XXVlll 



under the cowle of Hyder, producing three annual crops, it is hardly 

 known that less than 40 per cent, of the crop produced has been allotted 

 to the husbandman. Yet renters on the coast have not scrupled to 

 imprison reputable farmers, and to inflict on them extreme severities 

 of punishment, for refusing to accept of sixteen in the hundred, as the 

 proportion out of which they were to maintain a family, to furnish 

 stock and implements of husbandry, cattle, seed and all expenses 

 incident to the cultivation of their lands. But should the unfortunate 

 ryot be forced to submit to such conditions, he has still a long list of 

 cruel impositions to endure. He must labour week after week at the 

 repair of water-courses, tanks, and embankments of rivers. His cattle, 

 sheep and every other portion of his property are at the disposal of the 

 renter and his life might pay the forfeit of refusal. Should he presume 

 to reap his harvest when ripe, without a mandate from the renter, 

 whose peons, canakapillays and retainers attend on the occasion, nothing 

 short of bodily torture and a confiscation of the little that is left him 

 could expiate the offence. Would he sell any part of his scanty 

 portion, he cannot be permitted while the sircar had any to dispose of ; 

 would he convey anything to a distant market, he is stopped at every 

 village by the collectors of sunkum or Gabella (transit duties), who 

 exact a duty for every article exported, imported, or disposed of. So 

 unsupportable is this evil, that between Negapatam and Palghautcherry, 

 not more than 300 miles, there are about 80 places of collection, or 

 in other words, a tax is levied every ten miles upon the produce of 

 the country ; thus manufacture and commerce are exposed to disasters 

 ■ hardly less severe than those which have occasioned the decline of culti- 

 vation. 



" But these form only a small proportion of the powers with which 

 the renter is invested. He may sink or raise the exchange of specie 

 at his own discretion ; he may prevent the sale of grain, or sell it at the 

 most exorbitant rates ; thus, at any time he may, and frequently does, 

 occasion general famine. Besides maintaining a useless rabble, whom 

 he employs under the appellation of peons, at the public expense, he 

 may require any military force he finds necessary for the business of 

 oppression, and few inferior officers would have weight enough to 

 justify their refusal of such aid. Should any one, however, dispute 

 those powers, should the military officers refuse to prostitute military 

 service to the distress of wretched individuals, or should the Civil 

 Superintendent (the ' Superintendent of Assigned Revenues ', the 

 Collector of that time), remonstrate against such abuse, nothing could 

 be more pleasing to the renter ; he derives from thence innumerable 

 arguments for non-performance of engagements, and for a long list of 

 defalcations. But there are still some oLher not less extraordinary 

 constituents in the complex endowments of a renter. He unites, in his 

 own person, all the branches of judicial or civil authority, and if he 

 happens to be a Brahmin, he may also be termed the representative of 

 ecclesiastical jurisdiction. I will not enlarge on the consequences of 

 thus huddling into the person of one wretched mercenary of those 

 powers that ought to constitute the dignity and lustre of supreme 

 executive authority.^' — {Hislory of TinneveUy by Bishop CaMweU.) 



Salem {acquired in 1792 fro7n Tippu Sultan). — That the generality of 

 the peasants who inhabit the Bauramahl are extremely indigent is a 



