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My esteemed friend Mr. Arthur Grote of the 

 Calcutta Board of Revenue, in reporting on this 

 subject said : 



' It appears to me that to grant a perpetual tenure 

 of large tracts of unoccupied land, on the easy terms 

 at present offered in Assam, Darjeeling, and the 

 Soonderbunds, would be to repeat the error of 1793, 

 and that to allow grantees to buy a discharge from 

 all future demands for land-tax, by a present pay- 

 ment of the value of the annual tax chargeable on 

 their grants under those terms, would be a culpable 

 sacrifice of prospective State income/ 



* For, the terms now offered designedly abandon to 

 the grantee a large margin of profits under the cur- 

 rent settlements, with an express view to the lands 

 being returned to the State on the expiration of this 

 settlement in a vastly improved condition. The per- 

 mission to commute by a single payment the annual 

 tax now chargeable on their grants for a term of 

 years, which the present orders give to all grantees, 

 is fair and reasonable. A similar privilege should 

 not, I think, be given to commute in discharge of 

 all future claims for tax, except on revised terms of 

 grant.' 



'This revision should provide for the annual tax 

 being fixed at an amount scarcely short of what the 

 State expects to find the land capable of paying on 

 the expiration of the period of our present designedly 

 moderate settlements. The State would not be 





