Book F. Chap. iv. Indian Those subordinate rights of the people to temporary possession which have grown up in peaceful times, Sect. 2. have ever remained precarious and imperfect: but the right of the ruler is the right of the strongest; Ryots. and when either intestine wars or foreign invasion have brought a new master to a district, his sword has restored the sovereign's claim in all its primitive clearness. The proportion of the produce taken by the sovereign, has on some ground or other perpetually varied; that is, when he has pretended to confine himself to any definite proportion at all. The laws seem to fix it at one-sixth, but in practice, this law or rule has been utterly disregarded. Strabo mentions, that in his time, ἐστὶν ἡ χώρα Βασιλικὴ πᾶσα, μισθοῦ δ ̓ αὐτὴν ἐπὶ τετάρταις ἐργάζονται τῶν καρπῶν, where by straining the Greek a little either way, the rent may appear to have been one-fourth or three-fourths of the produce. The Mogul conquerors exacted their rents in proportions, which varied considerably with the quality of the land, more particularly with its command of water. But no definite rate of rent has ever prevailed long in practice. Under the Hindoo governments, there had been a disposition to allow many subordinate claims to the possession of the soil, and to offices connected with the collection of the revenue, to become hereditary. Of the offices, the most important was that of the Zemindars. These were entrusted with the collection of the revenue in districts of different sizes, were entitled to a tenth of its amount, had Chap. iv. Indian BOOK I. sometimes lands assigned to them, and were endowed with very considerable authority. They were much in the habit of making advances of seed and stock to assist the cultivator, and of stipulating for repayment in the shape of produce. When the son had been allowed to succeed the father for some generations in such an office, the ties and interests which connected him with the people under him were so many and strong, that the displacing a Zemindar, unless for gross misconduct or for failure in payment of the sovereign's rent, was thought by himself and the ryots, to be an act of tyrannical oppression. The ryots very generally occupied their lands in common, and were collected into villages under officers of their own, who distributed to the cultivators and tradesmen their respective shares of the produce. The village offices and various trades became hereditary. The ryot too himself, the actual cultivator, was yet less likely than the superior officers to be disturbed in the possession of his lands. Provided the sovereign's share of the produce was paid, he had no interest in disturbing the humble agents of production, and a very great interest in retaining them. From similar reasons, a claim to mortgage or sell his possessory interest, was suffered to establish itself. But then all these subordinate interests were only respected in peaceful times, and under moderate governors; and these were rare in India. It has been hitherto the misfortune of that country, to see a rapid succession of short lived empires: the convulsions amidst which they were established, have Chap. iv. Ryots. hardly subsided, before the people have begun to Book I. be harassed by the consequences of their weakness and decay. While any really efficient general government has existed, it has been the obvious interest, Indian and usually the aim of the chiefs to act upon some definite system; to put some limit to their own exactions; to protect the ryots, and foster cultivation by giving reasonable security to all the interests concerned in it. The Mogul emperors acted in this spirit, while exercising a power over the soil, which had no real bounds, but those which they prescribed to themselves. But as the empire grew feeble, and the subordinate chieftains, Mahometan, or Hindoo, began to exercise an uncontrolled power in their districts, their rapacity and violence seem usually to have been wholly unchecked by policy or principle. There was at once an end to all system, moderation, or protection; ruinous rents, arbitrarily imposed, were collected in frequent military circuits, at the spear's point; and the resistance often attempted in despair, was unsparingly punished by fire and slaughter. Scenes like these, in the ancient history of India, have been frequently renewed, and succeeded rapidly short intervals of repose. They were of course disastrous. Half the rich territory of that country has never been cultivated, though swarming with a population to whom the permission to make it fruitful in moderate security, would have been happiness; and nothing can well exceed the ordinary poverty of the ryots, and the inefficiency of their means of cultivation. Book I. Chap. iv. Sect. 2. Indian The English, when they became the representatives of the Mogul emperor in Bengal, began by pushing to an extreme their rights as proprietors of the soil; and neglected the subordinate claims of the Zemindars and ryots, in a manner which was felt to be oppressive and tyrannical, although not perhaps in strictness illegal. A great reaction has taken place in their views and feelings; perceiving the necessity of restoring confidence to the cultivators, and anxious to shake off the imputation of injustice and tyranny, they showed themselves quite willing to part with their character of owners of the soil, and to retain simply that of its sovereign. An agreement was in consequence entered into, by which the Zemindars assumed a character, which certainly never before belonged to them, that of the direct landlords of those ryots, between whom and the supreme government they had before been only agents; agents, however, possessed of many imperfect but prescriptive rights to an hereditary interest in their office. The government, instead of exacting rents, was content to receive a fixed and permanent for which the new landlords were to be re tax; sponsible. There can be no doubt of the fair and even benevolent spirit, in which this arrangement was made. It seems however to be now generally admitted, that the claims of the Zemindars were overrated, and that if something less had been done for them, and something more for the security and independence of the ryots, the settlement, without being less just or generous, would have been much more expedient. SECTION III. On Ryot Rents in Persia. Chap. iv. Sect. 3. Persian Or all the despotic governments of the east, Book I. that of Persia is perhaps the most greedy, and the most wantonly unprincipled; yet the peculiar soil of that country has introduced some valuable Ryots. modifications of the general Asiatic system of ryot rents, and forced the government, unscrupulous as it is, to treat the various interests in the land subordinate to those of the crown, with considerable forbearance. One of the most remarkable geological features of the old world, is that great tract of sandy desert, which extends across its whole breadth, and imposes a peculiar character on the tribes which roam over its surface, or inhabit its borders. It forms the shores of the Atlantic on the western coast of Africa, and constitutes the Zahara or great sandy desert, which has contributed to conceal so long the central regions of that quarter of the globe from European curiosity. It forms next the surface of Egypt with the exception of the valley of the Nile; stretches across the Arabian wastes, to Syria, Persia, and upper India; and turning from Persia northwards, threads between Mushed and Herat' the Elburz and Parapomisan mountains, parts of the Caucasian or Himalayan chain; runs north-eastward through Tartary, and rounding the northern extremity of China, sinks finally, it is 1 For the course of these sands on the confines of Persia and Tartary, see Frazer's Khorassan, p. 253. |