place before your Lordship the views which I have formed in regard to the condition of the vast population of these countries for which we have made ourselves responsible.

The available good land in India is nearly all occupied. There are extensive areas of good waste land, covered with jungle, in various parts of the country, which might be reclaimed and rendered suitable for cultivation, but for that object capital must be employed, and the people have little to spare. The produce of the country on an average of years is barely sufficient to maintain the present population and make a saving for occasional famine. The greatest export of rice and corn in one year is not more than ten days' consumption of its inhabitants.

Scarcity, deepening into famine, is thus becoming of more frequent occurrence. The people may be assumed to increase at the moderate rate of one per cent. per year. The check caused by the late famine, through five million of extra deaths, spread as it was over two years and a half, would thus be equal only to the normal increase over all India for that time. In ten years, at the present rate of growth, there will be twenty million more people to feed; in twenty years upwards of forty millions. This must be met by an increase of produce, arising from better management of the cultivated area, and enlargement of its extent by migration to unpeopled districts, and by emigration to other countries. We are dealing with a country already full of people, whose habits and religion promote increase without restraint, and whose law directs the sub-division of land among all the male children, As rulers, we are thus brought face to face with a growing difficulty. There are more people every year to feed from land which, in many parts of India, is undergoing gradual deterioration. Of this there can

be no stronger proof than that the

land revenue in unsafe to break

some quarters is diminishing. It is up more of the uncultivated poor land. The diminution of pasture thereby already caused is showing its effect in a lessening proportion of working cattle for an increasing area of cultivation.

The pressure on the means of subsistence is rendered more severe by the moral disorganisation produced by laws, affecting property and debt, not adapted to the condition of the people. In most parts of India, as

shown by the late proceedings in the Legislative Council on the Deccan Ryots Relief Bill, and as is plain to any careful observer in the country, the people are not only dissatisfied with our legal system, but, while the creditor is not much enriched, the debtor is being impoverished by it. Those British officials who see this, feel themselves powerless to influence a central authority far removed from them, subject to no control of public opinion, and overburdened with details with which it is incapable of dealing.

We have introduced a system the first object of which, for a Foreign Government, is necessarily the subjection of the people. This is rendered possible by the religious difference between the Hindus and Mahomedans which prevents their union against us, and they are in such proportions that the larger number of the first prevents the more warlike character of the second assuming predominance. We are accepted as the arbiters of justice to both, and the protectors of the weak against the strong. A handful of Englishmen could not hold these multitudes on any other principle. The strength we wield is a powerful army, now by the aid of railway and telegraph capable of rapid concentration on any threatened point. we govern through British officers stationed in every district of the country, who, under the supervision of the respective Governments, administer the law, command the police, and superintend the collection of the revenue. Native officers are employed under them, both in the Judicial and Revenue Departments, in large numbers, to whom the drudgery of government

And

is committed. The whole number of such officers, not reckoning the native army or police, is not more than one in ten thousand of the people. The English officers are not one in two hundred thousand, strangers in language, religion and colour, with feelings and ideas quite different from theirs, and enforcing a system of law, the justice of which they are slow to comprehend, while its costliness and delay are manifest.

By our centralising system we have drifted away from the patriarchal method of rule common in the East, where the populations are agricultural and dense, under which the management of the people is left to their natural leaders, the headmen of the villages, hereditary or elected by the people, who are recognised by the community, and who administer justice and preserve order, and are responsible for the public revenue. We have superseded this by discrediting the headmen, and in Madras and Bombay by an attempt to bring millions of small landholders into direct contact with the Government, through native officials of a low type (for the higher class of officers rarely have time to see them), and with a theory that our European officers, so few in number, will be able personally to supervise this arrangement, which is physically impossible. The headmen, no longer recognised or treated as leaders, and seldom communicated with, except through the lower class of native officials (who are said to be apt to take advantage of their position to extort bribes), become distrustful of us, and are distrusted by us. I rarely met a civilian in India who did not speak of the headmen with distrust. The

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