223 



the prospect indefinitely remote not till then, to 

 sell them. 



It will follow, I opine, then, that if circumstances 

 regulate the price of land, its natural properties as 

 well as the capital that may have been laid out on it, 

 determine its value. 



If an upset price means any tiling, in regard 

 to a number of commodities for sale of the same 

 denomination but of different values, it ought to 

 mean, the lowest price the seller can afford to 

 take, or will take, for the least valuable ; because, if it 

 be fixed with reference to the most valuable, or the 

 average value of the whole, a large proportion will not 

 sell at all. Now a large proportion of the immense 

 wastes of India is worth no more than the deserts 

 of Arabia Petrea, and the rest ascends in the 

 scale of fertility, like the lauds of all other countries 

 by regular degrees. What 5s. may represent in 

 relation to the whole, I do not know. It has been 

 calculated with reference to the terms of the present 

 leases of 99 years, that in selling these leases in the 

 tea districts of Assam and Cachar at that rate, Govern- 

 ment would not be a loser. But the return to labor 

 and capital expended on tea lands, including all 

 expenses of clearances, is several hundred per cent 

 more than that upon any land under cultivation in 

 India, except, perhaps, opium lands. If then, all 

 things considered, 5s. represents the value of this 

 kind of land, it must follow that no other wasteland, 



