IDl ,v:v:v..-\ A.,v ^;$^ , -S^ b^^^^E^^^ik^^^^n^n^^' \ i',.^1 s t WW' n ^my^-^^^^M-^^^::'^ ( - C/ri4/i/e^rU^ y€>^ ^Q^i^^f^m^ cTL. c //v V 'J r y/^A l/rtf(fr.jt/u // 'r.o/tfi MADRAS: CIVIL ADMINISTRATION; ROUGH NOTES FROM PERSONAL OBSERVATION, WRITTEN IN 1855 & 1856. PATRICK B. SMOLLETT, Esq., Agent to the Government of Madras in Vizagapatam. LONDON: RICHARDSON BROTHERS, 23, CORNHILL, E.G. 1858. PEEFACE. As the title-page of this volume sufficiently indi- cates, the following papers were written in India for private circulation among the author's personal acquaintances, and they are now published in the belief that their contents are calculated to draw the attention of public men to the practical work- ing of the revenue administration of Madras, the evils attendant on which are so little known in this country. They have no immediate relation to the reconstruction of the Home Government for India, rendered necessary by the calamitous events in Bengal. A 2 5132S9 IV PREFACE. In the chapter on torture in the collection of the revenue, the aim of the writer is to shew that the system of landed tenures in Madras is the great social evil of the Presidency, and that coercion and the ill-treatment of the native cul- tivators are the necessary consequences of its continuance. The manner in which this detestable land system is carried out — demoralizing the re- venue servants, degrading the agricultural classes, and devoting the private possessions of the native gentry of Southern India to ruin and confisca- tion — is illustrated and exposed in this and in the following chapters. The conclusion arrived at is, that the overthrow of the present policy, and the inauguration of another system which would really protect landed property, and would attract capital to the improvement of the soil, must ema- nate from a Royal Commission ; for thirty years personal observation has satisfied the author that no comprehensive change is to be looked for at the hands of the Local Government. The chapter devoted to the subject of irrigation PREFACE. V improvement, and the outlay of money on what are called reproductive works, is not undeserving of attention at a time when proposals are circu- lated, on authority, for the formation of private companies in England, with or without guaran- tees, to institute enterprizes similar to those un- dertaken by the Madras Government in Tanjore and Eajahmundry. In an official Memorandum emanating from the East India House, published a few weeks since, the Eajahmundry Annicut is specially stated, on the authority of the Public "Works Commission Eeport of 1852, to be a work that, in the process of its construction, not only replaced all the expenditure upon the undertaking, but promised an immediate return of £300,000 sterling to the State, and £3,000,000 per annum to the cultivators. The article now published is meant to shew that the statements of magnificent returns derived from those works are idle tales, and that abundant information of this fact has been in the possession of the local authorities in Madras for some years, which they have VI PREFACE. purposely withheld from submission to the Home Government. Statements have frequently been made in the Imperial Parliament of profits varying from 150 to 750 per cent, per annum, alleged to have been derived from local irrigation works in the Madras Presidency. These results are obtained in this way: — It must be held in mind that the land in Madras is the property of the Government; and that, in order to secure its rents from the occu- piers, it is the duty of the State, as landlord, to maintain, at the public cost, the reservoirs and channels on which the fertility of the villages depends. If a reservoir should burst, or a channel be choked with mud, the cultivation fed by these works will decay, and the rents will be lost; when the breach is filled up and the obstructions removed, the rent will be recovered. The expenses incurred under this head are part of the fixed charges incidental to the ownership of landed pro- perty, and the disbursements must be deducted from the rent-roll of the district before the real PREFACE. Vll value of the lands can be ascertained. At present, in the Madras accounts, the old revenues regained by expenditure in the Public Works Department are entered as new receipts springing from, com- paratively speaking, insignificant outlays. From accounts framed on this principle, magnificent pro- fits can readily be shewn to spring from a very trifling expenditure; while, at the same time, no real addition whatever is made to the general revenues of the Government. It is worthy of observation that since the general introduction of the annual individual settlement system, the revenues of the Madras Presidency have declined. Colonel Sykes, in an Appendix attached to his speech delivered in the House of Commons on the 18th February last, has shewn that, taken for decennial periods in 1809-10, the revenues of Madras were £3,620,000, while, from that date up to 1849-50, the receipts were £3,478,000 only. This decrease appears notwith- standing the annexation to the Madras territories, during the second period of the comparison, of Vlll PREFACE. Coorg, Kurnool, and several other independent states, and the absorption of many valuable pri- vate possessions in the manner pointed out in the following pages. 2bth March, 1858. CHAPTER L On the Madras Torture Commission, and on Coercion in the collection of Revenue. In the official small world of Madras one of the most remarkable events of the year 1855 has been the publication of the Report by certain Commissioners appointed to ascertain whether or not torture in this Presidency was inflicted by Government officials on the native community. Proclamations were framed by Government, and advertisements were published in the local newspapers, inviting com- plaints. Innumerable circulars in every language were posted in each hamlet to the same effect — an elaborate machinery was organized to elicit the truth. Two thousand complaints were received, some in person, but most by letter, of which perhaps B one-sixth part had reference to the subject on hand ; and now that a considerable period has passed, what has been the result, and what remedies for acknow- ledged evils have been devised? The result is posi- tively nothing, nor does anything more seem to have been established than what was previously known to every revenue officer, viz., that the lower orders of native officials whom the Government strive to starve into honesty are generally corrupt and often tyrannical ; and that, though the severities they practice towards criminals and defaulters are of late years mitigated, these malpractices still largely prevail in every district of the Madras Presidency. The enquiry into the practice of torture in the revenue department has proved, I regret to think, a total failure. It might have been otherwise, but the Commission nominated by Government was not composed of parties from whom any comprehensive fiscal remedies could be expected. The Keport and the recommendations were therefore only such as might have been looked for from a Commis- sion constituted as this one was. The resolution of Government disposing of the Report is com- plimentary and meaningless, and the subject is dying away without any practical measures having been taken to remedy great and acknowledged evils. How came the Commission to be nominated ? Mr. Blackett, M.P. for the town of Newcastle, brought on a debate late in the Session in 1854 upon a motion for a Commission to proceed from England to enquire into the tenure of lands in the Madras Presidency, or in other words into the system of annual ryotwar settlements. He described this system justly, in my opinion, as the vilest that could be devised, and said that the revenue demand was so exorbitant that it could only be levied by Govern- ment officials by means of torture. Mr. Danby Seymour confirmed this statement of his own know- ledge. He said that in Madras the object of the Government was to get ten shillings from a man who had only eight shillings a year, and that with this view every species of coercion was had recourse to. Mr. Bright, member for Manchester, following in the same strain, alleged that under the ryotwar system, whenever a cultivator was unable to pay his rent, he was visited with every species of cruelty and severity — that he was torn from his home, was treated to the rack and thumb-screw, and other tortures, and finally that he was cast out to the jungles to starve B 2 or rot, as the case might be. Mr. Bright's honesty of purpose is unquestionable, and the evils of the ryotwar system are manifold; but these statements, if delivered as reported, were greatly exaggerated. When intelligence of this debate reached Madras the Governor in Council lost no time in making known his sentiments. In somewhat lofty terms he thought it expedient that the people should under- stand that the British Government did not sanction, or even tolerate, such atrocities; would spare no efforts to expose them, and would be prepared to come down upon the perpetrators with the full ven- geance of the law. A Commission to take evidence, with full powers to summon principals, witnesses, and accomplices was forthwith nominated. They were instructed to consider the subject " in all its " bearings." A special law was enacted, and carried through the mock Indian Parliament sitting in Cal- cutta, with breathless haste, to enable the Commission to act with full effect. As an after thought, an investigation into "torture in criminal cases" was added to the previous labors of the Commission, and this addition ultimately extinguished the revenue enquiry altogether. When it is considered that the enquiry involved not only the simple fact whether torture was or was not practised in the collection of the Government revenues, but also whether coercion was a conse- quent of the Madras ryotwar settlement ; and, lastly, whether a better system of revenue management might not readily be substituted to remedy the evils so greatly deprecated, it was reasonable to expect that some gentlemen of practical revenue experience, men who were not wedded to the ryotwar system as the one thing needful all over the world, would have been placed upon the Commission. It would have been proper, too, that the parties nominated should have been relieved from all other pressing duties, and permitted to pursue their enquiries without restriction to place or district. Such was not the case. The members chosen were Mr. Edward F. Elliot, once an officer in the Eoyal Army, but for many years a magistrate and first judge of the Small-cause Court in Madras town ; a gentleman of great energy in his vocation, but with more business on his hands than he could well find time for. The second Commissioner was Mr. J. B. Norton, a bar- rister practising in the Supreme Court at Madras, a gentleman of great ability, with a plurality of offices in the Supreme and Sudder Courts. Mr. Norton owed his selection to the fact that he had a local newspaper under his control, Lord Harris being then as eager to obtain the support of the press as he has since been active in denouncing that press as seditious, and its writers disloyal. With these two gentlemen was associated a civilian, Mr. H. Stokes, a great partizan of the rjotwar land revenue system in Madras. The selection of Mr. Stokes as a Commissioner was in other respects an injudicious one, because the Native Association in Madras had made it a matter of public complaint, by petitions in India and by memorials to England, that the practice of torture was largely followed by the native officials under the ryotwar system in Guntoor, at the time when that district was entrusted to this gentleman^s administration. These three gentlemen, all tramelled with offices which occupied the greater portion of their time, were unable of course to quit the precincts of the Presidency. Their enquiries were therefore nominally conducted in a temporary office on the Mount Koad of Madras, where once a week every description of vagabond, male and female, might be seen congre- gated. Every thief in the country detailed his wrongs to them, some by letter, others in person, but for any useful purpose the Commission might as well have sat in London as in the Polytechnic Hall in Madras. What is the truth as regards the use of torture in the collection of revenue in the Madras Districts? Simply this : It has long been the conceit of officials on the Coast of Coromandel to insist that every cultivator in ryotwar districts, however small his holding, is the owner of the soil — in fact, a black yeoman. For his little patch of ground he settles directly with the collector and his myrmidons, and gets a puttah, or lease, annually. The number of these pauper cultivators has largely increased of late years, for the system of subdivision of tenure is fostered by the inferior native revenue servants, because at the time of settlement it aifords a wide field for chicanery and fraud in the granting of remissions, and now 800,000 puttahs are issued annually in Madras Districts to small nominal pro- prietors, each of whom pay less than 10 rupees of revenue to the State. These men, mere laborers, are, by reiterated orders of Revenue Boards, treated as if they were gentlemen. The collector is enjoined not to press them for payment early in the season, to permit them to sell in the best market 8 and at the most convenient time. He is ordered to treat them, in short, with every indulgence. Towards the close of the official year steps were generally taken to enforce the payment of the revenue demand against this class of small cotters, because till recently the appearance of large revenue balances in a collector's accounts was considered proof of lax and inefficient management; while on the other hand an increasing Land Eent Koll, col- lected punctually within the year, was held by Government to be the best test of an officer's administrative capacity, and to give him a claim for advancement in the Public Service. The pauper ryots were therefore hunted out in their various occupations of laborers and servants, and brought to the Native Revenue Collector's office. There they endeavoured to evade payment, and as they have no ostensible property, they would only pay if some durance, coercion — something sharper than persuasion — ^be applied to them. They were cuffi3d, kicked, hustled, kept exposed to the sun, or if very dogged they were put in tlie stocks. In some few, out of a thousand cases, rougher treatment was had recourse to, but no permanent bodily injury was hardly ever inflicted, except from accident. Some- times tills torture was a mere sham — large balances being out in a talook — a pretence at coercion was made. Although it had been arranged by the native public servants, in conjunction with the ryots before- hand, that only a certain amount was to be collected for Government, the collector must still be led to suppose that every endeavour was actually made to realize all the arrears. Pretended efforts were there- fore made to enforce payment by coercion upon some pariahs (experimentum in corpore vili) without effect, and the simpleton of a collector was befooled. I know that this game was constantly played. I have been down, too, pretty sharply on the players. The practice of delaying the settlement, and of permitting the removal of the crops before payment of revenue, has been increasing largely of late years. In Chingleput, in 1853, 3 lacs of rupees out of 9 were outstanding on the 1st July, and the settlement had not been completed in all the divisions of this district till then. In 1854, to my knowledge, the settlement of several talooks in Chingleput had not been commenced upon in June. In the middle of July, 1854, an assistant in Chingleput, trans- ferred to Chittoor, wrote to me thence to say that the collector there was still hard at work upon 10 the settlement of the preceding year. As it is in Chingleput and Chittoor, so it is in other districts. To the uninitiated it may be here stated that the revenue year ends in June. Under this system coercion and ill-usage are matters of necessity, otherwise the revenues could not be collected. All the principal cereal crops are cut and harvested by March at the latest, and there is no reason, as the state of the season is pretty well known in January, why the settlement should not be completed in every district by the end of April, and why the whole of the revenue should not be collected by the 1st of ]\Iay. In all zemindaries and private estates this is done, and the same system could be followed by collectors in the Government villages ; but in a ryotwar province, when half the demand of the district is outstanding on the 1st of May, peremptory edicts issue from head-quarters for the stringent realization of the revenues. The collector knows that much of the balance due cannot be collected by kind words or by caresses; he is fully aware that kicks and blows are necessary, and that they will be given freely. It is he, and not his native subor- dinates, that should be held responsible for the 11 irregularities in the revenue management, for the Amildar is compelled to use compulsion, or else his tenure of office would not be worth six weeks' pur- chase. The simple submission of the balance-sheet of his division would ensure his instantaneous dis- missal by the Board of Revenue on the recommen- dation of the collector. And if the Amildar pleaded the truth, viz., that the mal-administration of the collector was the real cause of the mischief, he would possibly be branded as a calumniator, and declared to be incapable of serving the State again in any capacity. This system, with all its abominations, has been growing worse and worse for many years in the Madras Provinces, and it was high time that it should be put down. The Torture Commissioners' Report, however, may be searched through without finding the slightest notice of the evil, or the sug- gestion of a remedy for any fiscal abuse whatever. In point of fact, the Report of the Commissioners is more a commentary upon violence and cruelty on the part of native officials in criminal cases, than an enquiry into the alleged existence of torture as an instrument to levy an extortionate revenue from a suffering people, under the Madras ryotwar b 12 system. This part of the subject is ignored by the Commissioners as far as possible, and hardly noticed at all in their concluding suggestion, which is the employment of the European element more largely in the administration of the districts in the interior of the Madras Presidency. The remedies for the present disgraceful revenue administration of the Madras Districts are simple and of easy application. If the present annual scourge of an individual settlement be continued, the demand should be fixed upon the crop before it is cut, and all claims to remission should be settled and adjusted at that time. The issue of individual Puttahs, the attendance and detention of the people for obtaining which is a great grievance, should be discontinued. This, of itself, would re- move much of all the extortion and violence practised under the ryotwar system. I have personally tried this plan, and can vouch for the thankfulness of the villagers at being relieved from the vexatious prac- tice of an individual settlement made late in the season, and for the facility with which the collection of the rent proceeded when the amount was fixed with the community while the crop was on tlie ground. One-third more revenue was brought to 13 account in this way, in several districts in which the experiment was tried, than was realized under the system of individual settlement, and yet the villagers were contented and the cultivation was greatly extended. The only parties who were dis- satisfied were some of the native public servants and their retainers, who profited by the confusion of an individual settlement. Although this simple act would go far to restore order and regularity, in lieu of the present riot and disorder prevailing at a settlement ; still, other remedial measures should be adopted. The land I hold to be the property of Government, in most of the ryotwar districts, but the rents should be lowered ; that terrible nuisance — an annual settlement — should be abandoned, and village rents should be introduced on moderate terms, with long leases. The term of the decennial lease is still held, in all the Madras Districts, to have been the most prosperous season for the people ever known. The Madras Board of Revenue have condemned it; but the Board's Report is a tissue of mis-representations. The preparation of most of the settlement accounts should be discontinued, and a few only retained in use — ^fifty-nine sets of intricate accounts, most of 14 them perfectly useless, and many of them untrust- worthy, garnished the Eeport of the settlement of Yizagapatam in 1855. The inferior native officials maintained to compile these voluminous accounts should be discharged, and all the higher ranks of public servants should be paid handsome salaries in proportion to the responsibilities of office. The Tahsildars (native collectors and magistrates) should get 200 or 250 rupees, per mensem, each. If these measures, or if a portion of them, were carried out, accusations of torture to exact an extortionate revenue from the Indian cultivator in Madras, would cease to be made in the Imperial Parliament. English patriots would have then leisure to attend to the cases of tyranny and oppression of their own magistracy towards the helpless tillers of the soil, an instance of which occurred, not long ago, in Essex, in the committal of two decent labourers to the treadmill for fourteen days, for the crime of leaving their work for a few hours one afternoon to look at a review. There is little hope, however, of these things being generally done. Here and there, in some favored district, a reduction of assessment is being made — not, so far as I can see, in a judicious way. But the 15 abolition of the annual settlement itself, the intro- duction of a permanent settlement, or a system of leases for a long term of years, and the proper pay- ment of the native public servants, who do most of the duties, but who get none of the emoluments of high office, are not thought of. Any proposition to that effect is treated with contempt. So far from approving of a settlement and collection from the crop, a few days ago a fresh circular letter was issued by the Revenue Board suggesting the still later post- ponement of the settlements and of the collections, for the old claptrap purpose of fostering the poor ryot. In my judgment this circular order is only calculated to give additional facilities for fraud by the public servants, and for the oppression of the people. Very recently, too, an extract from the minutes of consultation of Government was semi-officially pub- lished in the Madras Athenceum. The enormous revenue balance outstanding in North Arcot, on the 30th June, 1855, the last day of the official year, had attracted notice, and the Government, it seems, called upon the collector for an explanation. He replied that the settlement was made at a very late period of the year, and that as coercion and torture IG were not now permitted, his native servants could not collect the Government dues, the crops having been carried away. He said he had sent for some of the principal cultivators in his district, and ha^ pointed out to them the unreasonableness of their acts, and that he hoped yet to recover a good part of the arrear by-and-bye. This was the substance of the collector's explanation — sufficiently lame and