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CHAP. IV.

ON THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF REVENUE.

Permanent Settlement.

NOTHING can be more important to the interests of India, than a well-regulated administration of the land revenue. When we consider not only the great proportion of the population engaged directly in the affairs of husbandry, but that the employment of so many is limited to, and consequently their entire thoughts are engrossed with, the single object of providing the bare necessaries of life, we shall be able, in some degree, to appreciate the vast importance to the happiness of the people, of the regulations which may be adopted for the adjustment of the revenue of the soil. The system authorized for the management of the land revenue of India, be it what it may, cannot therefore be put in practice without producing effects of the greatest magnitude, on the condition of the people and the prosperity of the country.

Many have been the plans recommended, tried, and abandoned, for their defects. The ancient system of India revenue is also defective: it is a human institution, and may well be imperfect. Its imperfections, however, were seen and experienced. Those of the new plans required experience, and that only to shew that they must fail. But the ancient system had one great and decided advantage: that it was known to the people, the people. were reconciled to it, and, like all political institutions, however-bad, what was wrong in it had doubtless acquired practical

practical correctives, of easy and general application, which rendered it at least sufferable to the community.

When the Emperor Akbar approved the settlement submitted to him by his able financial minister, Rajah Tudur Mull, and of which that valuable officer is by many erroneously supposed to be the author, his Majesty well knew the source was more sacred from which it sprung. The law of the land was not altered by his Majesty's Hindoo minister, and his able Moohummudan colleague, Muzuffur Khan: but a settlement was made, having the law for its basis; and the detail was ably projected and superintended by those valuable servants of the state, who neither did, nor would have dared to depart, in any thing essential, from the law and the usage of the country.

In modern times, conquering statesmen have greater confidence. They do not hold themselves hampered by custom, however sacred, antient, or universal! There is not in the history of the world a more extraordinary instance of disregard of the usages of a people, than is to be found in the conduct of those who swayed the councils of India when the great financial innovation of 1793 swept away the ancient landholders of Bengal, and limited its territorial revenue for ever!

Nor did those celebrated financiers better consult the interests of the British government. They appear to have forgotten altogether the distinction between the people of England, to whom luxuries are become necessaries of life, and may be touched by the tax-gatherer, and the subjects of their Asiatic territories, to whom even the necessaries of life

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life are luxuries. What source of revenue did they leave to meet the growing expenditure of the government?

A land revenue is well adapted to the present state of India; not only on account of the want of other sources, but because of the antiquity of the system, of its being so well understood by, and so familiar to the people; their being so thoroughly reconciled to it, as to submit, even cheerfully, to heavy exactions from the land, whilst, with reluctance not easily to be overcome, they are brought to pay even a petty tax otherwise laid on.

All are accustomed to pay for their land. It is not a tax upon their industry, but rather a premium to be industrious; for the more they produce by their labour, the lighter will their public burden be. A cultivator pays so much for his field or beegah. If by his exertions it produce much, the less will be the proportion of his assessment to the produce. Not so a tax on the produce of his land: a corn tax. As the produce is increased, so would

be his assessment.

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The ease with which men are apt to be imposed upon by words, has never been more successfully exemplified than in the case we are now about to consider. A "permanent settlement of revenue," a "permanent income," sound very imposingly in the ears of an Englishman. It means, he must conclude, something secure. A revenue permanently secured, though it should perhaps be not quite so large, is a good thing, he would say; and the old adage, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," would occur to fortify his belief. But when this permanent settlement comes to be inquired into, even very superficially, it will be found to be no more than empty sound, so far as

security for the revenue goes; and, in truth, to partake no farther of the quality of permanency, than as it is a permanent obligation, on the part of government, to cease for ever from increasing the India revenue, entered into with individuals who never had, indeed never can have, any security to give, beyond what government always did possess without them; namely, the soil, and the labour, and wants of the people.

The amount of revenue, instead of being fixed, has been, and must be ever liable to fluctuation, and always by diminution. The want of security for the revenue is inseparable from the state of society in India; but the defect, involving progressive diminution of revenue, is intrinsic, essential, and peculiar to the settlement to which I am adverting. A permanent limitation of land revenue must necessarily contain within itself the seeds of its progressive decay. There is nothing stationary: by all the laws, both of the moral and physical economy of this world, that which cannot increase must diminish.

In fact, instead of being what it professed to be, an engagement entered into with the owners (proprietors) of the soil for a specific revenue from their lands, with all that security for fulfilment which a wealthy landed proprietary necessarily gives, this far-famed "permanent settlement” is nothing more than a species of farming out of the land revenue to individuals; men, almost universally speaking, of no wealth or capital, consequently but little interested in the prosperity of the country; men who had no right of property in the estates now conferred upon them, and whose only object was to accumulate wealth, or to enjoy afluent sluggish repose, regardless even of the ruin of

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their tenantry, which this unhappy measure gave them the power of doing.

It is absurd to talk of the permanency of the settlement affording any security to government for the revenue. This idea must be rejected by every person who reflects a moment on the subject, and knows who the parties are. There is, in truth, no security for a land revenue in India, but the security of a moderate assessment, fairly distributed; a regular and protecting government; protecting not to the zumeendars or farmers of the revenue, but to the ryots or cultivators, whose industry alone is the only source of, and security for the revenue.

It might have been expected, on the subversion of the Moghul government of India, and the sudden and unexpected acquisition of power and dominion which fell into the hands of a small body of foreigners, in 1765; such as the English in India then were (strangers, it may be said, utterly, if not to the languages, yet to the laws and usages of the country), that much difficulty would arise in settling, on a fair and equitable basis, the public revenue. Great difficulty was accordingly experienced, augmented by the chicanery of the native revenue officers, the natural disposition of the land-owner to withhold information, suppress, and falsify documents, and it must be confessed, in many instances, the want of probity in the European servants of government.

All this was to have been expected, and was really experienced; and it might have been supposed that a prudent regard for the interests of government, and of the governed, would have dictated to those in power the high importance of patient investigation. Twenty years, how