THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN INDIA.
WE have a pleasant bit of news to announce from India, a bit which to most Anglo-Indians will, we think, be a relief from the dreary horror of the hour, or the Cassandra-
like vaticinations in which it is our melancholy duty to in- dulge. The news is big too, big enough to be pleasant even to those who, like ourselves, believe that the "limitations in the area of famine," of which we hear so much, are day- dreams, that once the rains begin to stop the carts, all the counties now reported distressed, and perhaps more, will go
off, as regiments did in the Mutiny, like gunpowder-barrels. It seems discreditable both to ourselves and most others in- terested in India that the news should be news, but it is such, nevertheless, and the causes are easily explained. While our correspondent "3. M. L." was last week complaining, and we endorsing the complaint, that out of Bengal Indian property in land was still too unfixed to allow of prosperity,—the Duke of Argyll, with the unanimous assent of his Council, had for- warded a despatch to India which had been accepted and published by Lord Northbrook, and which endorsed, as we have reason to believe it may be, by Lord Salisbury, announces a radical change of policy in this respect. Owing to some accidents, and the huge length of the lever through which England acts upon India, the despatch, though dated 22nd May, 1873, was not published till October, appeared only in one of the most unknown and most important publica- tions in the world, the Calcutta Gazette, and with the famine approaching, almost entirely escaped attention. Even had it, however, been republished in extenso in the Times, its meaning would scarcely have been thoroughly understood except by a few students of Indian tenure. Routine requires that a Secretary of State for India should not fling despatches "out of the blue;" and etiquette demands that his orders of almost any kind should be couched in the form of answers to some representation or other from India, which is never in form deprived of the initiative. The despatch in question, therefore, though said to be the most important since the Education Despatch—which, we must add, Lord Halifax, or rather Mr. Lowe, found most effective means of publishing—takes the humble form of a commentary upon a report by Colonel Haig, RE., upon the eagerness with which the property-holders of Orissa were accepting the water provided by irrigation, and the equal eagerness with which they were raising rents.
Nevertheless, this apparently local and temporary despatch was intended for all India, was so understood by all Indian magnates, and accepted and endorsed as it has been, and fol- lowed up as it is sure to be, is really a statement that the Home Government of India has finally resolved not only to reject,: the advice of those who desire to see the State the owner of the " whole rent " of India, but to encourage and, in fact, create property in land throughout India, outside Bengal, by leaving a portion of the rent in the owners' pockets ; to insist upon moderation in settlements, to make those settle- ments perpetual, and, in fact—to speak with an unreserve re- quiring explanations only in detail—to carry out the Corn- wallis principle throughout India, subject only to those modi- fications which time and experience have taught us to be necessary. The whole-rent theory, or Thomason plan, or State-landlord plan, as it has been variously called, is in fact abandoned ; and instead of the State remaining as it is now, the ultimate owner of the soil, it will abandon that ownership for an unalterable quit-rent, subject only to one reservation,— the power of imposing local taxes to be expended on local objects, which was forgotten in the great Cornwallis Settle- ment of Bengal, under which the market value of estates has risen to twenty years' purchase. The principles laid down by the Duke of Argyll, and which will henceforward be main- tained, expounded, and enforced in detail, are sufficiently expressed in the following paragraphs, which we give in extenso
In the first place, it is quite certain that proprietors (if there be any such) who have no other tenants than such as sit at fixed rent; wifi not, and cannot be expected to improve. They have no inducement to do so. They are mere rent-chargers on their estates, and it is well to remember that, in the case of proprietors in this position, the whole of the fixed rent which they enjoy is absolutely withdrawn from the fund out of which agricultural improvements come. It may be true that even those proprietors who are in a position to enjoy the increased value of their land do not generally in India appreciate their duties, or see their
own interest its they ought to do. This is probably the result of long hereditary habits acquired under the discouraging effects of arbitrary
exactions levied by conquering and despotic monarchies. If so, we may hope that the progress of education, acting in aid of the motives of self- interest, will lead to a better state of things. But we must take care that this self-interest should really exist, and that it should be rendered obvious. In the case of proprietors who have only a fixed and limited interest in their property, there is no such self-interest to appeal to, and therefore there is no hope, and there can be no just expectation that they will ever spend money on improvements.