unsa- tisfactory, no doubt. To the Government it seems to have afforded intense delight. The collector was thanked for his promptitude and straightforwardness ! His promp- titude seemed to consist in finishing his settlement in August instead of in April, and his straightfor- wardness in a confession of his inability to collect the rental of his district long after the revenue season had closed. It would have been more to the purpose if the Government, instead of expressing satisfaction, had desired that the name of all col- lectors whose current arrears exceeded five per cent, on the 1st of June should be reported with a view to their being removed to some less respon- sible post. If that were done, I believe the balances would be infinitesimally small in all Madras col- lectorates, and we should then hear no more of the 17 difficulties of collection, now that coercion is autho- ritatively condemned. I contend that any officer who avows his inability to collect the amount of his own settlement by reason of the Torture Commissioners' Keport should be removed from office, whether he be a native or an Anglo-Saxon. The recommendation of the Commissioners in the concluding paragraphs of the Eeport, is " the infusion " of a larger amount of European agency into the " government of the provinces,'' and this is afterwards explained to mean " moral agency; for there are " many East Indians and some natives who might " be trusted with power." The aim of the Com- missioners, however, is to replace native authority by European and Anglo-Asiatic functionaries, " to " guard the natives against themselves." This is the sole concluding recommendation. In previous pas- sages they had suggested, rather than recommended, the separation of police and magisterial authority from the powers exercised by collectors in fiscal matters ; but there are difficulties in the way which they do not overcome, and they prompt the expedient, rather than heartily recommend it: for they admit that the suggestion is in the face of experience, — those districts being supposed, popularly, to be best c 18 governed where the European officers are fewest, and where the office of civil and criminal judge is largely combined witli that of collector and magistrate. Strange to say, at the very time that this Madras proposition was tabled, a counter- measure had been prepared, in Calcutta, to unite the functions of collector and magistrate, as the first step towards police reform in the Bengal Presidency. The districts alluded to by the Madras Com- missioners are what are styled, " non-regulation " districts," and include Mysore, the Punjaub, Nagpore, and the like; and although nobody is silly enough to suppose that the people suffer under no grievances in these countries, or that the native officials there are all immaculate, still it is universally credited that these provinces are better governed than are Chingleput and North Arcot — districts lying at the threshold of Madras; and why is this? Because there the system of criminal procedure is simple and without technicalities, because in these provinces there is no intricate revenue ryotwar system, and no Jummabundy Hookumnamah explaining its details extending over sixty sheets of paper ; no incomprehensible rules for 19 extra rents on lands supplied with Government water, or growing two crops ; no " Fysul Jastees " and " Sevoy Jummahs," — revenue terms in which Madras officials delight, but which I do not pre- tend to understand, and therefore cannot explain. Moreover, the superintendents of districts in non- regulation provinces are not constrained to manu- facture annually sixty separate sets of accounts to illustrate their gatherings, and they are not con- trolled by a Eevenue Board and tramelled with three or four thick volumes of circular orders, to which a heavy volume is now periodically added every year. I dissent from both the recommendation and the suggestion of the Torture Commissioners' Eeport. It does not seem necessary to me that the natives should be " protected from their own people." India, I think, should be mainly administered by Indians; it is the land system and not the men that should be changed. Many of the native tahsildars and several sheristadars in the Madras territories are, for the work they have to do — viz., .the administration of a province — superior in capacity to their European superintendents, and a district is often wholly managed through their instru- c 2 20 mentality, the collector himself being quite a nonen- tity in every thing except his official emoluments. On whose recommendation is the suggestion for a larger infusion of the European element made? The key note apparently was struck by the col- lector and magistrate of North Arcot, a district, he says, " little less extensive than Wales, and one-fourth " more populous." Mr. Bourdillon seems to lament that there are not in that district twelve towns, as in Wales, with a general gaol delivery in each, instead of one European judge holding his court daily at the principal town of the province, viz., Chittoor; but the Commissioners do not go quite that length ; they merely point out that in a district of this extent there are practically only six '' committing magistrates." This is a very great mistake. There are, indeed, including the collector, only six European cove- nanted officers, magistrates, and justices of the peace in North Arcot; but there are, at least, twenty or thirty native magistrates in that district, each of whom, in his own division, is a " committing magistrate," and is, within the limits of his appointment, coroner to boot. These men are not only authorized to commit all heinous cases to the Sessions Court, but they are enjoined 21 to do so without reference to their European superior. Nine criminal cases out of ten, therefore, are sent to the Chittoor Sessions Court direct by these men, the European magistrates being, in great measure, only superintendents of police, reviewing the cases of the native magistracy, and seeing that as far as practicable the work is done creditably and according to established form. The magistrate of a Madras district does little or nothing himself in this department, beyond ex- ercising a general superintendence over the whole establishment — European and native. Occasionally he takes up an original magisterial case, if it be one of more than ordinary interest ; but in general his duties lie in hearing appeals from the decisions of his European or native subordinates. In my judgment there are functionaries enough in the Madras Provinces, and to spare. What is wanted is, that those who do the duties should be properly remunerated; and, as already stated, every chief native officer vested with police and magisterial authority in a division should have, at least, 200 rupees a month. There is no reason why appointments of this nature should be fiUed by natives alone. The situations should 22 be open to men of all creeds, castes, and color; but the places should be made respectable in emolument, and the constables, even, should be better paid — not starved on salaries of 75. a month, with which they are supposed to clothe and arm themselves, and to maintain families. The amelioration of the situations of the existing uncovenanted service, and not the multiplication of " the moral element '^ in the shape of Indo- British assistants, with all the ill-paid native servants still running riot in the talooks, is what is needed in the Madras territories. I believe that extra uncovenanted agency is largely employed in districts in Bengal, especially in the magisterial departments; but there, unless I greatly err, the native police were, till lately, mere darogahs, and the European magistrates were really the only committing officers in the district. This is wholly different from the Madras system ; and if it be meant to revert to the Bengal practice, and to apply it to the districts in Madras, then I think that this will be a step backwards. I believe, too, that not- withstanding the uncovenanted agency in Bengal, the police of that province is a perfect scandal, and that torture is quite as common and more 23 ferocious in practice there than it is in Madras. The introduction of this system into the Madras Presidency would tend, in my judgment, to lower and degrade still more the native servants of the State, already, God knows, sufficiently debased by their discreditable treatment. Mr. J. W. Cherry has been noted as an advocate for the Commissioners' suggestion. He is sub- collector and joint magistrate of Salem, and has four talooks under his charge, the duties of which, he says, he finds to be far too much for his abilities. He suggests to Government a far greater agency of well-paid East Indians, and a far larger amount of European superintendence. " I am," says he, " the " sole European to conduct the police duties among " a population of 572,000 people, and to supervise the " collections of 6 lacs of revenue. These duties are " far too onerous to be performed by a single officer." Mr. Cherry, until he was appointed to be sub- collector of Salem, served chiefly in the office of the Accountant- General ; and that the Governor of Madras did not think the sub-coUectorate in Salem a very arduous post is proved by the fact that he was selected for it, although he had no previous experience in the department. The duties were possibly a little 24 irksome to Mr. Cherry, at first, from their novelty, and from their being so different from the forms of double- entry and account-keeping with which he must have been familiar in his late office. But, really and truly, the situation of a sub-collector and joint magistrate is a very easy one. If, as he says, Mr. Cherry really conducted all the police duties of a country 4,000 miles square, instead of superintending the work of six or eight native magistrates, then, no doubt, he greatly misunderstood his position, and if the business was done at all I dare say it was very badly done. But two hours a day, honestly devoted to the super- vision of the work of the native police officers and to the disposal of such original cases as properly came before him, would amply suffice, on an average, to keep the joint magistrate's office in order, and one hour a day's consultation with his sheristadar in revenue affairs would serve to dispose of all ordinary fiscal matters. Three hours a day of business, for six days of the week, is but a small day's work for a good day's wage; and if there was a proper revenue system in the Salem district, there would be little to do at all for many months of the year in the sub- collectorate. With a little more up-country expe- rience Mr. Cherry will, I doubt not, find this out ere 25 long, if he should prove to be, as his friends consider him, a smart man. Mr. T. D. Lushington, collector of Masulipatam, in a report of immense length, (the preparation of which itself shews that he has a great deal of leisure time on his hands, for it must have taken him some days to compose,) talks of the " diffi- " culties of a collector's position, of the scanti- " ness of his European subordinates, of his being " surrounded by a body of ryots in a state of " extreme moral degradation, brought up to consider " that the struggle of their life should be to evade " the payment of taxes in every possible way, and ^' that any amount of fraud and falsehood is justi- " fiable for such an object." I have served for many years, and have lived in almost every district in the Northern Circars, mixing much and inti- mately witli the people, and so far from finding the collector of Masulipatam's description of the culti- vators true, it is my firm conviction that where there is anything like decent management, where anything like common sense in the revenue system is pursued, the ryots in these districts are, as a rule, the quietest, the most simple, and the most manageable of men. I assert, besides, that the 26 Gentoo ryots in the Northern Circars are the promptest paymasters that are to be found in any portion of the Southern Peninsula. Go into Purlah Kimedy, into Madagole, into Jey- pore, the private properties of Indian noblemen, places where happily the cultivating classes never saw a Jummabundy Hookumnamah, and assume the management of the lands. There has never been a survey in these parts ; but it is not wanted, for the extent of the lands is estimated, and as their pro- ductive powers are fully known, the demand on each village has been fixed with the concurrence of the people, and the amount is moderately fair. The collections rarely fluctuate, except in years of great calamity, and the receipts are forthcoming, not only without coercion, but the instalments of rent are sent in largely in advance. In Yizaga- patam the large forfeited zemindary of Palcondah is rented to a mercantile firm in Madras. The demand on the lands is nearly 1^ lacs of rupees, and the superintendent never had a day's experience in revenue matters until he found himself installed in the duties of the management. In addition, he conducts a very extensive sugar factory, and he is engaged in large mercantile operations bcsidcsr 27 I asked this gentleman a few days since how much of his time the management of Palcondah occu- pied ; his answer was, " none at all ; the rents are " paid with much punctuality." But, of course, in " these places there are no annual puttahs, no rules " for Fysul Jastee," no twenty-two English forms of accounts for each village, and no revenue survey, with fifty classifications of soils. It is only in dis- tricts where such things, and annual settlements, and ryotwar regulations are rife, that the people become demoralized ; for the system itself being rotten, and carried out by ill-paid and corrupt functionaries, the ryots, in self-defence, are driven to have recourse to fraud and chicanery. By the collector's own shewing, the evils of coercion and torture on which he discourses arose, in Masuli- patam, from want of system, in the removal of the crop without payment, and in the connivance of the public servants with the ryots, through the collector exercising no proper control over them. Let him introduce a better method of settlement, and he will find the ryots manageable enough. The difficulties of his position, which the collector of Masulipatam so helplessly deplores, are unfelt by men of energy and self-reliance, and are surmounted without diffi- 28 culty by private individuals, who, acting on their own resources, avoid the errors of the traditionary- land revenue system in the Madras Presidency. ■ The Eeport of the Commissioners itself is a short and readable production, cleverly put together, as might have been expected from Mr. Norton's pen ; but the appendix is overlaid with an extravagant amount of nonsense. There are petitions translated at length on every imaginable subject. There is a report from a man named A. Nulla Moottoo, once a catechist and preacher, now a Government exciseman under Mr. Stokes, the collector of Madras, and a member of the Commission. This man inflicts his tediousness on the Commissioners at immense length, his story filling twenty-three closely printed pages of the appendix, and the Commissioners think him a great authority in matters of torture, for they call the particular attention of Government to his statements. He seems to have been required by the Com- missioners to give a history of his experiences, and he cheerfully responded. The man appears to have traversed many districts while in missionary employment, and to have been indefatigable in preaching. In every district visited, he, on all 29 occasions, took up his quarters as near as possible to the public offices. He paints the native public servants in the blackest colors, and dwells upon their cruelty, venality, rapacity, and tyranny, until one is left to think that the Company's dis- tricts in Madras must be a hell upon earth to the laboring poor. The catechist always slept in the neighbourhood of the native collector's place of business, by way of penance, seemingly; and as the business in the hot season generally begins there after sunset, he says that the shrieks of the tortured ryots vexed and rang in his ears all the night long. Mysore is visited by our traveller, but matters under General Sir Mark Cubbon are, by his ac- count, apparently as bad as in the Madras districts. The catechist, in preaching to the people there, used to improve the occasion by telling his black congregation that their immediate sufferings were inflicted by bloated Brahmins, and were not administered by enlightened Christians, to whom he advised his hearers to appeal for redress. The ryots, on the other hand, seemed to think that there was as little chance of obtaining justice from the pale- faced Christian as from their bronzed countrymen. 30 In the end the catechist propounds his remedies. He proposes to make the receipt of a douceur under any pretence punishable to the extent that gang rob- bery is now punished.* An enactment of this nature " properly enforced against the bribe-receiving vice, '* would prove," he says, " a moral renovation of the " people in general, whereby the Government and " subjects may be benefited almost in every respect," and he makes a tender of his own humble services to carry out this renovation — for a consideration. His last paragraph is given in full in his own words. There is, it seems, in Tanjore, a small inde- pendent principality, the property of one Eajah Tondiman Bahadoor, and the Christian catechist, knowing the passion of Government for annexation, thus ends his letter to the Commissioners with the recommendation of the robbery of a heathen. " Before I conclude," he says, " I humbly solicit " your attention towards the poor ryots (who are " ten thousand population) that are suffering the " most cruel treatment under the heaviest yoke of " Tondiman's absolute power over Poodicotta, which " I have seen with my own eyes. Oh, what hap- " piness the poor people would feel if they were to * Fourteen years' imprisonment with hard labor in irons. 31 " be rescued from the heavy yoke of the Tondiman " at such a time as this. May the Author of every " good towards His creatures lead and direct your " Commission, and our Lord Harris and his lord- " ship's councillors in every respect, that you may " be a blessing to the Government and the people, " and especially to be the instruments of His own " glory before the eyes of these millions of Hindoos." Was it to this cant that the Commissioners desired to call the Governor's attention? Has the Madras Government not cultivators enough to vex with their ryot war settlements without confiscating the poor Tondiman's little possessions? It was stated, at the commencement of these remarks, that no good was likely to spring from the publication of the Torture Commissioners' Eeport, but, perhaps, after all there are still grounds to hope that this agitation may lead to some practical measures in the end. In an English newspaper I observe that Mr. Walter Elliot, a member of the Madras Govern- ment, has recorded an ofiicial Minute on this subject — not printed, however, in the Madras Blue Book — and in speaking of the oppression and coercion prac- tised towards the ryots, that gentleman thus observes : " These practices cannot be checked so long as annual 32 " settlements of the revenue continue to be made. " The machinery for such a purpose requires the " employment of a very large body of inferior " revenue officers, many of them receiving rates " of remuneration lower than those of ordinary " domestic servants. They are always men of " education, that is, they are the best educated " individuals in the community; they are expected " to maintain a decent appearance, and the nature " of their duties often requires them to keep a con- " veyance. It is absolutely impossible for them to " do all this on the pittance allowed to them, and " their means are eked out by illicit contributions " extorted from the ryots. I believe that a more " permanent tenure of the land which shall save the " people from constant annual interference, while it " allows a large reduction in the present description " of inferior agency and the better remuneration of " those that remain, is quite as essential to the suc- " cessful repression of torture as any other method " that has been recommended." This is the root of the matter ; these few sentences contain more good sense than will be found in the whole Torture Report put together. Mr. Elliot sat for nearly twenty years in the Madras Board of 33 Eevenue, and always passed for a good ryotwar man, but when he, born north of the Tweed, native of a land the natives of which are proverbial for caution, abandons this annual individual settlement, its doom is, perhaps, not distant. The only wonder is that Mr. Elliot, entertaining these sentiments, did not advocate a change years and years ago, instead of writing in his official capacity all that time, as if he thought there was some magic virtue in an annual puttah, and joining with his colleagues in denun- ciations of those who condemned the system, and who endeavoured, as much as possible, to mitigate its evils. The omission of all suggestions similar to those of Mr. Elliot by any of the revenue officials consulted may appear strange to those unacquainted with the local politics of Madras. But there, a subordinate officer who presumes to doubt the wisdom of the annual individual settlement is placed under a ban — his heretical opinions are not allowed to be seen. There is proof of this fact in the publication of the Torture Blue Book. The writer of these lines, in his then capacity of collector of Chingleput, had ven- tured to say that the oppression and coercion of the laboring poor in ryotwar districts was mainly D 34 caused by annual individual settlements, and that coercion would, in his judgment, disappear if the system was changed. The paragraph which con- tained this obnoxious sentiment was excised by the secretary to Government, while the ribaldry of A. Nulla Moottoo, the Christian catechist, was printed and circulated with the recorded approbation of the Commissioners and the Government. If, then, the land system of Madras is ever to be thoroughly purged, and the misery removed which it has engendered, sweeping away every trace of wealth from the districts where it exists and reducing all the inhabitants to one level of serfdom, the remedy must come from a Commission emanating from England. It is hopeless to expect any radical change from the local administration constituted as it now is, nor from Madras officials under the existing regime at that Presidency. 