terminates by the prince girding him with a sword, in the old forms of chivalry. It is an imposing ceremony, performed in a full assembly of the court, and one of the few which has never been relinquished. The fine paid, and the brand buckled to his side, a steed, turban, plume, and dress of honour given to the chief, the investiture is complete; the sequestrator returns to court, and the chief to his estate, to receive the vows and congratulations of his vassals."-Tod's Rajasthan, p. 158. After these extracts, it can hardly be necessary to state, that the doctrine as to the proprietary rights of the sovereign is not weakened by the condition of the noble Rajpoots. It would be a curious subject, were this the place for it, to trace the peculiar causes which have led the sovereigns of Rajasthan, to delegate, in a great measure, the military defence of their frontiers to chieftains so nearly resembling our feudal barons. Those causes may be partially discerned in the ties of blood which connect the sovereign and chiefs with their tribes in the mountainous character of their fortresses-in their being constantly liable to hostile incursions-and in their almost perpetual state of defensive war. We should, I think, after fairly examining the causes and results of the Rajpoot system, find much more reason to wonder, that the rights of the sovereign to the soil have not oftener generated such a system, than to conclude from its existence in Rajasthan that there are no such proprietary rights.

I cannot quit the feudal part of the question, without warmly recommending Col. Tod's book to the general reader, and to the student of history, and of man. The system of modified dependence on the chief for military services, as established in this part of India, has produced a resemblance to the state of Europe at a certain period of the progress of feuds, which is most striking, interesting and instructive. That resemblance may be traced in the tenures and laws of the Rajpoots in the mixed political results of these both good and evil-and in the

moral, and we may almost say poetical characteristics of the population—in the deep and enthusiastic feeling which accompany their notions of fealty—in the emulous courage, the desperate fidelity of the nobles-and in many lofty and romantic traits of manners worthy to have sprung out of the very bosom of chivalry, and extending their influence to the dark beauties of the Zenana, as well as to their warrior kindred. High born dames in distress, still there, as they once did in Europe, send their tokens to selected champions, who whether invested with sovereign power, or occupying a less distinguished station, are equally bound to speed to their aid, under the penalty of being stigmatized for ever as cravens and dishonored. Col. Tod, himself, can boast an honor (well deserved by zealous devotion and disinterested services,) which many a preux chevalier would have joyfully dared a thousand deaths to obtain, that of being the chosen friend and champion of more than one princess, whose regal, and indeed celestial, descents make the longest genealogies of Europe look mean.

owns?

The next question arising out of Col. Tod's book is this. Are the ryots in Rajast'han practically, as he conceives them to be, freeholders in any sense in which an English proprietor is called the freeholder of the land he I began in the text by remarking, that the ryot has very generally a recognized right to the hereditary occupation of his plot of ground, while he pays the rent demanded of him: and the question is, whether that right in Rajast'han practically amounts to a proprietary right or not. Now a distinction before suggested in the text, seems to afford the only real criterion which can enable us to determine this question fairly. Is the ryot at rack-rent? has he, or has he not, a beneficial interest in the soil? can he obtain money for that interest by sale? can he make a landlord's rent of it? To give a cultivator an hereditary interest at a variable rack-rent, and then to call his right to till, a freehold right, would clearly be little better than

mockery. To subject such a person to the payment of more than a rack-rent, to leave him no adequate remuneration for his personal toil, and still to call him a freehold proprietor, would be something more bitter than mere mockery. To establish by law, and enforce cruelly in practice, fines and punishments to avenge his running away from his freehold, and refusing to cultivate it for the benefit of his hard task master, would be to convert him into a predial slave: and this, although a very natural consequence of the mode of establishing such freehold rights would make the names of proprietor and owner almost ridiculous.

