and Revenue Commissioner, qualified to form a judgment of the system, and of Rev. Com.'s Joint the manner in which its details will work, some more experienced assistant, or the collector himself, should be associated with the superintendent.

Letter.

Report.

16. Approved. A proclamation to the effect of Rule 1 should be published [37] when the revised rates are introduced in a district, and every patell furnished with a copy.

Rule 2.

17. I think we should take the opinion of Dr. Gibson regarding this rule.

Rule 4.

18. The remarks made by Revenue Commissioner render necessary that I should mention that, in this rule, it is clearly inferred that the unarable spots alluded to may be made arable by the application of capital for the purpose; as, for instance, by the conversion of the bed of a stream into good soil by throwing a dam across it, in order to accumulate soil behind it; and one object of the rule clearly is to secure the full benefit of such improvements to the occupant of the field, during the 30 years for which the revenue settlement is to continue.

19. In reviewing Rule 13 (paras. 32 and 33 of Minute), I shall have occasion to show that the Revenue Commissioner is wrong in thinking the present rule at variance with it.

Rule 5.

20. This rule, of course, supposes the field to be correctly entered in the name of the real holder, and when another name, through fraud or carelessness on the part of the village officers, has been substituted, it would be the duty of the collector to rectify the error.

21. Contending claims to the occupancy of fields should be settled, if possible, when introducing the new settlement; but when once a particular individual has been recognized as the holder of a field in the Government books, and the revenue due on it has been actually collected from and credited to him, without any protest being made by any other interested party, a sufficient title should be considered as constituted, and all inquiry by the revenue officers, as to the right of occupancy, be for the future barred. We shall vainly attempt to confer security of tenure if the Government books are not held to be authoritative evidence, regarding the right of occupancy, in all cases where they have not been designedly or inadvertently falsified.

Rule 6.

22. Approved, provided no meerasdaree or other recognized inheritable rights are interfered with.

Rules 7 and 8.

23. Cases such as those contemplated by the Revenue Commissioner, Southern Division, will, I hope, be very rare; but I think that, to avert the hardships he contemplates, a discretionary power may be granted the collectors as to the enforcement of the rules, when any of the co-sharers in a field have held possession of their land for upwards of 20 years.

25. This rule is in conformity to the views expressed in the Government letter of 12th September 1847, No. 390, and should be approved of; copy of the [38] rule and of our instructions thereon being forwarded for the information of Dr. Gibson.

Rule 11.

26. I object to a ryut being prohibited from cutting down trees growing on the boundaries of his field. They are frequently the only places on which a

ryut can grow trees, without interfering with his ordinary crops. The rest of this rule is substantially the same as that laid down in the Government letter just quoted, except that it is relieved of the somewhat impracticable condition of requiring trees to be planted in lieu of those cut down. I cannot but think that, under the security of tenure and moderate assessment of the survey settlement, self-interest will ensure a sufficiency of trees being planted for the wants of the population, especially if the local officers take proper interest in the matter. Copy of this rule, and of our instructions, should be sent to Dr. Gibson.

Rule 12.

27. If I rightly understand this rule, its object, as well as that of Rules 7 and 8, is to discourage the subdivision of fields, so that, by being retained entire, their sale and transfer, under the provisions of Rule 9, may be promoted. 28. It would be a hardship to refuse to recognize shares of fields already entered in the Government books; but the rights of such sharers are protected by Rules 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. In giving out waste for cultivation, however, which is the case provided for in the rule under consideration, there are no prior rights involved; and we have merely to look to the method best calculated to promote the interests of the ryuts and Government.

29. If fields are to be permitted to be split up without limit, and the occupant of every fractional share recognized as holding direct of Government, the inevitable result will be the ultimate subdivision of the whole land into very minute occupancies, accompanied by the impoverishment of the whole agricultural class. Farms will become so small as barely to provide subsistence for those occupied in their tillage, and the surplus from which the assessment is to be paid so trifling, that the slightest deficiency in the ordinary crop will suffice to annihilate it. With every precaution it may be impossible to prevent the subdivision of farms as population increases; but, assuredly, no opportunity should be lost of checking this tendency.

30. In the case of a ryut, in whose name a field is entered, and who holds it jointly with others, dying, the want of a record to show the liability of the other sharers would be of but little consequence, for they would be amenable for the revenue under the provisions of sections 3 and 5 of Regulation XVII. of 1827; and the desire of retaining possession of the land would more probably make the inferior holders anxious to defray their shares of the revenue, in order to obtain receipts from the village accountant, with a view to strengthen their claims to continue in possession.

31. But were even the rule to involve the certain sacrifice of balances of revenue due by ryuts dying under the circumstances contemplated by the Revenue Commissioner, instead of the remote possibility of such a contingency, it would still be better to submit to the loss than to sanction the alternative of an unlimited subdivision of fields

Rule 13.

32. It is evident that this rule has been misread by the Revenue Commissioner, and hence his conclusion that it is inconsistent with Rule 4.