15 th November^ 1855. CHAPTEE 11. The Rajahmundry Annicut — its cost and profits. The Commissioner in the Northern Circars, Mr, Goldingham, sent me for perusal, in September, 1855, a statement, which he had submitted recently to the Government of Madras on the presumed profits of the great Annicut in Eajahmundry. It is carefully prepared, and though the leaning of the writer is all in favor of these hydraulic experiments for the improvement of India, which he believes will, "with God's help," be a blessing to the people, his report, and the estimates of past and prospective profits which accompany it, entirely con- trovert the fabulous accounts of gains derived from irrigation improvements in Eajahmundry, which have been foisted on the public with some success, both in England and in India, for the last few years. Every one has heard of the inveterate hardihood D 2 36 of official assertion by public men in England in reference to mismanagement in the Crimea, and in other matters, but in no country has official misrepresentation been surpassed by the statements circulated in India regarding public works generally, and, the Rajahmundry Annicut particularly, its estimated cost and expected profit. The com- pletion of the Dam, or Annicut, at Doulaiswarum, with all the necessary locks and irrigation canals, was represented in the first instance to require an expenditure of £120,000 only, although if ordinary care had' been taken in the preparation of the estimates, it could easily have been ascertained that an outlay of at least three times that sum would be needed for the works. The estimates of profits varied in almost every letter and diary sub- mitted by the projecting engineer. At one time 9 lacs of rupees annually were promised on an outlay of 12 lacs. Then 10 or 20 lacs a-year were vouchsafed to Government, and the profit to the people in the enhanced value of their property was put down at £1,240,000. It is believed, that if the government of Lord Tweeddale, which sanctioned and embarked in this gigantic undertaking, had known the ultimate cost of the 37 works, and the small amount of profit arising therefrom, the project would have been postponed till the mania for works of irrigation in India had reached its climax under the wasteful adminis- tration of Lord Harris in Madras, in all expenditure connected with the Department of Public Works. Wlien the work was undertaken, and to some extent completed, the same mis-statements continued to be propagated in regard to its profits. Colonel Cotton, in his publication entitled " Public Works "in India," says, in page 211, "in Eajahmundry " while £200,000 have been expended, £300,000 " have been obtained in return." This was up to 1853, and the work had only been sanctioned in 1846. Again (page 62), writing on the same subject, the same author says, " the Godavery works have " been in hand seven years, and about 20 lacs " have been spent up to this time, and the revenue " has steadily increased from an average of 19 " lacs up to 25 lacs per annum, giving a total " increase of £300,000 against £200,000 expended. " So that this great system of works, which, when " complete, will have cost £250,000, has been " carried on not only without demanding a rupee " from the General Treasury, but with a clear 38 " surplus of £100,000 of revenue, and promising " to yield, probably within a few years, a permanent " increase of 10 or 20 lacs, £100,000 or £200,000, " a-year. These are undeniable facts." It will be shown from the sequel of the present narrative that these assertions, so confidently advanced, have no real foundation in fact whatever. The Commissioners for Public Works in Madras, who derived their inspiration from Colonel Arthur Cotton, adopted, in their Eeport of 1853, all the views of the engineer without misgiving, and even capped his boldest calculations. They printed a statement, framed up to the close of the revenue year, 1850-51, which showed a nett surplus gain to Government up to that date of 6 lacs and 89,000 rupees, the expenditure being calculated at 12 lacs and 65,000 rupees, and the receipts from the work 19 lacs and 54,000 rupees. The Commissioners then went into a calculation to show that the probable nett gain in ten years from the commencement of the works would be £280,000, besides paying the ex- penses of the work. The curious in these things will find the calculation in page 107 of their printed report. In the palmiest days of the railway mania, accounts of profits were never more adroitly cooked, 39 nor did the member for Sunderland himself ever sub- mit a statement to his dupes more calculated to make it appear that everything was smooth and pleasant. But all this money was, according to the Com- missioners, a mere bagatelle not worth mentioning, compared with the results that would ultimately be achieved. At the most moderate calculation £300,000 a year was the sure and certain gain, in a very few years^ in the land revenues^ irom the improvements effected by the Annicut in Rajahmundry, at an outlay of something less than that sum, being a profit to the State of more than cent, per cent. The Commissioners reckoned, with Colonel Cotton, that £12,000 a-year would be sufficient to maintain these works in good order, and, adding to this, £5000 for engineering esta- blishments, and a further sum of £12,000 as the interest at 5 per cent, on the capital invested, the total annual charge to Government was es- timated at about £30,000 per annum, the gross annual profits being £300,000 sterling. Then followed an eloquent eulogium on the advan- tages which the population at large would derive from the gigantic undertaking just then finished. In a fit of generous enthusiasm the writer of the Madras 40 Public Works Report exclaimed, " This glorious " success, this magnificent addition to the revenues " of the State, is not to be gained by exaction, by " trenching on the fair rights of property and " industry; on the contrary, the noblest ''feature " of the whole is, that this vast gain to Government " is to be obtained by adding in a far higher degree " to the wealth, comfort, and happiness of the " people." Reckoning the conversion of dry land into wet to be a gain to the cultivator of 245. annually per acre, and the change of dry fields into sugar plantations to yield a profit to the producer of £22 85. a year, the ofl&cial Commissioner thus calculated the people's gains at a very low estimate : '' 100,000 acres of sugar cane at £20. .£2,000,000 " 1,100,000 acres rice at 245 £1,320,000 " Total £3,320,000 " Reckoning the value of the crop at these moderate " rates, and taking no notice of the fact that much " of this land is now unproductive, we (the Com- " missioners) find that the gain to the ryot is " £3,320,000, and if he pays £300,000 in revenue " he will still be a gainer of £3,000,000 sterling " a-year." With such results the sum of £20,000 41 a-year unaccounted for was not worth speaking about ; the odd thousands of revenue receipts might be given to the engineer who created them, without any one missing the amount. He too would have been none the richer, for the gains are wholly imaginary. In a pamphlet, printed in 1854 for private circulation in Madras, I observed, in reference to these so-called facts, that they were mere delusions, and I now repeat that there is not one word of truth in the estimate of profits, either past or expected, given by the engineer and adopted by the Commissioners. In page 28 of that pamphlet I stated, that " the boast that the work had paid " for its construction and returned besides 10 lacs " of rupees to the Exchequer during the last " seven years was an utter fallacy ;" and in reference to the anticipated profits I advised " that a proper " enquiry, conducted on the spot by sober-minded " revenue officials, should be made, that a fair debtor " and creditor account should be prepared, with " interest calculated from the beginning, and that the " results should be published for general information." The alleged profits of the Eajahmuifflry works having been thus publicly impugned, an in- vestigation into the facts was ordered by Go- 42 vernment, under instructions from England, and the senior member of the Madras Eevenue Board, Mr. Goldingham, was instructed to institute en- quiries on the spot. Mr. Goldingham's views are embodied in his report, which will be noticed shortly in detail. I do not put faith in his calculations, because this gentleman is an enthusiast in these schemes; and, in his place in the Board of Eevenue, he supported this work from the first, as one that promised to yield large profits; but the report is believed to be an approximation to accuracy. It is moderate in its tone and views, and therefore deserving of attentive consideration. From data at his command, it is assumed, in the Commissioner's statement, that under channels dependent more or less on the Annicut, the gain from extended cultivation subsequent to 1846, on an average of some previous years, amounted, up to 1853, to 6 lacs of rupees in all, which he places to the credit of the Annicut and its works. Mr. Gold- ingham then cites the fact, that the excise revenues and the Moturpha, &c., with other miscellaneous revenue receipts, have been more productive to the exchequer since 1846, when the Annicut was com- menced; and the increase from these sources in 43 Kajalimundry, during seven years, estimated in the aggregate at 3 lacs of rupees more, he gives to the Annicut, making a total gain of 9 lacs of rupees in seven years, or IJ lacs per annum of gross increased revenue to Government by the work. Now admitting for the moment all this to be true, where is the profit? The Public Works Com- missioners estimated the interest on the outlay at 120,000 rupees a-year, and the superintendence and repairs at 170,000 rupees more. Three lacs of charges and 1^ lacs of income would leave a present deficit of 1 lac and 75,000 rupees per annum from this undertaking. But these calculations are really inadmissible in my judgment, for when we examine the data on which the 6 lacs increase from extended cultiva- tion, from 1846 to 1852, is founded, the first item of profit is headed " increased cultivation obtained by " the outlay of money," and the aggregate amount so obtained is modestly put down at 176,484 rupees. Then comes " profit by embankments which pre- " vented lands from being flooded ;" this item gives 224,463 rupees in the aggregate up to the close of the revenue year, 1853. Last of all is the actual increase from irrigation of land by the Annicut and 44 its channels, 194,429 rupees. These three sums form a total of 595,376 rupees, the gross amount of profits from all the works in Eajahmundry in seven consecutive years. Mr. G. N. Taylor, the local revenue official, who furnished the returns on which the Commissioner, Mr. Goldingham, relies, puts down 176,484 rupees as the profit gained in seven years from the wages of labor. This is a very modest calculation in com- parison with Colonel Cotton's estimates, backed by the Public Works Commissioners' stamped approval. Colonel Cotton says, " The wages of labour in a " poverty-stricken district return from 1 to 500 per " cent, per annum, and in Eajahmundry, in the very " first year, the expenditure in wages increased the *' revenues 3 or 4 lacs." Mr. Taylor puts the item down at something over 20,000 rupees a-year. And here let it be, once for all, stated that the labor at Dowlaiswarum, up to 1851, was forced labor; that every village in the country was com- pelled to find a certain number of workmen; that the native collectors of districts were ordered to produce laborers, and were dismissed from office if they did not find them ; that the pay, or so much of it as reached the workmen, did not suffice to keep 45 body and soul together; that private contributions for their sustentation were consequently levied in every hamlet; that a large constabulary force was maintained to guard the coolies from desertion ; that a magistrate was on the spot to punish and coerce them; that compulsory labor on the lowest possible wages was the rule, and voluntary labor the ex- ception. When these things are considered, it does indeed appear monstrous to find the authors of such acts boasting of the increased revenue derived from the savings of the coolies fructifying five hundred-fold per annum. Some of the actors in these scenes have expressed, in ray hearing, their regret at having been ever officially concerned in them; others, with more efirontery, seem still to think they were then meritoriously engaged in acts which, it may with confidence be affirmed, would not have been tolerated in any other province of the British Empire, except in a Madras coUectorate. Omitting, then, the pretended gains on cultiva- tion alleged to have sprung from wages of labor, we find, agreeably with Mr. Goldingham's calcula- tion, that from embankments and irrigation channels 418,892 rupees only have been obtained since 1846 : in round numbers 2 lacs of rupees from the Anni- 4G cut proper and its channels^ and 2 lacs more from embankments^ which might have been obtained at a small outlay, irrespective of the Annicut. This is positively tlie whole direct gross profit from land that is pretended to have accrued on the aggregate, from 1846 to 1852, from an outlay up to that time of £200,000, without adding a farthing for interest. The further amount of 3 lacs, said to have been obtained since 1846 from the sale of arrack and from other indirect sources of revenue in Eajahmundry, is put wholly out of consideration. The argument, if argument there is, seems to be, the arrack farms have yielded enhanced revenue since 1846; the Annicut was commenced in that year, therefore the enhanced rents were obtained by the Dam. This is an inconsequential style of reasoning, for it is seen that, in the adjoining dis- tricts of Guntoor and Vizagapatam, the excise rents and the miscellaneous receipts have largely increased during this same period, without any large irrigation expenditure whatever having been made in these districts. The Sea Custom collections are also paraded by Mr. Goldingham as Annicut and irrigation profits, and the enhanced exports from Coringa of late years 47 are dwelt upon as if these had all accrued from the building of a Dam across the Godavery at Dowlais- warum. The Annus Mirabilis of 1845 being taken as the starting point, every increased collection in every item of taxation is put down as caused by the Annicut. The fallacy of this argument is proved by the fact, that the very same results are found else- where without hydraulic expenditure. In Vizagapa- tam the exports by sea from the ports of Bimlipatam and Vizagapatam have risen, since 1845, from 9 to 18 lacs of rupees, and a larger amount of produce is shipped from the open roadstead of Bimlipatam than is exported from the harbour of Coringa. From Calingapatam in Ganjam an immense exportation direct to Europe in seeds and rice has recently sprung up. Formerly, merchant vessels declined to touch at the outports for cargo. Now, much of the exports from the Presidency of Madras is shipped thence direct. This trade has sprung up at the ports upon the coast, and mercantile houses have been largely established in the seaboard districts, quite irrespective of recent hydraulic improvements in Eajahmundry, which have had no influence what- ever on the growth of the chief article of produce exported, viz., oilseeds and date jaggery, or sugar. 48 But everything, however preposterous, is grasped at in order to shew a profit, because it is known and admitted that the land irrigated shews none as yet ; that very land from which it was calculated hy the Public Works Commissioners that £3,332,000 per annum of gain was to accrue through irrigation^ the lion's share of which was to be given, by the benevolent despotism which rules India, according to the same authority, to the poor ryots. But if all Mr. Goldingham's estimated receipts were admitted, which they are not, still they wholly confute the exaggerated statements put forth by Colonel Cotton and his coadjutors as "undeniable " facts. " Mr. Goldingham and Mr. Taylor, after taking every item they can lay hold of, and after framing the public accounts so as to show every possible and every imaginable profit, can only exhi- bit 9 lacs of rupees gain in the aggregate from the year 1846 up to 1853. Colonel Cotton and his advocates affirm that the profits were some 30 lacs of rupees, at least, during that period. One or other of these statements must be grossly inaccurate. So much for past profits — ^let us now look for the future. Mr. Goldingham calculates that, in the end, when all lands capable of being irrigated in the 49 Godavery Delta are brought under wet cultivation, and when the enhanced rents to be fixed thereon are all paid, and when in zemindary land the owners are assessed in addition for the use of the water, and when such enhanced taxation is realized to the full, the gross profit from land to Government, coming from these irrigation works, will then be 402,699 rupees a-year, subject to deductions for rent free tenures and other private lands required for public piu'poses, for which compensation must be given to the owners, the amount of which had not been estimated at the date when Mr. Goldingham's Eeport was written. Compare this statement of estimated future profit with that of Messrs. Balfour, Bourdillon, & Cotton, the Public Works Commissioners. They fix the Government share of the spoil at not less than £300,000 sterling annually, and the gain to the people at £3,000,000 sterling a-year. Mr. Golding- ham calculates that the receipts to Government from irrigation may be finally between 3 and 4 lacs per annum. The difference is a matter of £260,000 a-year only, and who is to be trusted? I, for one, accept the statement of the Commissioner, Mr. Goldingham, not as strictly correct, but as a favor- able estimate of the improved receipts which Go- E 50 vernment may possibly obtain at some future period from the Eajahmundry district; and the boastings of the engineer and liis coadjutors are dismissed as idle and silly dreams. Yet the £3,000,000 per annum gain to the poor natives was the point most dwelt upon in England on the first publication of the Public Works Commissioners' Eeport. The statement was copied into the Times newspaper, trumpeted forth by the Indian Eeform Association, and even at the present time, 1855, Colonel Cotton is lecturing in the manufacturing towns of England on the same subject, and announcing that the gain, " though wonderful, is an undeniable fact." The men of Lancashire are necessarily very im- perfectly acquainted with the details of the revenue administration in Madras, and are therefore easily induced to believe the overdrawn statements of gains which Colonel Arthur Cotton so frequently advances, when he discusses the advantages of those public works with which he has been pro- fessionally connected in India. Appended to Mr. Goldingham's Keport to Go- vernment is a tabular statement, framed by the former Commissioner in the Northern Circars, tend- ing to show that the existence of the Eajahmundry Annicut, in 1854, saved from ^'' imminent jeopardy ^^ 51 dry crops which the engineer of the district, Colonel F. Cotton, valued at £700,000. I consider this calcu- lation wholly erroneous, and the value of the crop to be preposterously over-rated ; but supposing the fact to be literally true, Mr. Elliot says the crop was in jeo- pardy only. It was not lost, nor is it alleged that it would have wholly perished if no Annicut had existed. I put no faith in this calculation, because in that same year, in the district of Yizagapatam, where there is no Annicut irrigation, but which is conti- guous to Eajahmundry, and which benefits from the same rains, although some dry crops suffered from drought, the harvest was not at all a failure. The revenue was collected as usual, and was punc- tually paid, and the land tax on the zemindars was realized within the year. K this was so in Vizagapatam, Eajahmundry, which is a much more fertile province, could not have been saved from destruction only by this Annicut. For this reason alone I believe the statement of losses prevented in 1853-54, extending to hundreds of thousands of pounds, to be mere clap-trap. For myself, however, I am of opinion that all the estimates of profit up to 1853 are in great measure apocryphal, inasmuch as they are based on compa- risons of the revenue receipts of some years before E 2 52 1845, when, tinder a disgraceful fiscal ryotwar admi- nistration, the revenues of Eajahmundry had been wasted through incompetent management. Mr. Danby Seymour, now secretary to the Board of Con- trol, is said to have declared, that India would have prospered more under the rule of the Mahrattas than the English. Eajahmundry, in my belief, suf- fered more from the incapacity of its collectors from 1833 to 1843, than if it had been plundered by a horde of Pindarries. I stand upon the fact, that at the beginning of the present century, on the introduction of the permanent settlement, the lands of Eajahmundry were valued at £250,000 of yearly income. The land tax was fixed at 19 lacs (£190,000), and £60,000 per annum were supposed to be the perquisites of the proprietors. I will admit, for argument's sake, that this valuation was too high, and I will therefore deduct 2 lacs, £20,000, for over-valuation, making the province of Eajahmundry worth only 23 lacs (£230,000) of yearly rent. I will also give 11 lacs as the profits of existing proprietors, who now pay 6 lacs annually to the State, reducing the Government demand to 21^ lacs, or £215,000 of yearly income from land, which Government should derive from the district without Annicut irrigation. 53 It may be said that the ancient valuation of 19 lacs of rupees was never obtained. Such a sup- position is wholly erroneous. From the date of the introduction of the permanent settlement into Rajah- mundry up to 1834, when it was partially broken up, during a period of thirty years, the zemindars paid to Government for their lands between 18 and 19 lacs of rupees of revenue annually, and many of them enjoyed large profits. The following are the col- lections for ten years from the land alone, from 1821 to 1830, exhibiting an average payment of more than 18 lacs and 70,000 rupees per annum: — Land Revenue of Rajahmundry from 1821 to 1830, inclusive. Years. Fuslies. ' Land Revenue Collection. Rupees. 1821 1231 18,57,620 1822 1232 18,33,443 1823 1233 17,49,600 1824 1234 20,69,280 1825 1235 19,01,553 1826 1236 20,29,165 1827 1237 18,05,646 1828 1238 19,28,304 1829 1239 17,76,792 1830 1240 17,57,478 Total.. 187,08,881 f;Tefr}l«-^0'««« 54 From that date up to the year 1852, the Govern- ment have become possessed of estates and farms by purchase, and by other means, that paid 13 lacs of yearly revenue, and which yielded a supposed profit of 2^ lacs a-year to the owners. These lands thus acquired should therefore, unimproved, produce in the hands of the collector 15^ lacs of yearly revenue to the State. The estates and lands, which still continue to be held as private property, contri- bute 6 lacs or £60,000 of revenue to Government. The public receipts from land rent in Eajahmundry should be therefore, under proper management, at least 21^ lacs of rupees, irrespective of any increase from the new irrigation works, by means of which an enormous addition to the revenue was expected. Now so far from this being true, the Government collections have never exceeded 20 lacs of rupees a-year up to the present date, and the Rajahmundry district, after an outlay of £300,000 sterling on the improvement of its irrigation, exhibits, in 1855, a de- clension of 1| lacs of rupees a-year of land rent below the valuation of the same lands in 1802, when these magnificent hydraulic experiments had no existence. From the province of Rajahmundry in the present day a gross rental of 20 lacs of rupees, or £200,000 55 sterling, is collected, from which there must be deducted 3 lacs of rupees, the acknowledged actual annual cost of the new irrigation works over and above the former general charges of management for the Government estates. The present nett receipts of revenue are, therefore, 17 lacs of rupees per annum, in contrast with 19 lacs formerly paid into the Treasury under the permanent settlement system. If the profits of the displaced landlords now in- cluded in the public receipts be brought into the calculation, then 2 lacs of rupees more remain unac- counted for, and the lands of this district show an apparent decrease in their productive value of 4 lacs of rupees per annum, after irrigation improvement, although there has been no reduction of taxation on the soil. On a rough view of the accounts of the Rajahmundry district there is a large loss of revenue and no direct money profit whatever. A tabular statement of the land revenue collec- tions in Eajahmundry for ten years, brought up to the year 1855, is here given. The normal revenue of this province, when it was held on permanent tenure, and when the lands were the private property of zemindars, was 19 lacs of rupees, £190,000 a-yean During the last four years, when two-thirds of the lands have been repurchased for Government, and 56 when the landlords' profits are included in the col- lections, it will be observed that the gross receipts were only slightly in excess of 20 lacs of rupees, or £200,000 sterling, annually. Yet, in the face of this return, and with a perfect knowledge of the fact, the Madras Public Works Commissioners, coun- tenanced by the Local Government, continue to delude the public with idle tales of the glorious achieve- ments of the engineers, and of the magnificent addition to the revenues of the State, contributed by the irrigation works in Eajahmundry, variously estimating the addition of revenue obtained at from £70,000 to £300,000 per annum:— Rajahmundry Land Revenues. Peshcush of Fuslies. Zemindary estates, and Balance. Collections. revenue from Government Talooks. Rupees. Rupees. Rupees. 