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130 some notice may be taken hereafter, was passed for the enquiry into and Settlement of the rights and interests of all classes concerned with the land; and under this law adequate protection was afforded to Zamíndárs, Pattídárs, and others. Possibly, too, the sturdier character of the inhabitants of the Benares Province may have facilitated the task of Collectors and Settlement officers in this respect. The cultivators were more independent, and more ready to combine together for legitimate purposes of defence.

From whatever cause, it is certain that disturbances in regard to rents, exactions, and encroachments were less frequent, and the cause of less anxiety to our administrators in Benares, after it was thus permanently settled in 1795. The subsequent Settlement of the rights of tenant-proprietors, and Ryots generally, was the work of Collectors such as James Thomason in Azamgarh, and of others elsewhere under the admirable system devised by Robert Bird. It was accomplished gradually between 1832 and 1840, as far as the Province of Benares was concerned. To describe the regular Settlement of the Doáb of Hindustan and other districts in the North-West Provinces, by which the two names just mentioned have become household words to some twenty-five millions of Asiatics, forms no part of this memoir.

While the law for the punctual payment of revenue by the Zamíndárs of Bengal and Behar was enforced with stringency, and while defaulters were exposed