THE LAND REVENUE NOT RENT 21 



lordism was opposed by all who wished to see a limit 

 placed upon future assessments, and who looked upon 

 the land revenue simply as a tax upon agriculture, to 

 be kept within the same limits as taxes upon other 

 industries. In the course of this controversy, which 

 was long maintained and very ably debated, the Under 

 Secretary of State for India, Sir L. Mallet, put forth 

 a novel vindication of private property in land. 'The 

 function of rent,' he argued, ' is to restrain the undue 

 pressure of population on the soil. The presence of 

 rent is the result of the demand for land pressing on 

 the supply. The private landlord performs for society 

 functions analogous to those of the " forestaller " or 

 " regrater," in adapting demand to supply, population 

 to means of subsistence. His demand for rent is a 

 warning to pass on to unoccupied lands and pastures 

 new, or to cease to increase and multiply without 

 replenishing the earth, and it is a warning which 

 cannot be disregarded with impunity or by the 

 juggler's trick of taking the rent from the agricultural 

 class in the name of the State and handing it back to 

 the whole population as proprietors of the soil.'* 



Interesting as is the question of the nationalization 

 of the land, it is useless to discuss it any further here, 

 because the Government of India has definitely re- 

 pudiated such a conception of its rights in the land. 

 ' The British Government has everywhere conferred 

 or recognised a private right in land, and in large 

 areas of country — Bengal, Oudh, and the whole of 

 Northern India, for example — it has expressly declared 

 the proprietary rights of the landlord and the village 

 owners. It is, then, impossible any longer to say 

 broadly that the State takes a rent from the land- 

 holders regarded as tenants. There are no doubt 

 cases where Government is the immediate owner of 

 particular lands, as it is of all waste and unoccupied 



* • Sir Louis Mallet : a Record of Public Service and Political 

 Ideals,' by B. Mallet, p. 117. London : John Nisbet and Co. 