1255 1845-46 1,768,138 18,624 1,749,514 1256 1846-47 1,825,827 13,338 1,812,489 1257 *1847-48 1,875,525 2,052 1,873,473 1258 1848-49 1,931,299 2,372 1,928,927 1259 1849-50 1,944,807 53,530 1,891,277 1260 1850--51 1,991,485 18,581 1,872,904 1261 1851-52 2,045,537 30,063 2,025,474 1262 1852-53 2,067,116 43,424 2,023,692 1263 1853-54 2,055,261 35,043 2,020,218 1264 1854-55 2,065,724 23,273 2,042,451 * In this year the foundations of the weir across the River Godavery were laid at a spot called Dowlaiswarum. 57 Heretofore these observations on irrigation profits have been general. The normal receipts of the Rajahmundry district, when it was permanently settled fifty years ago, have been taken in contrast with the present revenue collections, after an ample outlay on modern irrigation works has been made, and it has been shown that the boast of cent, per cent, returns upon an outlay of £300,000 of capital is a gross fallacy. It is now proposed to show what a ount of increased revenue has actually accrued to Government in Eajahmundry from the application of water to land by means of these expensive under- takings. The statements are taken from official sources and compiled from returns appended to Mr. Goldingham's public Eeport. The accounts of the villages operated upon by the engineers have been brought down to the year 1854. It would seem then, from official documents, that the villages in the Delta of the Godavery supplied in 1854 with water from channels filled through the Dawlaiswarum Annicut, were 280 in number. The channels which convey the water were for the most part excavated in the year 1852. Before that date, rice cultivation indeed had been largely pursued by means of water imperfectly received in the ordinary 58 reservoirs and channels of these villages, but without the scientific machinery since supplied through the profuse expenditure of money on public works. The average annual land revenue receipts from all sources in these 280 villages, taken for four years before Annicut irrigation reached them, was 552,653 rupees. The revenue demand for the year ending in June, 1854, was 699,426 rupees, showing an increased revenue in that year of 1 lac and 46,000 rupees, or £14,600 sterling. At first sight this result appears to be very satisfactory, but a parti- cular enquiry as to the sources from which this increase comes is needed to determine the value of the water, and a detailed examination was accord- ingly made for the Commissioner, Mr. Goldingham, by the local authorities in Eajahmundry. The accompanying tabular statement, compiled from the village accounts, exhibits the normal extent of wet cultivation in these villages, and the revenue formerly received, in comparison with the demand from the lands under wet cultivation in the year 1 854. This account shows that the former land rent on wet lands was 2 lacs and 19,000 rupees, and that the revenue for 1854 was 2 lacs and 38,000 rupees. The real increased receipts from wet lands, owing 59 to the new irrigation works, were, therefore, in round numbers, 19,600 rupees, or something less than £2,000 sterling, per annum: — Demand ox the Wet Lands of 280 Villages under THE DOTJLAISWARAM AnNICUT. Description of Lands. o . Former de- mandbefore the irriga- tion began. a lo a GO 1 2 3 4 5 Usu Dry Usu V ai ta al wet Acres. 43,993 13,932 1,843 158,076 48,577 12,416 170,212 56,042 12,416 12,136 converted into wet . . al garden, dry con- -\ 2rted into gardens ( id sugar cane plan- ^ itions ) 7,465 Total 59,768 219,069 238,670 19,601 1 1 O 1 Cultivated with rice' for 1st and 2nd ► crops Cultivated with rice" for 1st crop, and gingily oil seed for " 2nd crop _ Ditto with one crop . . 8,023 6,347 45,393 33,931 23,498 161,640 44,476 25,538 168,617 10,545 2,040 6,996 ^ 59,763 219,069 238,631 19,581 It has been already stated there was a general increase of revenue in these villages of nearly £15,000 a year. This increase, it is found, was 60 principally derived from the rents of dry lands, and mainly through an improved system of management and of collection. For a number of years the receipts from these villages had been wasted and embezzled under the baneful system of annual individual settlements then in vogue. In 1854, under an improved administration of village settlements, the revenues of Government had materially improved. This improvement was not confined to the Delta of the Godavery only ; it had been generally felt throughout the entire district, for, strange though true, those divisions of Eajahmundry which exhibit the greatest increase of revenue in recent years are divisions situated above the Annicut, and which do not derive any advantage from river irrigation. Nineteen thousand and odd rupees were therefore the entire direct receipts brought to the Government account, in 1854, by these enormous works of irrigation, coming from new water used for purposes of cultivation and applied to the soil. When this insignificant result is contrasted with the magnificent promises of the projecting engineer and his associates the upshot is supremely ridiculous. In 1845, when the great project of building a weir 61 across the Godavery was only in contemplation, Colonel Arthur Cotton published a pamphlet in the shape of a letter to the Anti- Slavery Society, in which he laboured to shew that 1,200,000 acres of land in the Delta of the Godavery might be converted into sugar plantations, and that 1,300,000 tons of sugar could easily be produced annually from the canes grown thereon. The climate of Eajahmundry was eulogized as one that was peculiarly adapted for Euro- pean colonists, and as most salubrious. Colonel Cotton assured his readers that the Government land tax was so moderate that the profits from the rum distilled from the molasses would alone suffice to pay all the public burdens and to defray the cost of growing and manufacturing the sugar ; and that the article would consequently cost the producers absolutely nothing. As the quantity of sugar thus raised, without cost to the producers, was said to be more than was required for the commercial wants of the whole world, it followed that sugar planting in every other tropical region must be abandoned, and that slave holding in Cuba or Brazil would cease to be profitable. Annicut irrigation was thus re- commended to Dr. Lushington and to Mr. Clarkson as a measure that specially deserved the support of 62 the Anti- Slavery body ; and it was held out to economists as a scheme which would at once render the maintenance of the African squadron useless. These were the day dreams of the engineer, and what are the results? Official returns prove that, in 1854, in the entire Rajahmundry province, there were only 2,314 acres of sugar cultivation, and that in the Delta of the Godavery the lands so cultivated amounted to 448 acres in all. A large portion of the sugar manufactured in Rajahmundry is made from date and palmyra jaggery, and not from cane juice. Again, at a later period, in 1853, agreeably with the calculation furnished by Colonel Cotton to the Public Works Commissioners, it was computed that, under the Godavery irrigation works, there would always be found about 100,000 acres under sugar cultivation, and at least 1,100,000 acres under rice. The actual extent of sugar cane cultivation in 1854 has just been shewn, and from the tabular statement printed in a previous page it wiU be seen that the extent of wet lands in the 280 Government villages irrigated by Annicut channels was under 60,000 acres altogether, the rent of which yielded an increase of £2,000 per annum only over the 63 average collections of the preceding five years. Surely this, after eight years' experience, is a miser- able short-coming. The entire rental of the wet lands of the Eajahmundry district, according to present official accounts, is 5^ lacs of rupees ; and one-half of this is a rent-charge on villages entirely unconnected with the Annicut works. Yet the English and Indian public have been misled to suppose that the water from the Annicut has brought into the Grovernment Exche- quer an increase of four lacs of rupees in the first year, and a gain of 7 lacs annually for the next four years ; while, in a few more seasons, the increase of public revenue, it was insisted upon, would be at least £300,000 sterling per annum. The land revenue of Eajahmundry, in 1855, in round numbers amounted to £200,000 sterling, composed as follows : — £50,000 accrued from the rents of wet lands; £90,000 a year were paid by lands under dry cultivation ; and £60,000 was the land tax on estates held under deeds of permanent tenure; this miserable fulfilment of the singularly happy promises of cent, per cent, profits per annum, on the faith of which an expenditure of £300,000 was sanctioned in the first instance, verges, it will be admitted, almost upon the ludicrous. 64 So much for the actual receipts by Government from this great hydraulic experiment in Eajah- mundry. Let us now examine what tlie charges were in 1855. The expenditure on capital account up to this date, without calculating interest from the commencement, was £300,000, or 30 lacs of rupees. The interest on this capital, at 5 per cent., is 1 lac and 50,000 rupees, or £15,000 a year. In the official budget of the Madras Government the esti- mated outlay for irrigation repairs in Rajahmundry, for 1856, was entered at 2 lacs and 30,000 rupees (£23,000 sterling). If the Godavery works be assumed to absorb £20,000 of this charge, and if £5,000 be added for the expenses of establish- ments permanently entertained, the total annual expenditure in this district under this head, with interest on the capital, will be £40,000 per annum. To set against this charge there is the present gain of £2,000 a year shown to have been received from wet cultivation, and there is also, it seems, an ex- pected gain from a levy of 10 per cent, of additional taxation, which has been recently un-authorizedly imposed in the 280 Delta villages, under a guarantee given to the cultivators by the subordinate collector there, Mr. G. N. Taylor, that no further enhancement 65 of revenue will be made on the villagers' lands while the present village renting system continues. This extra land tax will yield, it is supposed, 30,000 rupees, or £3,000 a year, and thus the whole apparent gains from land accruing from this irrigation work may amount, in the aggregate, to £5,000 a-year. As the charges have been proved to be £40,000 annually, financially considered, this great undertaking ex- hibits a present loss of £35,000 sterling, or of 3^ lacs of rupees a year. Thus, whether the revenue receipts of the Province of Kajahmundry are considered in the gross, or whether the revenues and the sources whence they spring are investigated in detail, the same results are obtained. The conclusion formerly arrived at remains unshaken, viz., that there is, up to 1855, not only no general increase of revenue in Eajahmundry, but that there is a very large deficiency in the nett receipts, if the permanent charges entailed by these irrigation improvements be deducted. The engineer and his disciples, who con- sider Colonel Arthur Cotton to be " the first engineer " in India, if not in the world," are invited to dis- prove, if they can, the correctness of the facts stated, the general authenticity of which is vouched for. F 66 It is readily admitted that there are advantages, much public convenience, and some benefits con- ferred on the Rajahmundry district from the con- struction of the Dowlaiswarum Annicut and its dependent navigable canals, although these are greatly overrated. It would be strange, indeed, if it were otherwise, after so large an outlay of money, past and prospective; but that is not the question for consideration at the present moment. The engineer, the Board of Public Works, and the Public Works Commissioners, with their abettors in the public service and in the press, have con- tended that the works yielded a direct profit of 70 per cent, and more from the commencement, and have stated that they would give a profit of 100 per cent, per annum to the Government in a very few years, with a gain besides to the humble cultivators of £3,000,000 sterling per annum. These men assert that Colonel Cotton's calculations have proved true to the very letter, and admit of no contradiction. The writer of these lines afiirms, on the contrary, that the statements of magnificent additions of revenue to the State, and of enormous gains to the cultivator, have no foundation whatever. He asserts, with confidence, that as a financial un- 67 dertaking the Anniciit has proved to be a ludicrous failure, which, if it had been undertaken by a private company as a commercial speculation, would long since have terminated in hopeless bankruptcy. The manner in which this important matter has been handled by the Government of Madras is worthy of mention in a writing treating on irrigation profits. Mr. Goldingham's report, which was submitted to Government in 1855, and which was meant to be as favorable as possible to the Kajahmundry weir, was so unpalatable to the advo- cates of large expenditure on reproductive works who influence the policy of the present Govern- ment of the Madras Presidency, that it has been suppressed. In 1856 its contents were made known to Colonel Arthur Cotton, and the engineer was invited to answer and refute, if possible, its state- ments. Colonel Cotton, it is understood, submitted one of his voluminous dispatches in reply, arguing, at great length, that if there was no present profit from irrigation in Rajahmundry the fault was with the revenue collector, and not with the engineer. Water, the Colonel calculates, is always worth 25. per 500 cubic feet, and the water supplied to the Kajahmundry villages should yield at this rate, at F 2 68 least, 14 lacs of rupees a year above the present receipts. In 1857 it is known that an attempt was made by the Madras Government to obtain through another source, for submission to the au- thorities in England, an official report, giving, if possible, a more encouraging estimate than that of Mr. Goldingham's, of the past and present profits of the Eajahmundry Annicut, but the attempt failed, and matters, therefore, still remain in this unsatisfactory and unpleasant position. Meanwhile, indirectly, upon every possible occasion, it is as- sumed in public writings that 700,000 acres are under irrigation influences in the Delta of the Godavery, although the Government is well aware that less than one-tenth part of this extent was actually cultivated with wet produce in the year 1855. It would be trespassing unnecessarily on the patience of my readers to enter into an analysis of the alleged profits of weirs for irrigation purposes in Tanjore. According to Colonel Arthur Cotton,* "10 lacs of rupees have been spent on new works " since 1836 in that province, and the outlay has * Colonel Arthur Cotton's " Madras," page 208. 69 ' increased the revenues of Government by 10 lacs, " of rupees annually, besides producing a capital of " £4,000,000 sterling to the ryots." There is not the smallest foundation for this statement. The land revenues of Tanjore in 1837-38 were 38 lacs of rupees, and if the salt sales and other miscellaneous items be included, the total receipts of that season exceeded 48 lacs. In 1848-49 the land rents were 38 lacs and 70,000 rupees, and the total receipts from salt and from other sources raised the revenues of that year to 48 lacs of rupees in round numbers. In 1849-50 the receipts were 49 lacs of rupees. In former seasons the average outlay for repairs was from 30,000 to 40,000 rupees a-year. In 1856 the estimates for irrigation repairs in Tanjore are seen, by a return signed by Mr. Bourdillon now before me, to be 1 lac and 70,000 rupees. The statements of cent, per cent, profits derived from these works are therefore wholly unfounded. There seems to be no nett profit whatever, if the increased charges are deducted. The writer is far from contending that all outlays for purposes of irrigation are unnecessary or unproductive, or that there are no tracts of country on the coast of Coro- mandel whicli would not benefit by and yield a hand- 70 some profit from hydraulic improvement. His aim has been to show that the gigantic works undertaken of late years, at the instance of Colonel Cotton and with the countenance of the Madras Government, are ill-considered schemes, carried out in a heedless manner, and with so profuse an expenditure, that no gains in a pecuniary point of view can ever be hoped for from them. Under the present system a large annual expenditure is made, and a vast amount is squandered on projects from which no return will ever be obtained. Well considered works, cheaply made, and requiring only a moderate annual outlay for their maintenance, will, in most districts, yield a considerable profit from the lands brought under irrigation ; but undertakings on a large scale, carried out under the superintendence of Government offi- cials, without regard to expense, are in most instances signal failures. Vizeanagram, January^ 1856. CHAPTEE III On zemindars in the Northern Circars, and THE TREATMENT OF NATIVE LANDLORDS BY GOVERN- MENT OFFICIALS. Thirty years ago the boast of the Madi-as Presi- dency was its revenue ryotwar settlement. The soil of the Carnatic was acknowledged to be poor and sandy ; the Coromandel Coast inaccessible and without a harbour ; sugar, opium, silk, and other productions of external commerce were then almost unknown, but the people, it was said, were pro- tected by an admirable fiscal administration. The collector of a district was the father of the people; oppression by villainous renters or lawless village headmen was utterly unknown. Each ryot received from the collector's hands annually a " puttah," de- fining his holding, the extent of his taxation, and the items that composed the demand. Imposition, therefore, Avas impracticable. In those good old 72 days it used to be thought a high privilege for a young gentleman to commence his revenue service in Cuddapah or Bellary ; to learn in those pro- vinces what a revenue survey field settlement really was ; to see a system there, in daily operation, which was said, practically, to have secured for the people the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Of course, at the same time, the management of native zemindars was generally described by ryotwar collectors as everything that was in- famous. They were oppressors, plundering middle- men, successful robbers of the public estate. If not altogether meritorious to destroy them, still to omit taking every fitting opportunity to eject them was reckoned a dereliction of duty. This doc- trine — occasionally acted upon by the Government, thirty years ago, as opportunities presented them- selves, especially in the case of modern zemindars — is now, in 1856, openly avowed and inculcated even where the greatest native chieftains are concerned. Former circular orders enjoined the sequestration of landed estates whenever 20 per cent, of ^arrear was reached, in order to obviate the necessity of sales; but the policy of the day now is, to wink at disorder, to decline interference during the offi- 73 cial year, and to sell up the owner peremptorily at the end of the season. With this view we see constantly large estates exposed to sale in the gross for small revenue balances, although, if these pos- sessions were sub-divided, as the law permits, the sale of a few villages would fetch a price that would dis- charge the arrear of revenue; but then the Govern- ment would miss the opportunity of acquiring a large territory for a song. Now, as there are few capitalists in the Madras Districts to compete at such sales, and as many lands held on feudal tenure are really unsaleable, Government, in most instances, acquires those valuable possessions at one- tenth of their real worth. It is pretended that this course of policy is called for, from consideration of the interests of the people, and for the protection of the oppressed cultivators of the soil. The pre- text is untrue, but under it the landlords of the Madras Presidency are slowly but surely systema- tically crushed. Meet a ryotwar collector in his o^vn house, at his hospitable board, he will admit that the sale of a great zemindary which he has just achieved was brought about by dexterous management; that the owner had been purposely permitted to get into 74 the meshes of the collector's net beyond his power of extrication ; that the sale could easily have been obviated, nay, perhaps, was uncalled for. He will not deny that the unconditional, sale of an ancient zemindary, entire, for a small balance of taxes, when the subdivision and disposal of a part would have met every requirement, is a questionable transaction, barely honest. He will hear, without being offended, an unprejudiced person stigmatize the purchase by Government of an ancient patri- mony, sold thus in the aggregate without necessity, as a robbery, as spoliation under the pretence of law ; but he will excuse himself by saying that it was the anxious desire of the Government to obtain possession of the dispossessed zemindars inheritance, and he will congratulate himself by stating that the culti- vating classes, at all events, will be benefited, and that it was well to do a little evil that good might come. If the people residing in an ancient zemindary were really consulted, ninety-nine inha- bitants out of every hundred would vote for the con- tinuance of the landlords' management in preference to the riot and confusion of Government administration. If instances of the improper confiscation of pro- perty be asked for, many cases can be cited, 75 extending over a long course of years, a few of which shall be given as a sample merely. Twenty years ago, the ancient Chocumputty estate in Tinnevelly, being in arrears to Government, was advertized for sale. The owner, to arrange a settlement, had voluntarily come to the collector's head-quarter-station some days before the date of sale; and, while there residing peaceably, he was seized and placed in confinement, under the pro- visions of a criminal regulation which authorizes the imprisonment and banishment from a district of parties proved to be disafiected and of dan- gerous character. No specific charge whatever was brought against him. The collector and magistrate merely reported that he was a " tho- " roughly worthless and good-for-nothing fellow,'' and the Governor, Sir Frederic Adam, supported the local official, and ordered the man to be re- moved to Trichinopoly for confinement as a political offender, where the ex-zemindar possibly still is, unless he be dead. The revenue sale was afterwards proceeded with, without regard to the interests of the family ; the treatment the zemindar had met with deterred any banker from advancing money to pay the arrear of revenue. The Government 76 official was the only bidder, and a most productive and highly cultivated estate was thus obtained for absolutely nothing, which yields, I believe, a clear surplus revenue of 30,000 rupees per annum. * The Woodiagherry jaghire in Nellore, worth 80,000 rupees a-year, was confiscated, in 1840, in even a more summary manner, without a reasonable ex- cuse and without recourse even to the forms of law. The jagheerdar was suspected of treasonable practices, in conjunction with the Rajah of Kurnool, at a time when a perfect panic reigned in Madras of Eussian intrigue. A Commissioner was sent to enquire into the truth of this man's alleged treason, who, without seeing the jagheerdar, or hearing his defence, or telling him of what he was accused, reported his sentiments to Government. The jagheerdar, a Mahomedan nobleman and a man of seventy years of age, was then seized, without resistance, and detained in confinement at Chingleput for life without trial, his estate being confiscated. Every inhabitant of the Nellore district believes that the charges were unfounded, and tlie Commis- sioners in Kurnool at that day had opportunities * A small allowance for life is now paid to some members of the family, thus robbed of an hereditary estate. 