January, 1912.] 



25 



Edible Products, 



taken up his appointment) was made 

 the first Agent of the new North-Central 

 Province. An able administrator and 

 persevering autocrat, he took up the 

 congenial task of rescuing this old 

 Principality from extinction, and devoted 

 to it with little or no interruption, the 

 best nine years of his life. As already 

 stated, the old agricultural customs had 

 survived in Nuwara Kalawiya, and 

 Dickson lost no time in reducing them 

 to writing, and adding any provisos 

 required to enforce the old communal 

 obligation to repair the village tanks. 

 To him is also due the credit for inducing 

 Sir W. Gregory to undertake the free 

 execution of the necessary masonry, 

 where the cultivators had undertaken to 

 carry out the earthwork of the village 

 tank, a task which was judiciously 

 spread over a number of years. He also 

 induced the villagers to open up the 

 district with " pin-paras," and in other 

 ways judiciously and gradually improved 

 the district and ameliorated the con- 

 dition of the people. 



Concurrently other measures and a con- 

 siderable outlay by Government aided 

 the development of the Province, but 

 they are outside the scope of this 

 compilation. Agriculturally the restor- 

 ation of the village tank has been the 

 great cause of the success which has 

 attended Dickson's policy, and which has 

 raised the area cultivated by their assist- 

 ance from under 10,000 to 44,000 acres at 

 which it now stands, but is yearly in- 

 creasing with a population of only 80,000. 



Bassawakulam and Tissewawa, two 

 tanks close to the City, were restored in 

 1876-7, and later Nuwara wewa, to improve 

 the water supply and with a view of 

 attracting settlers— hopes which have 

 been partly fulfilled, as from a recent 

 report 1 note 7,400 acres of the irrigable 

 area thereby are now cultivated twice a 

 year and Rs. 40,000 realised by the sale 

 of the land. 



The restoration of the great Kalawewa 

 and the Yoda-ella from it to Anurad- 

 hapura, serving seventy tanks en route, 

 came later and cost over Rs. 700,000. 



The circumstances which led to an im- 

 portant change in the mode of collecting 

 the Government dues and its effect on 

 paddy cultivation here call for notice. 

 Though introduced by the Indian 

 authorities, who took over the adminis- 

 tration of the Island from the Dutch, 

 and abandoned after a short trial, the 

 substitution of a general land tax in 

 lieu of the "taxes on food," as the 

 " paddy rent " and the import duty on 

 grain were termed, continued to be the 

 panacea in the opinion of the Home 

 4 



authorities. It was suggestsd in 1833, 

 but the Legislative Council reported 

 against any change as leading to a loss 

 of revenue without any advantage, and 

 passed the Ordinance 14 of 1810, to remedy 

 any alleged abuses in the renting system. 

 In 1845 Sir E. Tennant revived the idea, 

 which met with the approval of a 

 Committee in Eugland, appointed by 

 the Colonial Secretary ; but no action 

 was taken to give effect to the proposal, 

 and the subject lay in abeyance, until in 

 1868 the Duke of Buckingham ( then 

 S. S, C.) suggested a reduction in the 

 import duty on rice. Sir Hercules 

 Robinson in reply pointed out that the 

 state of the island revenue would not 

 admit of the loss this would entail, and 

 referred with disfavour to a proposed 

 substitution of a land tax to make up 

 the deficiency. In 1876, the question was 

 raised by Mr. George Wall, Chairman of 

 the Planters' Association, a leading 

 merchant and a former member of the 

 Legislative Council. Failing to obtain 

 local support for his views, his re- 

 presentations induced the Cobden 

 Society of England to take action, 

 and the matter was mentioned in 

 the House of Commons at its in- 

 stance by a member (Mr. Potter). This 

 was followed by a discussion in the 

 Colonial Legislature, which resulted in 

 the appointment by Sir W. Gregory 

 (January, 1877) of a Commission to " en- 

 quire into the taxes on home grown grain 

 and the Custom duty on imported grain." 

 In reporting the action taken to the 

 Secretary of State, this Governor, after 

 five years' careful consideration of the 

 system of taxation in Ceylon, and with 

 a strong desire to revise it, stated he 

 had arrived at the conclusion that no 

 equivalent for the duty on imported and 

 home grown grain was to be found ex- 

 cept a general laud tax, which he showed 

 was unsuited to the circumstances of 

 the island. He emphasized that the 

 objection to the paddy tithe was not so 

 much to the tithe itself as to the mode 

 most of it was collected, viz., renting. He 

 also pointed out that commutation was 

 open to all who chose to avail themselves 

 of this alternative, and that it had been 

 solely in deference to their wishes that it 

 had not been enforced generally ; and 

 that as long as the water supply was 

 precarious, so long would the cultivator 

 decline to be bound by the hard and fast 

 law of commutation. At the time (1877) 

 the revenue from paddy, largely raised 

 by renting which had been Rs. 100,000 

 per annum prior to 1857 and averaged 

 Rs. 710,000 per annum between 1858 and 

 1864; and Rs. 930,000 in 1869-73 rose to 

 Rs. 1,040,000 (1874-8). 



