Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/64

 52 PUBLIC REVENUE. diflPerence, in the different countries of the Archi- pelago. The relative situation of the sovereign and cultivator may justly be compared to that of a Russian or Polish lord with his peasants. The European noble estimates the value of his estate, not by the number or fertility of its acres, but by the amount of his peasants. This is exactly what is done in Java. The sovereign, in his letters of nobility, does not say that he gives a certain num- ber of acres, or a certain quantity of land, but that he gives a certain number of cultivators, or, which is the same thing, the labour of a certain number of cultivators. The subject of landed tenures in oriental countries has been, for the first time, ad- mirably explained by the philosophical author of that invaluable and great work, The History of British India, when he states, that, " In a country in which the revenue of the sovereign was increased in proportion to the number of cultivators, there would be a competition, not of cultivators for the land, but of the land for cultivators.*' That " If a ryot cultivated a piece of ground, and paid his as- sessment punctually to the sovereign, the sove- reign would be far from any wish to remove him when it was difficult to supply his place ;" and that, " If he sold the ground to another ryot, or left it to a successor, that is, put another in his place who would fulfil the wishes of the so- vereign, the sovereign, whose source of fear was