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the commutation of annual payments by one pay- 

 ment, and the terms were notified in the f Gazette/* 

 By this measure that the Home Authorities had 

 taken up the question, was noised abroad. An 

 extraordinary excitement followed. From the thou- 

 sands of square miles in Pegu and Jubbalpoor from 

 the millions of acres in Arracan, in the Tenasserim 

 Provinces, in Chittagong &c., it is true, not a sound 

 was heard: and the demands of the tea planters of 

 Darjeeling, and the coffee planters of the Wynaad 

 had been satisfied. A small voice spoke in the 

 Doon of Dehrah. But for the rest, the great wastes 

 of India were silent, or if their stillness was broken, 

 it was but by the roar of the tiger, which proclaimed 

 them untenanted by man. In Calcutta, however,*a 

 cry was raised by the owners or agents of some half 

 dozen tea concerns in Assam and Cachar a cry, not 

 for the removal of the resumption and other objection- 

 able clauses of existing rules, not for a new set of 

 rules for the Provinces with which they had any 

 concern; but for the sale in fee-simple of the 

 whole of the waste and uncultivated lands through- 

 out India at 5s. an acre ! Nothing short of 

 this, it was asserted, would meet the wants of 

 capitalists, planters, and settlers. The withhold- 

 ing of this, it was put forth, retarded all European 

 enterprize, for the establishment of cotton plan- 

 tations, tea, and other agricultural enterprises. For 

 * See Calcutta Gazette 17th August 185D. 



