95 



of a wise man with valuable property in land, or 

 wealth in mines, should not be to give them away, 

 or to sell them, at a nominal value, to the first person 

 who would undertake to cultivate the one or to work 

 the other, but rather to endeavour, if within his power, 

 to bring- them within those influences which would 

 give them a value in exchange, in proportion to 

 their natural value, and then, and unless to do this 

 was nearly impossible or the prospect indefinitely 

 remote not till then, to sell them. 



It will follow, I opine, then, that if circumstances 

 reg-ulate the price of land, its natural properties as 

 well as the capital that may have been laid out on 

 it, determine its value. 



If an upset price mean anything*, in regard to a 

 number of commodities for sale of the same denomi- 

 nation but of different values, it oug % ht to mean, the 

 lowest price the seller can afford to take, or will take, 

 for the least valuable ; because, if it be fixed with 

 reference to the most valuable, or the averag-e value 

 of the whole, a larg-e proportion will not sell at all. 

 Now a larg-e proportion of the immense wastes of 

 India is worth no more than the deserts of Arabia 

 Petrea, and the rest ascends in the scale of fertility, 

 like the lands of all other countries by regular de- 

 grees. What 6s may represent in relation to the 

 whole, I do not know. It has been calculated with 

 reference to the terms of the present leases of 99 

 years, that in selling- these leases in the tea districts 

 of Assam and Cachar at that rate, Government 



