towns upon the coast, and forcing their in"habitants to remove to Jumalabad, and other unhealthy situations near the hills; by seizing in one night all the Christian

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men, women, and children amounting to "above 60,000, and sending them into cap

tivity to Mysore, from whence one-tenth of "them never returned; by the prohibition of "foreign trade, and by the general corrup❝tion and disorder of his government in all "its departments. These circumstances cer"tainly accelerated the change; but taken "altogether they probably did not contribute to "it so much as the extraordinary augmentation "of the land rent.'

Again he observes, "Had such an assess"ment as that introduced by Hyder and "Tippoo existed in ancient times, Canara "would long ago have been converted into a "desert." Yet strange to relate, this augmented land-rent, so pregnant with mischief in the hands of our Mussulman predecessorthis Jumma, which Lord Teignmouth would rightly denominate "mere pillage and rack"rent" - was deemed sufficiently just and moderate in the hands of British collectors to be made the basis of our revenue system,

5th Report, App. p. 807.

and to be recommended in the very same report* as that above quoted for present adoption, whilst its utmost amount of exaction under Tippoo was afterwards held forth as a maximum which future collectors were encouraged to realize.

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It is thus that our revenue systems provide for the happiness and prosperity" of the natives of India. Their good is always the avowed object. Professions abound, and good

*It is but justice to Col. Munro to add, that this settlement was recommended by him in opposition to his own better judgment. His words are as follows: "However much I disapprove of the numerous additions made to the ancient "land-rent by Hyder and Tippoo, I did not think myself at liberty to depart widely from the system which I found 66 established, as it is the same as that which exists in all the "provinces which the Company have acquired in the last "and former war. I have made no other reduction in the "assessment of Tippoo Sultaun than such as was absolutely necessary to ensure the collection of the rest. I consider myself merely as a collector who was to investigate and report on the state of the country, but who was to leave "it to the Board to decide as to the expediency of lowering "the assessment."

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In another report, 27th Jan. 1800, (Mad. Rev. Sel. vol. i. p. 898.) Col. Munro observes; "I thought the rents too "high (in Canara), as I think they are in every part of "India that I have seen; but I conceived it belonged to the "Board, and not to me, to determine what part of them it

intentions, I admit, are for the most part sincere. But the means adopted are an absolute bar to the accomplishment of our own wishes. The indispensable wants of government must be supplied. A system, which inseparably links the great mass of the people with pauperism and beggary, is consequently enforced; and because human beings so fettered cannot improve their condition, we think to relieve our own responsibility by illiberally charging the evil on immutable prejudices, and supposing, or pretending to suppose, native Indians to be naturally incapable of moral improvement.

At all events we have, in the preceding statement, a series of recorded facts to shew how the Mussulman financial system absorbed all landed property by destroying individual rights, and how obviously it tended to obliterate, in a generation or two, the whole class of landed proprietors. It also shews, how this evil is perpetuated by the principles of our own administration; and, lastly, the effect of the system on the minds of our best collectors, when such a man as Colonel Munro finds it necessary to adopt, for his own Jumma, the highest assessment of his Mussulman predecessors, to satisfy the Revenue Board and Government at the Presidency; at the

same time that he avows his belief of the Jumma being too high to consist with the object of advancing the prosperity of the country.

SECTION XIV.

State of landed property in Malabar. Description of proprietary rights; modes of mortgage, assignment, and cultivation. Military service incumbent on landed proprietors and their tenants.

THE province of Malabar was always further removed than the others from the scenes, and the effects, of Mussulman usurpation. It accordingly preserved its independence, and its primitive institutions, undisturbed, until subjected to the dominion of Hyder Aly and his son Tippoo Sultaun, as before noticed.* When ceded to the British Government in 1792, we found that the same description of landed proprietors, and tenants, existed in Malabar, as above described in Canara; that the attempts of Hyder, and Tippoo, to enforce on the Malabarians the Mahomedan system of revenue, had driven from their lands all the principal Hindoo proprietors;

* Vide Vol. I. p. 543, et seq.

who now returned, full of anxious hope to be allowed to resume their estates. The inquiries instituted into the rights of these claimants consequently established the following facts.

A class of persons denominated Jelmkars, or Jenmkars, appear, from time immemorial, to have possessed a property in the soil more absolute, it is thought, than even that of the landlord in Europe. The term Jenm, means properly allodial right, acknowledging no superior, and Jenmkar, therefore, allodial proprietor. As far as history can be depended on, the government of Malabar was originally a perfect theocracy, and all the lands belonging to the Pagodas, in which, and the Namboory Brahmins, was accordingly vested the allodial supremacy of the soil. All other persons, even the Rajas themselves, held their lands from the Pagodas, by the tenure of Koodema Neer, that is, the garden or higher lands; and the Paddy or rice lands, on mortgage, for a valuable consideration given; but which might at any time be resumed on repayment of the sum borrowed; and this right of resumption is acknowledged and practised to this day. The title deeds were all in the names of the respective Pagodas. Of the tenure of Koodema Neer, it may be sufficient to say, that the Brahmins always