Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/74

 INTRODUCTIOW.

Ixiv

He

would ask you to realizing in full a few months later. consider that the old and effective means of collecting rent, to which both he and his tenants had been accustomed, "were now regarded as criminal offences ; and would urge that, if the use of the lathi and the slipper were inconsistent with a more perfect order, the State should at any rate provide some substitute ; and that if courts were appointed to realize his rents for him, the least that could be expected is, that they should be allowed time to perform the work efficiently ; and he would probably conclude by representing the injustice of arming the official with short, stringent methods of exaction from himself, while he for the collection of the same money, was allowed only the ineffectual procedure of a regular suit against his tenants or under-proprieAnd these are the chief causes which threaten the landed tors. classes for the less wealthy among them, their increasing numbers and diminished sources of subsistence for all, the rigid exaction on fixed days of a heavy demand from a property whose proceeds fluctuate with every season, the forcible abandonment of old and inability to use the new ways of collecting rent, their position between a sharp weapon against themselves and a blunt



own hands against their tenantry. the more general tendencies of our rule one at least is equally obvious, the disintegration of the existing structure of The caste system absolutely requires for its safety the society. ignorance of the lower orders. It is at any rate to the honour of our common humanity that no large classes of men will long submit to a position of inferiority and degradation when they have learnt to distrust the ascribal of it to an unalterable decree of fate. The Brahmanical order has as yet perhaps hardly lost anything of its old vitality but with schools, railways, newspapers, post-offices, and a Government which owes it no respect, its doom, if far off, is eventually assured. Yet it should be remembered that with all its glaring faults it has been the salt of the country that the national character owes it the preservation of all that it contains worthy of praise, and that it has supported its race for centuries under the unparalleled strain of a hostile barbarous despotism. When it is gone, as go it surely must, will anything be left in its place, or will the whole country be reduced to a dead and hopeless level of slavery ? Or is there any middle way which will allow it, by assuming a new development, to meet the altered circumstances? No certain answer can be given, but one clear duty is indicated. If the possibility of a national rule is to remain unless we are preweapon

in their

Of

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