A disagreeable but important telegram from Calcutta reached London on
Friday week. The tenants of Pubna, a county near
Hooghly. but on the other side of the river, had their rents increased by their landlords. They rose, and declared they were exempted from such exactions by the Road Cess Act, and would only pay the magistrate (mark that, who believe that the Zemindar is more trusted than the European). The Govern- ment sent the armed police, and warned the peasantry to pay their rents, and to resist exactions by suits in the Civil Courts. Fortunately, the rioters, being Hindoos, and not Ferazees, who would have massacred the Zemindars first and complained afterwards, submitted to reason and the police. This is the second agrarian difficulty in ten years, and one day we shall have one to which the Mutiny was a joke. The onslaught is not on us, but on the landed proprietors, who want extra rent out of the hereditary tenantry, which is illegal. The reference to the Road Act we do not quite understand, but presume that the Act contained some strong clause against illegal or private ceases.
