RESTRICTIONS ON THE ALIENATION OF LANDS. 



restrictions, which in cases affecting certain classes we are about to 

 make absolute, on the sale of agricultural land in execution of decrees. 

 All these restrictions have failed for various reasons to avert what 

 some of us have at length, after fifty years of British rule, been 

 convinced that it is most necessary to avert I mean a direct though 

 never-desired and never-intended consequence of the establishment 

 of that rule on the position of the old agricultural tribes. 



The early administrative restrictions took their later form in the 

 law of pre-emption. That law in itself was insufficient for this 

 reason amongst others, that it deals with the issue perceived by the 

 first administrators of the Punjab, the issue between the village- 

 community and the outsider, and does not deal with the much wider 

 issue now seen to have been developed that between the trading 

 classes and the old agricultural tribes. Moreover, that law, as it has 

 come to exist, actually admits the outsider whom it was the original 

 intention to exclude. This defect will, I hope, be shortly remedied 

 by a Pre-emption Bill to be introduced in the Punjab Council, partly 

 on its own merits, and partly as being supplementary to the present 

 measure. The customary law relating to the claims of reversioners 

 is wholly insufficient, both because its action depends on the interests 

 and even the caprice of individuals, and because, while alienations 

 may be made in case of necessity, necessity has been held to exist in 

 money if wanted for just debts. Finally, the Punjab rules as to 

 sales in execution of decrees have been evaded by resort to mortgages 

 by conditional sale. I do not pretend that the step we are now taking 

 is hot a momentous one ; but to my mind it seems just as much a 

 natural consequence of the administrative history of the Province as 

 the retention of the zamindar in the possession of his ancestral lands 

 is a political necessity arising out of its political history. Restric- 

 tion after restriction has either missed its actual mark or has other- 

 wise failed to secure that retention. Is it not at least reasonable that 

 we should now intervene, and that in the directest fashion by the 

 present legislation ? 



As to temporary transfers, if the mortgagor is not a member of 

 an agricultural tribe, or if he is such a tribesman, and the mortgagee 

 is a member of the same tribe, or of a tribe in the same group, there 

 is no change in the law except in so far as the Bill gives power to 

 determine what bodies of persons shall be deemed to be agricultural 

 tribes, In other cases we have been guided by experience in selecting 



