records kept in four villages, named Singoli, Taradgaum, Pakrapura, and Tirreh, in the Sholapore district, extracting at random the accounts of 14 families, consisting of 97 persons, who farmed 586 acres. The Their entire produce only averaged 154 lbs. per acre, and actually realised 132l. Os. 11d., that is, only 4s. 6d. per acre. assessment and local cess on these people amounted to 53l. 15s. 4d., or 1s. 10d. per acre, that is 40 per cent of their gross produce. There remained to defray the necessary cost of cultivation, labour, and maintenance of the ryots, their families, and their cattle only a sum of 781. 5s. 7d., that is not 16s. per head per annum. Of necessity, these fourteen families are now in debt to money-lenders to the extent of 500l. Towards this debt they were only able last year to pay 497. 2s., which is less than one-half of the interest due, the remainder being, of course, added to the principal. They provided for the entire assessment, and all but 29l. 4s. 7d. of their own maintenance, by the toil of their wives and children in other occupations, rendered possible by the proximity of the town of Sholapore. Yet the land-tax of these wretched creatures was at the last assessment raised from 321. 128. to its present figure of 53l. 15s. 4d., an increase of no less than 64 per cent. 5 The real fact is, that the Indian Survey and Settlement Department is a scientific engine for wholesale rackrenting, operating practically without any check whatever. Admittedly, the only limitation on its enhancements is that the over-assessed ryot may throw up his land. But the check is merely nominal. The ryot has nowhere else to go, and so, as long as life can be barely supported, he must struggle on. We are never tired of descanting on the justice of our system, as compared with that of the Mogul Empire. But that empire offered the ryot no less than four methods of accurately determining the Government share of the produce, any one of which he could elect to claim. Either a certain part of the land, when sown, might be set aside as representing the total Government share, or an amicable estimate of that share might be made on the standing crops, or the cultivator could claim a rough division of the produce by heaps, or he could demand a precise division of the grain by measure. Our system, on the other hand, purposely withholds from the ryot all chance of having his assessment compared with the total produce of his fields, so much so that our very Administration Reports altogether decline to entertain the question. We thus practically refuse even to consider the actual crop, yet we speak as confidently as if we had actually reaped it and measured it, and calmly assure the 5 This is the reason why, by the confession of the Settlement Department, holdings are assessed at a higher rate, because of the nearness of the village to a market town.'-Famine Commission Report, Part II., p. 124. • Thomas's Revenue Resources of the Mughal Empire, p. 9. world that we take at most one-eighth of the gross, or one-half of the net produce, leaving the remainder in the hands of a happy and contented peasantry! The reader can now answer Dr. Hunter's question —'What becomes of the surplus which our Government declines to take?' Where is it? And this is the state of things under which the official optimists shout loudly that they at present only take 3 to 7 per cent., and blandly instruct the Under-Secretary of State for India to assert in his place in Parliament that the revised assessment is equal to about 12 per cent. of the gross produce,' their own rules meanwhile being framed so as to prevent any check being put upon the statement. Væ victis! Any arithmetical process, however unsound, is good enough for the laudable purpose of diverting into the Government treasury the proceeds of the labour of a conquered race.' The fallacious system of averages already described is adopted at this moment, in the teeth of repeated exposure, within the precincts of the India Office itself. Parliament has obliged the Indian Government to furnish a yearly Report on the Moral and Material Progress of the country. A highly-paid Statistical Committee is maintained at India's cost to supply the necessary information. One of the most important things which should be set forth in the Report is a statement of the average prices realised for the produce of India, for comparison with the amount of taxation. But the Indian bureau have deliberately defeated the intention of Parliament, by framing their average tables on the radically unsound principle already alluded to, with the result that their information becomes not only worthless, but mischievous. These tables purport to give the average selling prices of produce in the different districts; and it is simply obvious that, in order to find the average per bushel realised by the cultivators for any given crop, say rice, throughout a whole province, it is necessary first to multiply the number of bushels produced in each district by the price current there, next to add together the results of this operation for all the districts of the province, and finally to divide the aggregate by the total number of bushels produced in all the districts. Instead of this, the Government of India simply add together all the prices, and divide by the number of the districts, taking no account whatever of the quantity produced and sold at each price! Thus, if, in one large district, 1,000,000 bushels were produced, and sold at 2s. per bushel, and if, in a small district of the same province, only 1,000 bushels were produced, and sold at 10s. a bushel, the India Office would deliberately inform the English people that the average price received by the cultivators throughout these two districts for all their produce was 68. a bushel; whereas, in point of fact, it was only two shillings and two-fifths of a farthing! As out of these two shillings the cultivator has to pay about a shilling to Government, the difference between the balance left to him in reality, and in the imagination of the India Office, may readily be computed. It may be that the erroneous system above described was originally adopted out of sheer incompetence; but then, if so, why has it not been departed from, after the enormous injustice of it has been repeatedly and thoroughly exposed? No wonder that, with such tables and such false prices before them, the India Office are quite unable to make up their minds whether the ryot is most enriched by high prices with scanty crops, by low prices with ample crops, or even by low prices and scanty crops combined! It is thus that we find, on page 41 of the Return of Moral and Material Progress for 1880-81, three opposite conditions obtaining in three different provinces, and all working together for the ryot's good: In the Punjab the harvests were rather below the average. The high prices which had prevailed for some years are said to have resulted in a marked improvement of the agricultural classes. In the Central Provinces abundant harvests were everywhere reaped, and the prices of all the staple grains were reduced, in some instances, by as much as 50 per cent. These easy prices were a boon to all non-agriculturists, while the agricultural classes sufficiently profited by the general good outturn of their crops. In Ajmere the crops generally