77 of knowing that some of the papers on which the jagheerdar was condemned, unheard, were forgeries. Thus, however, a great estate was obtained and an old native family was ruined, while the collector con- gratulated himself that the escheat was a profitable one to the Government, and that the confiscation enabled him to foster the poor ryots. No dis- trict under the Madras Presidency is more wretch- edly administered under the annual revenue settlement system than Xellore. In Guntoor, in recent times, the great Yassy- Eeddy possessions, which paid a revenue to Government of 6 lacs of rupees a year, were sold in the gross, and were bought in by the Govern- ment salesman for 5,000 rupees, this being the only offer. The pretext for selling these estates was the existence of an enormous balance which had accumulated during twenty years, created chiefly through the mismanagement of the officers of Government, who, as trustees, had administered the revenues all that time, the lands being under judicial sequestration owing to a disputed succes- sion. The highest courts of the Madras Presi- dency have ruled repeatedly, that lands secured by a deed of permanent settlement are not answer- 78 able for arrears of revenue accruing under Go- vernment management; but the heavy expenses of litigation against the State and the poverty of the family have prevented this illegal act from being sifted and exposed in a Court of Law.* In Masulipatam, three years ago, the Xedadavole estates were purchased by Government for about 12,000 rupees, at a mock auction, the worth of these being, perhaps, 30,000 rupees a year. In Vizagapatam, some years back, the ancient zemindary of Golgondah, which yields about 10,000 rupees of clear surplus annually, was sold, and bought by Government for £10 sterling. The collector who sold the estate, and the then Board of Eeve- nue, which authorized the sale, advised its being restored to the member of the family who seemed best capable of administering the zemindary, but the Government said it was a valuable acquisition, and desired that the subject of restitution should on no account be ever entertained. The numerous members of the family so plundered were ac- cordingly left to shift for themselves. Six years afterwards, this act of spoliation was the cause '^' The authorities in Leadenhall- street were erroneously in- formed that the arrears of taxation had been caused by the personal extravagance of the Vassy-Reddy zemindar, although the owner had not been in legal possession for twenty years. 79 of a local Insurrection, which it took three years to suppress, with a great sacrifice of life and property. In Ganjam, in 1855, the ancient zemindary of Hautghur was in like manner exposed to sale without the least necessity. The zemindar, who is weak in mind, had entrusted his zemindary with a small reservation to an influential and wealthy person, who bound himself to pay the Government tribute, and to account for the surplus profits to the owner. This agent purposely, in the last year of his engagement, swept into his own pocket the resources of the zemindary, and left a portion of the Government dues unpaid. The collector and political agent in Ganjam took no heed of these proceedings, but advertized the estate for sale at the close of the ofiicial year, and when the day of sale arrived he offered 120,000 rupees for the estate. Much to his dis- may, however, further biddings were made, and, in consequence, the sale was adjourned from day to day, without any ostensible cause. On the evening of the fourth day, the Government agent came to his office unexpectedly, and knocking down the estate to the representative of the CuUicote zemindar for 162,000 rupees, he demanded the deposit of 15 80 per cent, of the purchase money, agreeably with the terms of the sale advertisement. The representative of the purchaser said he would make the deposit if he were allowed to go to his lodgings for the money, and when this indulgence was refused, he brought to the notice of the Govern- ment officer the fact that the zemindar of Culli- cote had a large amount of money in Government bonds in the collector's treasury, which he tendered as security for the production of the deposit, but the collector was inexorable, and demanded the instan- taneous production of the rupees in cash. This not being complied with, he declared the bidding void, and as the next highest bidder had, in like manner, neglected to bring, on the evening of the fourth day, the deposit money in cash along with him, not anticipating its call, the Government offer of 120,000 rupees was declared to be the only bond fide one, and the State was thus made the pur- chaser of the Hautghur zemindary for one-sixth of its real value. The sale of the Hautghur estate so conducted was an outrage on the feelings of the entire population of the Ganjam Province. The worth of the property, at a moderate valuation, was at the least £60,000 sterling. 81 The extraordinary proceedings narrated in the preceding paragraphs were, after a protracted cor- respondence, disapproved of by the Government of Madras. The Governor's agent had acted somewhat indiscreetly in his zeal for annexa- tion. It was found politic, therefore, to disclaim the purchase, and to hand the estate over to the Cullicote Rajah, the highest bidder, on his completing the purchase money. But the mind of the Government, in crushing the ancient native families in Southern India, was fully exemplified by the acts of the authorities on this occasion. The party who held the sale was not a young man, but an old, experienced officer, of thirty years' service, who was only carrying out the de- clared policy of his Government ; and his imme- diate superior, the Eevenue Commissioner, sanc- tioned and approved of the proceedings. Sharp practice, in private life, in obtaining possession of an estate in the way that it was sought to secure Hautghur for Government, would bring a party concerned into general disrepute; but gentlemen, in public matters in India and elsewhere, will say and do things which they would scrupulously avoid in the ordinary transactions of private life. G 82 The ruin of the ancient chiefs of Hautghur was the more discreditable to the Government that permitted it because the default was not wilful, and because this zemindary is situated in a non- regulation district, which is specially exempted from the provisions of the ordinary regulations, and where the revenue sale law, therefore, did not hold good. The extinction of the zemindar was a most ungra- cious proceeding, too, for the family thus despoiled had done the State good service not many years back, during the prolonged insurrectionary move- ments in Goomsoor. There was not the slightest necessity either for proceeding to a sale, for the default itself could have been prevented if the Governor's agent had acted with proper vigour, and inter- fered, as he should have done, to save the zemin- dar from spoliation. The transfer of this ancient fiefship to another family by sale is, in a political view, an extremely injudicious measure. It will certainly render the tranquillity of this tract of country insecure for the next twenty-five years. In Vizagapatam, in 1854, the same traditionary policy was pursued in respect to tlie Madagole zemindary. This estate is worth 30,000 rupees per annum, and the zemindar owed to Govern- 83 ment the sum of 20,000 rupees only. Mr. Eobert- son, the Governor's agent, who had an honest disclination to injure, without necessity, a family which had held a distinguished position in this country for some centuries, proposed to administer the estate officially in trust for the zemindar, whose eccentricities and weakness of mind were notorious ; but the Commissioner in the Northern Circars would not listen to the proposition. The agent then observed that the subdivision and sale of a few villages would meet the Government demand; but this suggestion was equally distasteful to his superior in office, who authoritatively re- minded Mr. Eobertson that it was very desirable that the entire estate should be acquired by Government, and the sale, in other words the confiscation, of a property worth, say 4 lacs of rupees, was thus in- sisted upon for a balance of 20,000 rupees only. This transaction also occurred in a non-regulation district, where the sale law does not hold good ; but just as the sale was imminent, some friends of the zemindar's family obtained sufficient money, by loan at 18 per cent., to meet the present demand, and the sale was stayed. It may appear wonderful, that a man in G 2 84 possession of an unencumbered estate of £3,000 a-year is so situated as to be unable to borrow a matter of £2,000, but tlie reason is simply this: Madagole is what is called a hill zemindary, and in the state of society that exists there it is not possible for any banker, merchant, or native monied capitalist to obtain possession, and to manage the property with advantage. The inha- bitants of the estate, who regard the old family with feelings of veneration, would soon make the place too hot for the parvenu intruder, and the Government, therefore, with the power of its military resources at command, is alone able to administer such a zemin- dary. When to this it is added, that the owner is of weak intellect, and when, besides, the Government officials are watching for any opportunity to sell him up, repudiating all mortgages, it is evident that loans of money to such a person are perilous operations. It would be very different if the Government would act towards such landlords in good faith; if they would step in, as they are entitled to do, and would take the management of a great estate tem- porarily out of the hands of an incapable proprie- tor ; if they would appoint curators, or interfere as the Lord Chancellor in England would interfere in 85 the case of a lunatic, or of a landed proprietor of weak mind. But this is the last thing that most Madras officials will permit. Their desire is to extirpate all private property in the soil^ and whenever such a course is feasible they fulfil their mission without compunction. In estates so acquired the first thing done is to introduce the equivocal blessings of a ryotwar settle- ment. All alienations of rent or reduced assessments on the villages made subsequently to the permanent settlement are set aside, the old standard of land rent is enforced, a scrutiny into rent-free holdings is ordered, and all private and acquired property within the zemindary is thus put in jeopardy. The local village establishments of the zemindars for maintain- ing order are discontinued, and, in lieu, a stipendiary police, who find their own clothes and arms, and who receive a salary of Qs, or Ss. a month only, are let loose upon the people. Over all is placed a native collector, who is also a magistrate within his limits, with power to commit all criminals to the Courts without reference to his superiors, and he possibly gets from £5 to £6 sterling a month. Under such supervision the inhabitants of the zemindary soon learn to sigh over the downfall 86 of their easy, though possibly dissipated, native landlord. There are only one or two districts now under the Madras Presidency in which the zemindary system generally obtains ; the native landlords have been in great measure extirpated in Southern India. In Yizagapatam the zemindary tenure still exists throughout three-fourths of its extent, and if the condition of this province be compared with that of ryotwar districts, I do not think that it need shrink from the comparison. In all the ancient zemindaries which have descended in the family for some hundred years, the permanent settlement is moderate. In general, the country is thickly peopled; plough- ing cattle abound; the rents of land to the farmer are easy, when compared with the cultivators^ rents in Government villages; the fields are well tilled, and there are in these estates no large tracts of rich soil left uncultivated for years because the rent is too high. This is the general description of the ancient zemindary tracts. In the modern estates, where the Government permanent settlement is sometimes oppressively high, the ryots are not so favorably situated; but even in these estates the condition -of the people and the management of 87 the cultivation are immensely in advance of any ryotwar Government district in the Madras Presi- dency. In the town of Yizagapatam you will meet natives with fine houses, who drive good conveyances, and who have handsome furniture in their dwellings, and there are many landlords who live upon their estates, and who spend their thousands per annum as rationally as gentlemen of fortune spend tlieir incomes in England or Scotland. In what ryotwar district will you meet with anything like this? There, a merchant or banker worth £10,000 is a wonder, and capitalists there are none. In Yizagapatam there are several natives worth 10 lacs of rupees each, and in the district there are a score with a lac of rupees and more at their command. There are only two talooks in the Yizagapatam district managed directly by the officers of Govern- ment. These talooks were once private property, since acquired by Government, by purchase and dexterous management, as described in the preceding pages, but a good part of the lands so obtained had been permanently settled in 1802, saddled with a demand so exorbitant as to leave little or nothing to the landlords. Government, instead of reducini? this unreasonable taxation, exacted it 88 to the full, until, in the end, a number of estates reverted to the State, being unprofitable to the owners. It may be admitted that villages so situated of necessity were mismanaged, the owners endeavouring to raise the rents on the cultivators to make a profit where the Government officials had left them none, and that when the lands were purchased by the collector, the villagers were impoverished. But making every allowance for this, the administra- tion of these villages and lands, since they became the property of Government, is a discredit to our revenue management, and their condition is still exceedingly unsatisfactory, notwithstanding the very unnecessary irrigation outlay lavished on them in the Public Works Department. In the Northern Circars, there is a Commissioner vested with the full powers of a member of the Board of Kevenue, and of course every body in these provinces, with a real or fancied grievance, addresses himself to that functionary. It is not an exaggeration to say that ninety per cent, of the complaints made to the Commissioner in the Yizagapatam district come from the Government talooks. The complaints are of over-assessment, of sums illegally levied by the Amildars, of oppression by the Jemadars and 89 Peons, of monies extorted, of lands taken from the cultivators against their will, of coercion, and every other villainy of ryotwar management. Com- pare the condition of a Government village with that of a village in a zemindary, and take the Madagole zemindary, which adjoins the Government lands, as a sample. The owner of this estate is a gentleman of an ancient family, always on the brink of ruin, and constantly threatened with being sold up as previously stated, and it might be supposed that fiscal mismanagement was rife there, if any- where. But the zemindar's people are well off, his villages are flourishing, and the rents are collected not only without distraint, but sometimes they are paid a year in advance. I will take it upon myself to affirm, without fear of contradic- tion, that not one petition from Madagole has reached the Commissioners' office complaining of coercion or exaction in the revenue collections during the last six years; whereas from the neigh- bouring Government estate of Survasiddy, during that same period, the complaints presented on the same score may be computed by thousands. In fact, the boasted happiness of the people under ryotwar settlements is a gross delusion. 90 and the prosperity thence said to be engendered is wholly untrue. The condition of a district can be judged of by looking into the litigation going on in the Courts, and in many Govern- ment ryotwar provinces there are positively no original suits in the civil courts, not because the people have no taste for legal strife or dwell together like brethren in unity, but simply because there is no property of the value of £1,000 sterling to bring into the courts of law. Every officer of Indian experience examined before the Par- liamentary Committees in 1852 and 1853 scouted the agrarian system of Eevenue management in the Madras districts, and all thinking people in England have condemned it. In 1853, the East India Company had selected, with great propriety, as the immediate successor to Sir Henry Pottinger, an Indian official whose reputation was mainly founded on the introduction of a system of village settlements for long periods into the Upper Provinces of Bengal, and who, it was hoped, would do the same good office to Madras; but this happy prospect was altogether destroyed by Mr. Thomason's lamented death. For the present there is no hope of the introduction of any 91 comprehensive or beneficial change in the Madras revenue system, because all the principal appoint- ments about the Government offices are filled with ryotwar partizans; and a Governor without personal Indian experience, however well inten- tioned, is powerless in devising a better revenue system in these provinces, while surrounded by such advisers. Under Lord Harris' administra- tion, therefore, nothing will be done, except a little patchwork. Exorbitant assessment will be reduced, when its retention throws rich lands out of cultivation ; Mahratta accounts will be abolished ; English numerals introduced into village accounts, and such like trivialities; but any comprehensive scheme of revenue reform is not to be looked for, and the war against zemindars and the holders of free- hold property in the soil will continue unchanged. Nevertheless, the districts where zemindars still flourish are the only provinces in the Madras Presidency that exhibit any^ symptoms of vitality, in the presence of capitalists, a wealthy aristocracy, enterprising native merchants, respectable bankers, and a peasantry more contented and less harassed in their occupations than can be found in ryotwar districts. I shall not describe these in 92 contrast from my own observation, because it may be said I am prejudiced, and can see nothing good from Dan to Beersheba. I shall therefore transcribe a short notice by a Government officer of those dis- tricts of Madras in which the ryotwar survey settle- ment has been longest in operation, and which were held up to admiration for more than half a century as model provinces, viz., the collector ates of Cuddapah and Bellary. The writer, who, strangely enough, is an advocate of the ryotwar system, thus delivers himself in a recent number of the Calcutta Review : " Where," says he, " is comfort, ease, plenty, a " cheerful and hearty state of society, or the " encouragement of industry to be found under " the Madras Presidency ? Go into any village " in the ceded districts, and mark its condition, " its utter prostration as regards progress, the " total absence of a sign of wealth, or of im- " provement in land or houses. In every corner '' you will see rich productive lands one mass " of waste and weeds from over assessment." There is much more in the same strain ; com- plaint is made at great length of uncertainty of tenure, and of the excessive subdivision of lands ; the want of inducement to capitalists. 93 and the immense number of pauper ryots. This quotation, however, will suffice; though it may be added that the Commissioners recently sitting at Madras have established the fact, that in every ryotwar district the revenues are raised more or less by coercion, ill-usage, and what the public prints are pleased to designate " torture." The abject poverty of the vast Southern Peninsula may be seen in the fact that in 1855, the allotment, in the 5 per cent. Public Works Loan, to the Madi-as Presidency of the pittance of £300,000 quite upset the money market, and that the ap- portionment of a second sum of 30 lacs of rupees created a perfect tempest on the Madras bourse. And it is to the state of decay and degradation of Cuddapah and of Bellary that officials have been, and are still, striving to bring all the domains yet held in the Madras territories on permanent tenures, under the idle and contemptible pretext of a benevolent desire to improve the condition of the cultivators oppressed and enslaved by native landlords. If, indeed, upon obtaining pos- session of a large and valuable zemindary, these self-styled friends of the poor would restrict the settlement on the land to the sum paid to the 94 Government, as tribute by the fallen landlord, and if they would allow the cultivators to enjoy all the surplus receipts which the lord of the soil heretofore drew, then some credit might be given to these men for a sincere desire to raise the bulk of the laboring population in the scale of comfort and civilization. But it is not so; when the estate is bought by Government the same land-tax is collected from the villagers, generally under a much more grinding system than the zemindars followed. The revenues, instead of being spent as heretofore on the spot, are swept into the general treasury, and are thence drawn to pay stipendiary boards for superintending the construction of useless works, — perhaps to build a university at the Presidency, estimated to cost one-third of a million sterling.* The declared object of this institution is to bestow a superior education for the sons of native gentlemen, in a country where the race of gentlemen is becoming extinct, where the few native proprietors that remain are treated as if they were the pests of * A model of this monster university which, it was said, would cover, when finished, a greater area than that of any building in the world, was shown in the Madras Exhibition of 1855. Its erection was subsequently prohibited by the supreme Government. 