Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/474

 452 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL The average crop was estimated at some 25 bushels of un- husked rice (for irrigated land), or 5 bushels of millet (for ordinary land) per acre. An average crop greatly exceeds these estimates. At the prices ruling the re-settled assessment has amounted to the value of about four bushels of unhusked rice or four-fifths of a bushel of millet on the acre (with or without irrigation respec- tively). Such a rate is a tithe, and to call it half the net or one- third of the gross-produce is to call a thing that which it is nt, and to libel the South Indian farmer. A great reduction in the assessments was made in Kurnool for good reasons and in' Trichinopoly without good reasons; in other districts inequalities have been redressed, and rates nearly corresponding to the old rates reimposed. The survey checks the work of the village clerk, and great areas of waste which might have been tacked on to old holdings without due accountability of the holders have been duly brought to account. When the Government furnish the means of irrigation they seldom now fail to receive the rate due on that account. The statesmen of 1855 found that the Government demand for its share of the crop had been generally converted into a share of the money value of the crop. The rent charge being in cash and not in kind tended to become invariable in amount. The vast area of the then existing wastes was evidence that competition for land was not active, and the earliest revisers intended a general reduction of rates. As the din of the Mutiny subsided need arose for State expenditure to meet an ever increasing performance of all the duties now demanded from civilized governments; men saw that land revenue was the backbone of the Government income, and that the circumstance of the time forbade the impairing of the resources of Government. Further inquiry furnished fresh arguments to those who held that custom had more to do than competition with the amount of land assessment, and the schemes of re-settlement, district by district, were based upon the facts of the collector's practice as well as on the fancy. of the settlement officer's theories. The calculation of the net profit of a holding which the settlement officer professed to make involved the detailed esti- mate of all expenses of cultivation. Two propositions may be unhesitatingly affirmed on this subject: (1) Scarcely any Indio.n farmer could show in a balance sheet the cost to him of producing a given crop; (2) No two men are alike in capacity as farmers: the seasons, the soils of farms, and the practice of districts are infinitely various. That part of the cultivation expenses which