The use of the criterion here pointed out, is made very palpable by Sir T. Munro in a "Minute on the State of the Country and on the Condition of the People," dated the 31st of December, 1824. "Had the public assessment, as pretended, ever been, as in the books of their sages, only a sixth or a fifth, or even only a fourth of the gross produce, the payment of a fixed share in kind, and all the expensive machinery requisite for its supervision, never could have been wanted. The simple plan of a money assessment might have been at once resorted to, in the full confidence that the revenue would every year, in good or bad seasons, be easily and punctually paid. No person who knows any thing of India revenue can believe that the Rayet, if his fixed assessment were only a fifth or a fourth of the gross produce, would not every year, whether the season were good or bad, pay it without difficulty; and not only do this, but prosper under it beyond what he has ever done at any former period. Had such a moderate assessment ever been established, it would undoubtedly have been paid in money, because there would have been no reason for continuing the expensive process of making collections in kind. It was because the assessment was not moderate, that assessments in kind were introduced or continued for a money rent equivalent to the amount could not have been realized one year with another. The

Hindoo Governments seem to have often wished that land should be both an hereditary and a saleable property; but they could not bring themselves to adopt the only practicable mode of effecting it, a low assessment.-Life of Munro, Vol. III. p. 331.

Ibid. p. 336.-"Rayets sometimes have a landlord's rent; for it is evident that whenever they so far improve their land as to derive from it more than the ordinary profit of stock, the excess is landlord's rent; but they are never sure of long enjoying this advantage, as they are constantly liable to be deprived of it by injudicious over assessment. While this state of insecurity exists, no body of substantial landholders can ever arise; nor can the country improve, or the revenue rest on any solid foundation. In order to make the land generally saleable, to encourage the Rayets to improve it, and to regard it as a permanent hereditary property, the assessment must be fixed, and more moderate in general than it now is; and above all, so clearly defined as not to be liable to increase from ignorance or caprice."

Ibid. p. 339. "The land of the Baramahl will probably in time all become saleable, even under its present assessment; but private landed property is of slow growth in countries where it has not previously existed, and where the Government revenue is nearly half the produce; and we must not expect that it can be hastened by regulations or forms of settlement, or by any other way than by adhering steadily to a limited assessment, and lowering it wherever, after full experience, it may still in particular places be found too high. By pursuing this course, or, in other words, by following what is now called the Rayetwar system, we shall see no sudden change or improvement. The progress of landed property will be slow, but we may look with confidence to its ultimate and general establishment.

Ibid. p. 344.-"If we wish to make the lands of the Rayets yield them a landlord's rent, we have only to lower and fix the assessment, all then in time have the great body of the Rayets possessing landed properties, yielding a landlord's rent, but small in extent."

Ibid. p. 352. "It may be said that Government having set a limit upon its demand upon the Zemindar, he will also set a limit to his demand upon the Rayet, and leave. him the full produce of every improvement, and thus enable him to render his land a valuable property.

we have no reason to suppose that this will be the case, either from the practice of the new Zemindars during the twenty years they have existed, or from that of the old Zemindars during a succession of generations. In old Zemindarries, whether held by the Rajahs of the Circars, or the Poligars of the more southern provinces, which have from a distant period been held at a low and fixed peshcush, no indulgence has been shown to the Rayets, no bound has been set to the demand upon them. The demand has risen with improvement, according to the custom of the country, and the land of the Rayet has no saleable value; we ought not, therefore, to be surprised that in the new Zemindarries, whose assessment is so much higher, the result has been equally unfavourable to the Rayets. The new Zemindarries will, by division among heirs and failures in their payments, break up into portions of one or two villages; but this will not better the condition of the Rayet. It will not fix the rent of the land, nor render it a valuable property; it will merely convert one large Zemindarry into several small Zemindarries or Mootahs, and Mootahs of a kind of much more injurious than those of the Baramahl to the Rayets; because, in the Baramahl, the assessment of the Rayets' land had previously been fixed by survey, while in the new Zemindarries of the Circars it had been left undefined. The little will in time share the fate of the great Zemindarries ; they will be divided, and fail, and finally revert to Govern