Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/58

52 salt. The Zamíndár was also credited with the maintenance and pay of the village watchmen. But for many years the postal service between police stations and the magistrate's court, as well as the Chaukidárí or village watch system, was on a most unsatisfactory footing.

If some of the above responsibilities were occasionally inconvenient and irksome, they could also be turned into instruments of power and oppression in the hands of energetic landlords who could afford to have good legal advice and who were well served by active agents 'and retainers. While inexperienced and indifferent Zamíndárs were cheated by their servants, baffled by combinations of Ryots, and driven to the expedient of creating sub-infeudations which left them rent-chargers on their own estates; others, with energy and intelligence and without scruples, managed to avail themselves of every clause and section of the law, and to convert statutory liabilities into sources of profit. They sent their agents to measure holding after holding, and levied rents on all lands in excess of the pattá, as they had a perfect right to do. They sued substantial Ryots for enhanced rents, in order to exact the rates leviable by common custom on the better products. In spite of repeated prohibitions, legal and executive, they demanded and received extra cesses known as abwábs at every remarkable incident in their lives: the birth of a son, the marriage of a daughter, the dedication of a temple,