The Press. — London, England, 1854-10-07 00:00:00

OCTOBER 7, 1854. engine of power possessed by that little des pot the collector is put in force, and, being the magistrate of the district as well as the collector, his power is unlimited. The refrac tory are threatened with all kind of evils, including confiscation of their lands; and that is a threat of much import, as the owners like not to part with what has been valuable to their ancestors, and may, in better times, be valuable to themselves. Claims for arrear, too, are put in force which it would be hope less for the ryot to attempt to pay; and at last, wearied out, he gives a bond to cultivate infinitely more than he has capital to till, content for the present to avert his doom by the acceptance of this forced bargain. The lettings for the year thus thrust upon the people are then summed up by the collector, and the result is communicated in a flourish ing report of progress and improvement to Government. _ _ When the time comes round, however, for the collection of all this revenue the scene is changed into one which any man of sense would readily anticipate. The ryot's promises to cultivate have of course been broken ; his tillage has been scanty; and the produce is not enough, if all sold, to pay half the rent detailed in his engagements, without leaving him a single particle for his own subsistence. Then come protests from the ryot—prayers to the collector—petitions to Government—and bribes to the revenue officials ; and the end is, that after being made to pay as much as possibly can be screwed out of him, the amount is carried to the public account, while fabulous flights of locusts, droughts that never oc curred, and other excuses of that kind, are, together with the staple topics, " the igno " ranee and apathy of the natives," reported by the collector to Government as the reasons why all his glorious anticipations of an enor mous revenue have failed. The report is sent to rot in the archives, and so the farce goes on from year to year, as may be seen in the records at the India-house by any proprietor who cares to read them. Now, not many years ago, there was a collectorate in the Presidency of Madras still more rackrented and still more mis managed than any other collectorate even in that very ill-conditioned territory. The people had been screwed by a crack collector till scarcely a particle of capital had been left among them. Tillage had in consequence been gradually abandoned, and the revenue had fallen to half its proper amount. Villages were deserted, and the inhabitants, agreeably to the custom in India in such cases, had taken for a livelihood to plundering travellers on the road. The only things that flourished were jungles and gaols. At this period a new collector was sent, very clever and very good-natured, but who had no opinion of the system he was paid for ad ministering. Shocked at the miserable con dition of his collectorate, he bethought him of a very simple remedy. It was no use try ing to coerce people into cultivating what they had not means to cultivate—so he determined to let them in this matter please themselves. The acreage assessment of the collectorate was far too high ; but, by allowing them to culti vate as much waste land as they pleased with out charging for it, there was a way, without loss to Government, of virtually reducing it. In short, he saw before him a country capable of paying easily five times as large a revenue as was screwed out of it, if only dealt with on the principle that under such circumstances would be followed by the owner of an estate in England. What he said, therefore, to the people was this, " The land is yours, but I must have so much revenue from it ; give me that revenue yearly, and deal with your lands as you please. The man who has hitherto cultivated ten acres may cult: Cato fifty if he likes—l will never trouble him with measurements. All I want is that each village shall pay me the aggregate at which it stands assessed in the Government books ; but pay it fairly, and without making claims for remissions. Government will thus be an enormous gainer, for it will get freely paid to it nearly double the amount that has ever been realised; while, if the ryots get their lands virtually at half or a quarter of the rents hitherto paid by them, the reduction will be THE PRESS. made by increased cultivation, and not by diminishing the aggregate amount of this assessment. What they gain will be gained only at the expense of the jungle and of the wild beasts which inhabit it." The people could hardly believe their ears when they heard the proposition, but, seeing the collector to be in earnest, they most joy fully assented to it. Their fortunes being thus in their own hands, they set to work with a will ; and men who could not afford to cultivate ten acres at a rupee an acre found it well worth their while to cultivate twenty or thirty, when they had only to pay the same aggregate amount of rent for them that they had paid for ten. Besides, under the new plan, bribes to officials were unnecessary, and there was all that money saved. The village money lenders came forward, plunderers returned home to their fields, the district became safe again, the gaols were emptied, and the rent agreed on was paid to the day, without a single claim for remission or a single petition to Government. In short, the worst and most ill conditioned collectorate in the Madras Presi dency became in three years a model of excel lence, punctuality, and good order. At this time the extraordinary order and prosperity of the district attracted the special attention of the Revenue Board. A collecto rate with the revenue paid punctually and without a single complaint was such a marvel that they could not understand it. That the full rental of this district should be realised, and that without any periodical inquiries, con fiscations, and sales, was a thing unheard of. They deputed, therefore, one of their body to learn the secret of this wonderful system, with a view of introducing it into every collec torate at Madras. The great man came accord ingly, but what was his horror to find that the collector had effected this transformation by virtually setting aside, and that without refer ence to Government, the whole Madras Land Revenue Regulations ! His anger knew no bounds ; nothing could appease him. It was in vain that the collector pleaded the happi ness he had conferred on the people, and the great advantages he had secured for Govern ment,—all was useless. His immediate return to the old system was ordered, and he was assured that nothing but his own length of service prevented hia ignominious dismissal. But, disgusted at the proceeding, the collector threw up his appointment, and returned to Eng land, to ponder over the fate