CHAPTER II.

Treaty of Seringapatam-Cessions of territory to the Company-Military officers appointed to administer the Baramahal; Munro one of them-Captain Read-Munro's high opinion of him—Unsatisfactory character of the revenue management in the older possessions of the Company-Low standard of official morality—Inadequacy of official salaries-Lord Cornwallis's views on the subject--Instructions to Read-Depressed condition of the Baramahal-Maladministration under Hyder Ali and Tippoo-Introduction of the ryotwár system— Current misapprehensions regarding that system-Description of its real principles-Munro's views - On the importance of moderate assessments-On taxation of improvements-On special taxation of special crops-On leases-On enforcing the joint responsibility of ryots-On fixity of tenures and of assessments-Munro's life in the Baramahal-His attachment to the province- His private correspondence-Departure.

THE peace concluded with Tippoo in 1792 brought Munro's military employment to a close for some years, and indeed, with the exception of two brief periods-the first during the war which, seven years later, terminated with the defeat and death of Tippoo and the extinction of his dynasty, and the second during the Pindári war of 1817 and 1818, when Munro, with the rank of brigadier-general, proved, during a short but brilliant campaign in the Deccan and Southern Mahratta country, his high qualifications as a military commander-the remainder of his life was destined to be spent in the discharge of duties of a civil character. Under the treaty of Seringapatam

Tippoo ceded to the East India Company and their allies, the Mahratta chiefs and the Nizam, a moiety of his dominions. The share of the Company consisted of the district of Malabar on the western coast, which at first was placed under the Government of Bombay; the greater part of the present district of Salem, then designated the Baramahal; and the province of Dindigal, which forms a portion of the present district of Madura. The Baramahal and Dindigal were placed under the Government of Madras; but, owing to the deficiency in that Presidency of civil servants possessing a competent knowledge of the native languages, and to the unsatisfactory manner in which the revenue administration of the older possessions of the Company under the Madras Presidency had been conducted, Lord Cornwallis resolved to employ military officers for a time in the management of the Baramahal. The chief place, with the designation of Superintendent of Revenue in the Baramahal, was given to Captain Alexander Read, under whom Munro had recently served in the Intelligence Department; Munro and two other young officers of the Madras army, Lieutenants McLeod and Graham, being appointed his assistants. These appointments were made direct by the GovernorGeneral, and were at first intended to last only for a year, at the end of which time Collectors were to be 'appointed by Government for the said concerns 'from the list of civil servants.' The arrangement, however, continued in force until the renewal of military operations in 1799, when Read and Munro both left the Baramahal. It seems that, owing to a misunderstanding on the part of Read, caused by Munro having declined in the previous year to leave

his regiment while the war was going on, for the purpose of rejoining the Intelligence Department, Munro's appointment to the Baramahal Commission was very near not being made. Read, indeed, had applied for the appointment of another officer; but his application was not complied with by the GovernorGeneral, and on Munro intimating to Read that he was willing to serve in the revenue line, he was at once appointed. The temporary misunderstanding did not in any way affect the subsequent relations of the two men, which were invariably most cordial. Munro's letters show that he entertained a very high opinion of Read, whom he described as 'a man whose 'conduct is invariably regulated by private honour and 'public interest, and in whom the enthusiasm in the 'pursuit of national objects which seizes other men by 'fits and starts, is constant and uniform.' 'These 'qualities, joined to an intimate knowledge of the 'language and manners of the people,' eminently qualified Read for the station which, in the opinion of his assistant, he filled with so much credit to 'himself and benefit to the public.' Of the estimation in which Read held Munro, the best evidence is afforded by the fact that after they had been seven years together in the Baramahal, Read, on being appointed to the command of a body of troops detached to collect supplies for General Harris's army, took Munro with him as his secretary.

The duties entrusted to Read and his assistants were very comprehensive, involving no less than the whole administration, revenue, police, and judicial, of that portion of the ceded territory which was assigned to them, comprising a tract of country one hundred and forty miles in length with an average width of

sixty miles; but their first and most important business was to settle the revenue, and especially the land revenue, which was then, as now, the most important branch of the Indian revenue. In the discharge of this duty they had little or no assistance from the arrangements which had been made in settling the land revenue in other parts of India. In Bengal the revenue settlements had been the least able of Hastings' measures, had been a source of constant controversy with his opponents in the Council, and had met with emphatic disapproval from the Court of Directors. In Madras the inefficiency of the revenue management of the Northern Sirkárs and of the Jágír, had, as we have said, induced the Governor-General to look beyond the civil service when selecting officers for the Baramahal. 'In the Sirkárs a considerable portion of the land was in the hands of zemindárs, who collected the revenue from the ryots or cultivators, paying a fixed sum to the Government. The zemindárs, for the most part, employed renters or farmers of the revenue, who made the collections from the ryots, and oppressed them grievously by unauthorized exactions. Renters were likewise employed by the Company's officers to collect the revenue of land not under zemindárs, a whole sirkár being sometimes let to one renter. The persons thus employed were usually strangers to the country, hangers-on of the chiefs or members of the Provincial Councils, three of which Councils, stationed at Ganjam, Vizagapatam, and Masulipatam, were vested with the superintendence of the affairs of the Sirkárs. The renters employed by these Councils appear to have abused their powers even more grossly than those under

the zemindárs. In the Jágir also, the renting system had been adopted, with very similar results to the ryots and with serious loss to the Government; and in this case the mal-administration was intensified by the intervention of a class of persons called 'dubashes,' some of them domestic servants of the European residents at Madras, who, after the invasion of the Carnatic by Hyder in 1780, purchased rights in the land at absurdly low rates, and exercised a most mischievous influence in the district.

Added to these defects of method in administering the revenues, the standard of official morality recognized by those employed to administer them, was extremely low. The salaries allowed to the members of the Provincial Councils, and subsequently to the Collectors, to whom, on the abolition of the Councils, the revenue administration was entrusted, were so small, that it had become the universal practice to augment them by unauthorized receipts, which these officers, from the nature of their duties, had ample facilities and great temptations for obtaining. The evil had attracted the attention of Clive; but it had not been corrected until it was grappled with by Lord Cornwallis, who, in the same year in which the Baramahal was ceded by Tippoo, addressed a letter on this subject to the Court of Directors. He said:

I consider it a duty to you and my country to declare that the best rules and regulations that can be framed, either by yourselves or by the governments in India, will prove totally nugatory and useless, unless you adopt, as a decided and fixed principle, that liberal salaries shall be annexed to every office of trust and responsibility, at all the Presidencies; that all perquisites shall be abolished; and that the most vigorous checks shall be established to prevent