and permanent basis, precluding harassing surveys and reclassifications of the soil, and permitting the cultivators to save and to improve their condition in the future, Your Lordship's administration will be remembered as a beneficent era in the history of British Rule in India.

20th February 1900.

THIRD LETTER TO LORD CURZON: BOMBAY

MY LORD,-In continuation of my letters of the 12th and 20th February last, on the subject of Land Settlements in the Central Provinces and in Madras, I take the liberty to submit for Your Excellency's consideration the facts and circumstances narrated below relating to Settlements in the Bombay Presidency. The distressed condition of the agriculturists of the Deccan and Southern India has often received the attention of Your Excellency's predecessors, and I feel convinced that in the present year of famine the subject will receive Your Lordship's attention, and that every suggestion made with the honest desire of improving the condition of the peasantry of Bombay, Madras, and the Central Provinces will receive Your Lordship's consideration.

2. Land System in the Deccan under Mahratta Rule. The prevailing tenure in the Deccan under the Mahratta rule was the Miras tenure, under which the Land Tax was fixed in perpetuity in money or in kind in proportion to the net produce, and settlements were made with village communities through their headmen on the joint and several responsibility of the Miras holders. When additional contributions were required by the State for prosecuting wars or other purposes, they were levied in the shape of extra cesses or special demands from the village communities, and did not disturb

the unity of village life and the permanence of the Land Tax. Extraordinary contributions were frequent in the last years of the Mahratta rule; village communities were harassed with unending demands and went largely into debt to meet them; but even then the unity of village life and the permanence of the land assessments were seldom disturbed.

3. Early Land Settlements under British Rule.The dominions of the last Mahratta Peshwa passed under British Rule in 1817; and from that year the land revenue was continuously raised. In 1817 the revenue realised in the newly-acquired territories was eighty. lakhs, in 1818 it was raised to 115 lakhs, and in a few years more it came up to 150 lakhs, or a million and a half tens of rupees. The village community system broke down under this pressure, and the Ryotwari system, introduced in Madras by Sir Thomas Munro, suggested the introduction of a similar Ryotwari system in Bombay, i.e., a system of separate settlements with individual cultivators.

4. Settlement of Pringle and Cruickskank.-Settlement on the Madras principle was ordered by the Government of Bombay in 1825, and was undertaken by Mr Pringle, C.S., in the Deccan, and by Captain Cruickshank in Gujerat. But the estimates of produce made were incorrect, the share demanded as revenue was therefore unfair, and the cultivators were reduced to poverty and distress. The settlement operations, both in the Gujerat and in the Deccan, were stopped in 1829-30. Every effort was made-lawful and unlawful to get the utmost out of the wretched peasantry,

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who were subjected to torture in some instances cruel and revolting beyond description if they could not or would not yield what was demanded. Numbers abandoned their homes and fled into neighbouring Native States; large tracts of land were thrown out of cultivation, and in some districts no more than a third of the cultured area remained in occupation." (Administration Report for 1892-93, p. 76).

First Regular Settlement from 1836.-The Government then ordered a general inquiry into the subject, which was conducted by Mr Goldsmid, C.S., who was subsequently joined by Captain Wingate and Lieutenant Wash. Their Joint Report, submitted in 1836, proposed a new Land Revenue Settlement on an improved plan. The proposal was accepted, and forms the basis of what may be called the first regular Settlement in this Presidency, which commenced in 1836. The principles of this Settlement were these: in the first place, it continued the old system of separate settlements with individual cultivators; secondly, it instituted leases of thirty years for the short leases which had preceded ; and thirdly, it abandoned the basis of produce estimates and substituted the estimated value of lands as the basis of assessment. The Settlement, commenced on these principles in 1836, was completed, or nearly completed, by 1872, and showed an increase of land revenue from Rx.1,533,000 to Rx.2,031,000, an increase of thirty-two per cent., exclusive of Poona, etc., then under a second Settlement. (Administration Report for 1872-73, p. 49.)

6. Second Regular Settlement from 1866.-The leases

granted at the first Settlement began to fall in from 1866, and a second regular Settlement commenced, and is still proceeding. Out of 27,781 villages in the Provinces, 13,369 villages have up to date been resettled, and the total land revenue of these villages has increased from Rx.1,446,000 to Rx.1,886,000, showing an increase of eighty per cent. (Administration Report for 1898-99, Appendix II. (i., p. 2.)

7. Third Regular Settlement from 1896.—The leases granted at the second Settlement began to fall in from 1896, and a third regular Settlement has commenced and is still proceeding. Seventy-eight villages in the Poona Collectorate have been resettled, and the revenue of these resettled villages has increased from Rx. 10,353 to Rx.13,359, showing once more an increase of thirty per cent.

8. Undue Enhancements of Land Revenue.-My Lord, the brief history of Land Settlements in Bombay given above will indicate to Your Excellency one principal reason of the impoverished condition of the Deccan cultivators. The produce of the soil does not increase, either in quantity or in value, thirty per cent. every thirty years, and the endeavour to obtain such an increase in land revenue necessarily leaves the cultivators in a state of greater helplessness and poverty after each Settlement. Much of the best lands in the Deccan was under cultivation in 1836, i.e., after the first twenty years of British rule in that country; lands brought under cultivation since are less fertile and less productive; and the disproportionate enhancements of land revenue obtained at each successive

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