which surely befals all public servants in India who prefer the real interests of the State and the interests of hu manity to paying a literal obedience to the often ruinous and senseless regulations of the Company. In three years more the collectorate had, under the former system, reverted to its former condition, and the sheriff, the auctioneer, the gaoler, and the hangman had resumed their ancient sway once again. Our conclusion from this authentic anecdote is, that a great alteration is required in the land revenue system. We do not counsel col lectors to violate the regulations, but we do counsel the President of the India Board, who has the power to alter the regulations, to take a lesson from the estimable collector of Madras whose proceedings we have briefly stated. If he will do so we can promise him that all his land-revenue diffi culties will speedily cease, and that, instead of a decrease in the public income, he will have such a large augmentation of it as will furnish him with more than funds enough for all the public works that are there required. Let him get an act passed decreeing that every owner, or body of owners, of land in India may have a lease for ninety-nine years of the whole of his land at the rate paid for that portion of it which is now cultivated—the rent increasing, how ever, in consideration of this advantage, at the rate of one per cent. on the total an nually. And let him further enact that any such lessee may at any time convert his leasehold into a perpetuity on paying into the Treakury the number of years' purchase-money that the selling rate of the Indian public funds may indicate on the day on which the tender for such conversion may be made. Let the President of the India Board do this only, and he will at once find all the social and financial difficulties attending the Indian land-revenue 939 system vanish. It may be, as Mr. LOWE says, that the present occupiers have in many cases not money to buy their holdings with ; but so it has been with tho original squatters in nearly every country. But, wherever the power of purchasing land exists, it is never long in falling into the hands of men ca pable of making the most of it; and there are plenty of native capitalists in India who under such a system would speedily find the means of investingtheir superfluous thousands, or in some cases millions, in the purchase of land. " The Late Courts-Martial " is still a heading in the daily journals. A correspondence between Colonel GARRETT and the Duke of CLEVELAND shows, we are sorry to say, that a person may be styled his " grace" and yet want the delicacy of a gentleman. His attack on Colonel GARRETT was gratuitously cruel, and, in asking whether " such an officer " should continue in command of a regiment which " he has publicly disgraced ?" he went far beyond the censure which the evidence, fairly considered, would warrant. The long services and untarnished reputation of Colonel GARRETT, with the fact that he is on the point of setting out for the theatre of war, should have shielded him from such ungenerous re flection. Sir DUNCAN M'DouoAL has taken up the cudgels, in behalf of his cloth, in a more chivalrous spirit. The Times, in the pothouse tone it some times chooses to indulge in, asserted, in reference to PERRY'S case, that " the military profession has " fallen to that degree in the publio opinion that _ _ any man with the Queen's uniform on his back is • hencefore held to prove himself a gentleman be -3 fore he can be accepted as one by his countrymen." As Sir DUNCAN WDOUOAL wore the Queen's uniform, he demands from the Times the name of the writer of the " above slanderous paragraph," and is of course referred, as the Duke of CLEVELAND refers Colonel GARRETT, to a solicitor. Sir DUNCAN replies in a tone of great severity. His letter will do some good. Every one must admire his " pluck," and most persons will heartily approve his remarks. THE public will be delighted to hear that the Right Honourable Sidney Herbert, Secretary at War, is staying with his illustrious Russian relative, Prince Woronzow, at the Hague. THE Cumberland, 70, Captain G. H. Seymour, left Aland on the 15th ult. for the purpose of being paid off. This ship, our readers may remember, was one of those despatched to the Baltic with its crew in a half-mutinous condition, from not being allowed even a day's holiday after a three years' service on a foreign station. And what after all has been the result of this very questionable despatch! The heavily armed portion of the fleet has been absolutely doing nothing, and their officers write home "hoping that a short time will prove with whom the fault lies —our commanders, or their orders from home." EDUCATION AT ELBOURNE is being fairly encou raged. The new governor has laid the foundation stone of the new university as well as that of the public library. Four professors, one in the ancient classics, one in natural science, one in mathematics, and one in logic, modern literature, and political economy, are to be sent out by the council corre spondent in England. Their passage out will be paid; the salary is I,t 00/. per annum, and residence is added. The edifice of the university will cost 30,()001., and is endowed to the amount of 9,0001., whilst 10,0001. has been voted for the library, besides three grants, in all 5,0001., which have been set aside for the purchase of books. THE EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH is desirous that assistance should be given directly to Omer l'acha in his strategic operations in Bessarabia. Marshal • de St. Arnaud has received advices that some portion of the new reinforcements en route for the stations at Varna or Therapia should be despatched to take part in the advance of the Turkish army, which has lately reconnoitred the left bank of the Danube as far as Tutchkoff without the diversion of meeting a single Russian soldier. 6TM MELODIES OF IRELAND..--The preservation and publication of the immense quantity of national music still existing in Ireland, and of which much is yet unwritten, have long been a desideratumiamong those who are acquainted with the great extent and value of some private collections. Among these lie, almost unknown, hundreds of airs hitherto unpub lished in any form, and which range through every class of pure Dish music, from the most elevated style of ancient vocal melody down to the smooth, flowing, graceful songs of the last two centuries; and among which are preserved very many, too, of those vigorous, dance-compelling, quick tunes which can not be equalled by any similar music of other coun tries. Besides these collections, a considerable quantity of airs, not yet noted down, is to be found current among the peasantry in all parts of the coun try.—Dublin Journal of Induitrial Progreu.