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a peculiar indolence and recklessness | rious, and though practically no cusin the Celtic race? Of all vulgar tom could be maintained against the modes of escaping from the considera- sovereign's will, there was always a tion of the effect of social and moral rule of some sort common to a neighinfluences on the human mind, the bourhood: the collector did not make most vulgar is that of attributing the his separate bargain with the peasant, diversities of conduct and character to but assessed each according to the inherent natural differences. What rule adopted for the rest. The iden race would not be indolent and in- was thus kept up of a right of property souciant when things are so arranged, in the tenant, or at all events, of a that they derive no advantage from right to permanent possession; and the forethought or exertion? If such are anomaly arose of a fixity of tenure in the arrangements in the midst of which the peasant-farmer, co-existing with an they live and work, what wonder if arbitrary power of increasing the rent. the listlessness and indifference so en- When the Mogul government subgendered are not shaken off the first stituted itself throughout the greater moment an opportunity offers when ex- part of India for the Hindoo rulers, it ertion would really be of use? It is proceeded on a different principle. A very natural that a pleasure-loving and minute survey was made of the land, sensitively organized people like the and upon that survey an assessment Irish, should be less addicted to steady was founded, fixing the specific payroutine labour than the English, because ment due to the government from each life has more excitements for them inde- field. If this assessment had never pendent of it; but they are not less been exceeded, the ryots would have fitted for it than their Celtic brethren the been in the comparatively advantageFrench, nor less so than the Tuscans, ous position of peasant-proprietors, subor the ancient Greeks. An excitable ject to a heavy, but a fixed quit-rent. organization is precisely that in which, The absence, however, of any real proby adequate inducements, it is easiest tection against illegal extortions, rento kindle a spirit of animated exertion. dered this improvement in their condiIt speaks nothing against the capaci- tion rather nominal than real; and, ties of industry in human beings, that except during the occasional accident they will not exert themselves without of a humane and vigorous local adminmotive. No labourers work harder, inistrator, the exactions had no practical England or America, than the Irish; limit but the inability of the ryot to but not under a cottier system. pay more.

§ 4. The multitudes who till the soil of India, are in a condition sufficiently analogcus to the cottier system, and at the same time sufficiently dif ferent from it, to render the comparison of the two a source of some instruction. In most parts of India there are, and perhaps have always been, only two contracting parties, the landlord and the peasant: the landlord being generally the sovereign, except where he has, by a special instrument, conceded his rights to an individual, who becomes his representative. The payments, however, of the peasants, or ryots, as they are termed, have seldom if ever been regulated, as in Ireland, by competition. Though the customs locally obtaining were infinitely va

It was to this state of things that the English rulers of India succeeded; and they were, at an early period, struck with the importance of putting an end to this arbitrary character of the land-revenue, and imposing a fixed limit to the government demand. They did not attempt to go back to the Mogul valuation. It has been in general the very rational practice of the English Government in India, to pay little regard to what was laid down as the theory of the native institutions, but to inquire into the rights which existed and were respected in practice, and to protect and enlarge those. For a long time, however, it blundered grievously about matters of fact, and grossly misunderstood the usages and rights which it found existing. Its

mistakes arose from the inability of ordinary minds to imagine a state of social relations fundamentally different from those with which they are practitally familiar, England being accustomed to great estates and great landlords, the English rulers took it for granted that India must possess the like; and looking round for some set of people who might be taken for the objects of their search, they pitched upon a sort of tax-gatherers called zemindars. "The zemindar," says the philosophical historian of India,* "had some of the attributes which belong to a landowner; he collected the rents of a particular district, he governed the cultivators of that district, lived in comparative splendour, and his son succeeded him when he died. The zemindars, therefore, it was inferred without delay, were the proprietors of the soil, the landed nobility and gentry of India. It was not considered that the zemindars, though they collected the rents, did not keep them; but paid them all away, with a small deduction, to the government. It was not considered that if they governed the ryots, and in many respects exercised over them despotic power, they did not govern them as tenants of theirs, holding their lands either at will or by contract under them. The possession of the ryot was an hereditary possession; from which it was unlawful for the zemindar to displace him: for every farthing which the zemindar drew from the ryot, he was bound to account; and it was only by fraud, if, out of all that he collected, he retained an ana more than the small proportion which, as pay for the collection, he was permitted to receive."

"There was an opportunity in India," continues the historian, "to which the history of the world presents not a parallel. Next after the sovereign, the immediate cultivators had, by far, the greatest portion of interest in the soil. For the rights (such as they were) of the, zemindars, a complete compensation might have easily been made. The generous resolution was *Mill's History of British India, book vi, oh. 8,

adopted, of sacrificing to the improve ment of the country, the proprietary rights of the sovereign. The motives to improvement which property gives, and of which the power was so justly appreciated, might have been bestowed upon those upon whom they would have operated with a force incomparably greater than that with which they could operate upon any other class of men: they might have been bestowed upon those from whom alone, in every country, the principal improvements in agriculture must be derived, the immediate cultivators of the soil. And a measure worthy to be ranked among the noblest that ever were taken for the improvement of any country, might have helped to compensate the people of India for the miseries of that misgovernment which they had so long endured. But the legislators were English aristocrats; and aristocratical prejudices prevailed."

