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

 dated the 19th October, 1900.~] 



PUNJAB ALIENATION OF LAND BILL. 



His HONOUR THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR (Sin M. YOUNG) said : 



While congratulating my Hon'ble friend MR. RIVAZ on having 

 safely piloted this Bill through troubled waters and on having great- 

 ly improved its form in the process, I am bound to confess that I 

 find it impossible to speak with much confidence as to its probable 

 effect. Throughout the discussions which have taken place regard- 

 ing it, I have been conscious of seeing more clearly the objections 

 to drastic legislation than the arguments in favour of it. I have 

 been more in sympathy with the Punjab Revenue authorities of the 

 past than with newer views. Fifteen years ago SIR CHARLES AIT- 

 CHISON, writing of this subject, held the opinion that ' so far as the 

 evils complained of are inherent in the character and traditional 

 habits of the people, or in the gradual extension of law and systematic 

 government over a country governed more or less irregularly, little 

 if anything can be done to improve the position of the agriculturists.' 

 Two years later COLONEL WAGE, one of the most thoughtful and 

 experienced Revenue officers whom the Punjab has produced, wrote 

 in this connection that ' we cannot succeed in protecting people against 

 themselves; nor ought we to hamper those who are thrifty by 

 restrictions intended for the protection of those who are not.' SIR 

 JAMES LYALL in 1891, though strongly impressed with the danger- 

 ous rapidity with which transfers of land were proceeding in the 

 Punjab, thus expressed himself : " No one ventures to say that we 

 can go back from the gift of proprietary right, and it is generally 

 admitted that it existed before our time, and that what we have 

 really done is to make it more valuable, and thereby to promote its 

 being encumbered and eventually transferred/' He confined his recom- 

 mendations to measures designed to check the progress of transfers 

 so far as it is due to the action of our laws and Courts. His pr-- 

 gramme consisted of an Act to be framed for the Punjab on the mxlel 

 of the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act of 1879. He sketched (he 

 outlines of the measure which he proposed and asked for early leave to 

 assemble a Committee of Punjab officers to draft a Bill on those 