95 the province in which they live, and are being extinguished as rapidly as opportunities or decency will permit. If the British Government in Southern India should exist in its present shape for another half century, there will hardly be found one ancient native family of influence in possession of land and wealth within the limits of the Madras Presidency. Certainly not one merchant or banker will exist, raised in the Carnatic, who has grown prosperous or opulent under the British rule. There are other ways of securing the decay and confiscation of landed possessions besides that of selling them. There is, for example, the policy of abnegation, or non-interference, now being carried out in Jeypore. This ancient zemindary or fiefship, in Yizagapatam, is held under the usual deed of permanent settlement, by which the Government is bound to preserve the peace of the country, and is charged with the maintenance of an efficient police. For more than half a century this duty has been wholly neglected in Jeypore, and the people of the country have been left without the dispensation of either civil or criminal justice. The zemindar, who is styled the rajah of Jeypore, when active 96 and capable, apprehended criminals, and punished misdemeanors, although he had no authority to do so; but of late years he has become old and foolish, incapable of controlling even his own household. Public affairs have therefore been wholly unattended to, and a sort of anarchy uni- versally prevails. In January, 1855, the Commissioner for the suppression of human sacrifice in Orissa, with one of his assistants, visited Jeypore. The control of the zemindary was not within the scope of their duties, but as these gentlemen remained in that country for many weeks, the state of affairs there became known to them. They represented to the Supreme Government that the practice of the cremation of widows on the funeral pile of their husbands was not unfrequent, that there was no police authority in the zemindary, and that grave crimes and misdemeanors were of constant occur- rence. As a remedy, they advised the removal of the zemindar, whom they reported to be old and childish in intellect, confiscating, as a matter of course, his possessions, and giving him a pension for life ! This summary method of disposing of an inoffensive gentleman is quite refreshing; this. 97 indeed, is vigorous government. The State which by law is bound to repress crime throughout Jey- pore neglects its duty, and it is then hounded on, by its own officials, to suppress the oldest family in the Northern Circars, on the frivolous pretext that the head of this family is old and some- what imbecile, and has failed to do that which the Government itself had undertaken to perform. The recommendation to confiscate private property to the extent of £15,000 a year is disposed of in a couple of lines. What matters it : the land belongs to a black, and it would be a nice little acquisition to the Government. The Commissioners' Eeport having been trans- ferred for consideration to Madras it was suggested, by the local agent, that the long and discreditably neglected duty of maintaining an efficient police force in Jeypore should be at last undertaken. An addition to the armed local militia of Viza- gapatam was necessary to this end, and it was proposed to locate a body of this force, with an officer to officiate as a magistrate, in the very considerable town of Jeypore, the capital of the zemindary. It was also pointed out, that the officer in command, if need be, might assume the H 98 fiscal administration of the zemindary for the well- intentioned but incompetent old gentleman, and put his affairs in order, in which task he would have had the entire and cordial support of the population of the district. There was not the slightest difficulty apparent in the matter, and the Madras Government acquiesced in the propriety of these suggestions, but as their adoption involved an increased constabulary charge, it was necessary to refer the matter to the Supreme Government for sanction, and Lord Dalhousie at once over- ruled the proposal. He said the zemindar of Jeypore had promised to put down the practice of suttee, and that it would be well to wait and see whether he did or did not do so. The other grave misdemeanours and atrocities brought to notice he thought were " exaggerated, and, on the whole, he " saw no sufficient grounds for interference." His lordship also significantly observed, that if the Government did interfere it must be once and for ever. The plain meaning of this is, the pear is not quite ripe, the sick man is not yet in extremis^ but, in a little time, upon a proper representation being made, confiscation will be had recourse to. At the same time it is strictly enjoined 99 that no reform shall be commenced upon, and the responsibility of Government to introduce a police system, and to maintain tranquillity, by which alone order can be re-established, is quietly ignored. The Governor-General's admirers con- sider the annexation and absorption of independent kingdoms in the British Indian empire as the highest proof of his administrative ability. His opponents denounce his policy as impolitic and detestable; but this angling for the confiscation of private estates is contemptible petty larceny in a ruler. At several interviews which I had with Lord Harris in 1854, before reassuming charge of the Government agency in Yizagapatam, I ventured to remonstrate against the policy adopted by Government against the ancient zemindars of late years, and I stated, by desire, both orally and in writing, my views of what ought to be done for their benefit. His lordship listened with courtesy and attention, and seemed to think that the suggestions made were not altogether undeserving of consideration; but from observations that escaped him. Lord Harris seemed impressed with the belief that the decay of the native landed gentry was a necessary consequence H 2 100 of the British rule, and that their extinction was a part of our mission in the East, which, sooner or later, must be worked out. He ap- peared to believe that native landlords must disappear before a collector's administration, as the Eed Indian fades away when brought into contact with the Backwoodsman of America, and is supplied with unlimited quantities of alcoholic liquors. This seemed to be his lordship's opinion, founded on the ideas of the official gentlemen with whom he is unfortunately associated; but to me it appears that we treat Indian noblemen as if they were our enemies, and not British subjects, confiscating their possessions without necessity, and then hypocritically affecting to lament the results of the policy we have our- selves inaugurated. How was it that these Hindoo gentlemen maintained their position and their possessions for several centuries under Maho- medan rule? Is a Mussulman Government less rapacious than a Christian one ? The agent to the Governor in Ganjam and in Vizagapatam knows, or may know, the cir- cumstances of every zemindar within his district; and whenever one or more of these ancient 101 estates are getting into disorder, the circumstances that cause the anticipated default, and the remedy to be applied, should be reported to Government for orders. Considerations of policy demand that ancient fiefships should never be exposed to public sale. These estates do not come under the category of ordinary Hindoo property: they are hereditary, indivisible by law, and the succession and selection of the chief on a lapse should be the prerogative of the ruling power. If the extinction of the family, and the confisca- tion of their domains is imperatively required the fiat should issue as an act of the State, and the reasons for the adoption of such an extreme measure so generally unpopular should be made matter of public record. In most cases the ordinary disorders in these zemindaries arise from intrigues caused by the imbecility of the owner, for there is a great tendency to dissipa- tion in these chieftains, from their having, under British rule, been deprived of all military and political powers, and from their being reduced from feudal tributaries of the State to the class of landlord only. When old and foolish the chief is plundered by men whom he cannot con- I 102 trol. It is the duty of the agent to the Governors of Madras to rescue an incapacitated proprietor from this state of degradation by putting his estate under management; and there is no estate so situated in these provinces that this officer, if fit for his ap- pointment, could not efficiently and creditably admi- nister it. The private incumbrances, which are never large, should be enquired into and discharged, and moderate allowances should be made for the support of the dependent members of the family, during the term of the management, when the chieftain's authority is temporarily in abeyance. All this entails no labor whatever, not one-tithe of the trouble that the confiscation at a sham sale, and the consequent introduction of Government ryotwar mismanagement into an ancient zemindary, impose on the agent in these provinces. Farther, to correct the tendency to dissipation induced by the life of inactivity and listlessness to which these noblemen are perhaps unavoidably con- signed under the British Government, it should be the first duty of the State to insist that the rising generation of Rajpoot gentlemen shall be pro- perly educated and instructed when young. With that view they sliould be removed from 103 home, and educated at the head-quarter-station of the district; their removal to a more distant country is objectionable for many reasons. The lads should be brought into contact with young men of their own age and class, and made acquainted with some of the forms of business in the collector's office. A plain education, such as could be furnished in a provincial school, would suffice in most cases; instruction in natural and moral philosophy is not needed. Physically, there is no finer race of men than that of the ancient zemindars of the Northern Circars, and in the very few instances in which their education has been at all cared for they have turned out remarkably well in after life, managing their estates with economy, and living creditably in the midst of their own people. The education, the elevation, the eventual employment of the native gentry, and not their suppression by cunning and chicanery, is or ought to be our business — the true mission of a Christian, or of any enlightened Government, in a country like India, — and so it would be if we aliens and strangers cared less for the amount of our revenue receipts, and more for the real interests 104 of the children of the soil. But in this great province, with a population of 1,400,000 souls, there is not one school or educational institution to which the Government contributes one shilling. Some years ago it was proposed to found a provin- cial school, but the late Commissioner did not support the suggestion, and the proposal was cushioned. He said, that the foundation of this institution might interfere with the continued success of an eleemosynary school, conducted by some missionaries at Yizagapatam, in view to the conversion of the pupils to Christianity, and therefore the middle classes and the gentry are left uneducated to this day. These matters are not attended to in this country — no one cares for them. If a subaltern in a marching regiment be dis- charged for stealing a garnet ring, his wrongs, real or imaginary, will be discussed in every news- paper from Lahore to Cape Comorin; while the confiscation of native property, worth 10,000 a year, will pass unnoticed, no matter how rapacious the act. Nay, perhaps the deed will be lauded in such journals as the " Friend of India," on the ground that the fellow was a black, and had no right to be in a position to domineer and oppress the 105 poor ryots. Domination over the natives of India, according to these politicians, should be exclusively reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race. The landlords in the Northern Circars, as a class, have no faith in the security of possession of their lands. They look on themselves as a doomed race, and believe that their families will, sooner or later, be beggared under British rule. They see daily the endowments of their temples practically removed from the protection of the law, their landed estates confiscated, and their noblest families reduced to starvation. If not at present absolutely disafiected, the population in these parts view the British domination with fear. Our empire is certainly not one of opinion. It is distasteful to all classes of the people. But if an honest disposition was evinced to support the native hereditary chieftains of the district, and to govern these tracts in accordance with the cherished feelings of the people, no community in the world would be found more peaceable and contented, and none more attached to the British Government. It is our grasping, avaricious, dishonest policy, in annexing native states in the face of treaties, that renders the English rule so unpalatable to the 106 subject races in India generally, and it is our reckless conduct in rooting out the native gentry, under the pretence of law, that produces disturb- ance, and causes frequent agrarian risings amongst the independent peasantry of the hill zemindaries in the Northern Circars. CHAPTEE lY. Ox THE REVENUE l^UNAGEMENT OF THE ViZEANAGRUM ZeMIXDARY in YiZAGAPATAM during THE LAST TWENTY-FIYE TEARS. Both in England and in India much has been written in recent years of the ryotwar system as pursued in the Madras Provinces. The practice of forming a revenue settlement annually in the manner now followed in ryotwar districts has, in most instances, been unhesitatingly condemned; but when a substitute is required for the existing system, it is impossible to extract any specific plan from the enthusiastic declaimers in the Madras newspapers on the mis-government of Southern India under the administration of the East India Company. The creation of landed estates and the introduction of a landed gentry, holding their possessions on permanent tenure, are schemes which these patriots wholly repudiate, unless, indeed, they 108 could obtain a legion of Anglo-Saxon landlords of the mild and liberal character of Mr. Fischer, of Salem. Village settlements, also, they hold in no estimation. Patriotic writers in the public journals argue that these may exist in the North- west Provinces of Bengal, where, it appears, all men are brothers in the village community, and where it would seem that all form one happy family. In Madras, where the community con- sists of Brahmins, Chetties, Reddies, Goldsmiths, Pariahs, and others, according to these gen- tlemen, coherence in a village community is impossible, and therefore a village settlement is simply impracticable, whether for a term of years or in perpetuity. Agreeably with this reasoning nothing can be done but to improve the ryotwar settlement as it now obtains, and this, it appears, is recommended to be effected by a general reduction of assessment or rent, and by an unlimited ex- penditure of money in irrigation improvements, borrowing, for this purpose, as Colonel Arthur Cotton suggests, " say £40,000,000 sterling to " begin with." The writer of these lines concurs generally in the condemnation bestowed on the ryotwar annual- 109 survey - field - assessment - system of the Madras Provinces. He thinks that, as it is at present conducted, this system is the most complex, vile, grinding, and inquisitorial that could possibly be devised. Every province that has been subjected to its influence with which the writer is acquainted has declined and deteriorated, and in no dis- trict where the ryotwar settlement prevails has land generally acquired a saleable value ; there is only the collector with his subordinates and laborers, ceux que pillejit et ceux qui sont pillees. Admitting the pernicious evils of the ryotwar settlement as practised in the Madras Provinces, the introduction of any other system would seem to be a great blessing. A zemindary settlement, where land is held on perpetual tenure, appears the best and most rational system if the Govern- ment taxation on the land was moderate and just, and not excessive as it was in Chingleput, Salem, and in other places where the plan was tried and condemned because the ground-rent fixed upon the landlords was so exorbitant as to preclude its success. In the absence of a permanent assessment the village system of the North-west Provinces in Bengal seems to be a simple and a mosf beneficial 110 improvement on the annual ryotwar settlements of Madras. The alleged impossibility of working such a scheme on the coast of Coromandel is mere fudge. But even for immediate purposes the annual revenue settlement of Madras is susceptible of great improvement. The improvement suggested is to abolish all leases and individual settlement, fixing, annually, the village rent of the lands they occupy, upon the cultivating ryots, as a community ; holding them jointly responsible for the settlement, and letting them have full power to manage their lands as they think fit. The author of these pages has had some little experience of the feasibility of this system, having had under his care for several years a large zemindary into which he introduced a settlement based on the principles advocated above. The zemindary in question was that of Vizeanagrum, which, though the private property of one in- dividual, was managed by the officers of Govern- ment for a term of twenty-five consecutive years. To test the system in operation he purposes to review the working of the various revenue set- tlements pursued during this term of years, Ill and to examine their effects on the cultivation and on the revenues. The owner of the Vizeanagrum estate, in 1826, having fallen into private pecuniary difficulties, proposed to resign the management into the hands of the Government officials, and to proceed to Benares to economise; his offer was accepted, and the administration passed into the hands of the then collector of Yizagapatam, Mr. Henry Gardener. The estate of Vizeanagrum is a magnificent one — the largest private property in Southern India. It pays a revenue to Government of 5 lacs a year, and the rent value of its ordinarily cultiva- table lands (exclusive of those exempted from taxation) may be estimated at 11 lacs of rupees per annum. The rajah, previous to his departure, had rented out, on a sort of perpetual lease (hursaul cowles), large tracts of his country to persons of distinction in his zemindary. The principle of these leases was the deduction of some 15 per cent, from the ordinary demand to recompense the renter for the expences of management, and to maintain his family in affluence and respectability. Some individuals bought leases of this description, and I 112 so long as the parties were active, stirring, and economical the system answered well enough. In the end it broke down under the collector's mal- administration ; agrarian disturbances broke out, and the leases were some of them cancelled, some were bought back, and some holders volun- tarily relinquished them. The rajah's system of revenue administration prevailed to some extent from 1826 to 1831 in- clusive ; it is therefore proposed to examine what the current settlement of the zemindary produced during that period. Rent Settlement of the Vizeanagrum Zemindary. Year. Current Rent. Current Collection. Current Balance. 1 2 3 4 1827-28 1828-29 1829-30 1830-31 1831-32 1832-33 Total Rupees. 9,37,234 9,07,888 9,17,688 9,16,220 9,21,953 9,13,775 Rupees. 8,60,680 8,33,512 8,00,049 7,79,421 5,93,582 7,12,595 Rupees. 76,554 74,376 1,17,639 1,36,799 3,28,371 2,01,180 55,14,758 45,79,839 9,34,919 Average 9,19,126 7,63,307 1,55,820 113 It is seen that during these years the current average demand was 9,19,000 rupees. The current collections were 7,63,000 rupees only. At the close of each year the annual balance of the current revenue was 1,56,000 rupees, or one-fifth of the whole collection, little of which was ever after- wards realized. The superintendence of the then collector was very lax, and in the two last years, owing to agrarian disturbances produced by mal-administration, the receipts from this valuable possession were insufficient to defray the public taxes, and to meet the necessary expenses of management. In 1833-34 the hursaul cowles had all been forfeited or repurchased from the holders ; the whole lands were then settled on the ryotwar [system, and leases were issued annually to each individual cultivator, defining the extent of land in his possession, and specifying the demand upon it. For one or two years, under the stimulus of high prices and under the excellent supervi' sion of Mr. George Eussell — one of the ablest officers the Madras Government ever had, who was then employed as a Commissioner in the Northern Jircai's for tlie suppre^ssion of disturbances — the I 114 zemindary affairs seemed to revive slightly; but when it is considered that the renter's profits were all now acquired for the estate, the result of the next six years' management was not encou* raging, but the reverse. Vizeanagrum Zemindary Rent Settlement. Season. Current Settlement. Current Collection. Current Balance. 2 3 4 1833-34 1834-35 1835-36 1836-37 1837-38 1838-39 Total Rupees. 9,55,844 9,59,513 10,66,546 10,33,613 10,31,126 10,43,741 Rupees. 8,48,807 9,18,400 9,31,567 6,71,858 8,48,943 7,17,210 Rupees. 1,07,037 41,113 74,979 3,61,755 1,82,183 3,26,531 60,90,383 49,36,785 10,93,598 Average 10,15,064 8,22,798 1,82,266 The settlements, from 1833 to 1838 inclusive, show an average current demand of 10,15,000 rupees. The current collections were 8,22,000 rupees per annum, and the balance of current revenue uncollected at the close of the year was, therefore, on an average, more than 1 lac and 82,000 rupees per annum. . Matters proceeded pretty mucli in the same 115 way for the next seven years, or from 1839 to 1846 inclusive. During these years the average annual current demand was 9,02,000 rupees, the average annual current collection 7,59,000 rupees, and the annual current balance was nearly 1 lac and 43,000 rupees. Vizeanagrum Zemindary Rent Settlement. Season. Current Settlement. Current Collection. Current Balance. 1 2 3 4 1839-40 1840-41 1841-42 1842-43 1843-44 1844-45 1845-46 Total Rupees. 10,45,661 10,39,547 10,51,955 8,36,571 8,85,581 7,78,156 6,80,639 Rupees. 8,13,712 7,01,449 8,63,443 7,96,986 8,35,815 6,78,121 6,28,599 Rupees. 