Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/101

 PAR 93 At the same time he found, from the same set of papers, that under the Government of the king of Oudh the total number of cultivators in these one hundred villages was 3,653, and that the average holding of each amounted to six bíghas, thirteen biswas, thirteen biswánsis, while under British rule the number of cultivators has increased to 8,536, and the average holding of each has diminished to four bighas, nineteen biswas, and ten biswánsis. These results, combined with the fact of the almost entire commutation of produce rates into cash payments, point to com- petition. Rents in kind versus cash payment.--- Rents in kind largely prevailed prior to annexation, and were chiefly, if not entirely, levied on poor and unirrigated lands, where the produce was more or less precarious, in the proportion of one-half. Now, however, they have been almost every- where commuted into money rents; another result of increased numbers and competition. Competition.—Custom has not restricted the landlord's right in this matter, nor as regards the enhancement of rent generally. Custom, coupled with the fear of incurring universal odium, operated formerly in preventing a landlord from raising the rents paid by Brahmans. Now, however, such is no longer the case, and it is by no means unusual to find cultivators of this class paying at oven double the rates they used to pay in days gone by, their threats of " dharna" and self-mutilation or destruc- tion notwithstanding. Itis only to be expected that in a densely populated district like this competition should prevail. While custom regulated the transactions between landlord and tenant, prior to the summary settlement of 1858, since that date competition has been gradually displacing, and has now, in most parts of the district, superseded custom; the result, alike of a radical change of government, of greater security to life and property, and of the altered state of the fiscal relation between the landowner and the State. This sounds very much like heresy in the face of Mr. J. S. Mill's emphatically expressed doctrine, that "competition as a regulator of rent has no existence." At the same time he says in another place :-“ The relations, more specially between the landowner and the cultivator, and the payment made by the latter to the former, are, in all states of society, but the most modern” (the italics are mine)," determined by the usage of the country. Never until late times have the conditions of the occupancy of land been (as a general rule) an affair of coro petition.". Mr. Mill then goes on to cite India as an example in favour of his previous argument, but the analogy, so far as Onch is concerned, is not established; the system described, although in vogue in other parts of the country, being inapplicable to the now unquestioned tenant status of this province. It has been noticed that the reluctance, which has hitherto been manifestod by tenants, to lcave their native village with even the certain prospect of bettering themselves elsewhere, is beginning to give way in some places ; a fact which is a further indication of the presence of competition, but which is at the same time a healthy sign. Agricultural labour.—In the present day, when this country is being rapidly opened up to civilization, and its alleged hidden wcalth is daily