ment then, at present, or until some fortuitous 

 combination of circumstances gives these lands a real 

 value, may offer them for nothing, with very great 

 safety ; though, if it has any particular desire to plant 

 settlers upon them, it would be perhaps wiser, instead 

 of offering the public a gift of doubtful value to 

 pay people to go there I 



And to satisfy ourselves that this view is correct, 

 and that the result is to be traced to economic 

 laws, and not to any laws of the land, we have only 

 to turn our attention to Assam and Cachar, pro- 

 vinces which, in consequence of the impenetrable 

 jungle and rank vegitation with which they are 

 overgrown and begirt, and the deadly and noxious 

 miasma and malaria generated thereby, have always 

 been looked upon, as the penal settlements of 

 Bengal. The rules under which land was offered to 

 the public in these provinces, were not more favor- 

 able than those promulgated for Arracan, Pegu, the 

 Tenasserim Provinces, and other places. On the 

 contrary, instead of a twenty and thirty-four years' 

 rent-free tenure, in Assam and Cachar only a fifteen 

 years' rent-free hold was granted ; and at Darjeel- 

 ing, the very high price of l an acre was 

 demanded. Yet, for the last six years, developers 

 and their Agents have been hurrying to these 

 places crowding into them so fast that, as before 

 mentioned, Government could not demarcate and 

 survey grants of land as quick as they were willing 



