A. Certainly not; they have no head landholders over them to acquire capital; they are of a class who never acquire capital in any country; mere cultivators....

Q. What is the system of revenue which prevails in the North-Western Provinces ?

A. There has been a new Settlement carried out there of leases on long terms to Zemindars of different calibre, some holding a single village or so, and others being the many heads of a village.

Q. Was that Settlement laid down on the principle rcommended by Mr. Bird?

A. I believe so, but the principle was not new; it was much older than Mr. Bird's time; it was a very ancient mode of assessment of Land Revenue in India.

Q. Has that worked well, in your opinion?

A. I think it works remarkably well, when in forming your assessment of revenue with the heads of villages you have not infringed the rights of any Zemindar..

Q. Are the Zemindars in the habit of assisting the Ryots in case of the failure of their crops?

A. Yes.

Q. In what way do they assist them?

A. They will assist them with funds, or with seed, corn, or with oxen; that is the advantage of the Village or the Zemindari Settlement.

Illustrious men like Cobden and Joseph Hume were members of the Select Committee, and it is interesting to read the witness's answers to their special questions.

Mr. Cobden: You have stated that one difficulty attending the Ryotwari System in Bombay arises from the widespread and general corruption of the native population, and that where you lose the services of Europeans, you find it impossible to obtain faithful administrators. How do you reconcile that with the statement you made in the former part of your evidence

as to the general morality and truthfulness of the population of India?

A. I do not think I made use of the term widespread corruption of the population; I certainly meant nothing of the kind. I meant that the under-paid native agents whom you must use, in consequence of the want of funds to obtain others, are not to be trusted with the disposal of the money remitted from the revenue, or to carry out the Ryotwari System in all its minute parts.

Q. If the mass of the population be truthful and honest, where is the difficulty in finding honest agents among them?

A. You impose laborious duties upon them, and do not give them adequate salaries to maintain themselves.

Mr. Hume: You have stated that the present Ryotwari System leaves the cultivators in a state of beggary, and you have expressed a doubt how far the Village System could be adopted. Is there any other step which you could recommend as a means of improving the condition of the cultivators of Bombay?

A. I do not think I expressed a doubt as to the Village System. It is the system I have always advocated and adopted.1

The Ryotwari Settlement went on in Bombay. The rules of the Settlement were finally gathered up in 1847 in what is known as the Joint Report, signed by H. E. Goldsmid, Captain Wingate, and Captain Davidson. This Joint Report of 1847 was the basis of the Bombay Settlement, as Thomason's Directions to Settlement Officers, published in 1844, was the basis of the Settlement in Northern India.

The principles of the Bombay Settlement, as explained in the Joint Report, were, firstly, that it was

1 First Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1853, pp. 194-197.

based on the assessment of each field separately; secondly, that it granted long leases for thirty years; thirdly, that it abandoned the basis of produce-estimates, and substituted the basis of the value of lands for distributing the assessment.

"The cultivator's title to occupation of the fields is indestructible while he continues to discharge the assessment laid upon them, though his engagement for each be annually renewed; and by placing the assessment upon each field, instead of on his whole holding, he is enabled, when circumstances make the course desirable, to relinquish any of the former, or take up others which may be unoccupied, so as to accommodate the extent of his liabilities to his means. The fixed field assessment for the term of thirty years, introduced by our surveys, thus secures to the cultivator the full advantages of a thirty years' lease without burdening him with any condition beyond that of discharging the assessment for the single year to which his engagement extends. He has thus all the security of tenure which the longest lease could confer, without the attendant liabilities and risk which his limited capital and precarious circumstances would be quite inadequate to meet."1

For the purpose of estimating the value of lands, all lands were classed under nine different classes, as shown in the table on the opposite page.2

Fields being thus classified, it remained to determine the Government demand for a whole district, so that it might be then distributed among the fields and villages contained in the district.

"It only remains to complete the Settlement to fix the absolute amount of assessment to be levied from the whole [district].

"The determination of this point is, perhaps, the most important and difficult operation connected with the survey, and requires, beyond all others, the exercise of great 1 Joint Report, paragraph 9. 2 Ibid., paragraph 42.

Judgment and discrimination on the part of the officer on whom it devolves. The first requisite is to obtain a clear understanding of the nature and effects of our past management of the district, which will be best arrived at by an examination and comparison of the annual revenue settlements of as many previous years as trustworthy data may be procurable for, and from local inquiries of the people during the progress of the survey. . .

"Furthermore, to assist in tracing the causes to which the prosperity or decline of villages, or tracts containing several villages are to be attributed, independent statements of the annual revenue settlements of each village should be prepared.

In other words, the Land Revenue of the province, including the conquered dominions, was more than doubled within four years from the conquest.

Wingate's settlement, commenced in 1836, was virtually completed by 1872, and showed an increase in the Land Revenue (excluding Poona and a few other places then under a revised settlement), from £1,534,000 to £2,032,000, or an increase of 32 per cent. Figures for the different districts are given below.1

1 Compiled from Bombay Administration Report, 1872-73, pp. 49 and

50. £1 is taken as equivalent to 10 rupees.