Chap. iv.

Sect. 3.

Persian

irrigation, which were usually made by them. Their Boox I. right to the tenth of the produce seems to be now so completely severed from the duties of collection, that the jealousy of the Persian monarchs forbids Ryots. them sometimes even to reside in their villages, to prevent, it is said, their tyrannizing over the ryots3, more probably to get rid of their interference in resisting the exactions of the government officers, which it is found they can do more effectually than the ryots themselves*.

There are persons in Persia who boast, perhaps with truth, that these estates, as they call them, have been in the hands of their family for a long succession of years. Did there exist a real body of landed proprietors in Persia, as secure in the possession of their heritage as these men are in their limited interests, the despotism of the Shah would at once be shackled. But men entitled to collect one-tenth of the produce from tenants hereditary like themselves, while the great sovereign proprietor is collecting a fifth at the same time, are little likely to acquire an influence in the country, sufficient to protect either the subordinate ryots or themselves; and accordingly the chief weight of what is probably one of the worst governments in the world, rests upon the necks of the cultivators. "There is no class of men (says Frazer)

Chap. iv.

Sect. 3.

Book I. "whose situation presents a more melancholy pic"ture of oppression and tyranny than the farmers " and cultivators of the ground in Persia. They "live continually under a system of extortion and "injustice, from which they have no means of es

Persian
Ryots.

66

66

cape, and which is the more distressing, because "it is indefinite both in form and extent, for no man can tell when, how, or to what amount de"mands upon him may without warning be made. "It is upon the farmers and peasantry that the "whole extortion practised in the country finally "alights. The king wrings from his ministers and "governors; they must procure the sums required "from the heads of districts, who in their turn "demand it from the zabuts or ketkhodahs of vil"lages, and these must at last squeeze it from the "ryots; each of these intermediate agents must also " have their profits, so that the sum received by "the king bears small proportion to that which is "paid by the ryots. Every tax, every present,

66

every fine, from whomsoever received or demanded "in the first instance, ultimately falls on them, "and such is the character of their rulers, that the "only measure of these demands is the power to "extort on the one hand, and the ability to give

SECTION IV.

On Ryot Rents in Turkey.

Sect. 4.

WHEN the Turks, after subduing the provinces Book I. of the Greek Empire, finally quartered themselves Chap. iv. upon its ruins, the foundation of their system of revenue and government, like that of other Tartar Turkish tribes, rested upon an assumption that their leader had become the legitimate proprietor of the conquered soil.

The rent imposed upon the cultivators appears to have been originally calculated at one-tenth of the gross produce; and the estimated value of each district, at that rate, was at a very early date registered in the treasury. The registers are still used, in accounting with the Pachas of the different provinces. But as the rent paid by each district never varies, whatever changes take place in its cultivation, the decay of agriculture and population has loaded many of the peasants with much heavier burthens than they at first bore. One-seventh of the produce where the cultivator is a Turk, onefifth where he is a Christian, have appeared to later travellers in Greece to be about the average actual payment to the crown.

The violence with which the Turks exemplified in practice their Asiatic notions of the supreme right of their leader to the soil, will be best judged of by their next measure.

The Sultan granted a considerable portion of his proprietary rights to others, for the purpose of form

Ryots.

Book I. ing a sort of feudal militia. The officers of rank received allotments of land called ziamets and timars, in which their rights represent those of the sovereign, and the number created of these exceeded 50,000. The ziamet differed from the timars only in being larger. For these grants they were bound to perform military services, with a specified number of men. Their forces constituted, till the rise of the Janissaries, the main force of the Empire, and amounted it is said to 150,000 men. Similar grants are known in India by the name of Iaghires, in Persia by that of Teecools, but they were established less systematically in those countries than in Turkey. There these lands have never become hereditary. They are still strictly lifehold. In the early days of their institution, use was made of them to excite military emulation. On the death of the possessor, one of the bravest of his comrades was immediately appointed to his estate, and one timar has been known to be thus granted eight times in a single campaign1. The disposal of them, however, has long become wholly venal. An Aga not unfrequently purchases during his life the grant of the reversion to his family; but if he neglects to do this, his relatives are dispossessed at his death, unless they outbid all other applicants. With the exception of these interests for life, and of the estates vested in the Ulema or expounders of Mohammedan law, there are no distinctly recognized proprietary rights in Turkey. Although there, as among the ryots of India and Persia, and elseBook I.

Chap. iv.

Sect. 4.

Ryots.

where throughout the east, there exist claims to the hereditary possession of land. While the peasant pays to the Sultan, or to the Aga to whose Zaim or Timar he belongs, the legal portion of Rurkish his produce, his right to occupy and transmit his lands is not contested, and is secure, as far as any thing is secure there. In Greece the lands were, before the present convulsion, very generally cultivated by the ancient mortitæ or metayer tenants, who paid to the Agas half of their produce. Whether the lands thus cultivated consist exclusively of the domain lands attached to the Aga's Timar, or whether this rent is paid in consideration of stock advanced to the rayah, to enable him to cultivate better the lands of which he is himself the hereditary tenant, I have no materials for judging. It is probable that mortitæ are found of both descriptions.

There are evidently some advantages in the Turkish system compared with those of India or Persia. The permanence and moderation of the miri or land rent, is a very great one. If collected on an equitable system, that rent would be no more than a reasonable land tax, and the universal proprietorship of the Sultan would be reduced to a mere nominal or honorary superiority, like that claimed by many of the Christian monarchs of Europe. We may add, that the Turkish government has never been so wholly unequal to the task of controlling its officers, as the feeble dynasties of Delhi in their decline: nor so rapacious and capricious in its own exactions as the Shahs of Persia:

I