year. to particular kinds of culture, and to certain times of the The qualifying it generally, as I propose, may appear to be easy, but it is obvious, on reflection, that the doing it properly would often require our presence where we cannot be, and a knowledge of facts which we can never attain. Potails and other farmers can determine the actual value of the land with tolerable exactness, but they never will do that for us, or report the occupancy of it. Our next dependence is on our own Muttasiddies (accountants), but, selfinterested, they will generally either favour the ryots and cheat government, or, pretending zeal for the service, impose on both. I have brought these matters forward again to your consideration, in case you should have any thing new to offer as the means of a permanent settlement, and more liberal policy than the present.'* This is a remarkable judgment passed on the Ryotwar system, by a public officer of high respectability and talent, who having originally fathered the system, might naturally be supposed to have his partialities awakened in its favour, had he seen in it wherewithal to approve; but with a degree of candour and pure regard for the public welfare, seldom manifested on such occasions, unreservedly developes its peculiar failings, after five or six years' personal experience of its effects. Of Ryotwar settlements, indeed, it should always be kept in mind, that in the hands of its ablest advocate and patron, Sir Thomas Munro, and according to his own account of its formation, the result can only be deemed a complete failure. To minds not biassed by partiality to names or to systems, it is almost ludicrous to read the account given of measuring and re-measuring, of assessing, re-assessing, and classifying lands; of watching and expecting crops; of the time, labour, and enormous expense of a Ryotwar survey; and to find after all the whole so little worthy of trust, that the revenue was ultimately settled by estimate, or to use Sir Thomas Munro's own words, according to what was thought to be a fair assessment, in reference to former years' collections. 'But if revenue, or jummas, are ultimately to be fixed by estimate, or the power of "thought," it may reasonably be asked, why waste years of time? why expend hundreds of thousands of pagodas,† in useless preparatory steps? "Thought," aided by former years' collections, and the "opinions of intelligent natives," might surely estimate the jumma of a district, just as well before, as after, the farce of a tedious, costly, and useless survey. There are, however, those who still contend that, on Sir Thomas Munro's method, the actual resources of a country are, and always may be, precisely ascertained. My answer to this assertion, is to be found in the Madras Revenue Selections, vol. i, p. 603. The survey of the ceded districts alone cost between eighty and ninety thousand pagodas. analysis of the system already given, as well as of its worthy progenitor, the Tumar Jumma. Let us at all events not forget that when the new Ryotwar settlement was ordered to be adopted into the Madras territories generally, and Sir Thomas Munro, himself, appointed to superintend its introduction, surveys were again attempted, but ultimately abandoned, on proof of their utter impracticability. On this occasion, Sir Thomas Munro, in his zeal to establish a favorite system, discovered that the want of a regular survey was no longer an obstruction, as the village or Curnum's accounts would furnish the necessary information-accounts which, in his report of the 30th of September, 1802, he had declared, on his own experience and knowledge of them, to be "always false."* We have also the fiat of that able and experienced body, the Revenue Board at Madras, who pronounce "Ryotwar surveys and settlements to be altogether arbitrary; to have, in fact, no existence beyond the accounts of the collector's cutchery;" and whilst professing to fix an equal and moderate tax on each field, to be in practice and operation, an enormous oppression on the country.† 'It may, in short, be said of Ryotwar settlements generally, that the principle and essence of the system are, to exact from impoverished ryots the utmost revenue they can possibly pay; to follow up occasional improvements, with either immediate or periodical participations, on the part of Government; and thus to preclude the possibility of a gradation of ranks growing up between the rulers of a country and its labouring cultivators and artizans, which, in other countries, has been found so essential to the well-being and permanent prosperity of the social body. 'As society in India is now constituted, and must continue to be, under the system proposed, it is obvious that the success of a Ryotwar settlement must altogether depend on European superintendence and vigilance; and it is equally obvious that this superintendence and vigilance must be in the inverse ratio of the extent of a collector's district. An European collector, of 20,000 to 30,000 square miles of country, cannot be expected to superintend it, in all its extent, with the same efficiency which might, and probably would, be bestowed on a district only one-fourth as large, and thus to secure the confidence and satisfaction of its inhabitants. But it may be said, this has been done in the ceded districts, under Sir Thomas Munro,-Admitted. The people of India have, for so many ages, been accustomed to the greatest severities and extortions under former rulers, that an European collector, of easy access, conciliating manners, mild and forbearing temper, with a vigorous mind and steady habits of business, patiently attentive to the representations and complaints of the Natives, and equally just to all according to the extent of his powers, may be quite certain of uni+ Ibid, p. 478. Vide Rickards, p. 476. 