64 FIXITY OF TENURE 



take flight, he would readily find land to cultivate, and 

 protection for his person, on a neighbouring estate. 

 This must naturally have secured the cultivating 

 class, independently of the sentiment of hereditary 

 right above mentioned. Fortunately, also, this heredi- 

 tary sentiment made the old tenants strongly attached 

 to their lands, and they would strain every nerve to 

 pay a high rental rather than abandon the ancestral 

 holding. Naturally, then (as without cultivation there 

 is no revenue), all tolerably good rulers encouraged 

 and protected, if they somewhat highly rented, their 

 old resident tenants.'* 



The manner in which this traditional sentiment was 

 embodied in successive legislative enactments was 

 summarized by the great Famine Commission of 1880. 

 I cannot do better than reproduce here that part of 

 their report : 



' It has always been an accepted principle in India 

 that the occupant of the soil is entitled to remain there 

 from generation to generation, provided he pays the 

 portion of the produce which may be demanded of 

 him by Government, or by some superior holder or 

 landlord, and this proportion has generally been fixed 

 by local custom. But the tenant was often in a posi- 

 tion to enlarge this right, and place it on a firmer 

 basis. As a rule, the superior holders, unless they 

 carried their tenants with them, and had their support 

 in war as well as in cultivation, could not make head 

 against the officers of the Native governments who 

 practically exacted the maximum amount that could 

 be paid, and hence the tenants had to be conciliated 

 by privileges such as low rents and fixity of tenure. 

 In the less populous tracts, again, the same result 

 was produced by the fear of the tenant absconding, 

 and by the impossibility of replacing him. Rights of 

 this kind, when once acquired, were naturally con- 



* ' Land Revenue and Tenure in British India,' B. H. Baden- 

 Powell, p. 137. 



