CHAPTER IV. 



RESTRICTIONS ON THE ALIENATION OF LANDS. 



[Extracts from the Proceedings of the Governor General's Council, 

 dated the 27th September, 1899.~\ 



PUNJAB ALIENATION OF LAND BILL. 



THE HON'BLE SIR CHARLES RIVAZ said : 



The question of the indebtedness of the agricultural classes in 

 different parts of India has attracted the notice of Government 

 from the early times of British rule, and various schemes have 

 been proposed, from time to time, with the object of protecting 

 land-holders from the effects of debt and the consequent loss of 

 their lands. But, so far as I have been able to ascertain, MR. 

 JUSTICE WEST, of the Bombay High Court, was the first, in a 

 pamphlet, entitled The Land and the Law in India, which he published 

 in 1872, to formulate a plan for imposing some definite limitations 

 on the power to alienate land. The theory he propounded was 

 that, although the British Government had, for the most part, 

 divested itself of that exclusive ownership in land which had been 

 recognized as existing under native rule, still it had retained a 

 right of protective ownership ; and that, as experience had proved 

 that the principle of free trade in land, which had been allowed 

 to spring up, was not adapted to the present condition of the 

 agricultural population of India, the Government ought, in the 

 exercise of its protective right, to impose limitations on the further 

 application of this principle, and to pronounce all land to be 

 inalienable except with its assent. His proposed scheme, broadly, 

 was that the power of assent should be delegated to Collectors of 

 districts or other local officers, and that only excess land, above 

 what was necessary for the comfortable maintenance of an 

 agriculturist and his family, should be allowed to be alienated, or be 

 liable to attachment and sale in execution of decrees. 



In 1875, in consequence of agrarian riots in the Bombay Deccan, 

 a Commission was appointed to enquire into the condition of the 

 agricultural population of that part of India. The result of these 

 enquiries was the passing of the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act 



