22 THE OWNERSHIP OF LAND 



land in general ; but we are speaking of cultivated 

 land in villages and estates. The Government is cer- 

 tainly not owner of this ; the utmost it does is to 

 regard the land as hypothecated to itself as security 

 (in the last resort) for the Land Revenue assessed 

 upon it.'* 



The Economic doctrine has therefore never been 

 applied to the ownership of land in India; and since 

 the State has formally recognised private property in 

 land the landlords have as good a title to their estates 

 as any owners of property. I hold most strongly that 

 when once the State has recognised the legality of 

 private property in any commodity, be it in land or 

 slaves, or any other form of wealth, the owner cannot 

 be dispossessed of it without fair compensation. 

 Whatever arguments may be found in abstract reason 

 against private property in land, they do not release 

 the State from the pledge which it has given by re- 

 cognising the legality of this form of property. 



But if the Economic doctrine may be considered to 

 have now only an academic interest the same cannot 

 be said of the English doctrine. English conceptions 

 of landed property have in the past greatly influenced 

 the Land Revenue policy of the Government. The 

 English officials who took over this province at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century were anxious to 

 create in India a body analogous to the landlord class 

 in England. This end they believed would be realized 

 by fixing the land-tax in perpetuity. By this means 

 the landlord would know exactly what sum he had to 

 pay to the Government every year, and he would have 

 the strongest inducement to improve his estate in the 

 knowledge that anything which he could make from it 

 over and above the land-tax would be his private pro- 

 perty and not subject to any imposition from the 

 State. Soon after the acquisition of this province at 



* 'A Short Account of the Land Revenue and its Administration 

 in British India,' 13. H. Baden-Powell, p. 49. 



