CHAPTER IV 



FIXITY OF TENURE : THE LANDLORD AND THE 

 T EN AN T— Continued 



The last chapter was devoted to considering the re- 

 sults that follow from unrestricted competition for 

 land. Extreme cases were cited to show how a land- 

 lord who pursued without hesitation his own pecu- 

 niary interests, could deprive his tenants of all the 

 profits of agriculture beyond the barest sustenance. 

 It is never wise to expect that a whole class of men 

 will pursue a course of conduct which is opposed to 

 their pecuniary interest ; it is more prudent to assume 

 with Mill that ' the majority of landlords will grasp at 

 immediate money and immediate power ; and so long 

 as they find cottiers eager to offer them everything, it 

 is useless to rely on them for tempering the vicious 

 practice by a considerate self-denial.' 



This is the assumption which has been at the bottom 

 of the legislation by which the tenant has been given 

 a legal right to fixity of tenure, and such legislation 

 has been the more easily passed in India because it is 

 but the formal recognition of a principle which has 

 always been understood to govern the relation between 

 landlords and tenants. As early as 1820 Colebrooke 

 had protested against 'sacrificing the yeomanry' to 

 English conceptions of landownership and against 

 ' merging all village rights, whether of property or 

 occupancy, in the all-devouring recognition of the 

 zemindar's paramount property in the soil.' The 



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