in Madras the area assessed increased from 9,750,000 acres in 1850 to 20,000,000 in 1875-76, and, though the land revenue is 1,000,000l. sterling higher, its incidence per acre is reduced by 44d. on dry land and 5s. on irrigated land. Similarly, in Bombay, the assessed area has increased from 12,500,000 acres in 1856 to 20,300,000 in 1875-76, and an increase of 750,0001. in the land revenue has resulted, notwithstanding an average reduction of 44d. per acre in the assessment. In the same manner, in the North-Western Provinces, where the land revenue is calculated on the supposed value of the rental, the share of the rent claimed by the Government has much decreased. . . . In the Punjab it is notorious that the land revenue is infinitely lighter than that in any previous period, and the fact is corroborated by the enormous increase in the price of land since it passed under our rule from the cruel rackrenting of the Sikh Government.''

There has never, so far as our knowledge goes, been a Government in India that has taken so small a share in the profits of the soil as that taken by ourselves. This is true of every province of British India. Under all preceding Governments, and under Native Governments to this day, there has been, in the words of Mr. Thomason, no other limit to the demand upon the land than the power of the Government to enforce payment and the ability of the people to pay.'

Under the system laid down by Akbar, and carried into effect in the year 1582 by the famous settlement of Tódar Mal, the sovereign was held to be practising a wise moderation when he fixed his share of the gross produce of the land at 33 per cent., but this was much less than was ordinarily demanded. The Maráthas took at least one-half; and the same proportion was ordinarily assumed to be their proper share by the Governments that preceded us in Madras. The result of the minute

1 British India and its Rulers, p. 141.

inquiries made towards the end of the last century showed that the Native rulers in Bengal usually took about 54 per cent. In the Punjab, when we first occupied the province, it was found that the share of the gross produce taken by the Sikh Government was from 40 to 50 per cent. Elphinstone, in his 'History of India,' thus sums up the facts in regard to the land revenue under Native Governments: The sovereign's full share is now reckoned at one-half. A country is reckoned moderately assessed if he only takes onethird; and in one of his minutes, referring to the Deccan, he says that it seems to have been the original principle in all settlements for the Government to take half and leave half to the cultivator.'

Compare the foregoing facts with the following.

Instead of sweeping off the whole or the greater part of the surplus profit of the land, our Government never takes more than a fixed share, which falls at an average rate of from 3 per cent. to 8 per cent. of the gross outturn. In the Punjab, in tracts which are fertile and protected by irrigation, and in which the Sikh Government would have taken not less than 50 per cent., we take less than 17 per cent.; the average demand for the province is 5.6 per cent. In Bombay, the highest assessment on the most productive land is 16 per cent.; the average for the province is 7.6 per cent. Many of the Native States of Bombay have been surveyed and settled on the system adopted by our Government, and their rates are always 10 to 15 per cent. higher than in the British districts. In Madras, the average demand is now 6.3 per cent. In the North-Western Provinces, where the basis of the assessment is the rental of the land, and not the gross produce, our Government, at the beginning of this century,

took 90 per cent. of the rent.

We took the same proportion under the permanent settlement in Bengal. In the North-Western Provinces and Oudh the share of the State is now 50 per cent. of the rental, an amount estimated to be equivalent to 7.8 per cent. of the gross produce.1

In Bengal the incidence is much less, but this has been the result of special causes, to which I shall again

refer.

Although the demands made upon the land by the British Government are much lighter than those of the Governments that preceded it, it must be remembered that the principles on which our demands have been regulated are altogether different from theirs, and comparisons between the two are sometimes misleading. While our policy has been to encourage the growth of private property in land, and to take for the State only a moderate share of the rental or produce, former Governments hardly recognised the existence of such property, and frequently took from the cultivator an amount as large as the full rack-rent which might have been taken by a private landlord, or the whole of the surplus profit after the expenses of cultivation had been defrayed. The cultivator was entitled to subsistence; everything else belonged to the State. This is often the assumption in Native States at the present time. In the words of Mr. J. S.

1

These figures, showing the proportions of the gross produce taken as revenue, are taken, for the most part, from the Report of the Indian Famine Commissioners.

The following maxim is believed to express the ruling idea of the revenue system maintained under the Emperor Akbar:-"There shall be left for every man who cultivates his land as much as he requires for his own support till the next crop be reaped, and that of his family, and for seed. This much shall be left to him; what remains is land-tax, and shall go to the public treasury."'-Sir E. Buck's Statistical Atlas of India, p. 22.

Mill: Except during the occasional accident of a humane and vigorous local administration, the exactions had no practical limit but the inability of the peasant to pay more.' At the same time, when the peasant has no rights of property, and cultivates as a rent-paying tenant, it cannot always be assumed that he pays less under our system than he paid before, when there was no private landlord between him and the State.

An interesting investigation was made by the late Mr. Edward Thomas, in his 'Revenue Resources of the Moghul Empire,' into the question of the amount of the revenue derived from the land and other sources by the Moghul Emperors; but the materials which he was able to collect were very imperfect, and it is difficult to say what confidence should be placed in conclusions based upon them. The revenues doubtless reached their highest point under Aurangzeb. Mr. Thomas tells us that two manuscripts in the British Museum, copies apparently of official documents, give the land revenue of the empire for 1664-65 at 26,743,000l. and 24,056,000l. Bernier, about the same time, gave the amount as 22,593,000l.; his details for the various provinces differ greatly from those in the Museum manuscripts, and Bernier himself describes his list as 'ce mémoire que je ne crois pas trop exact ni véritable.' Towards the end of the seventeenth century a Venetian physician, Manucci, was employed at the Court of Aurangzeb, and an account of much that he learned. there is to be found in Catrou's 'Histoire générale de l'Empire du Mogol' (Paris, 1702). A list is given, on Manucci's authority, of the amount of the land revenue in each province in 1697, when Aurangzeb's empire was much larger than it had been thirty years

G

22

bebre. The total reaches the sum of $8.719.0007. Whether these figures represent the demand or the Colectors not stated, but no doubt the former is intended. Three manuscripts in the India Office Library give the amount of Aurangzeb's land revenue at sums varying between 34,187,000 and 34,641,000Z.; the years to which they refer are not stated, and although the totals do not much differ, the discrepancies in the details are great.

Considering that the land revenue of the British Government amounts only to 23,000,000l., drawn from a more extensive empire than that of Aurangzeb, the sums said to have been received or demanded from the land by the latter seem at first sight to deserve little credit. It seems to me, however, by no means impossible that even the largest amount mentioned may be approximately correct, because, as I have just explained, no comparisons are really possible between the land revenue of former Governments and our own. The 38,000,000, or whatever may have been the actual amount of Aurangzeb's revenue from land, included not only all that we now take as land revenue, but the greater part of the profit that we leave to private proprietors. For example, the rental of the landholders of Bengal is now probably not less than 20,000,000, of which only about 4,000,000l. is taken by the State. If a ruler like Aurangzeb were to take our place, nearly the whole sum would be claimed by him which is now intercepted by the zemindars.'

The views above stated seem to me to accord with Manucci's remarks in the following passage. After detailing the revenues of Aurangzeb ho mays: On ost étonné sans doute d'une si prodigieuse opulence, mais il faut considérer que tant de richesses n'entre dans les trésors du Mogol que pour en sortir tous les ans, du moins en partie, et pour couler une autre fois aur ses terres, La moitié de l'empire subsiste par les libéralités du prince, ou du moins elle est à ses gages. Outre ce grand nombre d'officiers et de