33. Rule 13 does not apply to fields only a portion of whose land is unarable; it applies to fields entered in the survey registers as wholly unsuited in their then state for cultivation, and upon which no assessment is placed at all. For such fields, or rather divisions of the village area, provision has been made in the 2d of the rules following the 17th para. of the joint report; and the present rules provide for the assessment of any portions that may be cleared and rendered fit for cultivation.

34. Approved.

Rules 14 and 15.

Rule 16.

35. This rule only reserves a portion of the fields alluded to in Rule 13, as unsuited in their then state for cultivation, and unassessed, for free pasturage, and this indulgence will, therefore, be limited to the villages in which such unarable fields are to be found; but I agree with the Revenue Commissioner in thinking we should continue the further restriction, already imposed by us, of the

privilege

privilege to the case of villages which have hitherto enjoyed the right of free Rev. Com.'s Joint pasturage.

36. The practice of selling unarable waste field by field, enjoined by this rule, promises, in my opinion, to be more acceptable to the villagers, and more productive of revenue to Government, than the plan of selling the entire unarable wastes of several villages or districts in the lump to parties engaging for the whole.

Letter. Report.

38. For the important object of taking up or relinquishing a field, which no ryut could have occasion to do more than once a twelvemonth, and most, not once in a number of years, it does not seem to involve much hardship to require the attendance of the applicant at the district cutchurry, when the matter could be at once finally and satisfactorily settled. If the village officers are to take the agreements, many opportunities will be afforded them for jobbing in the disposal of land, and greater inconvenience eventually occasioned to the ryuts, through subsequent investigation being rendered necessary by the village officers' proceedings being complained of or resisted.

39. With reference to the period to be fixed for throwing up lands, "the Mrigsal, or commencement of the revenue year," is the time within which the law (clause 1, section 6, of Regulation XVII. of 1827) requires intimation should be given. I believe that the Honourable Mr. Reid, when principal collector of the Concan, required that it should be given by March, and the legality of this order was never called into question. The three superintendents recommend the close of April, that is, the termination of the official year.

40. As the number of fields likely to be relinquished in a moderately a-sessed district would be very small, it is not of much importance whether the end of April or 5th of June be fixed upon as the period within which land must be thrown up; the latter period may, therefore, be fixed, as it is the one sanctioned by law, and recommended, and which the Revenue Commissioner recommends should be prescribed.

Rule 21.

41. Regarding the objection raised by the Revenue Commissioner, Southern Division, to this most important rule, I have obtained the opinion of Captain Wingate; and, as the arguments he uses appear to me conclusive, I cannot do better than quote them in his own words:

"The interval of six weeks required by this rule, instead of one month, between the periods when the instalments fall due, will give the ryuts more time to arrange for the sale of the portion of their produce necessary to make up the amount required. Produce will not be forced on the market to the same extent as at present, and, consequently, will fetch better prices. With every postponement of the period for collecting the instalments, hitherto introduced, the revenue has been realized with greater ease and certainty than before, just in proportion to the extent the ryuts have thereby been enabled to substitute bona fide sales of produce in the market for usurious loans from the village banker, as a means of obtaining money for the payment of their dues to Government. The greater interval of six weeks between the instalments, and the postponement of the last to the 1st of June, in the case of districts where late crops are an important part of the harvest, would give the cultivators great additional facilities for obtaining money for the payment of their rents, and by so doing would add as much to the certainty as to the ease with which the collections would be made. The saving to the agricultural class by the proposed alteration would exceed a hundred fold any possible loss of revenue to Government from the deaths of individuals by cholera in April and May; and it may safely be concluded, that the method of collection which is the cheapest to the ryuts is also the best for Government in the end, as the extent of land in cultivation, and the security of the revenue, must ever be dependent on the amount of agricultural capital in the country.

"Another important object of the rule is to prevent the amount of the instalments fluctuating with the proportion of early and late crops sown in each year by individual ryuts, as at present is the case in some collectorates, and the continuance of which is recommended by the Revenue Commissioner. The latter 999.

Rev. Com.'s Joint
Letter.

Report.

practice offers great facilities for the exercise of favouritism or oppression by the village officers, into whose hands it places, unchecked, the power of making the early instalments heavy or light, and this power is now very frequently abused. But by making the instalments of invariable amount, and to fall due at stated periods, under all circumstances, the cultivator will have a certain prospect before him, and be made to trust to his own exertions, without reference to the likes and dislikes of the village officers, for being able to meet his liabilities. The certainty of the one plan will promote habits of foresight and economy; the uncertainty of the other tends to paralyse exertion, and induce an indolent reliance on fortune instead.

"There is only a difference of one month between the periods fixed by the [41] rule for the instalments of early and late districts; so that no great inconvenience could possibly be occasioned to the cultivators should a failure of the monsoon rains require an unusual proportion of late crops to be sown in any of the former districts."

42. Approved.

Rules 22, 23, and 24.

District and Village Accounts.

43. I am certain that the introduction of a simple and uniform system of accounts through all the surveyed districts would add so much to the efficiency of our native establishments as to render unnecessary additions, now urgently required, to their numerical strength, and would also considerably lessen the labour of the collectors and their assistants in checking the work of the subordinate hoozoor district and village agents.

