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people under them, and have often lamented the apathy of 

 the majority of their fellow Zemindars, in improving the 

 condition of the ryot, and of the country. As enlightened 

 men they feel that the rights and the education of the pea- 

 santry should not be left to an oligarchy. This would not 

 be safe even in Christian England, then how much less so 

 in India, the land of caste, where, for ages, the ryot has 

 been regarded as the orange to be squeezed, and then flung 

 away. 



Now is the time to urge these points, as the Bombay 

 Gazette admirably remarks, '' The great dumb multitude, 

 who have no art or part in the Government of India, save 

 meekly to contribute twenty millions of land revenue to 

 its exchequer, without daring to ask Government to spend 

 a single rupee in the improvement of the land, or dream- 

 ing of enquiring in what manner it appropriates the enor- 

 mous tax it levies on them, has hitherto been dumb and 

 uncomplaining, through mere excess of ignorance ; and 

 the martyrdom of one-fourth of the population of the 

 province seems to have been required to convince Govern- 

 ment that it has duties to discharge towards the ryots 

 of India, quite as important as those of an English squire, 

 or an Irish landlord." Surely if the tenant right is about 

 to be established in Ireland, England will not hold back 

 a similar measure for the ryots of Bengal, when she was 

 the instrument by the Act of 1?93 of reducing them to 

 their present condition, when she farmed them out, body 

 and soul, to men who were originally collectors, but whom 

 by a strange act, she constituted proprietors of the soil. 



What is the remedy for this condition of the Bengal ryot? , 

 I feel it will not be found in India ; of late years feudal 

 notions regarding land have been in favour with the higher 

 class of Government officials, European non-officials, and 

 Native gentry. The reform, therefore, must come from 

 England, where the interests of the working classes have 

 been, of late years, regarded ; and a Reform Bill is sure to 