2,31,949 3,38,098 1,88,512 39,585 49,766 1,00,035 52,040 63,18,110 53,18,125 9,99,985 Average 9,02,587 7,59,732 1,42,855 This tabular statement gives a very discouraging picture of this great estate and of its receipts under the ryotwar land system, from the introduction of which so many advantages were at first expected. The annual current revenue of the Vizeanagrum zemindary had fallen 1^ lacs of rupees below the I 2 116 receipts which the Eajah's easy rents had yielded under his own superintendence, and during the two last years in which the ryotwar settlement was fol-. lowed the average collections did not amount to 6| lacs a-year. This great estate, with a population of 450,000 souls, was at this time in a state of ruin and total disorganization. In 1846 a new system of administration was introduced. The ryotwar individual settlement, which had been pursued for the previous fourteen years, was summarily set aside. Individual leases were abolished. In the beginning of the year the lands, both arable and waste, were rented out to the village community on joint respon- siblity, and when the season had developed itself the amount of land-rent previously fixed upon was received from the cultivators , .collectively, through the immediate agency of the head or heads of the village. The lands were distributed amongst the cultivating classes agreeably with their own requirements, and without the interven- tion of the Government establishment. This done, no scrutiny was made about individual holdings ; the headmen of the village communities took their proper position in the mauagemont, and the de- 117 mand was realized without any difficulty or com- plaint. The renovation of the zemindary under this change of system was instantaneous. For the next three years the demand was, on an average, 9,74,000 rupees per annum. The current collec- tions were 9,63,000 rupees a year, the average balance outstanding was only 11,000 rupees per annum. k' Vizeaiiagnim Zemindary Rent Settlement. 1 Season. Current Current Current Settlement. Collection. \ Balance. i i ¥ 1 2 3 4 1846-47 1847-48 1848-49 Total Rupees. 9,48,154 9,81,196 9,93,178 Rupees. 9,32,896 9,75,599 9,80,647 Rupees. 15,258 5,597 12,531 29,22,528 28,89,142 33,386 Average 9,74,176 9,63,047 11,129 1 In 1850, 1851, and 1852, under the operation of the same system, the zemindary continued to advance in prosperity. The current demand amounted to 10,25,000 rupees per annum, the current collections exceeded 10 lacs, and the balance in these years was 25,000 rupees on an average* 118 Vizeanagrum Zemindary Bent Settlement. Season. Current Settlement. Current Collection. Current Balance. 1 2 3 4 1849-50 1850-51 1851-52 Total Rupees. 10,30,211 10,27,072 10,20,035 Rupees. 10,10,256 10,02,803 9,89,208 Rupees. 19,955 24,269 30,827 30,77,318 30,02,267 75,051 Average 10,25,773 10,00,756 25,017 The current collections wliich, in the seven con- secutive years from 1839 to 1845 inclusive had fallen below 7,60,000 rupees on the average, and which in the last of these years had only slightly exceeded 6 lacs of rupees, were more than 10 lacs of rupees per annum for three years successively. It may be supposed that these last seasons must have been years of great prosperity and of high prices. It was not so. Mr. J. B. Norton, in his table of prices framed to establish the pressure of the assessment on the people from the fall in the price of grains (page 160 of his work), has shown that for forty years, since the commencement of this century, on ten years' averages, the prices were remarkably steady; but that from 1848 to 1851 119 inclusive the fall of prices tliroughout the southern peninsula -was immense, yet these were the very years when the current collections ranged highest in the Vizeanagrum zemindary. Mr. Norton was right in the fact that the last years were seasons of great and unusual cheapness, as is shown in the accompanying tabular statement. The fall in the price of cereals from 1846 to 1851 is gene- rally quoted as a cause of the present poverty of the i native cultivators under ryotwar management, and the partizans of this iniquitous system will possibly allege that the Vizeanagrum revenues were extracted from the ryots by torture. No assertion can be IQore opposed to truth than this, although it must be admitted that coercion was rife enough in this zemindary in former years, under ryotwar mis- management. Return of the Prices of Grain in Vizeanagrum. No. Description of grains. 1 1839 1840 1841 1850 1851 1852 4i M ■|i I'* Raw ric3 .... 119 106 64 56 51 52 96 53 Natcheny .... 90 97 66 61 54 54 77 56 Black gram . . 210 189 103 96 100 |109 167 101 Horse gram . . 147 il21 56 54 57 84 108 65 120 The disciples of Colonel Artliur Cotton will, doubtless, allege that the great accession of revenue arose from an outlay by Government on public works, " inasmuch as in an impoverished district every rupee that comes into the hands of a cultivator in the hot weather, in the shape of wages, enables him to do something that shall return him 50 or even 500 per cent, in im- proving cultivation" (Colonel Cotton, page 64). Upon enquiry it will be found that scarcely any outlay whatever was made under this head ; economy was the order of the day in Vizea- nagrum. The entire expenditure upon irrigation within the zemindary of Vizeanagrum, during the last six years of the Government management, did not exceed 8,000 rupees per annum on a demand of 10^ lacs of rupees of land revenue. Irrigation Expenditure in Vizeanagrum. 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 RupeeSi . 4,740 . 6,196 . 7,465 . 5,279 . 9,207 .15,517 6J 48,404 8,067 121 The increase of 3 lacs of rupees annually on a previous rent roll of 7 lacs was simply occasioned by the abandonment of the ryotwar system, and by reverting to the system of village settlement. Cultivation extended in every direction ; the villages improved in appearance; industry, before paralysed, flourished ; new lands were brought under the plough. In 1846, the Government had ordered a sale of a portion of the zemindary, and its dismemberment seemed imminent, for at that time the Government demand was in arrear, the owner's private embarrassments exceeded 12 lacs of rupees, bearing interest at 12 per cent., and the estate did not pay its tribute and expenses. In 1852, under the new system, without any sale of lands, the debts had been discharged in full, and the zemindar was in possession of an unencumbered estate which yielded a nett surplus of £60,000 per annum. The officer in charge of the district, through whose exertions this metamorphosis was brought about on his own responsibility, and who carried out the new system in spite of the local thwarting of servants who had profited by the scandalous mismanagement of the ryotwar settlement, never 122 got one word of commendation, but, on tlie contrary, was loaded with abuse by the controlling authorities of the Presidency throughout the entire period of his incumbency. A disbelief in the virtues of an annual individual settlement, and a desire to support the interests of native landlords, have always been considered disqualifica- tions for ofiicial advancement in Madras. If, on the other hand, the resources of the Vizeanagrum zemindary had continued to be wasted legitimately under the ruinous fiscal system introduced ten years before, and if the pecuniary defalcation had been arranged so adroitlv as to necessitate the escheat of tlie entire principality to the State, the agent in such transactions would have been hailed by his superiors as a public benefactor, and would have" been recommended for elevation to the highest posi- tions of dignity and emolument under the local government of Fort St. George. Independently of the Vizeanagrum zemindary receipts noticed above, the rajah had a number of villages, the revenues of which were managed by his private native agent, and applied to private purposes of his own* It was thought that this agent did not sufficiently develope I 123 tlie resources of the lands, and the villages were accordingly transferred to the Governor's agent, and placed under the ryotwar management of his servants. Under that system, during six years preceding the season 1845-46, these lands pro- duced on an average 21,000 rupees annually. During the next six years, under the village settlement system, the same villages yielded 28,000 rupees per annum. Thus one-fourth part of the whole revenue seems to have been wasted under ryotwar mis-management. In speaking of the Vizagapatam district. Captain Eundall, who was appointed to it as an engineer in 1851, was pleased to say, (as quoted in the Madras Public Works Eeport, page 95,) " the " whole of the irrigation works in this district, " with the exception of the two Government " talooks, have been entirely neglected.''^ In another place he says, " the condition of the " Government ryotwar talooks in Vizagapatam has " much improved from the late expenditure laid but " upon them* The works of irrigation, again, " in the Yizeanagrum zemindary, have mostly " gone to ruin." An increase of revenue to the extent of 3 lacs a year in Yizeanagrum, I 124 from 1846 to 1853 inclusive, gives a direct contradiction to Captain Kimdall's flippant state- ment; and as regards the condition of the Government talooks, it is sufficient to state that, although a very large outlay has been made in them both in the construction of new works and in the repair of old, their revenues have been decidedly on the decline for the last six years. Captain Rundall may account for that decline if he thinks fit to do so, but the late Commissioner held that many of the engineer's irrigation works were superfluous, and that some of them were actually hurtful. Captain Rundall is a disciple of Colonel Arthur Cotton's, and had long sat under his ministry. Following in the paths of his master, he desired to immortalize himself in the Yizeanagrum zemindary, and with that view he persuaded the Rajah of Vizeanagrum to take him into his service, in order to repair the ruined tanks and watercourses alleged to have suffered under the agent's long neglect. This engagement was entered upon in 1852, and the engineer's first suggestion was the construction of a weir over a local stream, at a spot called Davarapilly; the whole work, with the 125 necessary subordinate channels, was estimated to cost 25,000 rupees. Presently, it was discovered that double this sum would be required; then supplemental estimates followed, so that in the end this work, with the expenses of superin- tendence, cost about 60,000 rupees. The masonry works were completed at this expense in 1854. The freshes of the river in the middle of this year greatly shook the dam, and some heavy floods in September, 1854, entirely swept away the whole fabric. Upon this the engineer proposed to com- mence again, and suggested that, as all already spent had been lost, the rajah should write off the past expenditure to profit and loss, and begin wdth a fresh balance-sheet. This method of account keeping, although much esteemed by the engineer department, and avowedly adopted upon all occasions by the Board of Public Works in Madras, was not relished by his native patron. The rajah cashiered the engineer, resolved to be satisfied with the first, loss, and he has wisely determined to steer clear of these projectors for the future. Captain Rundall, under these discouraging circumstances, was sent to look after the gigantic Government irrigation experiment in Eajahmundry, the financial results of 126 which have been considered and explained in a separate chapter. Under the zemindar's own management the receipts from the Yizeanagrum estate since 1852, with a demand (including private villages and resumed rent-free lands) of 11^ lacs of rupees annually, continues to prosper. The annual repairs cost about 12,000 rupees, or about 1 per cent, of the settlement. This is considered a sufficient outlay on the district in ordinary seasons, although the Government frequently expend a much larger sum annually in a single talook. But this irriga- tion expenditure is sheer waste, and the talooks are still deteriorating under a bad revenue system. It will scarcely be credited that the Eajah of Yizeanagram who defrayed all the ordinary ex- penses of the management of his estate, was actually compelled to pay besides from fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds a year annually to the Government for having his estate misma- naged, as it was from 1827 to 1846. He was also constantly importuned to guarantee payment of the expenses of a revenue survey of his zemindary, which happily was never commenced upon. The remedy for all fiscal abuses in the Madras 127 territories is held by the present administration there to be the institution of a minute revenue field survey which has been recently commenced upon, and which it is calculated may possibly be com- pleted in forty years hence, at the cost of one million sterling. This expenditure, so far as it relates to the introduction of a good revenue system, seems money wasted. Ko minute measurement of fields has ever been made in Yizeanagrum or in any ancient zemindary, and yet at least nine-tenths of the culturable lands are under tillage; whereas in ryotwar districts, which have been managed under the control of European officers for nearly a century, one-fourth of the arable lands only are admitted to be under the plough. Gentlemen who fancy that agricultural operations cannot proceed regularly in village communities, and that fair rents cannot be collected punctually without the aid of an accurate scientific survey of each field and holding, might be sent -to learn their duties as land stewards, with benefit to themselves as well as to the Go- vernment, from the practice of native landlords, whose management is in most instances vastly superior to that of their European masters. - Vizagapatam^ December , 1855. CHAPTER Y. On the treatment of the native servants of THE State under the Madras Government, MORE PARTICULARLY IN THE NORTHERN CiRCARS. Until a very recent period it had long been a . received axiom among all the wisest and ablest statesmen who have studied the wants of British India, that one of the .most pressing exigencies of its Government was the necessity for giving the natives a larger share in the civil administration of their own country. Every person who has taken a conspicuous part in the events which have led to the acquisition of the Indian empire has borne testimony to the pro- priety, to the justice, of admitting gradually to high fiscal employment the natives of the soil, with suitable salaries. Munro, Malcolm, Mount- stuart Elphinstone, Lord William Bentinck, . and 129 Lord Metcalfe, have all urged the necessity of ap- pointing natives to offices of higher trust and emolu- ment than they had previously filled, in substitution of European agency to some extent; but during the last five-and-twenty years little progress has been made in carrying out this great want in the Madras Presidency. In the judicial depart- ment a few respectably paid appointments have indeed been thrown open to natives, and some of these offices are creditably filled by them. In the revenue department not only has nothing been done for native advancement, but the office of native collector or tahsildar has greatly deteriorated. The tenure of power has become more and more precarious, and the highest situations attainable are falling into dis- ss teem in popular opinion. A new school of statesmen has sprung up, whose notions are now received as law in the Madras Council Chambers. Their doctrine is, that all natives are hope- lessly corrupt, that a far larger infusion of the " European element " is needed, and as the [employment of covenanted servants sent from Great Britain is too costly to be largely ex- tended, their main suggestion is the entertain- K 130 ment of a host of uncovenanted assistants — black, brown, bister, or yellow — one to each talook, to save the unfortunate cultivators from the oppression of the " bloated Brahmins. " These are the notions of the " Tapers" and " Tad- " poles" of the present Government; the traditionary- opinions of Elphinstone and Metcalfe are wholly- disregarded. The services, it is said, are at present greatly over-worked. This is idle assertion. With an efficient revenue system, with estates assessed in perpetuity on terms that leave a sure profit to the holder, or with village settlements for a long term of years upon a liberal rent, there would be but a reasonable amount of business for the present functionaries in the Madras districts to perform, and there can be no greater curse to a resident in an Indian district than the want of employment. In the district of Vizagapa- tam, which to a great extent is permanently settled, the criminal and civil jurisdiction over a country containing a population of one million souls is vested in the collector and political agent, in addition to his ordinary revenue and magisterial business, and tlie labors are not oppressive. So 131 light indeed are tliey, that former agents have frequently proposed to undertake the civil and criminal duties of the portion of the country still placed under the ordinary Courts of Law, with- out extra establishments or remuneration. There would be still less to do than there is at present, if the tahsildars and the heads of police, who are the real collectors and magistrates within their several localities, were paid respectable salaries, and if, in consequence of such decent payments, a wider field for the selection of these agents was given. But when a head of police or stipendiary magistrate for a county receives less pay than an English footman gets in a gentleman's family, and when the deputy- superintendent of a division di'aws less pay than an ordinary black cook, honesty in the native service is not to be expected. The wonder is that with such instruments so much work is done, and that, upon the whole, it is so creditably performed. Under a good system a great number of the present subordinate native servants might be dispensed with; the salaries of the rest should be trebled. They should be treated like educated gentlemen, and not trampled upon like menials. K 2 132 It has been stated that the tahsildars, as a class, are deteriorating, and daily becoming less trustworthy ; the cause is obvious. The Local Government so far from endeavouring to improve the condition of these over-worked men, has been continually imposing more work and greater labor, and has been tasking its faculties to degrade the appointments. It has been ordered of recent years, that all native tahsildars shall find securities for their good conduct to the extent of a couple of thousand rupees, and although this call upon them is absolutely worthless, the produc- tion and renewals of the sureties from time to time, now rigidly enforced, cost money. Inquisitions are annually made into their private circumstances; the possession or acquisition of lands is held to be a disqualification for ofiice in the districts in which they live; and all the superior native servants are vexed and harassed by constant investigations to this end. Their small salaries are, in every month, attenuated by fines for every trivial mistake, or for delay in furnishing the ever increasing multitude of returns called for by half- a-score of departments. The dilettanti Government of Madras have ordered from January, 1858, that 133 no native servant above the rank of a constable shall receive promotion, unless he passes a compe- titive examination, the main requirements being a knowledge of English literature, and an intimate acquaintance with Elphinstone's History of India; and this test of fitness for a section writer or a native accountant is enforced in provinces where there is not at present so much as a village school. Everything, in short, is done to disgust respect- able natives with the service of Government, and nothing is listened to that tends to improve their condition, or to render it respectable. Nevertheless, fine words and delusive circular orders have been lavished oil this subject by almost every successive administration. Twenty years ago a proclamation was circulated far and wide, which may be taken as a sample of the way in which ofiicial mention is made of the native unco ven anted service. The Government, in 1835, desired to proclaim their intention, " that " situations of trust and responsibility, such as " those of tahsildars, should be rendered an " object of ambition to the most meritorious " natives of the country, and that they should " be impressed with the conviction that, as 184 " servants of the State, they have a right to " expect and are entitled to receive from Go- " vernment a support commensurate with the " arduous duties they have to execute." Collectors were enjoined not to change them frequently from one locality to another, for it was observed, that a tahsildar was exposed to more tempta- tion, to more obloquy, and to more vindictive accusations, than any other class of public officers, while the only security he had of keeping his place was the conviction that he would not be the victim of frivolous complaint, or of those secret confederacies which are at work in every district." The order addressed to all collectors of dis- tricts went on to say, — " The right honorable " the Governor in Council feels assured that he " may calculate upon your cordial co-operation " to effect what appears to him the desirable " end of endeavouring to convince the tahsildars " under you, that they have a permanent " interest in their offices, and I am desired to " intimate to you that Government Will always " esteem it honorable to yourself to have men " in your district who have served the public 135 *' in elevated situations for long periods of time. '' You will be pleased to acquaint them that, as " the servants of the State, it is the desire of " Government to recognize them as native " gentlemen of consideration, holding offices of " responsibility, and that the Government have " as much interest as themselves in maintaining " and in raising their reputation. This has not " been sufficiently considered in the administra- " tion of Indian affairs, but the Government is " satisfied that it is called upon to pay more " attention to it, both from motives of justice *' as well as from sound principles of political " wisdom. " With a view of essentially counteracting the " public evil which arises from the precarious " tenure by which native office in this country " is held, I am earnestly directed to press on " you the justice of endeavoui'ing to substitute, " for the present shifting and vacillating state " of things, a system better calculated to win " the confidence of the people, and to give to " this class of servants, on whom the well-being " of the Government essentially depends, a feeling *' of self-respect, and the assurance that the 136 " administration of our provinces as far as it " relates to the employment of higli native " officers, instead of being a system of expediency, " is founded on the principle of giving high " and honorable employment to men of the " highest character and consideration in the " country. " Under this system of duration the people ;" would be free from the disquietude which now " always attends frequent alteration in their " immediate superiors. The appointment of a " new collector, instead of producing, as it is at " present apt to do, a struggle of contending " interests and a general anxiety throughout the " province, would be generally unfelt." These excellent sentiments were put forth more than twenty years ago, but precept is one thing and practice another. The tahsildars were said to be exposed to more temptation than any other class of men, and it is admitted, on all hands, that the scantiness of income in responsible situations is the greatest of all barriers to honesty, but nothing has been done to remedy this evil. For instance, fifteen months ago an application was made to have the pay of two native collectors, in the district of 137 Vizagapatam, raised to £10 a month, — no great sum for a magistrate and land-steward over a hundred thousand men, with a revenue of at least £12,000 a-year to manage, — but the Commissioner in the Northern Circars refused even to entertain the recommendation; he thought £8 a month ample! So far from these appointments being generally held for years together, half-a-dozen tahsildars are frequently discharged in a month. On this point I can speak from experience, from facts that have come under my own observation. In 1842 I was appointed to officiate as collector and agent to the Governor of Madras in Vizagapatam, and during the short interval between my predecessor's departure and my arrival to assume charge, the head-serishtadar and one-half of the whole superior servants of the district had been suspended or dismissed by the senior- assistant, who had temporary charge of the province. On my arrival a hope was expressed that the individuals newly selected were persons in whom confidence could be placed. The assis- tant's reply was, " Oh, we go to the bazar here for tahsildars," and so of course any officer who acted as he did must go. But some 138 very clever and experienced men were afterwards induced to accept the situation of tahsildars, although not without much difficulty at first, and only after the system of revenue settlement was changed in the province. It is not pretended that they were immaculate, for what can be expected when the salary is insufficient to meet the legitimate expenses of the office; but any effi^rt to remedy this is useless, unless a collector gave the servant extra remuneration from his own pocket. In the Northern Circars the superior native servants have not the smallest confidence in the duration of office. It chanced that, in 1844, I was sent unexpectedly to officiate as collector and Governor's agent in Ganjam. At that time there were only four talooks in that district owned by Government, the rest of the district being held on zemindary tenure. Out of the four tahsildars three were officiating, their fixed appointments being clerkships in the native accountant's office, and the highest pay of the substantive appointment was 30 rupees per mensem* Not one of these men would accept permanently the post of a tahsildar, that " situa- " tion of high and honorable employment,'* but all, 139 both personally and by letter, entreated to be sent back to their old appointments before the Governor's agent, then absent on furlough, should return. They alleged that, under his admini- stration, a tahsildarship was not worth three months' purchase, and this was quite true under the worth- less fiscal ryotwar system which that gentleman followed. But as I found them, so I left them, and the description holds good of Ganjam at the present date, as I shall hereafter have occasion to show. So far from the situations of tahsildar being coveted or sought for by the ablest and best of the native population, in these parts it is often extremely difficult to get a decent and creditable person to accept the office at all. If we turn to the offices of head and deputy- serishtadars of districts the same remark still holds good. The holders of these appointments have no greater security of duration in office than the tahsildars possess, yet these situations are really honorable, and being, comparatively speaking, handsomely remunerated, they ought to be filled by parties of the highest ability and consideration in the country. During the last ten years the serishtadars and deputy-serishtadars have been 140 dismissed, in some cases twice over, in nearly every district in the Northern Circars. I will notice, for examples' sake, somewhat in detail the treatment experienced by some of these superior native officials, and out of the many cases that have come personally under my ob- servation I shall take up a few individual instances only of modern date. In Kajahmundry, then, the office of head-serishtadar was held from 1844 to 1852, by a native named Cumbum Nursingarow.