PAST AND PRESENT FINANCIAL PROSPECTS OF TEA. 5 



the neighbouring villagers and intending purchasers the 

 boundaries of the land to be sold, be resorted to. 



This last simple expedient would have saved some 

 grantees years of litigation, and many a hard thought of the 

 said grantees against the Government. It would naturally 

 occur to any one at all conversant with the subject ; but, 

 alas ! in India this is often not the condition under which 

 laws are made. 



But there is another difficulty at the back of all this. 



Though the Waste Land Rules enact that the Govern- 

 ment, and not the grantee, shall be the defendant in any 

 claim for land within a lot sold, practically the said enact- 

 ment in no way saves grantees from litigation. Claimants 

 for land always plead that it is not within the boundaries of 

 the land sold, and ergo the grantee is made the defendant to 

 prove that it is. The villagers never having been shown the 

 boundaries by any Government official (for it is not enacted 

 in the Waste Land Rules), the question whether the land 

 claimed is within or without the boundaries is an open 

 one, not always easily decided, and the suit runs its course. 



I even know of cases where, though survey has been 

 charged for at the exorbitant rate of four annas an acre, the 

 outer boundaries of the lot have never been surveyed at all, 

 but merely copied from old Collectorate maps, which showed 

 the boundaries between the zemindaree and waste lands.* 

 Is it strange, then, if buying lands from Government is 

 often buying litigation, worry, loss of time and money. 



In many countries, for example Prussia (there I know it 

 is so, for I have tested it again and again), there are official 

 records which can and do show to whom any land in ques- 

 tion belongs. This may scarcely be practicable in India, 

 but surely the question of title being, as it is, in a far worse 



* I need scarcely observe it is impossible to define lands from maps alone 

 without the field-book. 



