different object, to secure for the State a firmer grip on the produce of the soil, to whittle away both landlord right and tenant right, and to make an agricultural nation more dependent on the unfettered will of the Executive Officer.

The power of the Revenue Officer and the Settlement Officer has been made more absolute by legislation. The period of Settlements has been cut down from thirty years to twenty years in the Punjab and the Central Provinces. Cultivators in the same Provinces have been restrained from alienating their own holdings. The Government has taken the power of withdrawing the right of transfer in Bombay. The Government settles rents between landlords and tenants in the Central Provinces. The rule of limiting the State-demand to half the nett rent is, in practice, disregarded in Bombay and in Madras. The rule of limiting State enhancements to the specific and definite ground of a rise in prices has been withdrawn. And a compulsory waterrate, which was condemned by Argyll and Lawrence, has been imposed in Madras, and is consolidated with the land assessment.

CHAPTER VII

LAND RESOLUTIONS OF RIPON AND CURZON

THE uncertainty of Land Assessments, and the harassment caused by the revaluation of lands in Settlement Operations, were evils which successive Viceroys endeavoured and desired to remedy. Lord Mayo was of opinion that, when the quality of the soil and the quantity of the produce were once ascertained, there should be no further alterations in assessment except on the ground of fluctuations in prices. Lord Northbrook was also in favour of a self-regulating system of assessments, and was not in favour of repeating valuations at each fresh Settlement. The question was finally taken up by Lord Ripon. In his despatch of October 17, 1882, he desired to eliminate from future settlements the elements of uncertainty and inquisitorial inquiry. His object was to give the agriculturist an assurance of permanence and security, whilst not depriving the State of the power of enhancement of the revenue on "defined conditions." The reader will perceive that this was a compromise between the two opposite principles which had been held for twenty years by Indian administrators.

Men like Canning and Lawrence had held that the Land Revenue should be fixed for ever, leaving to the people of the country all future increase in the profits of agriculture. Other administrators had held that the State should claim an indefinite increase of revenue from the increasing profits from agriculture. Lord Ripon's masterly scheme met the views of both schools. He left the door open for a continuous increase of the Land Revenue with the increase of prices. At the same time,

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, i.e. 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 "Some of the principal administrative difficulties which now exist in India," he recorded

would give no pledge.

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 made, 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.