PERMANENT SETTLEMENT POSTPONED 25 



day the road from Koil runs through an almost un- 

 broken series of crops and gardens to where Jalali lies 

 ' bosom'd high in tufted trees.' 



The local officers, in reply to the Commissioners, 

 deprecated a permanent settlement as long as the 

 country was so thinly populated. They foresaw that 

 under a settled Government large tracts of land, then 

 waste, would be brought under the plough, and that 

 by a settlement made before this land was brought 

 under cultivation, the Government would be debarred 

 from all share in the profits of agriculture in these 

 tracts. The Commissioners themselves, after an ex- 

 tensive tour, decided that a permanent settlement 

 would be unwise ' while the population was so limited 

 compared to the extent of its area.' 



The permanent settlement was, therefore, not re- 

 jected, but merely postponed. It is interesting to 

 note that those who deprecated the immediate intro- 

 duction of a permanent settlement did not foresee 

 what was to Mill the greatest objection to fixing an 

 immutable tax upon rentals — namely, that in a pro- 

 gressive society the value of land is always rising 

 without any effort on the part of the landowners. 

 ' The ordinary progress of society which increases in 

 wealth,' Mill truly observes, 'is at all times tending to 

 augment the incomes of landlords; to give them both 

 a greater amount and a greater porportion of the 

 wealth of the community, independently of any trouble 

 or outlay incurred by themselves. They grow rich, 

 as it were, in their sleep without working, risking, or 

 economizing. What claim have they, on the general 

 principles of social justice, to this accession of riches ? 

 In what would they have been wronged if society had 

 from the beginning reserved the right of taxing the 

 spontaneous increase of rent, to the highest amount 

 required by financial exigencies ?' In the course of 

 the nineteenth century the landlords of the United 

 Provinces did indeed grow richer, as it were, in their 



