Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/76

 INTRODUCTION.

Ixvi

that the commencement of any other hampered by the division of the people into

sively agricultural country



form of production is We castes, and the absence of every kind of mineral wealth. opening out their utmost value by resources give its existing industry new but we have not called any communication, means of into life, nor does there seem to be any prospect of doing so at In return for the economical advantages it receives it present. has to pay for a Government more expensive than any that have' preceded it, and which spends the greater part of the money it collects beyond the limits of the province. In fine, we have to administer a country rich in vegetable products and densely inhabited by a people distributed by an ancient and unshaken polity into definite and unaltering orders,' The beat of these classes is piled up in stratum above stratum of proprietors and under-proprietors on the land from which all the wealthisderived. The immediate tendency of our rule is unfavourable to the higher classes to the Brahman because it undermines the system on which his power is based by the diffusion of a hostile knowledge and by the direct substitution of our courts and forms

of legal thousrht for his own to the Chhattri because one of his occupations is gone, and his other source of livelihood, the tenure of the land, is imperilled by the increasing numbers of the proprietary population which it is called on to support by the blind rigidity with which Government enforces its demand againsi him, and by the withdrawal of the old and substitution of a new method of collecting the means by which that demand is. to be met. The lower classes have reason to be thankful for their delivery under a strong order from oppression and their advancement through education. If this is correct, a few lines of policy may be clearly indicated. may more than compensate the people for the loss of an old system by fitting them to adopt a better. The wisdom of admitting them to the higher ranks of the administration has been recognised by the appointment of two tried native officials and one young taluqdar of the highest family to the rank of assistant commissioner, an appointment



We

which would be eagerly welcomed by men of the best blood and position. The ruin of the landowning classes, and consequent degradation of the fine body of yeoman proprietors, would be an indelible stain on our administration, and that Government' is keenly alive to this is proved by the repeated revisions of the assessment and its direct interposition with a large loan of public money to- save the larger estates from their creditors. The evil would be sensibly mitigated, perhaps wholly averted, if the deputy