Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/77

Rh in accordance with native feeling, and it has political advantages which compensate or at any rate balance its defects.

But, to sum up, it can hardly now be an open question whether Shore's plea for delay would have involved any sacrifice. The Zamíndárs, with security of tenure and with privileges converted into rights, would have been willing to accept a Settlement for a long term of years. The changes in the constitution, duties, and remuneration of the Civil Service, about to be described, would have enabled the Indian Government to train up a race of officials who had a deeper knowledge of agricultural customs and a more complete mastery of administrative principles and details. At any and every periodical revision of the Zamíndárí system, abuses must have been tested by increased official knowledge, and remedies would have been applied at an earlier date. This revision would have probably outweighed any disadvantage arising out of the excitement inseparable from a break in the revenue system. As it has turned out, action for the benefit of tenants and under-tenants has been forced on the Government by the periodical representations of district officers, by the recurrence of formidable combinations on the part of the agriculturists, and by outrages for which magistrates and judges who sat in judgment on their perpetrators were often compelled to remark that there were divers excuses to be made.

Yet it must be remembered that the Settlement