In the next place, the same effect is produced in a less degree upon all owners of land whose rents can only be raised by some difficult and expensive process. The duty of recognising subordinate shares in the ownership of land wherever they existed is a duty which cannot be denied. But neither can it be denied that, in proportion as those shares are numerous, complicated and difficult of increment, in the same pro- portion are the motives weakened which can alone induce superior owners to spend their income on improvements.
"In the third place, there can be no doubt that, when the owners of land know that they are liable to have the proportion of the rental which they pay to the State arbitrarily enhanced at the end of some temporary settlement such as a term of 30 years, a powerful effect is produced in dis- couraging outlay on permanent improvements. A lease for 30 years is amply sufficient, and more than sufficient, to give complete security to the actual cultivators of the soil in respect to the profits of oven the highest cultivation. It is ample also to encourage reclamation of waste lands where this can be effected by ordinary labour. It is sufficient, therefore, and more than sufficient, to induce them to do all that mere cultivators can ' ever ha expected to do. But those more permanent and expensive im- provements which owners of land execute in Europe are inseparably connected with the prospect of secure and permanent enjoyment, and with the feeling which identifies a man's own interest with the interests of succeeding generations.
"Lastly, it is to be remembered that, under the system of Land Revenue which has long prevailed in India, whether the settlement be permanent or only temporary, and whether it be made with zemindars, or with villages, or with individual ryots, the proportion of the total produce of the soil, and consequently, of the rent, which is absorbed by the State, is very largo. Proprietors of the smaller class who do not enjoy more, and who generally enjoy less, than one-half the rental, are not in the position which enables proprietors of land in other countries to expend largely out of their income upon the permanent improvement of the soil. The late Marquis of Dalhousie repeatedly complained that in India the people do nothing for themselves, and expect everything to be done for them by the Government. But, whore the Government appropriates a large proportion of that surplus produce of the soil which in all countries must be the foundation of individual and of national wealth, it cannot expect the people to have the enterprising and independent spirit which that wealth promotes. It is at least satisfactory to remem- ber that this is a system which we did not establish, but one which we inherited from the Native Governments which preceded us. Indeed, it may be said with truth that we have done much to mitigate its evils. But we ought not to forgot that the State. in taking so large a share of the rental, will naturally be expected to take also a more than cor- responding share of the proper duties of a landlord, because the portion which remains to proprietors cannot generally be more than sufficient to afford them a living commensurate with their habits and with their social position."
In order to understand the enormous magnitude of the change which principles like these once accepted, as we believe they have been by statesmen of both parties, will involve in India outside Bengal, we must enter into a little, possibly tiresome, de- tail. The "whole rent "party, as our correspondent "3. M. L." terms it, which was all-powerful in India, till the Mutiny awoke many of its leaders to a conviction that if the land were all levelled no flood could be stopped, and that the State could not deal with such myriads of minute units, has become immensely powerful again, and desires not only to eliminate all large proprietors, but to turn all proprietors whatever into farmers holding direct from the State, with leases at the uttermost of thirty years, and with " revisions " on expiry, to be made by officials whose one object is to obtain reputation by "increasing the revenue," —that is, to take from the tenant, whether large or small, the uttermost fraction above the amount sufficient to keep him alive. In theory, of course, they are more moderate, but in practice the desire to succeed always makes them severe, even when they do not hold, as a good many civilians now do, a peculiar variety of the socialistic theory about land, unknown here, but not unknown either in France or Italy. So few are the employments open to natives, so intense are the local attachments of the people, and so deep is the dread of the omnipotent State, that this can actually be done,—it was done all through Madras, under the Monro system, as it was most unjustly called, till out of the Presi- dency town "not a man in the Presidency possessed £10,000,"— and in special districts is even now doing. Half the net produce of the land is the