all proposals for the imposition of a municipal tax must originate with them; and the Local Government, although it has the power to refuse sanction to proposals for taxation, has no power to impose a tax itself, and has no power, if it seeks to modify the proposals of the board, to make any modification which may increase the amount of the tax to be imposed. Again in legislative matters the board has enormous powers, powers to legislate and make by-laws on almost every conceivable subject (section 298 of the Act).

The experiment now made in the United Provinces is far in advance of anything attempted in any other province, and is a very real experiment in Local Self-Government. The results of the experiment will be very interesting to watch; for if municipal members are unable to run the affairs of their own town it is difficult to see how they can be deemed able to run the affairs of a larger area, while if the experiment is a success it will afford grounds for experiment on a wider field.

As to communal representation it is only fair to state the actual history of the case, which is, that, when Lord Morley started his Councils scheme on somewhat hasty lines, in response to protests from the Mohammedan community in London, he made a promise that both in the Council elections and in the elections to all representative bodies, such as municipal and district boards, the Mohammedans would be guaranteed a separate electorate. This promise was repeated by Lord Minto, and has been definitely embodied in the rules for separate representation for the legislative councils both provincial and imperial. When the proposal to amend the United Provinces Municipalities Act, with a view to making it possible to release the municipal boards entirely from official control, was brought up the Mohammedans at once objected and claimed the redemption of the promise made by the Secretary of State and the Viceroy before they would agree to the boards being released from official control, and the definite provisions now made in the United Provinces Municipalities Act were the results of a compromise between the Hindu and Mohammedan non-official members of the Council. The Bill in fact would never have been passed if this provision had not been inserted. The other possible remedies had of course been considered; but it was of no use raising them as neither party would look at them. It is of little use suggesting proportional representation in this country when the House of Commons has itself refused to recognize the principle. The method of voting under that system is no doubt simple, but the method of counting is, as you admit, complex, and must be done by experts and the difficulty of suggesting any such system in this country is that the system of counting is unduly complex and is very difficult to explain to the voters.

As regards the methods of taxation in municipalities out of a total income (I quote the figures in thousands of rupees) of 94,42 in the year 1915-16, 29,44 was derived from octroi, 4,28 from house-tax,

98 from a tax on vehicles and animals, 1,83 from a tax on professions and trades, 1,63 from tolls, 5,57 from water-rate, 68 from conservancy, 3,45 from a tax on circumstances and property, 3,46 from terminal tax, 55 from terminal toll, and 93 from a pilgrim tax. There are at present only 33 municipalities in which octroi is in force, and the reason why this tax, which is such an obstacle to trade, has not been abolished in those 33 municipalities is that it has not hitherto been found possible to immediately replace it by direct taxation. Wherever it was possible to abolish the octroi tax and replace by direct taxation it has been abolished within the last eight years. Proposals are now being considered, however, for the abolition of octroi in all the other towns where it will probably be replaced by a light terminal tax collected mainly by the railways. But you will see from the above figures that there is already a fair amount of direct taxation. Direct taxation, however, is still extremely unpopular, and in spite of its obvious beneficial educative effect in compelling the ratepayers to take an interest in municipal matters still finds little favour with the politicians.

§ 43. The forty-eight districts of the United Provinces are, as we noticed above, grouped into ten divisions each in charge of a commissioner. The function of these superior officers is generally to reduce the volume of work which would otherwise go from the district officers to the Board of Revenue and government secretaries. The Board is the final court of appeal in revenue cases, but commissioners dispose of a large number of appeals from district courts before they get to the Board. In agrarian matters generally they devil' for the Board or government by giving advice or encouragement, settling whatever can be settled, pouring oil on troubled waters, applying the whip and spur if necessary, and keeping the higher authorities in touch with the people. District officers sometimes whisper that commissioners are the fifth wheel in the administrative coach. When they come to discharge the functions of commissioner later in life they are apt to revise that opinion, and compare him to oil in a motor car, theoretically unnecessary, but practically most useful. It is difficult to see how the members of the Board or the Central Government could get through their work without them, unless the personnel of the Board and government secretaries were greatly increased. There would probably be little or no saving in the actual number of officers. The change in fact might mean simply a transfer of senior officers from the mufassil to the capital of the province, which could scarcely be reckoned a change for the better.

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V

LAND REVENUE

(July 1917) § 1. In the first of these studies, the chain of authority was traced from the Imperial Cabinet in London to Delhi and Simla, thence to the capital of the province, to the city which forms the centre of the division, to the country town which forms the centre of the district, and finally, to the village which constitutes the typical unit of Indian society. But let it be realized that in all these cities and towns there dwells but one-tenth of the total population of India. The remaining nine-tenths live in purely rural surroundings, and draw their subsistence directly or indirectly from tillage of the soil.

