264 



I'he result must be oppression and peculation on the one 

 hand, and fraud, evasion and concealment on the other. If 

 the Government share is farmed out to renters, who must be 

 armed with the necessary powers to collect the tax, such an 

 arrangement must equally be disastrous to the ryot's rights 

 which have been slowly built up by half a century of good 

 government and fairly just administration of the laws ; and 

 the oppressions and exactions of the renters, must be far 

 more difficult to be borne than the exactions of sowkars 

 under the present system. In zemindaries where the sharing 

 system prevails, the ryots are anxious for the introduction of 

 a system of money assessments. There is, however, one fact 

 to be remembered in the conversion of assessments in kind 

 into assessments in money, viz., that under the former system 

 the Government is practically both a landlord and a sowkar, 

 and that it has in seasons of scanty produce not only to 

 remit the assessment, but also to advance to the ryot the 

 necessaries of life and the means of carrying on cultivation. 

 When, however, money assessments are introduced and the 

 Government divests itself of the functions of a landlord, 

 the ryot being expected to shift for himself in all seasons 

 except those of dire famine, the assessments must represent 

 a tax pure and simple, and care should be taken to see that 

 it does not include any portion of the landlord's and mer- 

 chant's profits realized under the old system. 



Another proposal of Sir James Caird was that the ryot 

 should be deprived of the right of transferring his land by 

 sale or of raising money on it by mortgaging it. The Famine 

 •Commission did not support this proposal either. So far as 

 this presidency is concerned, it will have been seen that land 

 is not being transferred from the agricultural to the non- 

 agricultural classes to any injurious extent. Land is sought 

 after as an investment to some extent by the labouring classes, 

 and to throw any impediments in the way of transfer will 

 arrest the beneficial process of land passing into the hands of 

 those who can make the best use of it. Moreover, in all 

 countries where peasant properties are the rule, France for 

 instance, freedom of transfer of land has been found to have 

 the effect of counteracting in some degree the minute sub- 

 division of holdings which results from the law of equal 

 division of patrimony among the children. 



The Famine Commission suggested that restrictions 

 should be placed on the power of a ryot to sub-let his lands. 

 This proposal was negatived by the Madras Government, as 

 no evil consequences, such as those aj)prehended by the 

 Famine Commission, have been experienced in this presidency. 



