amounting to over Rs. 100.1 With all these appeals it is difficult, with the best of intentions, to eliminate the advantage of wealthier suitors who can afford to carry their cases from court to court.2 None the less zamindars as a class would prefer a more summary system which ensured final decisions at the initial stage. A steady growth in the number of lawyers is a necessary result of the present system.1

3

§ 32. The practice of recognizing the claims of the hereditary tax collector and administrator of the land, and of placing him in the position of a landlord, has prevailed in Bengal and in Northern India. In these parts of India the zamindari system is the rule, though in Northern India the zamindar is usually subject to a periodic revision and enhancement of the revenue due from him to the state. All this was done with the deliberate intention of creating a landed gentry disposed to maintain the existing order and competent to aid in doing so by reason of the influence which each of them wielded amongst his own tenants.

§ 33. It must not be inferred from anything said in the foregoing pages that this policy is regarded as a mistake, apart from the permanent settlement in Bengal. The economic results of the policy have been traced. They are

1 A collector notes: It should, I think, be made quite clear that the system here referred to is that of the United Provinces. In Bengal all such cases are dealt with wholly by the Civil Courts, and the collector and his subordinates and the commissioner have, I believe, no concern whatever with them. This is another difference in system which divorces the ordinary district official from the people in Bengal. (The same remarks apply to Behar.) '

2 The same collector notes: These remarks are very true. The result is most emphatically one law for the rich and another for the poor.

There is also increasing tension between landlord and tenant. Far too many landlords are absolute absentees, leaving the management of their estates to agents, who are frequently far from honest, cheating their masters and swindling and tyrannizing over the tenants. Some day there will be a jacquerie

3 A senior member of the 1.C.S. notes: The tenants as well as the zamindars would prefer more summary methods. Their illiteracy, which is greater than that of the zamindars in proportion, makes them a constant prey to the technicalities of a tenancy law, of which legal practitioners, with no established code of honour to restrain them, make the most in their own selfish interests.

Our tenancy law is in an unsatisfactory condition, but really pressing questions of its amendment have to take a back seat when fuss about home rule and such-like nebulous and frothy politics is the order of the day.' 4 A senior officer notes: In fact, in the United Provinces quite a small proportion of appealable orders in such cases are actually appealed. The numbers look large because the population and the districts are many.'

facts which have to be weighed, but economic considerations have often to be overruled by political reasons, a thing which economists are prone to forget. In any case there can now be no more question of disturbing the present rights of the zamindars than of going back on the permanent settlements, wherever they were made.1

§ 34. As noticed above it was due to the personal influence of Sir Thomas Munro that the opposite policy was followed in Madras. Wherever possible the claims of the zamindars were set aside, and the revenue was collected direct from the cultivator or raiyat by government officials. The result is that 47 per cent. of the land revenue of India is now raised from districts in which the raiyatwari system prevails. In these districts it is the cultivator himself who benefits from the gradual reduction in the proportion of the rent taken by government to 45 per cent. Where 55 per cent. of the economic rent is left to the cultivators it would clearly be possible for many of them to sublet and to live on the rents. Under these circumstances the raiyat would become a landlord. The right to sublet, however, is subject to government sanction and is carefully controlled.2 In the raiyatwari districts there is, therefore, no need for land laws regulating rents and relations of landlords and tenants. A mass of litigation, and a consequent growth of the legal profession, is avoided. The raiyatwari system prevails in Madras, Bombay, Assam, and Burma.

§ 35. The method of collecting the land revenue remains to be noticed. In the permanently settled districts of Bengal the zamindar must pay the revenue due to government into its treasury by sunset on a certain day, failing which his rights are exposed for public sale.

Elsewhere the revenue is generally payable in instalments after each crop is reaped, according to local conditions. The tahsildar is usually the officer who actually receives the cash.

1 An Indian critic notes: In an agricultural country like India, if the landed gentry had not been created the natives would have remained nonprogressive.'

I have since heard that in Madras raiyatwari tenures are freely purchased by mere investors who sublet them to the actual cultivators. I have not been able to investigate the matter at close quarters; but in so far as this practice has been permitted, the raiyatwari system has clearly developed into a zamindari system in a disguised form. The disguise might be a danger if it tended to prevent the protection of the tenant by law, as in other parts of India where the zamindari system is recognized.

Where payments are in default, recovery is effected by attaching the movables of the defaulter, or the land in respect of which the revenue is due, or other land belonging to the defaulter, or, in some cases, by arrest. The issue of the writ of attachment is usually effective at once.1

§ 36. Where crops have failed, the revenue is suspended or even remitted. From 1899 to 1902, when famine prevailed, revenue to the value of £1,289,812 was suspended, of which £1,238,937 was finally remitted. In the famines which followed 1902, though less severe, much larger sums were remitted.

§ 37. From the foregoing sketch it appears that the agricultural produce of land is the main source of revenue in India, and the government has steadily reduced the demands made on it. As the value of produce has grown, government has confined itself to taking a smaller and smaller proportion. The result is that, despite the fact that the average wealth of the people of India per head is extremely low, the proportion of that wealth diverted for public purposes is even lower.2

§ 38. Mr. Jack has conclusively shown that, in comparison with Italy or Japan, the inhabitant of Bengal contributes an exceedingly small proportion of his substance to the general revenue. In Madras a similar result has been reached by Mr. Galetti. His conclusions are so important that it is well to quote in full the data upon which they are based.

