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would receive more than double the revenues these provinces ever produced to him, and the Eaft-India Company would become in a short time the richest body of fubjects in the world.

"On a candid and attentive perufal of my third chapter +, it will be obvious, from the whole tenor of it, that it is calculated to incite you to attempt the poffeffion of this country in truft for the Emperor, and thereby put a period to a diftructive and inadequate war: but can you imagine I excite you to this from the confideration of the worth of the provinces, according to the rates ftanding on the King's books? no; it is from the confideration of their real value and actual produce, and the farther confideration of how much this produce would certainly be increased under an English Soubah.

* Interesting Hift. Events, Vol. I. p. 231. + Ibid. Vol. I. p. 177.

‡ Ibid. Vol. I. p. 211, fupplementary letter to H. C. Boulton, Efq. and the Directors, December 1765.

"You have been told, gentlemen, that the revenues of Bengal are rated in the King's books under three crores of ficca rupees; if it is faid the lands are fo rated, you have been told the truth; thefe only go into the Royal Treasury, and, to the best of my remembrance, are rated two crores feventy-five or feventy-fix lacks, and fome odd, thousands rupees. Ought this information, without looking farther, to be taken as a proof of my exaggeration? when my estimate exprefly includes the rents of the lands, and the revenues arifing from their produce, which I have estimated conjunctly at eleven crores, and now proceed to the proof*, refting it upon what those converfant in your affairs in India will admit to be an indifputable fact, that the lands throughout the provinces bear nearly a proportional value to each other."

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I repeat then, and infift on my estimate, that exclufive of the royalties, upon an obvious and fair calculation, the whole lands of the three provinces have never

* Statement of the value of the Pergunnahs, Intereft, Hift. Events, p. 216.

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yielded lefs than 11 crores 40,000 ficca rupees per annum ; and deducting for Oriffa I crore and a half, at which the lands and revenues of that province are ufually eftimated, there will remain nine crores and a half for Bengal and Bahar, to which annex the royalties, and they will more than make good the above deduction for Oriffa.

Though I have, in my general estimate, confined myself to the confideration of the known and established rents and revenues of the provinces, yet the extra items fpecified above no lefs conftitute a part of their value, and though these items have for a long courfe of years been concealed and embezzled from the government, that is no reason why they may not in future be brought to account by a British Scubah at the head of it, an event which I will still hope is not far diftant.

Governor Holwell concludes his Letter to the Directors, December, 1765*, “ with

* Interesting Hist. Events, 2d edit. Vol. I. p. 220.

a few anecdotes relative to the lands and revenues of Bengal.

"The rents of the lands are the property of the Emperor, in confequence of which he has a royal Dewan in every Soubahdary, but there is always a good understanding between the Dewan and the Soubah; they never are at a lofs in pretending reafons for the rents falling fhort, though the whole is ftrictly and fully collected what is diverted from the royal treasury is divided between the Dewan and the Soubah, of which the latter always takes the lion's share.

"Though the amount of the rents on the King's books is near three crores a year, yet the highest ftipulation made with the Emperor was one crore one lack one thoufand one hundred and one rupees, by the Soubah Soujah Khan, and this was regularly remitted to the royal treasury until the ufurpation of Aliverdi. He, on pretence of the diftreffes of the provinces, (to which diftreffed ftate he himself had brought them) made a new ftipulation of

fifty-two lacks per annum, to which he paid no regard longer than the Vizier Monfoor Ali Khan's army was within a few days march of Patna, A. D. 1750; nor has the royal treasury benefited a rupee from these provinces fince that period.

"The established ground rent is three ficca rupees per Begah, about one third of an English acre, throughout the empire; but Aliverdi Khan made the first innovation in this established law, and affeffed the land four annas ficca, or a quarter of a rupee, upon each Begah, on pretence of the Chout paid to the Mahrattas, and raised the rents of the Rajabs and Zemindars in that proportion; these had no other means of reimburfing themselves but by levying it on the farmers, and they again on the tenants.

"Subsequently, the lands were, on various pretended exigencies, at different periods, affeffed to ten fixteenths of a rupee, though every additional tax on land above

• Reyutty.

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