THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 33 



But in spite of miscalculations such as this the burden 

 laid upon Mainpuri was, in the opinion of succeeding 

 officers, unduly heavy. 



The same story is told of other districts. The early 

 fiscal history of Aligarh was very carefully investigated 

 by Mr. W. H. Smith in his Settlement Report (1874). 

 He asserts that there was an enormous increase in 

 the revenue up to 1833; it rose from Rs. 1,929,978 

 in 1804-05, to Rs. 3,314,022 in 1815-16, or 71 per 

 cent, in twelve years. No figures are recorded for 

 subsequent years, but 'we may infer that the total 

 enhancement of revenue in the territory now forming 

 Aligarh from 1804 to 1833 was little less than 100 per 

 cent., and it is certain that the greater part of this 

 increase is due to the twelve years before 18 16.' 

 This enormous increase of revenue seems to suggest 

 an increasing severity of taxation, but the facts do not 

 altogether bear out this interpretation. The extension 

 of cultivation was even more rapid than the enhance- 

 ment of revenue. Before the establishment of British 

 rule the district was very thinly populated, as was 

 shown above from the evidence of an eye-witness in 

 1794, and in 1807 the collector wrote to the Board of 

 Commissioners that ' the district was in a very un- 

 cultivated condition in consequence of former misrule, 

 that frequent revolutions in the Government, the 

 rapacity of the public officers, and the extortion of the 

 farmers (of the revenue) had checked the growth of 

 population, that the ravages of the famines of 1783 

 and 1793 were not yet overcome, and that the district 

 was altogether in an impoverished state.' Population 

 returned to the district and waste land was brought 

 under cultivation as soon as peace and security were 

 established. Mr. W. H. Smith's calculations are as 

 follows : * I am rather under the mark in concluding 

 that in 1840 cultivation in Aligarh, even since 181 5, 

 had doubled, and that since 1803 it must have more 

 than doubled. In 1815, too, the revenue rate on culti- 



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