cclv 



be spetJified in the puttah ; (ii) landlord to keep irrigation works in 

 order and liability to be enforced on complaints from ryots by carrying 

 out the necessary repairs and levying the cost from him ; (iii) village 

 establishments within the landlord's estate to be maintained in a 

 state of efficiency. 



(7) Extract from Sir He nr If Maine's speech oit the Pcmjab Tenanrtj Bill 

 before the LeyisJatlvc Coiotnl of India in October 1868. 



As regards the hardship of requiring strict proof in a court of 

 justice of the existence of customary rights and privileges under con- 

 ditions which preclude settled authority and regular government, and 

 the necessity for inferring the existence of such rights and customs 

 from the facts ascertained as regards whole tracts of country, and not 

 in individual cases, the following extracts from Sir Henry Maine's 

 speech on the Panjab Tenancy Bill before the Legislative Council of 

 India in October 1868 may be usefully consulted. 



" Property in land which had little or no value before annexation 

 (of the Pacjab) has now a very great and distinct value, and the real 

 struggle obviously is whether, in the case of occupancy tenants, the 

 new profits shall be divided between them and the landlords, or shall 

 wholly go to the landlords. The position, therefore, of the two par- 

 ties to this contention iu the Settlement Courts was this : on the 

 one side, you had very ignorant men, asked very difficult questions as 

 to indistinct ideas of old date. On the other, you had witnesses, a 

 shade better educated, more thoroughly aware of the matter in hand, 

 but under the sti'ongest temptation to adapt their testimony to their 

 interests 



"I observe, for example, that in a great number of cases the 

 persons under examination, whether landlords, tenants or witnesses, 

 were asked whether a particular person had a right to do a particular 

 thing, and the point was frequently put for decision to the committees 

 who acted as referees. 1 do not mean to say that the word ' right ' 

 was invariably used, but the questions constantly implied the notion 

 of a right, or some shade of it. Now, every body who has paid even 

 a superficial attention to the subject is aware that there is no more 

 ambiguous term than ' right,' and no idea less definite. I do not 

 suppose that in the Oriental patoi>< in which the questions were asked, 

 the word is less equivocal than in the cultivated European languages, 

 and yet in Europe it is only the strictest and severest jurists who 

 speak of rights with accuracy. Prima facie, when you ask whether a 

 class had rights of a particular kind, you mean Jegal rights ; but legal 

 rights imply a regular administration of fixed laws, and there was 

 confessedly no such administration under Sikh rule. Yet I find 

 Settlement Officers enquiring about rights of eviction or enhancement, 

 without explaining (and apparently without being conscious of the 

 need o* explaining:) whether the rights in question were of the nature 

 of legal rightB, or whether moral rights were meant, or whether what was 

 intended was merely the physical power of the stronger to do what he 

 pleased with the weaker. And these difficult and ambiguous ques- 

 tions — questions which in reality sometimes involved highly refined 

 abstractions — questions which I do not hesitate to say that, even if I 

 had been cognizant of the facts, I could not myself have answered 



