18 THE OWNERSHIP OF LAND 



valuable service to industry, for which, according to 

 the strictest economic, reasoning, he was justified in 

 claiming a share in the product. But with the growth 

 of settled government, the necessity for the services 

 of the local landlord has declined ; his primitive 

 functions are now discharged by the State, and there- 

 fore his claim to the exclusive ownership of a certain 

 portion of the earth's surface has not the economic 

 justification which attaches to other forms of private 

 property. 



With this economic theory may be contrasted the 

 English and American practice of regarding land as 

 the absolute property of the landlord. According to 

 the English doctrine the land is the landlord's to do 

 as he pleases with, and he has as good a right to 

 drive the best bargain he can in letting it, as he has 

 to sell his cattle or his grain to the highest bidder; 

 he is responsible to no one for the use to which he 

 puts the land. 



The Indian conception of landed property may be 

 regarded as a compromise between these two extreme 

 views. In India the landlord's title to the land is 

 acknowledged, but it is a title subject to very con- 

 siderable limitations. On the one hand, his owner- 

 ship is limited by the claim of the State to a joint 

 interest in the land, and, on the other, by the claims 

 of the tenant to a semi-proprietary right (to fixity of 

 tenure) in his holding. 



Theories respecting land tenure have always been 

 to the Indian Government questions of great practical 

 importance, because from time immemorial the revenue 

 derived from land has been the mainstay of State 

 finance. The land revenue is that proportion of the 

 private landlord's income* which is claimed by the 



* The landlord's income is known in official literature as his 

 ' assets,' a term which covers rent and other advantages accruing 

 from the ownership of land. 



' These " assets ' ' mainly consist of the total rents actually received, 



