103 



which in India must be distinguished from taxation properly 

 so called, as by immemorial and unquestioned prescription, 

 the Government is entitled to receive from the occupier of the 

 land whatever it requires of the surplus profit left after 

 defraying the expenses of cultivation ; and consequently land 

 revenue may with more propriety be regarded as a rent paid 

 by a tenant, often a highly favored tenant, to the paramount 

 owner, than as a tax paid by the owner to the State. This 

 extreme view of the rights of the State, which was dissented 

 from by the Madras member of the Famine Commission, is 

 in consonance neither with the conclusions of the best autho- 

 rities, nor with the practice of the English administrators in 

 this Presidency ; and indeed as regards the latter, Madras has 

 been more fortunate than many other parts of India. Sir 

 Thomas Munro, who is generally believed to have denied that 

 the ryot had any right in the soil he cultivated, says : " The 

 ryot of India unites in his own person the characters of 

 laborer, farmer, and landlord ; he receives the wages of the 

 laborer, the profit of the farmer on his stock, and a small 

 surplus from 1 to 20 per cent, on the gross produce as rent, 

 but on an average not more than 5 or 6 per cent." Again in 

 another place, he remarks : " The Collector looks upon the 

 ryot as a mere tenant, and hence he infers that the occupa- 

 tion of land in India may be regulated as in England. But 

 the station of the ryot is not so low as is made by his plan. 

 The ryot is certainly not like the landlord in England, but 

 neither is he like the English tenant. If the name of land- 

 lord belongs to any person in India, it is to the ryot. He 

 divides with Government all the rights of the land. What- 

 ever is not reserved by Government belongs to him. He is» 

 not a tenant at will, or for a term of years. He is not re- 

 movable because another offers more." The fact is, that the 

 relationship between the ryot and Government, or between 

 the ryot and the Zemindar who is the assignee of the rights 

 of Government, is not that of landlord and tenant, but that 

 of partnership.^^ Professor Marshall puts this matter in a 



** James Mill in writing to a son who was reading in the East India Company's 

 College at Haileybury explained this very clearly : He said, " Do not allow yourself 

 to be taken in, as many people are, by an ambiguity in the word 'property.' English- 

 men in general incline to think that where property is not entire, especially in the land, 

 there is no property. But property may be as Y>^v{ectlj property, when it includes only 

 a part, as when it inclndes the whole. There is no doubt that the ryot has a property 

 in the soil, though it ia a limited property. There is no doubt that the Government has 

 a property in the soil — that also limited — the one limited by the other. It is therefore 

 B, caae (jt joint property. Hence the controversies." As regards the proprietary rights 

 of the ryots in the soil they cultivate, the following authorities may be referred to : 

 Bhaskarappa*;;. The Collector of North Canara, XII Bombay High Court Keporta 

 appendix ; the judgment of the Madras High Court in the Attapadi valley case ; the 

 judgment of the 'Madras High Court in A.S. No. 83 of 1883 ; Sir Charles Turner's 



