So far as the poor agriculturists of India are concerned, the dispute is merely a quibble, and often a heartless quibble. Four-fifths of the population of India depend directly or indirectly on the produce of the soil, and if an unduly large share of the produce is taken by the State, so as to leave the cultivators impoverished, it is small comfort to them to learn that some able and ingenious financiers call it a rent and not a tax. The ten thousand cultivators of Madras, who are annually driven from their homes and lands for being unable to pay the State-demand, will derive little satisfaction from the thought that very distinguished and very honourable gentlemen give that demand one name rather than another. The millions of cultivators who are driven to the money-lender within two months after they have reaped their harvest, in order to meet the State-demand, will find little consolation if the curious information be placed before them that learned political economists in Europe give a very special name to that very severe demand. And the six millions of starving men and women and children, who have been unable to save anything after paying the State-demand in past years, and who are crowding to relief centres in this year of drought and failure of crops, will fail to appreciate the kindness of able and eloquent debaters who are ready to prove that the demand was no tax at all. The nation in India depends on the produce of the soil; it is a cruel grievance when the Government demands thirty per cent. of that produce or more, as is done in some parts of Madras and Bombay; and it is a redress of this grievance which the poor and resourceless people

are asking for. To them our arguments would appear
a hateful quibble, a heartless mockery of their mis-
fortunes. Let us not give them a stone when they are
asking for bread. Let us find out if too much of the
produce of the soil is demanded from them in any
province, and let us, as responsible and reasonable
administrators, moderate this demand by whatever
name we may choose to call it.

A second fallacy, which is often committed in esti-
mating the incidence of land revenue in India, is to
estimate the supposed gross produce of an entire pro-
vince. As an instance, we quote the following figures
from the Report of the Famine Commission of 1878,
vol. ii. p. 112-

The value of the gross produce is calculated at
£5 per ton for food and £3 per acre for non-food
crops. The fallacy in this calculation lies in the fact
that it assumes an annual produce for India which
India never produces in any single year.
All the culti-
vated area does not bear crops every year. No approxi-
mately correct average can be struck, because it is not

G

known, and it has never been reckoned how much of the "cultivated area" in a province like Bengal, for instance, is actually under cultivation and bears crops in any single year or in a series of years. No approximately correct value of food-crops and of non-food crops can be estimated, because it is not known how much of the area under cultivation bears any produce in any year or in a series of years. The entire calculation is based on an assumption which has no basis on actual facts. The percentages shown in the last column show the proportion of revenue to a produce which India might be supposed to bear, but which she does not bear in any single year. The percentages are absolutely valueless for all statistical purposes.

The real percentages which the land revenue bears to the gross produce is shown with a greater approximation to correctness in Appendix A, from the evidence of officers who have tried to arrive at the truth from such facts as were available to them. Their evidence shows that the land revenue in Bengal is between five and six per cent. of the gross produce; in Northern India it is between eight and ten per cent.; in Madras it is between twelve and thirty-one per cent. ; in Bombay it is probably higher.

It is a remarkable instance of the tendency to minimise the incidence of taxation in India that the figures placed by responsible administrators before the Famine Commission of 1878 (given in Appendix A) as to the actual proportion of the land revenue to produce, varying from five to thirty-one per cent., are never quoted in speeches and debates. And the figures showing the

proportion of the land revenue to the possible produce of India, ranging between three and eight per cent., are seriously relied upon by responsible statesmen !

For the practical administrative purpose of fixing the land revenue evenly and moderately in those tracts and in those individual cases where it presses hard on the population, the supposed average for all India is of little value. When the people of Madras complain that the State-demand of twelve to thirty-one per cent. of the gross produce impoverishes the cultivators, it is no answer, to say that the average for all India is less than eight per cent. When the Malguzars of the Central Provinces represent that an enhancement of the revenue, exceeding a hundred per cent. in some districts, has been made by the last Settlement, and is felt as oppressive and severe, it is no satisfaction to them to learn that in Northern India the enhancement by the recent Settlements is not over thirty per cent. It is not in this manner that practical statesmen deal with the grievances of particular localities in the United Kingdom; and when the case of the West-Ireland cottier or the Highland crofter is under consideration, we are not told that farmers in Devon or Lincolnshire pay a reasonable rent. Humane administrators will rather seek to consider the case of each locality and of each individual Malguzar and ryot, instead of flaunting the figures, supposed to represent the average for all India, before our eyes.

A third fallacy which is often made in dealing with the question of land revenue in British India is to compare it with the figures which we possess of the assessments made by the Mahomedan emperors of India.

It is forgotten that the old figures only represent an ideal demand which was never collected in full; that it was the policy in previous ages to fix the demand at a high figure and to collect as much of it as was possible from year to year; and that to compare modern figures with these old figures is to compare collections actually made by British administrators with collections which were never made by Mahomedan administrators.

One collector, Mr Dumbleton, pointed out in the early years of this century that British administrators were trying to continue the severe rates of the Government of the Nawab of Oudh, "without the same elasticity in realising." And Sir John Strachey, in quoting some supposed figures representing Aurangzeb's land revenue, makes the significant remark, "whether these figures represent the demand or the collections is not stated, but no doubt the former is intended." 2

Lastly it is forgotten that the whole of the Moghal revenues derived from the land was spent in the country, fructifying agriculture and the industries, and flowing back to the people in one shape or another. Spent on the army it maintained and fed the people ; spent in the construction of great edifices or in articles of luxury it encouraged arts and industries; spent in the construction of roads and irrigation canals it directly benefited agriculture. It is obvious that the people of a country can bear the incidence of heavy taxation

1 Baden Powell's "Land Systems of British India," vol. ii. p. 14. 2 Sir John Strachey's "India" (1894), p. 105. Further on Sir John Strachey remarks, "Little confidence can, in my opinion, be placed in the particular figures which purport to represent the amount of the Moghal revenues."-Ibid., p. 107, note.