Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/110

102 Indeed, neither Múlráj nor his father seems ever to have rendered accounts with any pretence to completeness for the great province of Múltán. Ranjít Singh, while in full vigour at the head of the Sikh nation, trusted to his memory in the matter of revenue payments, assisted by a notched stick.

But if the pubhc accounts were loosely kept, the public burdens were numerous and severe. Forty-eight taxes had been levied: a long and curious list of imposts, from the land revenue (one half the entire crop, and in some years more) to the transit duties, exacted and re-exacted at every city gate, and paid twelve times over before a bale of goods could pass across the province. Dalhousie's lieutenants reduced them to about half-a-dozen. But an honest system of collection, and an exact audit of public accounts, produced from them a larger revenue than had reached the Sikh exchequer. The land tax of the Punjab was resettled on a fairer basis. Each village and field were surveyed, and every peasant's claim to his holding was scrupulously ascertained. This 'Record of Rights,' forms at once the Magna Charta and Domesday Book of the Punjab. It stands as the beneficent landmark of the commencement of British rule.

The rapid advance to prosperity in the Punjab was due in no small measure to the powerful impulse given to trade and agriculture by roads and irrigation works. Money was advanced to the