* This gentleman had filled appointments of consideration in the revenue department elsewhere for many years, having been in continuous employment for a period of twenty-seven years. He was specially selected for this office, and for seven years he was always spoken of by his immediate superior, the collector of Rajahmundry, in his yearly reports, with in- creasing satisfaction. The revenues of this misma- naged district greatly increased under Nursingarow's supervision, through the improved system intro- * Serishtadar properly signifies an accountant, but in tlie Madras Provinces the head serishtadar is the native collector and principal confidential adviser of the European functionary in fiscal matters. Every order issuing from the collector's office is countersigned by him. 141 duced by him since 1844. The engineer depart- ment, indeed, has stated that all the increase of public revenue in Rajahmundiy was caused by the fortunate circumstance that a huge dam was com- menced to be built, by forced labor, across the river Godavery, in 1846 ; but no person at all ac- quainted with the condition of the district believes this tale, and the local engineers themselves will hardly venture to repeat now the statements which, in the first instance, they so confidently advanced. It chanced that, about the end of 1850, the owner of the ancient zemindary of Pittapoor died, leaving an infant family, who were in consequence made wards of Government. On the casualty being reported, the collector of Eajahmun- dry, accompanied by his head-serishtadar, at once proceeded to Pittapoor, to take charge of the inheritance. The principal surviving relatives, male and female, displayed on that occasion a passive resistance to the mandate to deliver over to the collector's custody the jewels of the family and the personal property, together with the care of the landed estates. The Pittapoor zemindary was a very valuable one, and the zemindar (deceased) had had woful experience of the results of Go- 142 vernment-guardiansliip in the Madras Provinces, He had been a ward himself for some twelve or fourteen years, and his estates, so far from having been nursed and made over to him with a large cash surplus, were placed in his hands, at the end of the minority, in so dila- pidated a condition and with such an enormous public debt, that the young man was glad to cede one-half of the lands to Government, to enable him to retain the rest. Under his own administration, from 1844 to 1850, the estates left to him again yielded a large surplus, but mismanagement seemed to pursue them under official administration. By the accounts published, no surplus accumulations appeared up to 1855, and in that year no less a sum than 65,000 rupees of the current settlement of the estate was uncol- lected and unaccounted for by the collector. The Government, in reviewing the collector's settlement report, passed over this loss without a comment, and this in a tract fertilized to some extent by that extraordinary work the Kajahmundry Annicut. As a very small part of the valuables known to belong to the zemindar was voluntarily given up, in the first instance, to the collector by the surviving 143 relatives of the Pittapoor family, the head serish- tadar advised the collector and magistrate, both verbally and in writing, to issue a warrant to search the premises, but the collector did not see occasion to follow this course. Eventually, how- ever, about a month later, a considerable amount of the family property, valued at half a lac of rupees, was made over to the collector's keeping. On this one Timmarauze was named manager of the estate, on a salary of 250 rupees a month, and an unemployed attache or candidate for office was appointed to be tahsildar or collector of the Pitta- poor zemindary. The salary of 250 rupees a month awarded to the sinecure office of manager was liberal enough, but it was not paid by the Government, which always enjoins a wholesome parsimony when the disbursement of salaries from the public treasury to native servants is required. It will be seen what sort of character this Timmarauze, the mana- ger, turned out in the sequel, also what manner of man the tahsildar proved himself to be. The manager and tahsildar were no sooner fairly installed in office, than, in concert with each other, they got up charges against C. Nursingarow, the head-serishtadar of Eajahmundry, of having 144 been engaged in a nefarious conspiracy to plunder the zemindar's estate, for which end it was alleged that he had destroyed or made away with many of the zemindar's accounts. Every credence was given to this statement by the magistrate, who immediately suspended his head native assistant and sent him to jail. After a tedious enquiry, this functionary was sent to the Session's Court for trial on charges of forgery and the destruction of public accounts, — acts which had led, it was said, to the perpetration of tremendous frauds on the Pittapoor estate. The collector and magistrate was himself the accuser, the prosecutor, and the committing magistrate, and his written statement, explanatory of the offence, which ac- companied the criminal calendar, filled several sheets of foolscap-paper, closely written. Bail, although tendered, was refused, and the highest native officer in the province was incarcerated, because the magistrate averred, " he had been *' heard to say, that death was preferable to " dishonor." The incarceration was thus shown to be an act of humanity on the magistrate's part to guard his native subordinate from the dreadful crime of suicide. 145 One of the counts in the monster indictment set forth that the head serishtadar had failed to bring to the collector's notice the fact that the property and jewels of the Pittapoor family were not forth- coming, agreeably with the zemindary accounts in his possession. In answer to this charge the serish- tadar informed the Court that he had, both orally and in a written statement, brought the circum- stance to notice which he was accused of having concealed. The existence of any written memoran- dum was, at first, denied, but Avhen, by order of the Court, the collector's records were searched, the paper was discovered, and the prosecutor admitted that it must have been laid before him. In making a return of this document to the Sessions' judge, the prosecutor requested the Court to bear in mind that, although it did seem that the accused serishtadar had apprized him of the fact of the missing jewels, &c., he had yet, with the accounts of the estate avowedly in his possession, concealed from him (the collector) a deficit of 67,000 rupees in cash, which was apparent on the face of them and which had been embezzled through his villany. The magistrate furnished a statement of this loss in detail, and quoted it as " a damning L 146 " proof of the prisoner's guilt." This statement was prepared in the native accountant's office of the collectorate, to the head of which, in substitution of Nursingarow, the manager Timmarauze had been advanced, the secret originator of the criminal charge. This " damning statement," when submitted to examination, was proved by the accused, to the satisfaction of the Court, to be an entire fabrication from beginning to end, and the judicial proceedings having been protracted to the almost fabulous term of sixteen months ! the serishtadar in the end was fully and honorably acquitted. Of the trial itself little more need be said, save that the Amildar of Pittapoor, one of the original conspirators, during his examination in support of the charge, perjured himself so grossly that the judge committed him to custody, and he was, in consequence, dismissed from office. While the trial was proceeding the collector and magistrate placed himself in communication with the Commissioner in the Northern Circars. In an elaborate official report he pointed out how, by the unprincipled artifices of his head native servant, the estate of his ward had been plundered 147 of thousands of pounds. He said that everybody in the district of Eajahmundry was probably aware of the gigantic fraud and robbery committed against the property of the young zemindar of Pittapoor when it happened, except himself, " to such a state " of isolation had he been reduced by the powerful " combination of that mighty corporation the '^ Cutcherry." From this position he had, of course, been only extricated by his new friends, Timmarauze and the Amildar. In anticipation of a conviction, and under the circumstances recited, the collector requested authority to dismiss the accused native official per- manently from office, and he pressed the Commis- sioner, if he was disinclined to permit this, to allow, at least, the removal of this native officer, on the ground that, even if he was acquitted, cordiality and co-operation between himself and the serishtadar could never be expected in the same province. The Commissioner, so importuned, authorized the removal of the accused from office, and on the receipt of this permission the collector issued the following order : — " Cumhum Nursingarow, " It has been already intimated that you were L 2 148 " suspended from office till the close of an enquiry '' into your conduct. From the subsequent in- " vestigation it has been proved that jewels and " cash, to a very large amount, belonging to the " late zemindar of Pittapoor, have been embezzled ** through your connivance or mis-conduct when " deputed to that place to bring the estate under " the charge of the Court of Wards. You have " also committed other irregularities, and, being " untrustworthy, the Commissioner in the Northern " Circars has been addressed, who has authorized " your removal. You are, accordingly, hereby " dismissed from office from the date of your " suspension, being unfit for Government employ- "ment; no pay will be given from the date of " your suspension.'^ It may be noted that the collector dismissed the deputy-serishtadar also, although he acknowledged that he was not mixed up with the charges against the principal serishtadar, on the ground that he had not assisted in unravelling the frauds in which C. Nursingarow had been engaged ; frauds that appear never to have existed, as it will presently be shown, by the Government officer's unqualified admission. 149 Upon the full acquittal of the serishtadar by the Sessions' judge, Cumbum Nursingarow addressed himself to the Commissioner in the Northern Circars, and made known to that gentleman the fact that the enormous embezzlement of which he had been accused was a total fabrication. He showed that no property whatever had been lost to the Pittapoor estate, and that the accounts manufactured to prove the losses were spurious. Wlien the address setting forth these facts was forwarded to the collector, the Commissioner drew his particular attention to these statements and desired an answer. The collector accordingly replied in a letter dated the 2nd Novem- ber, 1853, so much of which as it is necessary to quote will be given in the writer's own words. The first few paragraphs relate to the employment of Timmaranze in the double capacity of Pittapoor manager and of Government serishtadar, to which post he was specially nominated because the col- lector needed, he said, "a trustworthy person to '^ be near him in the crisis of the district.'* An apology, for having entertained a person in so high a capacity who had proved himself so worthless, was tendered to the Commissioner. This done, the collector proceeded to make a clear 150 confession that all the previous charges of em- bezzlements were totally unfounded. " With much difficulty," he wrote, " I have been " enabled to obtain from Timmarauze an explanation " regarding the loss of 67,000 rupees, and this "" is so unsatisfactory that it must be deemed to " be an admission that there was no such deficiency. " He has the hardihood to say that he never saw *' ]bhe account, that he had nothing to do with " the preparation of it, and that the responsibility " rests with two young officers of the account " department in whom I had not the slightest *' confidence. " When the account was brought to me I sent it " to be examined in the serishtadar department " before I adopted it, remarking that any error in " a magisterial case would be a very serious matter *' and that I could not possibly excuse it. My " impression is that I sent it up for examination " a second time, owing to a doubt that arose, but " I cannot positively say I did so. At all events " I thought I had done all in my power to secure " a full and perfect scrutiny of the account in " question. *' When I communicated the deficiency of 67,000 151 " rupees to the Sessions' Court I had no idea that ** the two individuals above-said would have dared " to deceive me, after having given them so serious '' a warning, nor that Timmarauze would have *' been guilty of such gross and culpable disregard " of duty. I can say nothing in palliation of this " grievous error. It is most vexatious to me to " find that a man, on whom I placed so much " reliance, has laid himself open to the imputation " of having concocted a false account to ruin the " late head serishtadar, or that he was so senseless " as to permit an account to issue from his depart- " ment, either without inspecting it himself or " causing it to be carefully examined by his '^ subordinates. " I submit that this is a very extreme case, " and that the recklessness and obtusity of " Timmarauze are so unprecedented and incom- " prehensible that they mar the idea that he was '' a party to a conspiracy against the accused " serishtadar, for no man of ordinary sense would " have joined in such a scheme. For my own ^' share in the transaction I can only express a " hope that, though I deliberately put my signature " to an account without testing its accuracy, it 152 will be borne in mind that the party most likely to suffer the greatest injury from it was a most able accountant, from w^hose scrutiny there was no possibility of its errors escaping notice. Although it was harmless, therefore, in this view, I have no wish to make any attempt to justify it. I admit that it is indefensible, but as the responsibility for the accuracy of every account issuing under a collector's certificate had not then been declared to rest on the head of the office, as it now does, Timmarauze is answerable for rendering a false account." Comment on this letter is uncalled for. The false account sent up as '^ a damning proof of the guilt "of the prisoner" fell harmless, for the magistrate apparently conceived that incarceration in a common jail, and harassing detention in Court for sixteen months, were nothing to a black man. It may be remarked, however, that while the serishtadar's trial was pending, the guardian and uncle of the young zemindar was, in like manner, sent to the criminal jail on a charge of robbing hi^ relative and ward of property of which this 67,000 rupees formed a part. Of course he was triumphantly acquitted, but it will scarcely be credited that 153 Englisli barristers were brought four hundred miles to support this prosecution, and that the expenses of this discreditable trial were paid for out of the zemindar's funds. This is a specimen of the manner in which the funds of Government wards are wasted, and it accounts in some measure for the fact of there being no surplus revenue up to 1854 in Pittapoor. The Commissioner, on receipt of the letter quoted at length above, declined to interfere, and referred the dismissed serishtadar to Government for redress. The Madras Government, when appealed to, simply stated that " the removal of the sheristadar from " office Avas approved." In answer to a farther repre- sentation of his wrongs, in which the ex-serishtadar, disclaiming all wish to serve again under the collector of Eajahmundry, simply requested that his fitness for employment might be recognized, inasmuch as the judge who had tried him had offered him a judicial appointment, the Governor in Council curtly observed, that " the employment of the petitioner " in any branch of the public service ivas j^^ohi- " Mted. " This resolution was passed in the teeth of an order promulgated by Government a few months previously, which enjoined that no native servant whose pay exceeded 10 rupees a month 154 should be dismissed, unless a written statement of his offence was furnished to him, his defence heard, and a specific order passed thereon. This order was yiplated, as all similar orders were, in the case of Gumbum Nursingarow. His dismissal by the col- lector was based on the fact of his being " privy " to, and cognizant of, enormous embezzlements." Honorably acquitted on this charge, the collector of course fell back on the averment that the e^- serishtadar was "utterly untrustworthy," and this general allegation was held to be a justification of the dismissal and ruin of an old and meritorious native public servant, in the face of numerous certificates, granted by the collector, of Nursinga- row's probity and proved efficiency.* While the native functionary was thus uncere- moniously ejected from office the collector of Eajah- mundry was appointed to be political agent to the Governor of Madras in Ganjam, a situation of much greater dignity and importance. His advent in that district at once created there that " feeling * A memorial was sent to England by C. Nursingarow in 1855, bringing to notice the injustice lie had received at the hands of the Local Government, and in 1856 an answer was sent cancelling his exclusion from public employment. Nur- singarow's restoration to office is, however, hopeless. He is now dewan to the Rajah of Vizeanagrum, and admirably con- ducts the revenue administration of that princely estate. 155 " of disquiet and insecurity,'* the existence of which the Government had so greatly deprecated on the change of superior officers in the provinces, and not without reason. The new agent had not been in- stalled in office more than a few weeks when he ejected most of the superior native servants of Gan- jam, beginning with the head serishtadar, an officer of forty years' service, who was about to retire on his full pension with an honorary distinction to be con- ferred by Government for some acknowledged political services. The agent caused this distinguished native officer to be apprehended, and he was forwarded in custody to the Sessions' Court of Chicacole on a criminal indictment. The charge, when looked into, was considered by the presiding judge to be so frivo- lous and vexatious that he declined to put the pri- soner on his trial, and finally he struck it off his file. But, although fifteen months have since elapsed, the case of the serishtadar is still under consideration. The papers have been before the proper authorities for many months, and, as the man is old and in a bad state of health, death will probably relieve him from his troubles before a decision is passed in his case. One charge against the ex-serishtadar of Ganjam was, that he had assumed a more honor- able designation in his official . addi'ess than was 156 accorded to such a functionary in the southern districts of the Madras Presidency, and there were other criminations of a like contemptible sort, but not one public delinquency of the smallest consequence has been sought to be established against him by credible evidence.* When the very highest native functionaries of the State are thus treated, the inflated proclamations of the local Government are proved to be delusive clap- traps, to be appealed to in Parliament and quoted in public documents, if need be, but to be thrown aside in daily practice as idle words. Where, in the in- stances quoted, has the faintest desire been exhibited to raise the superior native fiscal appointments in public estimation? Is the incarceration of an old servant of one district in jail for many months, on charges which the collector in the end was constrained to admit were false, likely to increase the reputation of the uncovenanted native ser- vice? Does the consignment of the highest func- tionary of another province to the criminal dock on * Before leavIn^ . ^ ^ A^-^>.A A'>X'^"V v^^^>'^^^^ ^ ^ V ' ^^ OV A A\^V-r^\i A^^^A^%^ A>\"^^^^ ^1 ^ 1 o: : - . \v ^^A^A^AAV> '^^^^ v^v'^i"' >-!