The new

The measure proved a total failure, as to the main effects which its well. meaning promoters expected from it. Unaccustomed to estimate the mode in which the operation of any given institution is modified even by such variety of circumstances as exists within a single kingdom, they flattered themselves that they had created, throughout the Bengal provinces, English landlords, and it proved that they had only created Irish ones. landed aristocracy disappointed every expectation built upon them. They did nothing for the improvement of their estates, but everything for their own ruin. The same pains not being taken, as had been taken in Ireland, to enable the landlords to defy the consequences of their improvidence, nearly the whole land of Bengal had to be sequestrated and sold, for debts or arrears of revenue, and in one generation most of the ancient zemindars had ceased to exist. Other families, mostly the descendants of Calcutta money dealers, or of native officials who had enriched themselves under the British government, now occupy their place;

and live as useless drones on the soil which has been given up to them. Whatever the government has sacri

ficed of its pecuniary claims, for the creation of such a class, has at the best been wasted.

In the parts of India into which the British rule has been more recently introduced, the blunder has been avoided of endowing a useless body of great landlords with gifts from the public revenue. In most parts of the Madras and in part of the Bombay Presidency, the rent is paid directly to the government by the immediate cultivator. In the North-Western Provinces, the government makes its engagement with the village community collectively, determining the share to be paid by each individual, but holding them jointly responsible for each other's default. But in the greater part of India, the immediate cultivators have not obtained a perpetuity of tenure at a fixed The government manages the land on the principle on which a good Irish landlord manages his estate: not putting it up to competition, not asking the cultivators what they will promise to pay, but determining for itself what they can afford to pay, and defining its demand accordingly. In many districts a portion of the

rent.

cultivators are considered as tenants of the rest, the government making its demand from those only (often a numerous body) who are looked upon as the successors of the original settlers or conquerors of the village. Sometimes the rent is fixed only for one year, sometimes for three or five; but the uniform tendency of present policy is towards long leases, extending, in the northern provinces of India, to a term of thirty years. This arrangement has not existed for a sufficient time to have shown by experience, how far the motives to improvement which the long lease creates in the minds of the cultivators, fall short of the influence of a perpetual settlement.* But the two plans, of annual settlements and of short leases, are irrevocably condemned. They can only be said to have succeeded, in comparison with the unlimited oppression which existed before. They are approved by nobody, and were never looked upon in any other light than as temporary arrangements, to be abandoned when a more complete knowledge of the capabilities of the country should afford data for something more permanent.

CHAPTER X.

MEANS OF ABOLISHING COTTIER TENANCY,

1. WHEN the first edition of this | work was written and published, the question, what is to be done with a cottier population, was to the English Government the most urgent of practical questions. The majority of a population of eight millions, having long grovelled in helpless inertness and abject poverty under the cottier system, reduced by its operation to mere food of the cheapest description, and to an incapacity of either doing or will ing anything for the improvement of their lot, had at last, by the failure of that lowest quality of food, been plunged into a state in which the

alternative seemed to be either death, or to be permanently supported by other people, or a radical change in the economical arrangements under which it had hitherto been their misfortune to live. Such an emergency had compelled attention to the subject from the leglslature and from the nation, but it could hardly be said with much result; for, the evil having originated in a system of land tenancy which withdrew from the people every motive to

*Since this was written, the resolution has

been adopted by the Indian Government of

converting the long leases of the Northern Provinces into perpetual tenures at fixed rents,

industry or thrift except the fear of starvation, the remedy provided by Parliament was to take away even that, by conferring on them a legal claim to eleemosynary support: while, towards correcting the cause of the mischief, nothing was done, beyond vain complaints, though at the price to the national treasury of ten millions sterling for the delay.

"It is needless," (I observed) "to expend any argument in proving that the very foundation of the economical evils of Ireland is the cottier system; that while peasant rents fixed by competition are the practice of the country, to expect industry, useful activity, any restraint on population but death, or any the smallest diminution of poverty, is to look for figs on thistles and grapes on thorns. If our practical statesmen are not ripe for the recognition of this fact; or if while they acknowledge it in theory, they have not a sufficient feeling of its reality, to be capable of founding upon it any course of conduct; there is still another, and a purely physical consideration, from which they will find it impossible to escape. If the one crop on which the people have hitherto supported themselves continues to be precarious, either some new and great impulse must be given to agricultural skill and industry, or the soil of Ireland can no longer feed anything like its present population. The whole produce of the western half of the island, leaving nothing for rent, will not now keep permanently in existence the whole of its people: and they will necessarily remain an annual charge on the taxation of the empire, until they are reduced either by emigration or by starvation to a number corresponding with the low state of their industry, or unless the means are found of making that industry much more productive.'