It is only when we take small similar local units, and eliminate disturbing factors as far as possible and apply practical detailed

1 A senior officer notes: In the United Provinces it is commonly sufficient to issue a writ of demand, or at the most a summons to appear before the tahsildar. Arrest and attachment of movables are comparatively seldom resorted to, and severer processes are hardly ever required.'

A commissioner also notes: The first thing usually is to serve the defaulter with a reminder that the demand is overdue, for which he is charged a shilling, or else he can be served with a citation to appear and pay or explain why he has not paid. Moreover, all the proprietors in a "matal" are jointly and severally responsible, and ordinarily the revenue is realized in a lump sum from the "lambardar", or representative of the proprietors, who realizes from them their quota. If they do not pay him he can proceed against them by suit in the revenue courts.'

2 An Indian critic notes: Is not the proportion of wealth diverted for public purposes to be lower of necessity if the wealth of the people is extremely low, in order to leave a margin for their subsistence?

More Truths about India, issued by the East India Association, 191314, p. 65.

knowledge and experience, that comparisons between taxation in such distant and different countries can be really illuminating. I will compare the taxation in a single village in the Krishna District. with that in a single village in Italy which I know well, and I promise striking results. My figures are official in each case.

Konatalapalli is a typical upland village in a backward portion of the Krishna District. It has a population of 1,300, and an area of 2,700 acres, of which 2,500 are comprised in holdings. It grows millet on about 1,000 acres, cotton on about 400, pulses on 200 or 300. There are also a few paddy fields. Castor-oil and chillies are grown on small areas. There are some fruit and liquor trees. The population comprises, besides the agriculturists, only the usual village artisans, a few weavers, and a few persons connected with the liquor trade.

Torre San Patrizio is a typical upland village in a backward portion of Italy. It has the same population as Konatalapalli, 1,300. The area comprised in holdings is somewhat less, 2,000 acres against 2,500. It grows maize and wheat. Konatalapalli eats its millet and sells its cotton. Torre San Patrizio eats its maize and sells its wheat. Konatalapalli has its oil seeds; Torre San Patrizio its oilfruit on the olive-trees. Konatalapalli has a few liquor trees, but not many; Torre San Patrizio has a few liquor shrubs (vines), but not many. Pulses are grown as secondary crops in both villages. The population of Torre San Patrizio is all agricultural. There are the usual village artisans. There are no rich proprietors. There are not even weavers as a class apart, but in a few ryots' houses the women work at the loom in the winter. The people of Torre San Patrizio are vegetarians, not from choice but from necessity. They cannot afford to eat meat, nor even eggs. They sell their eggs and their fowls. They cannot afford to eat wheat bread, but eat maize porridge and maize bread, vegetables, and fruit, and what the cow produces.

The soil of Konatalapalli is black regar clay, which grows good crops of millet and cotton. The soil of Torre San Patrizio is lightcoloured clay, which grows fair maize and good fodder crops but very poor wheat and vines..

I shall now draw a comparison between the taxation paid by the peasants of Torre San Patrizio and the ryots of Konatalapalli.

The government land revenue is nearly the same in the two villages. It is just over Rs. 3,000 at Konatalapalli, and 4,568 francs = Rs. 2,741 at Torre San Patrizio.

But when we come to local taxation on land the difference is enormous. It is law in Italy that village panchayats shall not add cesses for their own purposes to government direct taxes until they have exhausted every other source of taxation. But Torre San Patrizio has only, apart from akbari, land, houses, and cattle to tax. It therefore taxes these, what corresponds with akbari being entirely insufficient.

Konatalapalli pays Rs. 250 local cess. Torre San Patrizio pays 1,707 francs = Rs. 1,024 to the Taluk Board, and besides this 6,337 francs = Rs. 3,803 to the village panchayat, or a total of nearly Rs. 5,000 cess on the government land revenue of Rs. 2,741.

Nor is this all. For the cess is only one of the taxes extracted by the Torre San Patrizio village panchayat from the ryot. The total revenue of the panchayat is Rs. 9,000, or more than three times the Government land revenue of the village.

The revenue of the Torre San Patrizio panchayat is made up as follows:

The cesses, the cattle tax, and the hearth tax, amounting to Rs. 7,634, come straight out of the pockets of the ryots, and are a burden on the land the ryots till, the cattle with which they till it, and the houses they live in. Besides this Rs. 7,634, they have to pay Rs. 2,741 land revenue and Rs. 237 house tax to Government, and Rs. 1,024 land cess and Rs. 106 house cess to the Taluk Board. The land, cattle, and village site of Torre San Patrizio thus bear a burden of Rs. 11,854, while the land, cattle, and village site of Konatalapalli bear a burden of little over Rs. 3,000. Nothing is levied on Konatalapalli cattle, there being no government forest reserve in the neighbourhood.

I reckon the gross agricultural income of Torre San Patrizio at Rs. 90,000. This figure is based upon researches extending over twenty years, and is very accurate. For Konatalapalli I cannot make so accurate an estimate. But the village officers tell me the crop on an acre of cotton is sold at about Rs. 40, and that on an acre of cholum at about Rs. 30. These two products alone, grown on about 400 and 1,000 acres respectively, yield Rs. 46,000 a year gross. Then there are hundreds of acres of pulses and other products, including fifty of wet paddy, and I must also reckon in the milk and other products of the cows and buffaloes, and the profit on