226 RESTRICTIONS ON THE ALIENATION OF LANDS. 



accepted the proposition that social and agrarian evils are not 

 to be rectified by legislation, where, I wonder, would the boasted 

 advance of the nineteenth century have been ? How would the 

 men in our coal-mines, the women and children in our factories, 

 ever have secured the full protection which they now enjoy ? Would 

 labour have emancipated itself from the all-powerful control of 

 capital ? Had they not been guaranteed by legislative enactments, 

 where would the valued privileges of compensation for improvements, 

 compensation for accidents, compensation for disturbance, have been ? 

 Even in India itself how should we have built up the fabric of 

 social and agrarian rights without the instrumentality of the law ? 

 Finally, as regards this particular case of land in the Punjab, 

 I do not see how there can be anything immoral or revolutionary in 

 taking away or modifying a privilege which, it is proved beyond 

 possibility of doubt, was for the most part one of our own arbitrary 

 creation. If it is an improper thing to diminish or destroy 

 proprietary rights in land because it involves an interference 

 with the course "of nature, equally was it an improper thing to 

 create them as we did fifty years ago, when they did not already 

 exist. You cannot apply the argument at one end of the scale, 

 without admitting it at the other. This is the answer to the plea 

 of inviolable promises and inviolable rights that was put forward 

 today by SIR HARNAM SINGH. The objections in principle to legisla- 

 tion of this description may, therefore, I think, be disregarded. 



There remains the question whether this particular Bill and the 

 methods to which it proposes to give the sanctity of law are the best 

 remedy that could have been devised. I have been a good deal struck 

 in the discussion, both in Council and in print, by the absence of 

 any alternative prescription. Inaction, I may point out, is not an 

 alternative. It is only an evasion of responsibility. It does not, of 

 course, follow, because no other suitable or likely remedy has been 

 pointed out, that ours is the sole or the right one. Such a contention 

 would be both illogical and foolish. But given an evil which all 

 admit, if the method of cure or rather of prevention which is suggested 

 by the responsible physician is questioned either by the patient or 

 by the public, the onus, I think, lies upon the latter of indicating 

 a better plan. The fact that in the present case no such rival panacea 

 has been forthcoming leads me to claim that the Government proposal, 

 | whether it be sound or unsound, at any rate holds the field, 