minimum in all cases, and in some the State demand has been known to rise above 80 per cent. Half the net product could possibly be borne, and we should individu- ally be jealous of reducing it, if that proportion were taken once for all, as Lord Cornwallis took it, profit rising rapidly with perpetuity of tenure ; but half, with a tenure of only thirty years, is not only fatal to improvement—a point upon which we shall have something to say directly—but to that slow but certain system of minute hoarding which, without improvement, will make the most stationary people rieh. Who is going to hoard, if to-morrow a new rent is to lick up all ? The people can refuse the leases ? Yes ; and so they can refuse the air if they like, but as they have nothing else to live upon they must die if they do.. They can emigrate ? Whither ? For them the Government of India owns the planet. They can rise in insurrection ? Not so. They could rise against their native Governments, and very often did ; but the British power can no more be resisted by a village, or a district, or even a province, than Parliament can be resisted by an Irish county. Slowly, cumbrously, but inevitably, the mighty roller is turned upon the province where the stones seem too apparent, and almost without appearance of movement crushes all level again. The Duke of Argyll says the native sovereigns took more than we do, but we fear history does not bear out that often repeated assertion. Spasmodically the native sovereigns took more, for they took all and desolated a province ; and they always, if resisted, took their share in a rough and brutal way, almost as bad, or quite as bad as an ordinary invasion ; but in an obedient district, before the era of incessant and universal war, the native sovereigns took less than we do, not indeed always in theory, but always in practice, for they took their revenue in kind, and suffered from low prices or a short crop just as their people did. We insist very pro- perly upon silver at all times. That, however, is a detail. The present fact is that outside Bengal we take between fifty and eighty per cent, of the net rental, that we refuse to allow more than thirty years' tenure, and that we revise rents with a single eye to the interest of a landlord who is ubiqui- tous, irresistible, and under an incessant pressure for money to press on at a terrible pace with his work of civilisation. The very goodness of the landlord makes him in this respect a bad one. And the whole-rent school believe this to be good, grudge every morsel of wealth left in individual hands as an injury to the State, and would, if left to themselves, before long leave nothing in the Punjab, in the North-West, in Bombay, and in Madras, except overworked peasant tenants— not peasant freeholders, mind—and the grand figure of the State, which must do all, foresee all, feed all, and be to all a Providence, that State in the long run being a single overworked, pale man, who cannot send an official to Spandau for a twelvemonth, even if his " settle- ment " has, as happened in one terrible case, crushed a people out of the world. It is the Fellah system of Egypt, redeemed only by the fact that the gangmasters are English gentlemen, who, under the influence of a theory, can regret, with Colonel Haig, that we had not delayed irrigation for five years, for then the State, instead of its 5 per cent. or what-not of interest, would have had the whole benefit of its water supply, but who, nevertheless, do give the water. "I will give you your barn," says Lord Blankshire to his tenantry, "if you give me first 5 per cent, on my outlay, and then all the gain you are to get out of that method of storage." How grateful would that tenant be, or what in this country would be the character of that landlord?
We have not space in this article, or indeed in this journal, to answer all the objections which the whole-rent civilians will raise to this despatch, or explain the causes of the dislike felt for the Perpetual Settlement by a whole school of Indians. We must content ourselves here with observing that the great mistake of that great and, on the whole, successful Act—the creation of new land- lords not previously existing—will be avoided ; that in the majority of cases the permanent owner will be that very ancient co-operative society, the village ; that the State right to a share in the increment will be preserved in the right to force on improvement through local taxation ; that from the day the new policy is in force the right of property in land begins in Southern, Western, and Northern India ; and that if a hun- dred millions of people could read, and understand and fully believe the words we are now writing, their roar of relief, and anticipation, and pleasure would teach England that if India has no popular word for gratitude, that is but one more illus- tration of the fact that words are not invariable accompaniments of feeling.
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