11. The revenue demanded from Malguzars was fixed equally high. Departing from the old rule of demanding fifty per cent. of the landlord's assets as revenue,— a rule which is in force in Northern India,-the authorities of the Central Provinces asked the sanction of the Indian Government to demand fifty to sixty-five per cent. of the Malguzar's assets as revenue. The Government of India in its letter No. 397, dated 31st May 1888,had "some hesitation in allowing in any case so high a percentage as sixty-five to be taken," but nevertheless did grant the permission in some cases, and made sixty per cent. the maximum rate in other cases. If we add to these high rates another twelve and a half per cent. which has been added as rates, it will be easy to see that between seventy and eighty per cent. of the landlord's supposed assets, i.e. nearly one hundred per cent. of his real assets, are now demanded by the Government as

revenue.

12. My Lord, the question to which I have ventured to invite Your Lordship's attention is one of life and death to the Indian cultivator in the Central Provinces. The question is not a complicated one but a very simple one. If after the experience of nearly a century of administration it has been found in Northern India that the wisest, safest, and most considerate policy is to let landlords make their own arrangements with cultivators as regards rents, subject to salutary checks imposed by the Government, is it a wise policy in the Central Provinces for the Government to fix after calculations, which are unintelligible alike to landlord and tenant, what rent each cultivator should pay for his holding?

If private landlords in Northern India consider one-fifth of the gross produce a fair rent for the lands held by their tenants, is it considerate of the British Government to impose on the poorer peasantry of the Central Provinces a rental of one-third or more of the gross produce? And if the Government of the NorthWestern Provinces consider forty per cent. of the landlord's assets as fair Government revenue (vide Sir A. P. Macdonnell's evidence before the Currency Committee),1 will Your Excellency's Government sanction and approve of a State-demand of sixty or sixty-five per cent. in the Central Provinces, plus twelve and a half per cent. as rates? These are simple questions which will demand from Your Lordship an early consideration, because they affect the well-being of more than ten millions of Her Majesty's Indian subjects, who have suffered most acutely during the famines of 1897 and of the present year, and who are at present the most helpless and resourceless class of peasantry in all India. The main reason of their wretchedness is manifest from the facts stated above. There is not a cultivator in India who does not understand and recognise three annas in the rupee out of the gross produce of his holding as a fair and equitable rent, leaving a fair margin of saving. And there is not a cultivator in India who does not feel five or six annas

Sir Antony

1 Exception has been taken to this statement. Macdonnell has pointed out that though the Government in the N.W. Provinces takes about forty per cent. of the rental, its proper theoretical share is fifty per cent. I accept this correction, but it does not affect my argument, as I have recommended that fifty per cent. of the rental be fixed as the Government demand in the Central Provinces and elsewhere.

in the rupee of the gross produce as an oppressive and exhausting rent, impoverishing him in good years, and sending him to relief works in bad years.

13. My Lord, Your Excellency's administration has been marked by a famine which exceeds in its intensity any previous famine known in India. I trust and hope that Your Excellency's administration will also be marked by one of those great remedial measures which permanently ameliorate the condition of the people, and which the grateful population of India cherish and remember from generation to generation. The impoverishment of an Indian Province under British administration is a more serious calamity than any defeat or disaster which has been known in the history of British rule in India, and if Your Lordship be convinced after inquiry that the impoverishment of the people of the Central Provinces is due to any extent to the exhausting rental fixed in those Provinces, as compared with Northern India, I feel convinced, Your Excellency will not lay down the reins of administration in India without removing the cause of their permanent wretchedness, and enabling them to improve their own condition, as the peasantry of Bengal and of Northern India have been enabled to do.

14. The close of the present famine operations in the Central Provinces may appear to Your Lordship an appropriate time to institute an inquiry, not merely into systems and rules of relief works, but into the general condition of the people, and the incidence of the land revenue and rents, as compared with Northern ndia.

Such an inquiry may elicit facts which are

not now clearly known, and may be fruitful of some suggestions for permanently improving the condition of the agricultural population, an object which Your Lordship is endeavouring to secure by every possible means. No one can be better fitted to superintend, help, and direct such an inquiry than the present Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, Mr Fraser, who has already won the esteem of the people by his sympathy and his real desire to secure their interests. The people of the Central Provinces will have confidence in him, and in any other officers whom Your Excellency may entrust with the task. And should Your Excellency consider me fit to represent the views and wishes of my countrymen on the Commission which may be appointed to conduct the inquiry, I shall be prepared, on receipt of Your Excellency's commands, to return to India, to join the work at any time that may be fixed for the inquiry. And I shall ask for no remuneration for my humble services in the conduct of an inquiry needed for the well-being of millions of my countrymen.

12th February 1900.

SECOND LETTER TO LORD CURZON: MADRAS

MY LORD,-In continuation of my letter of the 12th February I have the honour to submit to Your Excellency this brief note on Land Settlements in the Madras Presidency. The subject has repeatedly come under the consideration of Your Lordship's predecessors, and will probably receive Your Lordship's attention.

2. Madras was one of the first Provinces in India which came under British administration, and while some estates were permanently settled with landlords, in the rest of the Province a Ryotwari Settlement was made directly with the cultivators. Sir Thomas Munro, the virtual author of this system, explained the principle of the Settlement in his evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the 15th April 1812. And his idea was to regard each cultivator as the proprietor of his holding, and to make a perpetual Settlement with the cultivators, as a permanent Settlement had been made with Zamindars in Bengal in 1793 by Lord Cornwallis.1

3. This was the principle recognised by the Government of Madras for over forty years after the time of Sir Thomas Munro. As late as 1855-56, the Ryotwari system was thus explained in the Madras Administra

1 See the letter of the Madras Government to the Government of India, No. 241, dated 8th February 1862, Appendix K.