XXIV 



obtained access to those markets about 1 800 ; and the Indian merchan- 

 dise being undersold, the trade declined. The grain traific was not 

 great. The demand was chiefly in the southern districts and the only 

 means of transport by sea, on native craft ; and the winds prevailing at 

 the harvest season being contrary, the transport was precarious and the 

 trade small. The enormous expense of land carriage was jjrohibitive. 

 Carts were not obtainable. All goods were conveyed on bullocks (the 

 cost of transporting 1 putti of grain was 1 star pagoda and 5 fanams for 

 every 8 miles in 1805. This is about one-third of the average price 

 of that quantity ruling throughout the district). These difficulties, 

 combined with oppressive customs and other taxation and the insecurity 

 of the roads, completely paralysed trade. The confusion and uncer- 

 tainty of the revenue system ; the oppression of the renters, themselves 

 the victims of the rapacity of the Nabobs and compelled to recoup 

 themselves by exactions from their people ; the fraud and venality which 

 had infected all ranks ; the poverty of the cultivators who were nine- 

 tenths of the community ; their ignorance and apathetic indifference to 

 their own improvement ; the stagnation of trade and manufacture conse- 

 quent on restrictive taxation and general insecurity ; the depredations of 

 Poligars and Kavalgars, the supposed guardians of the public security ; 

 the total want of a system of judicature ; all these combined to produce 

 a state of things wretched in the extreme, and from which it would be 

 vain to hope for sudden or rapid improvement. — {The Nellore District 

 Manual.) 



Ceded Districts — Bellari/ and Cuddapah (acquired from the Nizam in 

 1800). — The state of the districts in 1800, when they were ceded by the 

 Nizlam, has been thus described : Probably no part of Southern India 

 was in a more unsettled state or less acquainted either by experience 

 or by tradition with the blessings of settled Government, the collection of 

 the revenue being entirely entrusted to zemindars. Poligars and potails 

 each of these became the leader of a little army and carried on destruc- 

 tive feuds with the villages immediately contiguous to him. Bands of 

 robbers wandered through the country, plundering and murdering such 

 travellers as refused to submit to their exactions, while the Grovernment, 

 conscious of its weakness, scarcely attempted to interfere. It is com- 

 puted that in the year 1800, when the Ceded districts were transferred 

 to the Company's rule, there were scattered through them, exclusive of 

 the Nizam's troops, 30,000 armed peons ; the whole of them, under the 

 command of 80 Poligars, subsisted by rapine and committed everywhere 

 the greatest excesses. 



Kurnool {acquired from the Nabob of Kurnool, 1838). — It is impos- 

 sible to draw out any history of the revenue management of the country 

 during the time of the Nabobs. There were no laws between the 

 governing and the governed, the taxer and the taxed, except the ruler's 

 own will. The little that we can learn of the internal economy of the 

 country, before the immediate rule of the British, shows us that the 

 manner of imposition of the revenue was most arbitrary and the collec- 

 tion most iniquitous. The whole known history, with the honorable 

 exception of Manauwar Khan's rule, is but a series of acts of oppression 

 and violence on the part of the Nabob, and passive resistance or flight 

 on the part of the people. Mr. Blane, the Commissioner, on the 

 assumption of the country, constantly mentions these facts and shows 



