Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/406

 890 continued, practically without interruption, down to the present day and to which, with improved communi- cations, expandin irriation and aricultural It was rising prices for its produce, no end is at present visible. shortly after the mutiny that sales of The Punjab is essentially a proprietor. The ypioal owner tenant. easily qualities which endow them with importance. prosperity has object tribes and probably cultivates four acres more as a The agricultural tribes are generally distinct, defined bodies, possessing valuable martial considerable political To secure heir eontenmen and for nearly seventy years been he main of the administration. Their expropriation by of non-cultivating eapialiss would obviously annual Land solicitous watched the Administration care with which the have proved a grave source o! embarrassment and the Reports testify to the Punjab Government rapid increase in sales of land by the ancient owners to money-lenders and shopkeepers. The prolonged ofiieial anxiety of the Land Alienation finally led to Act in 1901. the passing Throughout this period, however, the continued rise in the price of land has been, regarded as a matter for pride and congratulation and no doubts seem to whether this process has not limits at which it could be It is this question which paper. Undoubtedly the to have arisen as continued past the viewed with complacency. forms the subject of tMs efforts of the British Administration to confer on the requisites of a prosperous cause of- the rise in price. assessment, preparation rights and the legal of an protection peasantry was the Reduction of the accurate accorded agriculturists all the initial reveIlU record of to these province of peasant possesses some eight land began to attract notice and by 1872 the increas- ing volume began to cause disquiet to Government.