LAND POLICY 179 



the pitch of the assessment and its liability to revision 

 every thirty years. So far as these points are con- 

 cerned, the situation has been fully discussed else- 

 where * It is certainly essential that the pitch of 

 the assessment shall be based on a consideration of 

 what the cultivator can well afford to pay, and that 

 the enhanced demands of the periodical revision 

 settlements shall be tempered by moderation ; but the 

 public revenues have to be raised, and the present 

 system is probably the most equitable method of 

 raising them. There is no valid ground for believing 

 that it depresses production or discourages permanent 

 improvements to the land. Another matter which 

 has been much discussed is the power given to the 

 land-holder of alienating his land. It is doubtful how 

 far he had such power under the rule of the Peshwas ; 

 but in practice, at any rate, he seldom exercised it. 

 It was part of a deliberate policy to make the transfer 

 of land easy ; and Wingate, the author of this policy, 

 in 1836 expressed himself thus : " The most effective 

 means at our command for preventing the land be- 

 coming the inheritance of a pauper, or at least a 

 poverty-stricken peasantry, is to afford the greatest 

 possible facilities for its conveyance from one party 

 to another ; so that when a cultivator becomes im- 

 poverished, and by his inability to cultivate properly, 

 deprives the community of the wealth it is capable of 

 producing, the land may get into the hands of some 



* w 



Rural Economy in the Bombay Dec can," Chap. II., by 

 G. Keatinge (Longmans, 1912). 



12* 



