CHAPTER III 



THE COMPETITION FOR LAND : THE LANDLORD AND 

 THE TENANT 



The object of this chapter is to illustrate the action of 

 competition in determining Indian rents. The legis- 

 lation by which tenants have been in some measure 

 protected from the operation of free competition will 

 be dealt with in the succeeding chapter. 



It has sometimes been maintained that in the first 

 half of the nineteenth century, rents in these provinces 

 were not determined by competition at all but by 

 custom. It is difficult to imagine a society in which 

 economic causes were totally inoperative, and I do 

 not think that there is sufficient evidence to justify us 

 in maintaining that such a state of things ever existed 

 in India. What I believe is true is that the economic 

 and other conditions of those days were favourable to 

 low rents and permanence of tenure, and that these 

 conditions lasted long enough to cause English 

 observers to believe that they were prescribed by 

 custom. In the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 the landlord was not in a position to drive a hard 

 bargain with his tenant. In the first place, land was 

 abundant and tenants scarce ; if a tenant was driven 

 away by harsh treatment, it was almost impossible 

 to replace him. In the second place, the landlord's 

 tenants were also his retainers, and their support was 

 not less important to him in war than in cultivation. 

 The occasions on which the landlord had need to 



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