310 SEVENTH REPORT—1837. | 
£12,000,000; contributions of congregations to their clergy, 
colleges, schools, &c. about £17,300,000 : total £80,000,000 4. 
The population being 20,000,000, the tax per head is £4, In 
France, the taxation, including provision for the clergy, schools, 
&c. is £40,000,000; the population 30,000,000; equal therefore 
to £1. 6s. per head. In America the population is between 
10,000,000 and 11,000,000, and the taxation £5,000,000, or 
not quite 10s. per head. The revenue of Dukhun, viewed as a 
capitation tax, is 8s. per head. 
Assessments. 
Assessments and land measurements are so intimately con- 
nected, that it would not answer any good purpose to treat 
of them. in separate sections. With respect to the portions of 
land variously denominated for the purpose of assessment, I 
am clearly of opinion that the prevailing denominations 
amongst the Hindoos were not descriptive of superficial extent, 
and that the assessments were founded on the productive 
power of the land without reference to its quantity, and were 
uniform only for similar denominations of land in a village. 
The Moosulmans, no doubt, endeavoured to be more system- 
atic; they measured garden lands, and probably in some few vil- 
lages, the field lands, under the denominations of Kundhee, Mun, 
Tukeh, Piceh, Seer, &c. with a view to the general conversion 
of such terms into the uniform and appreciable term of Beegah; 
but the Hindoo terms not applying to quantity, the beegahs of 
different villages could only be equal when there existed an 
accidental identity in productive power in the unmeasured 
Mun or Kundhee, &c, of land in one village with the measured 
Mun, Kundhee, &c. intended as common types. This will © 
account for the varying extent of the beegah in field cultivation 
in Dukhun. How little successful the Moosulmans were in their 
attempt to supersede the old terms, is proved in the limited 
extent to which the assessments by beegahs obtained when we 
took possession of the country. It may be well doubted whe- 
ther we shall be more successful in our introduction of acres : 
the ramifications of ancient usages amongst a people are in 
general too deeply fixed to be eradicated by legislative enact- 
ments. A plant may be cut off by the surface, but there is 
always a latent disposition to reproduction from the untouched 
roots. Whatever may be our success, a revenue survey was 
imperatively called for under the indefinite Hindoo land deno- 
minations, to enable a collector to regulate his assessments 
with a shadow of equity. 
* Speech of Colonel Davies in the House of Commons, May 8, 1829. 