In England the rural population is partly gathered in villages, but the landscape is dotted with country houses, farms, and cottages, whose isolation bears witness to a condition of peace and security established centuries ago. In the greater part of India it is otherwise. Except in Assam, Eastern Bengal, and the west coast of Madras, most of the rural population of India is congregated in closely congested hamlets rising like mounds from the centre of the cultivated fields. Long ages of recurring disorder and rapine have imposed on the mass of the Indian people the gregarious habits of the ant. The mass of thickly crowded dwellings, moulded from the earth of the plain in which they stand, and threaded by narrow and tortuous lanes, is, indeed, strangely suggestive of an ant-heap. The suggestion is enhanced by the fact that the village is usually super-imposed on a mound, which the casual traveller is apt to suppose to be some natural hillock, chosen by the villagers for the purpose of better drainage or defence. In this, however, he is usually mistaken; for the mound is commonly composed of the debris of dwellings, many of which had crumbled to dust before the art of writing was known or history had dawned. When wolves still howled where Notre Dame and St. Paul's now stand, and the very names of Athens or Rome were unheard of, there lived and toiled on these sites the predecessors of the villagers who tenant them to-day. It is with some feeling of reverence

that the western parvenu should view these populous mounds, and know himself to be but a creature of an hour. Nearly nine-tenths of the people of India live in such villages, which number 728,605 with an average population of 364.

To an Englishman the word 'village' suggests merely the church and the houses which cluster round it. In AngloIndian terminology it signifies rather what the Englishman would express by the word 'parish'. It includes the cultivated lands, and often, some commonage, which surround the hamlet. It is from these surrounding lands that the subsistence of the villagers is drawn. But unlike the English parish, the villages do not cover the face of the whole country. There are tracts which are waste or covered with jungle, very largely the property of government, which are not included within the area of any village. Such waste, when privately owned, is usually included in a village.

§ 2. It is from the produce raised on the fields by the villagers, that revenues have been drawn which have enabled a succession of conquerors to rear kingdoms and empires in India. Their thrones have always depended upon the continuance of their ability to collect these revenues. By immemorial tradition the ruler has been entitled to a portion of the grain heaps collected in the village when harvesting is done.

Thus Sir John Malcolm quotes the Mahabharata as alluding to the origin of kings: Mankind' (says the author) were continually

1 A commissioner notes: There is no English word which represents the meaning of the word " mauza". It means a collection of plots of land usually in a ring fence which is treated as a unit for all administrative purposes. It need not necessarily contain any inhabited houses at all, but it may contain many villages (gaon). The word " parish" is the nearest English equivalent but sometimes a mauza may contain as little as

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a hundred acres without one inhabitant.'

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66

Another officer writes: I am not sure of the comparison. "Parish" seems to denote a well-ordered village with church, &c., and a number of scattered farms with one or two good metal roads running through it, and lanes for the rest. This gives a false idea of my idea of the Indian village. 'The main site or abadi ", with possibly a few scattered purwas (hamlets). The rest nearly all under cultivation, though there may be some groves and now and again some scraps of jungle. The villages lie very often with nothing to separate them from the next village, and internally they have the most primitive means of communication. If you walk round a few next cold weather you will I think find that the idea of a parish will give a false idea. You will be able to describe them better than I.'

opposing each other, and they at last went to Brahma to ask him to appoint a king over them. Manu was directed to be their king. He replied, I fear a sinful action: government is arduous, especially among ever-lying men.' They said, 'Fear not; you will receive a recompense of beasts a fiftieth part, and also of gold, and we will give you a tenth of the corn, increasing your store,' &c. Manu (chap. vii, 127-30) says: Of cattle, of gems, of gold and silver, added each year to the capital stock (the king's share) is a fiftieth part, of grain an eighth part or a sixth or a twelfth, according to the difference of the soil and the labour necessary to cultivate it.' In chap. xv, 118, it is admitted that the share may be raised to one-fourth of the crops at a time of urgent necessity, as in war or invasion; and so the tax on the mercantile classes may be raised. It was noticed that in Alexander's time the cultivators were already contributing onefourth of the grain. In the great southern Hindu kingdom of Bijanagar or Vijayanagar (which lasted till the middle of the sixteenth century), the Minister Vidyaranya declared that a king who took more than one-sixth 'shall be deemed impious in this world, and shall be cast into hell-flames in the next '.

From the many allusions in books, it seems probable that, as long as the old kingdoms were at peace, the traditional sixth was adhered to. The king had no expanding administrations nor demands like those on a modern government; and as long as the revenue share came in regularly, and as it was moderately increased by increase of cultivation and by the other tolls and dues which the king levied, he had no great temptation to raise the share, at any rate formally and openly. But there always comes a time when invasion and war and other difficulties disturb affairs; and in later days we shall find Hindu kingdoms, no less than others, raising the revenue freely.1

The learned author then adds in a note:

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It should be remembered with reference to the supposed moderation of the one-sixth, that it really represented little more than a charge for the royal privy purse'. No public works, no army, and no police had to be maintained out of it. The army was supported by the estates on the feudal system, and so with the police as far as there was any distinct from the military force. And when the great tanks, bathing-places, and other works which are now looked on with just admiration as showing the wealth, power, and wisdom of the old kings, were made, it was chiefly by unpaid labour, or at least by labour fed with food taken from the neighbourhood. All this cannot be ignored in comparing the modern system with the ancient.2

That ancient Hindu code, the laws of Manu, prescribes that one-twelfth, one-eighth, or even one-quarter of each 1 Land Systems of British India, by B. H. Baden-Powell, p. 264.

2 Ibid., p. 266.