24 



in places where the culture is simple and the meanest as in 

 the Circars, find it expedient, at the different seasons, to bor- 

 row money at high interest in proportion to the risk incurred 

 by the lender, and never under two per cent." Sir Thomas 

 Munro, writing in 1797, says ''many of the ryots are so poor' 

 that it is always doubtful whether next year they will be in 

 the rank of cultivators, or laborers, and few of them so rich as 

 not to be liable to be forced by one or two bad seasons to 

 throw up a considerable part of their farms. Many of the 

 middling class of ryots often fail from the most trifling acci- 

 dents. The loss of a bullock, or of a member of the family who 

 worked in the fields, or confinement to bed by a fit of sickness, 

 frequently disable them from paying their usual rent during 

 the ensuing year." The realization of Government revenue by 

 means of torture was one of the recognized institutions of the 

 country and the practice indeed continued, though in a miti- 

 gated form, down to 1855. Mr. Forbes, the Collector of 

 Tanjore, writing in that year, states that "the ryot will often 

 appear in the cuteherry with his full liabilities in his possession, 

 tied up in small sums about his person, to be doled out rupee by 

 rupee according to the urgency of the demand, and will some- 

 times return to his village, having left a balance undischarged, 

 not because he could not pay it, but because he was not forced 

 to do so." The above quotation will serve to show how abject 

 and demoralized was the condition of the agricultural classes in 

 those days. 



Section III. — The Condition of the Agricultural Classes under 

 British Administration during the first half of the present 

 century. 



15. The bulk of the territories under the Government of 

 „ , , ^ ,,, Madras, with the exception of the Northern 



Early land settlements ri' L^ r^-i • ^ t • ^ ' t p 



and the condition of the Oircars, the (jhingleput ]aghir, and a tew 

 country during the first trading Settlements, were acquired by the 



30 years of the century. t-< t t i , ,-. -. h,7x^ i noo,f» 



English between the years 1792 and 1803. 

 At the conclusion of the first war with Tippoo in 1792, the 

 districts of Salem, Dindigul and Malabar were acquired. The 

 second Mysore war in 1799 added Canara and Coimbatore. 

 In 1800 the whole territory south of the Kistna and Tunga- 

 bhadra rivers, comprising the districts of Cuddapah, Bellary 

 and Anantapur and portions of Kurnool, were ceded by the 

 Nizam. In 1799 the Eajah of Tanjore resigned his sovereign 

 rights over that province to the English, and in 1801 the 

 Nabob of the Carnatic made over to them the districts of 

 Nellore, North Arcot, South Arcot, Trichinopoly, Madura and 

 Tinnevelly. The British power may thus be said to have been 



