he offered to the cultivators what was virtually a Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue as represented in produce.

To Settlement Officers Lord Ripon virtually said: You shall have a legitimate increase in the Land Revenue if there is an increase in the prices of crops. To the cultivators he said: You are secure henceforth from all uncertainty and all harassing inquiries; the Land Tax you pay shall not be an enhanced share of your produce.

Lord Ripon addressed the Governments of Madras and Bombay, offering this scheme for their acceptance. The Government of Madras accepted the proposal that in districts where the Land Revenue had been adequately assessed, ie. in districts which had been duly surveyed and settled, the element of price alone would be considered in future settlements. The Government of Bombay demurred to the proposal.

After a considerable correspondence, the matter came up before the Secretary of State for India for final decision in 1885. He had disapproved of the scheme of a Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue for India only two years before. It was hoped that the acceptance of Lord Ripon's scheme would at least give some security to the people against arbitrary and uncertain enhancements of the Land Revenue. It was hoped that after the bitter experience of a quarter of a century, the Crown Administration would at last give the harassed cultivators of India some pledge, some intelligible rule, to determine demands of the State. It was believed that the difficult problem would accept its final solution in the masterly compromise that Lord Ripon had made.

The action of the Secretary of State for India destroyed all these hopes. He looked to the interests of the Indian Land Revenue, not to the welfare of the Indian cultivators. He would frame no definite rule; he would give no pledge. "Some of the principal adminis

trative difficulties which now exist in India," he recorded

in reply to Sir Alfred Lyall, "arise in a measure from such pledges having been given on former occasions." He did not perceive that the greatest of all "administrative difficulties" in India was the wretched poverty of the cultivators; and that no progress, no improvement, no accumulation of agricultural wealth was possible without some definite rule or pledge given to the people.

Accepting the principle that it was desirable to simplify procedure and avoid unnecessary harassment to the people, the Secretary of State laid down the following rules:

(1) The idea of a Permanent Settlement is abandoned.

(2) The State shall claim its share in the unearned increment of the value of land.

(3) Rise in prices is one of the indications and measures of this increment.

(4) Revision Settlements should be made less arbitrary, uncertain, and troublesome to the people in the future.

(5) Modifications should be made in the assessment rules, and enhancement of revenue should be made mainly on increase in the value of land.1

These elaborate instructions, excellent in their way, fixed no definite or intelligible rule by which the cultivators of India could measure their liabilities, or Settlement Officers could limit their enhancements. Settlements therefore went on as before; enhancements of the Land Revenue were made on grounds which the cultivators did not understand and could not contest. And how little the new rules of 1885 added to the prosperity and the

1 Despatch dated January 8, 1885, referred to in Madras Revenue Board's Resolution, dated December 6, 1900. The original papers connected with Lord Ripon's proposals of 1882, and the Secretary of State's decision of 1885, have never been published. They contain a mass of valuable proposals, including those of Sir Alfred Lyall, regarding the Land Question in India, and their publication in the shape of a Blue Book is urgently needed as a help to reforms in Land Administration in India.

staying power of the cultivators was proved by the famines of 1897 and 1900.

Then the question was once more taken up by some men who had passed the best part of their lives in the task of Indian administration. They had retired from the Indian Service, but still felt a strong desire to help and befriend, as far as they could, their Indian fellowsubjects. They met in consultation in London, when India was still suffering from the famine of 1900, and they submitted a Memorial to the Secretary of State for India offering five suggestions to make the existing rules of land administration definite and clear, and more helpful to the Indian agriculturists.1

The five suggestions made in the Memorial are given below:

Thirty Years' Rule.-"That no revision of the Land Tax of any Province, or part thereof, should be made. within thirty years of the expiration of any former revision."

Half-Rental Rule.—" Where the Land Revenue is paid by landlords, the principle adopted in the Saharanpur Rule of 1855, whereby the Revenue demand is limited to one-half of the actual rent or assets of such landlords, should be universally applied."

