Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/73

Rh tracks of communication impassable for wheeled carriages for at least five months in the year, the runners who conveyed the post were constantly carried off by tigers. There was plausibility in the argument that without a guarantee against any increase to the land-tax, the Zamíndárí system, if not doomed to failure, would never be a success. But it is admitted that the judgment of posterity has endorsed the wiser opinion of Shore. Many of the advantages of a Perpetual Settlement might have been equally attainable by a Settlement for a long term of years. It is only fair, in judging Cornwallis, to take into consideration the stubborn difficulties which he had to face.

Many of the subsidiary measures, executive and legislative, necessary for the complete success of the measure, were not immediately carried out. Some indeed were unaccountably and unwarrantably delayed. A summary of them will be given in the chapter descriptive of subsequent legislation. They included the resumption of invalid rent-free tenures: the creation of facilities for the recovery of rent by summary process; and the protection of the rights of tenant-proprietors and others, in 1859 and again in 1884.

But in one aspect, the Settlement has not received its full meed of praise. Here, for the first time in Oriental history, was seen the spectacle of a foreign ruler binding himself and his successors to abstain from periodical revisions of the land-tax; almost