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per diem all through the year, or a little more than twice the 

 value of his daily ration in grain, may be taken as the 

 average wages of an adult labourer. Servants of the degraded 

 castes, such as Pariahs and Pallars, probably get 25 per 

 cent, less, as they are not allowed to enter the houses of the 

 ryots and attend to cattle and other household work, while 

 other servants, to whom the objection does not apply, pro- 

 bably get 25 per cent. more. Taking the labouring classes as 

 a whole, the improvement in their condition in recent years is 

 manifested, not in any clearly visible rise in the standard of 

 living of the lowest grades or in the comforts that they 

 enjoy, but in the fact of a considerable proportion of the 

 labourers, who, under the old conditions, would have remained 

 in the lowest grade, having been drafted into the next higher 

 grade, while a portion of the latter has gone into the grade 

 which is next higher, and so on. Thus, a percentage of 

 labourers of the pannial class, as will be seen from Mr. Clerk's 

 account, has gone into the grade of porakudies, and a cou- 

 siderable percentage of porakudies has gone into the class of 

 tenants, paying definite rents in cash or kind, while a portion 

 of the latter has acquired landed property and become 

 puttadars. Confining our attention to the lowest classes — 

 the Pariahs and the Pallars — one would hardly be inclined 

 to believe that their condition could, at any time, have 

 possibly been worse than it is at present, but there is no 

 doubt that this was the case. The statistics, compiled in the 

 Census ofiice and kindly furnished to me by Mr. H. A. Stu- 

 art, show that, in the three districts of Tanjore, Chingleput 

 and South Arcot, in which these classes are found in large 

 numbers, a considerable proportion possesses landed pro- 

 perty. In Tanjore, the Pallar and Pariah population, 

 according to the recent census, comprises 567,700 persons; 

 of these, 2-1,600 persons, or 6 per cent, of the families, 

 taking 5 persons to a family, possess land. In the Chingleput 

 and South Arcot districts, the Pallar population is altogether 

 insignificant. In the former district, of the Pariah popula- 

 tion amounting to 310,000, 38,900 persons, or 12 per cent, 

 of the families possess land. In the South Arcot district 

 the number of possessors of landed property is very consider- 

 able, being 196,600 out of a population of 583,000, or 33 per 

 cent, of the families. As regards the landless labourers, all 

 the measures of Government during the last forty or fifty 

 years have tended to ameliorate the condition of the lowest 

 down-trodden classes so far as it is in the power of laws or 

 administrative arrangements to do so ; and in this respect 

 the policy pursued by the Indian Government has been more 



