GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 201 years after his arrival in India Lord Cornwallis made the Permanent Zemindaree Settlement of Bengal the law of the land. 8. That the first effect of the regulations was to bring, under the operation of the Sale Law, a large number of estates to the hammer, and greatly to impoverish several influential Zemindars. 9. That a new Act-Act VII. of 1799, which relaxed the extreme strictness of the Sale Law, and gave the Zemindar increased power over the defaulting Ryot, greatly improved the condition of the former, and diminished the number of sales. 10. That by successive enactments the relations of the Zemindar and Ryot were further improved; and that at the present time the quantity of land sold for arrears of revenue is very small in proportion to the area under assessment. 11. That the assessment is in itself a moderate assessment, and does not press severely upon the industrial energies of the people. 12. That from the very first the provinces have prospered under the Permanent Settlement-that large tracts of waste land have been reclaimed that capital has accumulated-and that the country has been exempted from the periodical famines which had so grievously afflicted them before. Lastly, that the peasantry of Bengal, in so far as their happiness is affected by the Revenue Regulations, cannot be said to be more miserable than the peasantry of any other part of the world. CHAPTER III. Our First Territory in Madras-The Northern Circars-Old Revenue System— WHILST in the latter years of the last century the ser- On our first acquisition of these territories the Company's servants did very much what they were doing in Bengal. They knew nothing about landed tenures and The Northern Circars formed part of the ancient kingdom of Ooria and Telinga. The territory which passed into our hands, and which consisted of Chicacole, Rajahmundry, Ellore, and Condapelly, had been granted by Salabut Jung to the French East India Company; but on the capture of Ma- THE NORTHERN CIRCARS. 203 revenue settlements. They could carry the revenue to account, when it was collected; but they did not know how to collect it. So they let the native administration take its course they entered into engagements with one or two large capitalists, for the payment of a certain amount of annual revenue or rent, and left them to collect it from farmers and under-tenants and others, and did not much concern themselves about the manner of its collection. ance. This arrangement, however, was but of brief continuIn 1769, the native administration was abolished, and the management of the Circars was placed in the hands of the Company's servants-of certain provincial chiefs and councils, who had no administrative knowledge or experience of any kind, and could not talk the native languages with more fluency or correctness than a cadet in the first year of his inexperience, or a Chief Justice at the end of his career. But the condition of affairs before their interference had been so irredeemably bad, that they could not introduce greater disorder into the administration, or greater misery among the people. There were two kinds of landed tenures then recognised. There were Zemindarry lands-lands held by certain chiefs as their hereditary estates, paying tribute to the Government of the day; and there were "Havelly" lands, or "portions of territory not in the hands of Zemindars, but in those of the Government, and in which it was, therefore, optional to adopt any system of management for collecting the land-revenue from the Ryots."* The land was for the most part leased out to speculators, grasping Dubashes and others, who had as little regard for the welfare of the cultivators as the worst of the Zemindars. On both descriptions of lands the Ryots were defrauded and oppressed. The Zemindars, or contrac*Fifth Report. tors sub-rented the lands. The middle-man had to make his profits, and so it happened that little more than a fifth or sixth of the produce could be retained by the actual cultivator. ment. On the Circars passing into our hands, the Company's servants were glad to make any arrangement which would save them the necessity of a detailed management of unfamiliar business, so they allowed the Zemindars and large renters to appropriate the revenues on condition of their paying certain stipulated amounts to GovernThe provincial chiefs, ignorant of the language, and inexperienced as revenue-collectors, were obliged to conduct all inquiries through their native underlings, or rather to leave them to do all the business for themselves. Little or no progress was made towards good government, and, probably, none for some time would have been made, but that the state of affairs in the Northern Circars fixed the attention of the home authorities; and in those days the Court of Directors greatly surpassed their Indian servants in enlightenment and benevolence. They were eager to see a better system of administration introduced into their Madras territories, and they ordered that a Special Commission, or, as it was denominated, a Committee of Circuit-to be composed of certain members of the Madras Councilshould proceed into the districts and institute rigid inquiries into their general condition, with a view to the definition of the rights and the protection of the interests of all classes. The instructions of the Court of Directors were conceived in a liberal and enlightened spirit, and clearly and emphatically expressed. But the Committee of Circuit was a failure. The Provincial Courts thwarted its operations. The Zemindars would render the Commissioners no assistance, but rather endeavoured to throw dust in their eyes. They could not speak the native lan EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 205 guages, and all their information reached them through the lying medium of men who were interested in concealing or distorting the truth. So it happened that though the Committee of Circuit continued its operations from year's end to year's end, no fixed system was introduced. Annual leases were granted in the first instance then settlements for three or five years. The "Havelly" lands were let, in most cases, on the system of Village Settlements, but they were very imperfectly made. And altogether the humane intentions of the Home Government were most inadequately fulfilled. But the tendency of all our administrative efforts at this time was towards gradual improvement. In 1786, a Board of Revenue, after the Bengal fashion, was established at Madras; but it was in continual collision with the Provincial Councils, which obstructed the working of its machinery, whilst they did no good by themselves. So Lord Hobart, who was then Governor of Madras, abolished the Provincial Councils, and appointed collectors in their stead. But the collectors, like the other functionaries of whom I have spoken, had small acquaintance with the native languages, and were compelled to leave the minutiae of revenue detail to their Dewans and Dubashes, and other native underlings, who throve upon the ignorance of their masters. But the Permanent Zemindaree Settlement had been by this time introduced into Bengal; and it had many advocates in high places both at home and abroad. The Madras Board of Revenue had been studying the minutes of Shore and Cornwallis; and the Court of Directors had written out, that "being thoroughly sensible of the propriety and expediency of the late revenue and judicial regulations established in Bengal, they directed the Madras Government to consider the expediency of adopting similar plans for the Northern |
