Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/48

42 that he had no right to dispossess any one cultivator for the sole purpose of giving his land to another. He insisted that Zamíndárs should grant pattás or documents specifying the amount which the Ryots were to pay 'by whatever rule or custom it may be demanded.' Every cess or 'benevolence' known as abwáb, imposed by the Zamíndár, was declared by Cornwallis to be a breach of his agreement and a direct violation of the established laws of the country.

He expressly reserved to Government the right to enquire into and to resume alienations of land granted for religious and secular purposes to favourites, Brahmans, astrologers, priests, and other classes: and one of the sections of the Regulation or Law in which he embodied these views contains, as has been shown, an intimation that as it was the duty of the ruling power to protect the helpless classes, the Governor-General in Council, whenever he might deem it proper, would enact such Regulations as he might think necessary for the safety and welfare of the dependent Tálukdárs, Ryots, and other cultivators of the soil. In many other ways was a limit imposed on the power of the Zamíndár. Though permitted to sell and mortgage his estates, he was not by any such transaction to endanger the realisation of the Government revenue.

Although private sales of estates were not numerous the shares of joint-proprietors had to be separated. And the separation, which at first only meant that