Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/687

 REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE.

6 5 I

revenue of India, namely, land, salt, and opium, in the ten years from I860 to 1869 :—

Years ended

Land

Salt

Opium

£

£

£

(i860

18,757,400

2,926,436

5,887,778

rt 1861

18,508,991

3,805,124

6,676,759

& [1862 < { 1863

19,684,668

4,563,082

6,359,270

19,570,147

5,244,150

8,055,476

ro 1864

20,303,423

5,035.696

6,831,992

I860

20,095,041

5,523,584

7,361,405 '

^3 U866

20,473,897

5,342,149

8,518.264

1 T1867

19,136,449

5.345,910

6,803,413

g <^ 1868

19.986,640

5,726.093

8,923,568

ph 1868

co "-

19,926,171

5,588,240

8,453,365

The most important source of public revenue to which rulers in India have, in all ages, looked for obtaining their income is the land, the tax on which, in the year before the Mutiny, furnished more than one-half of the total receipts of the East India Company's Treasury. At present, when the necessities of the Indian exchequer require that Government should resort more largely to the aid of duties levied on the continually increasing trade of the country, the tax on land produces not quite so much in proportion, but it still forms two-fifths of the total receipts of the empire.

The land revenue of India, as of all eastern countries, is generally regarded less as a tax on the landowners than as the result of a joint proprietorship in the soil, under which the produce is divided, in unequal and generally undefined proportions, between the ostensible proprietors and the State. It would seem a matter of justice, therefore, as well as of security for the landowner, that the respective shares should, at a given period, or for specified terms, be strictly defined and limited. Nevertheless, the proportion which the assessment bears to the full value of the land varies greatly in the several provinces and districts of India. Under the old native system, a fixed proportion of the gross produce was taken; but the British system deals with the surplus or net produce which the land may yield after deducting the expenses of cultivation, and the direc- tions to the revenue settlement officers provide that at least one-third of this net produce shall always be left to the cultivator as his profit.

In Bengal, a permanent settlement was made by Lord Cornwallis, in 1793, with the zemindars or principal landowners, who pay direct to the Government a sum probably somewhat exceeding one-half of the amount which they receive as rent; by this measure, the Go- vernment was debarred from any further direct participation in the agricultural improvement of the country. In the north-w ester n