44. The two Revenue Commissioners should be requested immediately to report how far, and with what results, they have carried into effect the instructions conveyed in the Government letters of 24th April 1846 (Nos. 1924 and 1925); they should also be directed to transmit, for the opinion of Captain Wingate, the forms of accounts of what they may have approved.

Remissions.

45. My minute on this subject was dated the 19th June, that of the Honourable Mr. Reid, 28th, and of Honourable Mr. Willoughby, 29th idem. The letter to the Revenue Commissioner framed from these minutes was not despatched until 5th October. I have directed the Revenue Secretary to ascertain the cause of this delay.

Publication of Correspondence.

46. I approve of the suggestions of the writers of the joint report, and the Revenue Commissioner, Southern Division.

16 November 1847.

(signed)

G. Clerk.

[42]

MINUTE by the Honourable Mr. Reid, dated 16 May 1848.

AMONG the questions discussed in the paras. 1 to 10 of the joint report is that of the superiority of an annual settlement with each ryut, according to his actual holding for any year, over a settlement by lease for a certain number of years, and I do not feel quite assured that the decision which the committee arrive at is correct. It is, at least, not so clearly exemplified as to remove all doubt as to the accuracy of the result.

2. The arguments in favour of the annual settlement are, that it permits the ryut to contract or extend the sphere of his labour according to the means at his immediate command, a privilege of immense importance in a country where the capital of the agriculturist is not only small in itself, but subject to great fluctuations from the effect of variations of the season (vide para. 44 of Mr. Goldsmid's and Captain Wingate's report of the 27th October 1840), and that it gives him all the advantages of a long lease, without any of its disadvantages (para. 8 of joint report).

3. The arguments on the other side are, I think, very strong, and I should regret to see it laid down as an unchangeable maxim, applicable to all districts and

and to all states of society, that an annual settlement must be made with each ryut for the land which he may choose to hold.

X. Revenue Survey and Assessment

4. It cannot be a question that a poor ryut, having a small agricultural stock, under the Bombay cannot well be bound by a lease. His few cattle may die, and then, however Presidency. favourable may be the terms of his lease, he must relinquish his fields, or the lease must be broken up. But let us hope that this is not the case with all. It cannot be that we have not now, and never are to have, any accumulation of agricultural capital. Our farmers will not always be dependent on the results of one season; nor will they necessarily be ruined if it bring with it scanty crops, loss of cattle, or other misfortunes. The very object of our revising the assessment throughout our provinces is to eradicate the hand-to-mouth system which has so long prevailed with the agricultural classes, and to create agricultural capital; and we should endeavour to combine with this object those of inducing these classes to look more to the future, of exciting in them feelings of independence, of exempting them as much as possible from the pupilage and surveillance of the Government officers, and of attaching them to the soil, and to their own particular portion of it.

5. I know not how these objects can be obtained more decidedly than by the grant of leases for lengthened periods. While in the continuance of the system of annual settlements, I can foresee, although the great object of leaving the ryut free is gained, that the others run the risk of being wholly neglected.

6. A ryut, who, looking beyond the present year, knows that he will have to provide for the payment of a certain revenue for many years to come, must necessarily acquire more prudent and thrifty habits than he who looks to the present year alone, and who knows that, if he choose to be idle, he has no responsibility.

7. The independence of feeling which every man ought to possess can seldom arise when a man knows that he holds his land, as it were, by an annual tenure; that if he fail to till a certain field, and it be omitted from his holding for one year, his rival may step into his place, and perhaps deprive him of his field for ever; and nothing, perhaps, more tends to diminish such feeling than the inquisitional visits of Government officers, inquiring what is the extent of his cultivation, and regulating the fluctuating amount of his rent.

8. A lease imposes a wholesome responsibility upon the ryut, and secures the Government against fluctuation in the revenue. That responsibility the ryut cannot be expected to incur without some equivalent, nor should the Government expect to gain the security without some sacrifice. I think this point has not been sufficiently attended to in our attempts to introduce leases, and hence our failure in parts of Goozerat. We desired to secure every thing to Government, without making any sacrifice in favour of the lessee.

9. If a farmer possess 10 fields, assessed at 10 rupees each, or together at 100 rupees, we cannot expect that he will bind himself to pay 100 rupees for 30 years for those fields. He would pay no more if he took out no lease, and might often have to pay less. But if the Government, in order to secure a certain unfluctuating revenue, consent to give him a lease for 30 years at 95 rupees, it might be well [43] worth the while of a ryut, possessing some capital, to take such a lease. This is the principle on which, I think, leases might successfully be granted.

10. I think the observations in paras. 11 to 18 of the joint report, on the division of the land into fields, and in paras. 29 to 31, on boundary marks, judicious.

Village Boundary Disputes.

11. The rules proposed for the settlement of these disputes by the survey are certainly deserving of a fair trial, and if they have succeeded in Dharwar, they may be equally efficacious elsewhere. I approve of the course proposed in the Honourable the President's 7th para.

Measurement and Mapping.

12. I am happy to observe the great importance attached to the preparation of the village maps. If I recollect right, Lieutenant Nash was opposed to the process, but I entirely agree in the views expressed respecting these maps in the present joint report.