Half-Produce Rule.-"Where the Land Revenue is paid directly by the cultivators, as in most parts of Madras and Bombay, the Government demand should be limited to 50 per cent. of the value of the nett produce, after a liberal deduction for cultivation expenses has been inade, and should not ordinarily exceed one-fifth of the

1 The Memorial was dated December 20, 1900. The signatories to the Memorial were: The Right Hon. Sir Richard Garth, late Chief-Justice of Bengal; Sir John Jardine, late Judge of the High Court of Bombay; Sir William Wedderburn, late Chief Secretary of Bombay; Mr. R. K. Puckle, C.S.I., late Director of Revenue Settlement in Madras; Mr. J. H. Garstin, C.S.I., late Member of the Madras Council; Mr. J. B. Pennington, late Collector of Tanjore in Madras; Mr. H. J. Reynolds, late Revenue Secretary of Bengal; M. C. J. O'Donnell, late Commissioner in Bengal; Mr. A. Rogers, late Member of Council in Bombay; Mr. J. P. Goodridge, late Settlement Officer of the Central Provinces, and the present writer.

gross produce even in those parts of the country where, in theory, one-half of the nett is assumed to approximate to one-third of the gross produce."

Enhancement Rule.-" That when revision is made in any of those parts of India where the Land Revenue is paid by the cultivators direct to the Government, there should be no increase in the assessment except in cases where the land has increased in value, (1) in consequence of improvements in irrigation works carried out at the expense of the Government, or (2) on account of a rise in the value of produce based on the average prices of the thirty years next preceding such revision."

Local Cess Rule." Lastly we recommend that a limit be fixed in each province beyond which it may not be permissible to surcharge the land tax with local cesses. We are of opinion that the Bengal rate of 6 per cent. is a fair one, and that in no case should the rate exceed cent."

10 per

Our readers who have followed the story of Indian Land Administration in the preceding chapters will perceive at a glance that the memorialists suggested no new rules and no foreign principles. They accepted the different land systems which had grown up in the different provinces of India. They accepted the principles which had been laid down by preceding administrators. They suggested rules which were in keeping with the principles generally recognised in India. They asked for no large measures, like the extension of the Permanent Settlement, as had been done by Canning and Lawrence. And they did not demand the abolition of the local cesses imposed on land, as has been done in the present work. They desired only to limit such cesses, though the limits which they recommended have been somewhat vaguely worded in their last rule. What was meant by the rule is that when the cesses are assessed in Rents as in Bengal, they should not exceed 6 per cent. of the rental; and when they are imposed on the Land Revenue as in other

Provinces, they should not exceed 10 per cent. of that

revenue.

The memorial was forwarded by the Indian Secretary of State to the Government of India, and the Land Question thus again came up for discussion. Lord Curzon approached the subject with a true appreciation of its national importance, and gave it his own personal consideration. It was unfortunate, however, that he did not institute any open inquiry, and he did not ask for the views and opinions of the people or of popular associations. In a matter so vitally touching the welfare of an agricultural nation, some expression of the popular opinion might have assisted the Viceroy in viewing the question from both sides; some deliberation among men familiar with land tenures in the different Provinces might have cleared many misapprehensions. Lord Curzon simply asked for the opinions of the local governments, and the local governments naturally defended the systems which they themselves worked. Their defence was summarised in a Government Resolution,1 which was published as a final reply to the memorial.

The memorialists had not urged an extension of the Permanent Settlement. Many of them did not consider such extension desirable; and they had asked for reforms in which they all agreed, and which involved no change in the existing system. Nevertheless Lord Curzon thought it desirable to travel out of the proposals which the memorialists had made, and to condemn the proposal of a Permanent Settlement which the memorialists had not made.

"At an earlier period," says the Resolution, "the school of thought that is represented by the present critics of the Government of India, advocated the extension of the Permanent Settlement throughout India.” They [the Government of India] cannot conscientiously

1 Resolution of the Governor-General in Council, dated January 16,