Parliament, by way of remedy, applied a stimulus to population, but none at all to production; the help, however, which had not been provided for the people of Ireland by political wisdom, came from an unexpected source. Self-supporting emigrationthe Wakefield system, brought into effect on the voluntary principle and on a gigantic scale (the expenses of those who followed being paid from the earnings of those who went before) has, for the present, reduced the population down to the number for which the existing agricultural system can find employment and support. The census of 1851, compared with that of 1841, showed in round numbers a diminution of population of a million and a half. The subsequent census (of 1861) shows a further diminution of about half a million. The Irish having thus found the way to that flourishing continent which for generations will be capable of supporting in undiminished comfort the increase of the population of the whole world; the peasantry of Ireland having learnt to fix their eyes on a terrestrial paradise beyond the ocean, as a sure refuge both from the oppression of the Saxon and from the tyranny of nature; there can be little doubt that however much

the employment for agricultural labour may hereafter be diminished by the general introduction throughout Ireland of English farming, or even if like the county of Sutherland all Ireland should be turned into a grazing farm, the superseded people would migrate to America with the same rapidity, and as free of cost to the nation, as the million of Irish who went thither during the three years previous to 1851. Those who think that the land of a country exists for the sake of a few thousand landowners, and that as long as rents are paid, society and government have fulfilled their function, may see in this consummation a happy end to Irish difficulties.

Since these words were written, events unforeseen by any one have saved the English rulers of Ireland from the embarrassments which would have But this is not a time, nor is the been the just penalty of their indiffer- human mind now in a condition, in ence and want of foresight. Ireland, which such insolent pretensions can be under cottier agriculture, could no maintained. The land of Ireland, the longer supply food to its population: | land of every country, belongs to the

people of that country. The individuals | less at their work; since they could not called landowners have no right, in be dismissed in a body, and if they could, morality and justice, to anything but dismissal would now be simply remandthe rent, or compensation for its sale- ing them to the poor-rate. Far other able value. With regard to the land would be the effect of making them itself, the paramount consideration is, peasant proprietors. A people who in by what mode of appropriation and of industry and providence have everycultivation it can be made most useful thing to learn-who are confessedly to the collective body of its inhabitants. among the most backward of European To the owners of the rent it may be populations in the industrial virtuesvery convenient that the bulk of the require for their regeneration the most inhabitants, despairing of justice in the powerful incitements by which those country where they and their ances- virtues can be stimulated: and there is tors have lived and suffered, should no stimulus as yet comparable to proseek on another continent that property perty in land. A permanent interest in land which is denied to them at in the soil to those who till it, is almost home. But the legislature of the em- a guarantee for the most unwearied pire ought to regard with other eyes laboriousness: against over-population, the forced expatriation of millions of though not infallible, it is the best people. When the inhabitants of a preservative yet known, and where it country quit the country en masse be- failed, any other plan would probably cause its Government will not make it fail much more egregiously; the evil a place fit for them to live in, the would be beyond the reach of merely Government is judged and condemned. economic remedies. There is no necessity for depriving the landlords of one farthing of the pecuniary value of their legal rights; but justice requires that the actual cultivators should be enabled to become in Ireland what they will become in America-proprietors of the soil which they cultivate.

The case of Ireland is similar in its requirements to that of India. In India, though great errors have from time to time been committed, no one ever proposed, under the name of agricultural improvement, to eject the ryots or peasant farmers from their possession; the improvement that has been looked for, Good policy requires it no less. Those has been through making their tenure who, knowing neither Ireland nor any more secure to them, and the sole difforeign country, take as their sole ference of opinion is between those who standard of social and economical ex- contend for perpetuity, and those who cellence English practice, propose as think that long leases will suffice. The the single remedy for Irish wretched- same question exists as to Ireland; and ness, the transformation of the cottiers it would be idle to deny that long leases, into hired labourers. But this is rather under such landlords as are sometimes a scheme for the improvement of Irish to be found, do effect wonders, even in agriculture, than of the condition of the Ireland. But then, they must be leases Irish people. The status of a day- at a low rent. Long leases are in no labourer has no charm for infusing fore- way to be relied on for getting rid of thought, frugality, or self-restraint, into cottierism. During the existence of a people devoid of them. If the Irish cottier tenancy, leases have always been peasantry could be universally changed long; twenty-one years and three lives into receivers of wages, the old habits concurrent, was a usual term. But the and mental characteristics of the people rent being fixed by competition, at a remaining, we should merely see four higher amount than could be paid, so or five millions of people living as day- that the tenant neither had, nor could labourers in the same wretched manner by any exertion acquire, a beneficial in which as cottiers they lived before; interest in the land, the advantage of equally passive in the absence of every a lease was merely nominal. In India, comfort, equally reckless in multipli- the government, where it has not im cation, and even, perhaps, equally list-prudently made over its proprietary

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