proprietary rights, and possessions, which our own laws, for a series of years, had in many instances created, in others sanctioned, and in all recognized. The original robbers (for they deserve no better name) may have appropriated the lands above described in utter contempt of the undeniable rights of lawful proprietors; but if it be an axiom of civil jurisprudence, that the injustice of the original appropriation does not affect the justice of the tenure, provided that it has been sanctioned by the state, or permitted to acquire the qualities of security and transference, it may be apprehended that this Regulation, however benevolently intended, is more likely, in its operation, to be considered another act of arbitrary power, rather than of retributive justice-in other words, an attempt to remedy one system of confiscations by actually legalizing another. It is true that the Bengal Government proposed, and even ordered, that compensation should, in all these cases, be given to the party disseised, proportioned to the value of his interest in the property resumed. But who were the parties to settle and adjudge compensation? Persons who

neither knew, nor ever can know, the real value of the property to be resumed; and who, in addition to the errors of ignorance,

may often find it impossible to satisfy its possessors, by any thing like an equitable pecuniary consideration, for the loss of what they are often more attached to than to life itself.

SECTION VIII.

Attempts of Government to encrease the public revenue by resuming rentfree lands, and lands supposed to be fraudulently alienated. Opinions of the Court of Directors thereon. Different view taken by the Bengal Government, and power of deciding cases of this description vested in Revenue Collectors.

BUT to return to the particular effects of this system in inducing augmentations of the public land revenue. The infectious rage of "improvement" is not confined to collectors, and revenue commissioners, alone. It sometimes takes a like hold of the higher authorities, notwithstanding their unqualified condemnation, on other occasions, of the operation of our fiscal system, and of its peculiar tendency to induce enhancement of demand.

When the permanent settlement was introduced into the Bengal provinces, it will be recollected that it was part of Lord Cornwallis's plan to give up to the Zemindars all the waste or uncultivated lands appertaining to their estates tax-free; that it might encourage them to extend their cultivation, so as thereby to lighten the pressure of a disproportionate im

post, which the necessities of Government, and the orders of the Court of Directors, obliged him to lay on the cultivated parts. Of the extent or quality of these wastes it is quite true that nothing at the time was known; but Lord Cornwallis avowedly despaired of acquiring accurate knowledge on this head; and thought it better to give up these lands, without reserve, to the Zemindars, rather than to prosecute further useless and harassing enquiries. In process of time, more knowledge was obtained of the vast extent, and even fertility, of these wastes; and when it was also discovered that Zemindars were enriching themselves, by causing their untaxed wastes to be extensively cultivated, it seems to have excited a notion that the Zemindars had got too good a bargain. Good or bad, however, the bargain had been made, and so binding were its terms, that both the Court of Directors, and the Bengal Government, were fully sensible that, in justice and good faith, it ought not to be disturbed.

Subsequent enquiries had moreover led to the discovery, or at all events to the belief, that lands, both cultivated and waste, were included within the limits of particular estates, without being accounted for to Government at the time of the perpetual set

tlement. Lands of this description are particularly noticed in Lord Moira's Minute of Sept. 1815, under the denomination of Toufer or Toufeer lands (Vol. 1. p. 593.) But if we were deceived on this occasion, we were ourselves willing parties to the deception, by a voluntary grant of the estates in perpetuity, for a fixed sum, under avowed ignorance of their value, and of their specific contents.

It will also be remembered that at the time of introducing the permanent settlement (1793), lands of considerable extent were held free of revenue, and supposed to have been alienated under fraudulent grants. Some attempts were made at the time to ascertain the real merits of these alienations, but miscarried. They were afterwards renewed, for we find, that in 1815, commissioners had been appointed, in various parts, to investigate and resume illegal alienations, and to assess such wastes as it could be ascertained were not included in the original allotment of estates in 1793. One of the commissioners, Mr. Salmon, in the province of Baugulpoor, reports, in 1817, the difficulties by which he was surrounded. The Zemindars laid claim to the wastes, as being included in their assessed estates; and so vague and inaccurate (he observes) were the terms of the Permanent Settlement, so

loose and improvident the manner in which it was performed, and the village registers affording no information as to the quantity of the land belonging to each estate-what part was cultivated, and what waste-or what were the respective boundaries of each-that the commissioner thought he had no alternative but to recommend to Government, that all lands, however usurped, which had been taken possession of to any useful purpose, should be resigned to the Zemindars; whilst such waste lands as remained, in every practical sense of the word, unoccupied, should be declared, by virtue of the Mahomedan law, the property of Government, and without further ceremony appropriated; unless the Zemindar could prove that the land in question was comprised in his estate at the time of the perpetual settlement. But it is an ascertained fact that there is not a foot of land, in the long settled districts of India, that is not the claimed, and probably the lawful, property of some individual, or of some village community; and every Zemindar naturally concludes that his estate embraces every portion of the land, whether cultivated or waste, that ever did belong to it. The proposition of the commissioner went therefore obviously to reverse the principles of equity to pass judgment, and to execute