THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



Then they inspired all classes with awe ; but that re- 

 verence has now passed away even among the lowest or- 

 ders of society, and they can no longer enforce their 

 decrees. The present law, however, permits litigant 

 parties to call a body of assessors into court, who find 

 the facts of the case, but leave the law to the judge, thus 

 resembling our juries. This process is now rarely resorted 

 to, as it has not been very successful ; but it is adopted 

 more frequently in the north-west provinces, where the 

 village system has been restored, than elsewhere. The 

 difficulty is to prevail on respectable natives to attend, 

 who are reluctant. The only classes to be obtained are 

 functionaries in the public offices, but the natives do not 

 like to embroil themselves from the fear of incurring 

 odium and trouble. 



The East India Company originally established itself 

 on the shores of Hindostan as a body of trading adven- 

 turers, seeking the profits of commerce; but they had 

 no territorial possessions, except the ground on which 

 their factories were erected. In 1765 they became a 

 civil and military power, administering justice and levy- 

 ing taxation. It was in that year that Jaffier Khan, the 

 sovereign of Bengal, and his son who was recognized as 

 the Newab of Bengal, transferred by grant to the Com- 

 pany what is known as the Dewanny authoiity over the 

 immense provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, they 

 consenting to accept in lieu of that splendid dominion a 

 fixed annuity for the maintenance of themselves and their 

 household. In the following year the famous Lord Ciive 

 took his seat in the Council as Dewan, or collector of 

 the revenue for the Mogul Emperor ; and thus was laid 

 the foundation of the supreme rule of the Company, so 

 greatly extended in subsequent years by treaty, conquest, 

 annexation, and forfeiture. But the sceptre thus sud- 

 denly acquired was too weighty for their inexperienced 

 hands, and they were compelled to take into their ser- 

 vice many of the native functionaries, to collect the re- 

 venue and administer justice. At this crisis of Indian 

 history the ancient institutions had fallen into decay and 

 many abuses had crept in, which the feebleness of go- 

 vernment was unable either to repress or correct. The 

 nszims or heads of the revenue board exacted what they 

 could from the zemindars and great farmers of the taxes, 

 whom they left at liberty to plunder all below them, re- 

 serving to themselves the right of plundering them in 

 return, when they were supposed to have become once 

 more enriched by the plunder of the industrious classes, 

 who in vain sought redress in the corrupted courts of 

 law, where venal magistrates decided suits, not accord- 

 ing to evidence, but according to the amount of bribes 

 they received. It was this system of oppression that 

 mainly reconciled the bulk of the inhabitants to British 

 supremacy, for no change of masters could have ren- 

 dered their unhappy condition more deplorable, and there 

 was a prospect of their wretchedness being mitigated. 



The celebrated Warren Hastings was the first Gover- 

 nor-General who attempted to give stability to our new 

 acquisitions, and he had difficulties to encounter almost 

 insuperable in their character. At that early period 

 there were few Europeans who understood the Oriental 

 languages, which want of knowledge was unfavourable 



to our administrative and commercial policy, which ne- 

 cessarily partook of an experimental character. We 

 were unacquainted with the mechanism of Asiatic finance, 

 and little conversant with the habits and feelings and 

 modes of thinking of the people. We had to depend 

 on native functionaries for the interpretation of technical 

 terms used in the old official documents, and for an ex- 

 planation of the customary modes of procedure. Thus 

 whatever related to the revenue and its mode of reception 

 was very obscure and confused. Alluding to the uncer- 

 tainties in which we were involved, Mr. Shore, after- 

 wards Lord Teignmouth, in a minute, dated in 1790, 

 observes that " every man who has been long employed 

 in the management of the revenue of Bengal will, if can- 

 did, allow that his opinion on many important points 

 has been often varied, and that the information of one 

 year has been often rendered dubious by the experience 

 of another." In 1784 Parliament interfered, and it was 

 gravely debated whether the subjects of the Crown of 

 England could constitutionally exercise the prerogatives 

 of royalty in a dependency of the Crown. The point 

 was allowed to slumber, and the Imperial Legislature con- 

 tented itself with directing the Company to inquire into 

 certain complaints which averred that "divers rajahs, 

 zemindars, and other landholders within the British ter- 

 ritories in India, had been unjustly deprived of, or com- 

 pelled to relinquish or abandon their respective lands, 

 or that the rents, tributes, or setvices had become op- 

 pressive." These grievances, if founded upon truth, 

 were to be " effectually redressed, and permanent rules 

 established on principles of moderation and justice, by 

 which their rents and tributes should be demanded and 

 collected in future." The Court of Directors of that 

 day honestly desired to rule in a spirit of justice, not of 

 nepotism ; and in proof of this view of their conduct, 

 we may cite a passage in their instruction to Lord Corn- 

 wallis, who succeeded Warren Hastings — " That a mo- 

 derate jumna or assessment, regularly and punctually 

 collected, unites the consideration of our interest with 

 the happiness of the natives more rationally than any 

 imperfect collection of an exaggerated jumna, to be en- 

 forced with severity and vexation." 



Lord Cornwallis assumed the administration of Indian 

 affairs in September, 1786, and introduced many finan- 

 cial and judicial changes, but they were not so success- 

 ful as his military operations. His errors must be as- 

 scribed to ignorance, to confidence in men as uninformed 

 as himself, to want of judgment, and, above all, to a 

 rooted prejudice in his mind that the ancient institutions 

 of India had been similar to, if not identical with, the 

 principles of European feudalism. Yet nothing could 

 be more fundamentally opposed to each other, for in 

 Hindostan every acre of soil belonged to the cultivators, 

 while in feudal Europe all the land was the property of 

 the Crown. On this mistake Lord Cornwallis acted, 

 and founded the perpetual settlement, which exists to 

 this day, with the view of ever putting an end to uncer- 

 tainty of tenure. He imagined that the zemindars, 

 who, under the Hindoo and Mahomedan governments, 

 were no more than officers or farmers of revenue, were 

 the ancient hereditary proprietors of the soil ; and when 



