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 CHAPTER VIII.

CONCLUSIONS.

Nearly twelve years have elapsed since the edifice of the Oudh Compromise was crowned by the passing of Act XIX. of 1868, but such legislation for the province as has been effected during that period has been concerned with details rather than with principles, and has but little general interest. The main features of the system of agricultural polity have not been materially altered by Acts XVII. and XVIII. of 1876 — the Oudh Land Revenue Act and the Oudh Laws Act — and the diflerent classes of the population have been left " free to work out their several good, to go forward in the bright career before them," almost wholly unhampered by any such interference between landlord and tenaut as was so earnestly deprecated by the organ of the Taluqdars.

In the preceding chapters it has been attempted to give a general idea of the actual condition and mutual relations of the agricultural population of Oudh, and to sketch, however inadequately, the process by which that condition and those relations have been arrived at. A more dillicult task remains, that of endeavouring in some degree to estimate the effects on various classes of twenty -four years of British rule, and to indicate certain practicable remedies for some of the evils from which the province at present suffers.