286 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



The scheme I have here developed destroys the monopoly 

 of the land the very life-blood of the nation by any 

 class, while it allows for the freest interchange and the 

 most unrestricted use of the land, and for the most 



duke. There was a primitive village upon it occupied by sailors, pilots, 

 and fishermen, which is described in Domesday Book, and was in- 

 habited at the Conquest by the actual forefathers of the late tenants, 

 whose names may be read there. The houses were out of repair. The 

 duke's predecessors had laid out nothing upon them for a century, 

 and had been contented with exacting the rents. When the present 

 owner entered into possession, it was represented to him that if the 

 village was to continue it must be rebuilt, but that to rebuild it would 

 be a needless expense ; for the people, living as they did on their 

 wages as fishermen and seamen, would not cultivate his land and were 

 useless to him. The houses were therefore simply torn down, and 

 nearly half the population was driven out into the world to find new 

 homes. A few more such instances of tyranny might provoke a 

 dangerous crisis." 



This is a sufficiently striking case of the evils of landlordism which 

 gives a rich man the power to tear the poor man away from his 

 ancestral home. Can we really boast of our freedom when even 

 centuries of occupation give these poor seamen no right to live on 

 their native soil ? But even this, bad as it is, is as nothing compared 

 with the wholesale misery we have caused by forcing our land-system 

 upon a large portion of India. This is what a Bengal civilian (quoted 

 in the Statesman for September 1879, p. 329) states to be the present 

 condition of the unhappy peasants of Bengal: "The zemindar and 

 ryot are as monarch and subject. What the zemindar asks the ryot 

 will give ; what the zemindar orders, the ryot will obey. The 

 landlord will tax his tenant for every extravagance that avarice, 

 ambition, pride, vanity, or other intemperance may suggest. He will 

 tax him for the salary of his ameen, for the payment of his income tax, 

 for the purchase of an elephant for his own use, for the cost of the 

 stationery of his establishment, for the payment of his expenses to 

 fight the neighbouring indigo-planter, for the payment of his fine when 

 he has been convicted of an offence by the magistrate. The milkman 

 gives his milk, the oilman his oil, the weaver his cloths, the con- 

 fectioner his sweetmeats, the fishermen his fish. The zemindar fines 

 his ryots for a festival, for a birth, for a funeral, for a marriage. He 

 levies black mail on them when an affray is committed. He establishes 

 his private pound, and realizes five annas for every head of cattle that 



is caught trespassing on the ryot's crops These cesses pervade 



the whole zemindari system. In every zemindari there is a naib 

 (deputy), under the naib there are gumashtas (agents), under the 

 gumashta there are piyadas (bailiffs). The naib exacts a perquisite 

 for adjusting accounts annually. The naib and gumashtas take their 

 share in the regular cesses ; they have other cesses of their own. The 

 piyadas when they are sent to summon defaulting ryots, exact from 

 them four or five annas a day. It is in evidence before the Indigo 

 Commission that in one year a zemindari naib, in the district of 

 Nuddea, extorted ten thousand rupees from his master's ryots 



