The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-19 00:00:00

really and truly, without taxation. As far as this
source goes, the people of the country remain un-
taxed. The wants of Government are supplied
without any drain either upon the produce of any
man's labour, or the produce of any man's capital."
Till recent times the property of land in Europe
was quite the same. The land belonged to the
people. It was portioned out among indivi-
duals, on the condition of their rendering the
various services necessary for the defence of the
State and its internal tranquillity ; but though
the son often did succeed to the father, the State
might resume the grants. Nothing is better un-
stood in the history of property than that the
possession of land was long held only for terms
in Europe. The custom of son succeeding
father was in latter times construed into a right,
and the various offices, such as Duke, Count,
&c., at first personal, came in time to be heredi-
tary, and at length to be merely honorary. The
services to be performed in return for the pos-
session of land, from various circumstances, be-
came illusory, and we have now in most parts
of Europe a class of men unknown in any other
quarter of the world, living on the share paid by
the cultivator for permission to cultivate the soil
and dispose of its produce. We are all apt to
be unduly influenced by the circumstances to
which we have been accustomed. The writer of
the Quarterly Review almost supposes property
to be identical with the possession in perpetuity
of a right to the produce of land. There may,
however, be many kinds of property in land. If
we were to suppose the State the universal pro-
prietor, as the King is by fiction under the
feudal system, the cultivation of land could be
conducted with as much benefit by tenants for
terms of years paying rent to the State, as by
tenants paying rents to individuals. The sub-
stitution of individuals to the State as owners of
the soil, therefore, so far from being an advantage,
is a great calamity, which cannot now be re-
paired. Let us only take this metropolis as an
instance. Two hundred years ago the popula-
tion of the metropolis was about one-eighth part
of what it is now. From the accidental circum-
stance of one million and a half of individuals
requiring ground for their habitations, the owners
of that ground have been put in possession of
an enormous revenue—which, had land been in
all cases public, might, as in India, have been
made available to the wants of the State. The
evil is now of course past remedy. But it is an
evil. And nothing but the habit of consider-
ing the state of things around us as the natural
state of things could have prevented us from
seeing this in the light of an evil. All that the
people of a country are interested in, is that the
land shall be cultivated in the most advantageous
manner ; that the occupier of the soil shall re-
ceive the degree of protection which is necessary
to his obtaining from it the utmost possible
amount of produce. In this country, all the se-
curity required by those who invest capital in
land, is that the term shall be sufficiently long to
enable them to repay themselves their outlay
with a sufficient profit. A tenant for a term of
years builds houses and improves land with as
little hesitation as if he possessed the ground in
perpetuity. It is a very delightful thine, to an
individual that he should receive 20,0001. a
year from the cultivators of 20,000 acres ; but if
the cultivators were to go on equally well if
the 20,000/. were paid to the public, it is clear
that the nation would be a gainer, were there
no intermediate class between the cultivators
and the Treasury. Led away by European no-
tions, the English took it into their heads that
there ought to be proprietors of the soil in India
as in Europe, and they made the Zemindars, or
collectors of the Government rent, proprietors,
subject to a fixed rent. By the extension of
cultivation, many of these Zemindars have ob-
tained a valaable property after deducting the
permanent rent. But all that the Zemindars
have gained has been lost to the East India
Company. The Ryots, or cultivators, have not
gained ; on the contrary, they are best off where
they are immediately under the Government.
Of late years the India Company have taken care
to avoid the mistake of making proprietors o
the soil,--" I believe (says Mr. Mill) the per.
manent settlement was introduced with the best

of all public motives, with a view to the protec-
tion of the whole mass of the agricultural popu-
lation. That appears to me, from the proclama-
tions of Government at the time, and other do-
cuments, to have been the object in view. From
our want of experience, great abuses had before
that time been practised by the different sorts of

people whom we employed in the collection of
the revenue. The detail of the business was so
great, that it frightened Lord Cornwallis and
' the Government of the day, and they conceived
that no better method for the protection of the
Ryots could be invented, than to create a
species of landlords, from which they ex-
pected much benefit to arise. The ground
upon which their reasoning principally went
was this, that these Zemindars, having a perma-
nent interest in the land assigned to them, would
feel an interest in the prosperity of the Ryots,
in the same manner as a landlord in England
feels an interest in the prosperity of his tenants.
This was expected to produce two good effects
—to create a landed aristocracy in the country,
and, above all, to afford protection to the Ryots
from this kind of paternal feeling that was ex-
pected to pervade the Zemindars. Unhappily,
that last expectation has been found to be very
far from corresponding with the facts; they little
understood the nature of the men with whom

they were transacting." If instead of England,
we take a country like Ireland, the case becomes

more simple. In Ireland we have the owner in
chief, who stands in the place of the Govern-
' inent in India. Between him and the actual cul-
tivators of his estate is placed the middle man,
who receives the full rent, and after deducting an
allowance for his risk and trouble of collecting,
pays over the residue to the owner. If the con-
fiscated lands of Ireland had been retained by the
public, instead of granted in estates of 1 and
200,000 acres to courtiers, the ten and eleven
millions of rent now paid to individuals might
have been paid into the public Treasury, and
precluded the necessity of imposing any burdens
on the capital or industry of the inhabitants.
The question now, as far as this country is con-
cerned, is merely a matter of curiosity ; but in the
case of our colonies, it may be well to make the
land available to public purposes. In the infancy
of colonies, labour is everything, and the ack-
nowledgment would be small. But, in time, an
increasing population would add to the value of
land, and diminish the value of labour ; and the

State might avail itself of such circumstances to
increase the rent from time to time. In this way
it ould not be necessary to add to the burthens
of the people by taxation when the diminished

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value of labour impaired the ability to support it.
We consider the security of property as essential
to society, and all the dangers to property from
popular suffrage we hold to be creatures of the
imagination. " During the first French revolution
(says the Quarterly Review), there was au al•,