CHAPTER IV 



FIXITY OF TENURE : THE LANDLORD AND THE 

 TENANT— Coniiuued 



The last chapter was devoted to considering the re- 

 sults that follow from unrestricted competition for 

 land. Extreme cases were cited to show how a land- 

 lord who pursued without hesitation his own pecu- 

 niary interests, could deprive his tenants of all the 

 profits of agriculture beyond the barest sustenance. 

 It is never wise to expect that a whole class of men 

 will pursue a course of conduct which is opposed to 

 their pecuniary interest ; it is more prudent to assume 

 with Mill that * the majority of landlords will grasp at 

 immediate money and immediate power ; and so long 

 as they find cottiers eager to offer them everything, it 

 is useless to rely on them for tempering the vicious 

 practice by a considerate self-denial.' 



This is the assumption which has been at the bottom 

 of the legislation by which the tenant has been given 

 a legal right to fixity of tenure, and such legislation 

 has been the more easily passed in India because it is 

 but the formal recognition of a principle which has 

 always been understood to govern the relation between 

 landlords and tenants. As early as 1820 Colebrooke 

 had protested against ' sacrificing the yeomanry ' to 

 English conceptions of landownership and against 

 * merging all village rights, whether of property or 

 occupancy, in the all-devouring recognition of the 

 zemindar's paramount property in the soil.' The 



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