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 INTRODUCTION.

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of the lands in the same property in common and others severally. The 7,000 village communities which know no superior landlord contain more than 60,000 proprietors, whose ill-defined rights and constant disputes form a perennial source of trouble and litigation. The soil, therefore, parcelled out in tiny farms of four acres each, has to support, besides the cultivators themselves, about 400 large landowners, above 60,000 small proprietors, and rather more than that number of sub-proprietors holding an intermediate position between the cultivators and the landlord; and above all, comes the great landlord the State, with its unvarying and inexorable demand. The land revenue demand under the late king's government rose within the last ten years of its existence from £1,399,000 to £2,702,000; but the value of the accounts of the royal treasury may be estimated when we find that, within the same period of enormous nominal increase, the actual receipts fell from £1,318,000 to £1,063,000. Besides this, there were practically no When we assumed charge of the protaxes of any importance. vince a rough assessment was made, on the basis of the accounts for the five years preceding, at a little over a million sterling. Officers were very soon appointed to fix the land demand on a

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and as their estimates came till now, rose, at the conclusion of the gradually in the revenue one and a half million. The about stands at it work of revision, spirits and excise on the stamps on the are taxes chief remaining applications to the courts, which yieldand securities valuable ed last year £73,000 and £93,000 respectively. Miscellaneous sources which do not properly come under the head of taxation yield some £65,000 more, to which the principle contributions are £28 000 from the Government forests and £16,000 from the postoffice. There are, besides, two other great sources from which thei imperial treasury draws an income the first, in the strictest sense the second, the profits of a trade, for which of the word, a tax only provide the material at a fair price country the people of the themselves. At the lowest estimate the Oudh and with no loss to annually for the salt he exchequer £200,000 peasant pays the from the trade in derived is consumes, and a profit t»f £500,000 the opium which he grows. The taxes proper, then, are those on the land, the salt, litiga-

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scientific basis for thirty years,

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tion and civil contracts, and spirituous liquors, and they yield altogether about £1,865,000 annually to the State, which derives sources which involve a further income of nearly £600,000 from no drain on the country and are analogous to the receipts from