PAST AND PRESENT FINANCIAL PROSPECTS OF TEA. 5 



This last simple expedient would have saved some grantees 

 years of litigation, and many a hard thought of the said 

 grantees against the Government. It would naturally occur 

 to any one at all conversant with the subject ; but alas ! in 

 India this is often not the condition under which laws are 

 made. 



But there is another difficulty at the back of all this. 



Though the Waste Land Rules enact that the Govern- 

 ment, and not the grantee, shall be the defendant in any 

 claim for land within a lot sold, practically the said enact- 

 ment in no way saves grantees from litigation. Claimants 

 for land always plead that it is not within the boundaries of 

 the land sold, and ergo the grantee is made the defendant to 

 prove that it is. The villagers never having been shown the 

 boundaries by any Government official, (for it is not enacted 

 in the Waste Land Rules) the question whether the land 

 claimed is within or without the boundaries is an open one, not 

 always easily decided, and the suit runs its course. 



I even know of cases where, though survey has been 

 charged for at the exorbitant rate of four annas an acre, the 

 outer boundaries of the lot have never been surveyed at all, 

 but merely copied from old Collectorate maps, which showed 

 the boundaries between the zemindaree and waste lands. 1 Is 

 it strange, then, if buying lands from Government is often 

 buying litigation, worry, loss of time, and money ? 



In many countries, for example Prussia (there I know it is 

 so, for I have tested it again and again), there are official 

 records, which can and do show to whom any land in question 

 belongs. This may scarcely be practicable in India, but surely 

 the question of title being, as it is, in a far worse state in 

 India than in most countries, any change would be for the 

 better. Anyhow the present mode the Government adopts 



1 I need scarcely observe it is impossible to define lands from maps alone 

 without the field-book. 