278 Further Examinations of Mr. Rickards' Work on India. versal popularity in whatever part of India he may chance to be placed. Such a man was Sir Thomas Munro ; in whose hands (I speak from personal knowledge of his character) measures of extreme difficulty and complication would succeed, which, with ninetynine other persons out of an hundred, would be found impracticable. Sir Thomas Munro had, moreover, a number of assistant collectors under him, whose personal superintendence over limited extents of country, was of great service in promoting the success of his plan. He also brought the qualities above-mentioned to the restoration of a country which, previous to our possession, had been reduced by Mussulman severities to an almost inconceivable state of wretchedness and distraction; and when property had been so completely subverted, and its owners dispersed, that scarcely an individual, I believe, if we except Polygars, and professed thieves, came forward to assert an independent claim. To give effect, therefore, universally, to Ryotwar settlements, we must have, First,-Principal collectors, like Sir Thomas Munro, every where. 'Secondly,-A sufficient number of subordinate collectors, to admit of the country being divided into small circles, for the personal superintendence of each. This would acquire a vast addition to the junior branches of the civil service; whose chances of promotion to the higher stations, consequently of return to their native land, would be thereby greatly diminished. 'Thirdly,-Large native establishments would likewise be necessary, whose habits, as society is now constituted, it might be as difficult as ever to restrain. But if these objections could be surmounted, others still remain. First,-It is difficult to conceive how a Ryotwar settlement, on Sir Thomas Munro's principles, could be introduced into districts occupied by village zemindars, maliks, meerassadars, &c., now admitted to be "actual proprietors of the soil," without flagrant violation of these ancient rights. 'Secondly,-The table entered in pages 306-7, as the foundation of the Tumar Jumma, is calculated to prove the impossibility of equally adjusting an assessment which is to be rated at so much per beegah. Considering the great varieties of soil, of seasons, of productive powers, of the means of irrigation, fluctuations in price, distance of markets, and changes in the culture of different articles, every assessment founded on a general survey and valuation of lands, particularly in India, must be unequal in the first instance; and the longer it continues, the greater will be its inequality. In India, for example, a ryot cannot adopt the European system of a rotation of crops. His lands might yield him, in one year, a valuable produce, which from change of seasons, fluctuation in the state of demand, or change in the article of culture, might not yield half as much in the next. A tax, therefore, at so much per field, or per beegah, must be ruinously oppressive when no remissions are allowed; or, if allowed, the remissions would require a vexatious annual scrutiny, which it would be impossible, where millions perhaps were claimants, for the officers of Government satisfactorily to accomplish. Lastly, The tendency of the system to perpetuate the present stationary condition of the people, is, of itself, decisive of its true character; fatal to the progress of improvement, and fully justifying the judgment passed on it by the Court of Directors in 1809,* that" it is more suited to an early and simple state of society, than to the condition of India in modern times, and its true interest, under a fostering and enlightened government; and that, however well calculated to discover the resources of a country, it is not to be preferred for constant practice.' ТО НЕВЕ. ARISE, arise, my Hebe rise, Cast earth upon each care and pain: What though these prudes malign our fame, They scoff me, if by sighs I show, These hallow'd pains then let me keep, From such a source their fountain flows: And yet awhile my sorrows sleep, To think from whence my sorrows rose. For, ah! what cypress can compare, Hafiz, have patience, still you say, * Madras Revenue Selections, vol. i. p. 598. A DAUGHTER'S LAMENT. (From the Edinburgh Literary Gazette.) "Soul of the just! companion of the dead! Where is thy home, and whither art thou fled?" I SEE a freshness on the earth, a glory in the sky, CAMPBELL. I hear the music of the woods, and the summer breeze pass by; For the voice that loved me, and I loved, is silent in the grave. I thought that when the summer came, with its floods of life and light, Alas! I knew not that the time, I most had wished to see, Would bring, with all its "sounds and sights," a voice of grief to me; And I turn me to his lonely couch, were his days and nights were spent ; Or tremble lest my lightest step might wound that lov'd one's ear. But it may not be!-for I have seen his dim and closing eye, And the hour was passed in which 'twas mine, a last sad look to take, But oh! to think that still he lives, immortal in the sky In that bright land where every tear is wiped from every eye ;— |