were below the outturn of an average year. Prices, however, remained low, and there was consequently no distress among the people. Nor is it matter for wonder that, with such erroneous information, the officials should so far deceive themselves as really to believe that the ryot is at this moment too lightly taxed, and that inhuman theories and suggestions—the absurdity and cruelty of which would be at once apparent if applied to the smallest and humblest class of our own countrymen at home--are gravely propounded by India's alien rulers, as the panacea for the sufferings of scores of millions of helpless peasants. There is at this moment in India a powerful party in the Revenue Department, who, while fully admitting that the peasantry are steeped to the lips in poverty and debt, in very mockery of their sufferings allege that, so far from this being caused by over-assessment, there has been a tendency of late to take too little rather than too much as land revenue; '7 and who actually urge a large increase of land-tax, as the best means of raising these famine-stricken creatures from poverty to affluence! 8 6 Equally shocking are the methods employed by the Indian Government for taxing improvements made by the ryot's own capital and labour. The result of their policy in this respect has been plainly recorded by Sir James Caird, who truly says that the Indian • Finances and Public Works of India, p. 18. 8 See note by Mr. C. A. Elliott, Secretary to the Famine Commissioners, Famine Commission Report, Appendix I., p. 86. 9 cultivator, having been so often the victim of bad faith, now 'will not lay out a penny on the holding which is liable to future increase of assessment.' As a rule, the Indian farmer is so poor, that it is ridiculous to talk of his laying out capital on his holding, in the English sense. The sole capital he possesses is the labour of his own hands, and of his wife and little ones. But he employs this without stint whenever there seems fair hope of a return from the investment. In the cool season, when the dry crops were growing, it used to be a common sight to see the ryot himself, with no weapon but a blunt iron lever in his hands, day after day, with arduous toil, sinking a shaft inch by inch into the rocky soil, bis wife meantime plying the shovel, while their little children, with tiny wicker baskets on their heads, carried the débris to the surface by a winding path. All worked with a will, for, after perhaps three years of unremitting labour, the excavation would one day become a well, to the great joy of all their hearts. And thus it comes to pass that, with no capital except the labour of the people, the only kind of tenants' improvements' which exist in India consists of wells. There are, however, many millions of such wells, all dug in this way by the people themselves, free of all cost to Government. The Famine Commission estimated the extent of land irrigated from these at no less than 12,000,000 acres, a figure which is probably much under the truth. It is fully admitted, in principle, that a ryot's taxation should not be increased in consequence of irrigation from these wells; but, in practice, all, or nearly all, are nevertheless brought under crushing taxation, by one specious device or another. In fact, the increase of rent levied on this class of tenants' improvements usually amounts to no less than from 500 to 1,600 per cent. over and above the dry-crop rates! The Under-Secretary of State for India was made by the India Office categorically to deny this, last year in Parliament, with reference to the Bombay Presidency, in these words: A Bombay landholder cannot be taxed on his own improvements; nor, if he digs a well, can his assessment be increased on that account, either during the currency or on the expiration of the settlement. The following particulars will show Mr. Cross how much faith should be placed in the asseverations of his India Office advisers. Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of Bombay, in his evidence before the Finance Committee, spoke as follows: As a general rule, there is a separate tax upon the land which is irrigated by water raised from wells, which involved considerable cost to the cultivators in their construction. Mr. Kazi Shabudin, a Deputy Collector, before the same Committee, testified as follows: • Parliamentary Papers, 2732 of 1880, p. 9. All wells pay a separate assessment. All irrigated lands have a water assessment charged upon them, in addition to the land assessment. It is about four or five rupees per acre, and in some places more. At present the ryots do not know what the Government might do if they invested what capital they have in wells, and that prevents them from digging wells. In 1865, however, an awkward circumstance took place, which threatened to destroy the profits drawn by the Survey Department from such tenants' improvements. By pressure from the Home Government a special section was introduced into the new Survey Act passed in that year. It declared that increased taxation should be levied, not with reference to improvements made by owners or occupants, but with reference to general considerations of the value of land, &c.' 6 Here seemed certainly a formidable obstacle to the taxing of private wells, but it did not for a moment disconcert the plans of the zealous Survey officers. They at once found a way out of the difficulty, which, instead of curtailing their powers over tenants' improvements, had the merit of giving them even greater latitude than before. While nominally removing the tax from a ryot's well, they could easily decide that the value of the land was increased by possessing water within a certain distance from the surface! They could then proceed fully to recoup the treasury by taxing the water among general considerations.' Indeed, this new device was clearly much more effective than the old, inasmuch as it could be applied with equal facility whether a well was dug on the land or not! Accordingly, on the 30th of March, 1865, Mr. Ellis, the Revenue Commissioner of the Northern Division, earnestly recommended to the Bombay Government nominally to abolish the welltax, and at the same time to substitute for it a tax on the water-producing capacity of the soil.' Captain C. J. Prescott, the Superintendent of the Revenue Survey in Guzerat, when reporting on this project on the 1st of December, 1864, began with a frank admission that the assessment of wells dug at the expense of private individuals is contrary to all principle.' But he immediately went on to say: The only question is whether it is needful.' In other words, he contended that, if the State wanted the money raised by the well-tax, the question as to its justice or injustice to the ryot should not even be considered. Deciding this 'only question' in the affirmative, Captain Prescott joined forces with Mr. Ellis, and officially urged the Government to abolish the well-tax, so as to comply with the new Act, but at the same time to levy an equivalent tax on land generally.' It is not an unknown method to excuse the commission of one injustice by pointing to the existence of another still more flagrant. By this species of logic Captain Prescott was able completely to justify the designs of his Department. He urged that the new proposal was really not half so bad as another |