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90 laud

DO HISTORY OF INDIA. [Book IV.

A.D. — silver, a fiftieth part may be taken by the king, of grain an eighth part, a sixth or a twelfth" (said by the commentator to be regulated according to the differ- ence of tlie soil and the labour necessary to cultivate it), " He may also take a sixth part of the clear annual increase of trees, flesh meat, honey, clarified butter, perfumes, medical substances, liquids, flowers, roots and fruit, of gathered leaves, pot-herbs, grass, utensils made with leather or cane, earthen pots, and all thincjs made of stone."

Property in Agricultural produce, on which a maximum rate of a sixth might have been

levied, must have been by far the most productive of these taxes, but it has been maintained that the tax on produce was by no means the only revenue derived from land, because the property of the soil belonged exclusively to the king, and must have yielded him an immense return in the shape of rent, or at least enabled him to meet the expenses of the public establishments, by paying the ofiicers with grants of land, instead of giving them salaries in money. The question thus raised is of great importance, and having direct practical bearings on the actual administration of the government, has been discussed at great length and with much keenness. It would be out of place here to take part in the discussion fui'ther than to say, that the leading advocates on both sides have taken too high ground. By regarding India as if it were a single territory, they have first imagined that one uniform system of land tenure was practicable, and then, in support of the view which they advocate, have appealed to the kinds of tenure prevalent in particular provinces or districts. In this way it has been possible to maintain with almost equal plausibility that the property of the soil is in the sovereign, in zemindars, supposed to mean landed proprietors similar to those of Europe, and in the ryots or actual cultivators ; whereas the only inference ought to have been, that the tenures were not uniform but various, and that the necessary consequence of recognizing any one of them as exclusive of the others was to commit wholesale injustice. The ryots, as the class least able to defend themselves, have been the greatest sufierers by this rage for uniformity on the part of their rulers ; and Sir Thomas Muni'o did not describe the injustice which has been done in too strong terms when he said, " We have, in our anxiety to make everything as English as j)ossible, in a country which resembles England in nothing, attempted to create at once tlu-oughout extensive provinces a kind of landed property which never existed in them ; and in the pursuit of the object we have relinquished the rights wdiich the sovereign always possessed in the soil ; and we have in many cases deprived the real owners, the occupant ryots, of their proprietary rights, and bestowed them on zemindars and other imaginary landlords: changes like these never can effect a permanent settlement in any country ; they are rather calculated to unsettle whatever was before deemed permanent."'

'' Miuute on tlie State of the Country, and Condition of the People under the Presidency of Fort St. George^ dated 31st Dec. 1824, and ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 17th May, 1830; p. 2G.