237 





Occupant. The Occupant in short, becomes the 

 owner, because all things are presumed to be some- 

 body's property and because no one can be pointed 

 out as having a better right than he to the proprie- 

 torship of this particular thing/* 



If this view of case be the correct one, and much 

 that we find existing around us, goes a considerable 

 way to prove that it is, popular notions would seem to 

 be an unsafe guide; and I think, therefore, that be- 

 fore any attempt was made to sell, outright, the 

 waste lands in India, it would have been desirable that 

 some definitive some fixed principles regarding 

 rights, real or traditionary, should have been laid down 

 by competent authority, not only to entitle the 

 possessor to sell, but to prevent those blunders the 

 commission of which has so hampered successive 

 administrations of India, in their anxious endeavours 

 to ameliorate the Government of the country. Fiscal 

 questions, vitally affecting the future welfare of large 

 provinces questions that have occupied the most 

 serious attention of the profoundest thinkers or> 

 these subjects in all ages, are here not unfre- 

 quently decided off-hand, on the recommendation 

 of settlement officers, or collectors, by chief Civil 

 Authorities, who if they could find the time fully 

 to consider their bearings, can hardly be expected to 

 possess the qualifications necessary to deal satisfac- 

 torily with them. A remarkable instance of this 



* Ancient Law by H. Sumner Maine p. 256. 



