remainder is their own unmolested share. When the Hindoos were, as in former times, left in quiet possession of their estates, this probably was the case in India also; but when Mussulman taxation took the place of Hindoo rents; and that rents, and revenue, came to be, as they are to this day, confounded; the process of dividing produce with the Indian metayer was altogether compulsory. He had not only to satisfy the government demand for revenue, but the rapacity of those employed to collect it. He had also to provide for the expences of cultivation, and often to supply a pittance to the ousted, but real, proprietor of the estate. In Europe, therefore, however indigent the metayer may be, the proprietor is left with the means, and generally in the secure possession, of property; but under the revenue systems of India, the proprietor is reduced to as destitute a state, as the metaying Ryot, and oftentimes to worse. Poverty, therefore, in India, is universal; our revenue system, as before abundantly explained, the sole cause; and whilst the Court of Directors continue to maintain the Mussulman doctrine of an indefeisible right to a moiety of all that is, or all that may be, produced, their own interests are blindly sacrificed; they blight the resources of go

vernment by the very act through which they mean to provide for future increase. The metaying system of India, therefore, carries with it all the disadvantages of a proportional tax on profitable employment. It is an effectual bar to all improvement. The agriculture of the country can at best be but stationary; for who would undertake the hazard of fresh enterprise, where all the loss, in case of failure, and a fraction only of the profit, if successful (and, perhaps, not that), were to be his own?

This discrepancy, however, attaching wholly to the revenue system we have thought proper to adopt, does not affect the original character of the institution. In the preceding review, on the contrary, it has been shewn that landed property, in both regions of the earth, was, originally, on the same footing; that it was not a sovereign gift or grant, but acquired through individual means, and held, and acknowledged, in full proprietary right. In both regions too, when roving tribes became settled and agricultural, they naturally fell into the same mode of managing and cultivating land; for in both countries do we find much the same system of leasing, farming, and assigning; of cultivating both by freemen and predial slaves;

the same right of sale and transfer; the almost universal practice of mortgages; the high estimation in which this description of property was everywhere held; and the aristocratical privileges it conferred on all the greater landlords.

I may here add, that the rules of inheritance were also much alike in both countries. It has been already remarked (vide p. 242.) that landed property in India, according to the provisions of Hindoo law, descends, in equal shares to all the sons of a family. It is likewise a law of Malabar, (perhaps may have been common formerly to other parts of India,) and a remarkable proof of the inviolable character of landed proprietary rights in the East, that even in cases of attainder, or convictions for high treason, or other capital offences, the estate of the criminal is not forfeited, but descends without prejudice to his heirs. In treating of the tenure of Gavelkind in England, Judge Blackstone (vol. ii. p. 84.) considered it as one of the fragments of Saxon liberty, and concurs in the opinion of the learned Selden, that Gavelkind, before the Norman conquest, was the general custom of the realm. Among the distinguishing properties of this tenure, he observes, that "the "estate does not escheat in case of an at

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"tainder or execution for felony; their maxim being, the father to the bough, the son to "the plough." He also adds that "the lands descend, not to the eldest, youngest, or any "one son only, but to all the sons together; "which was indeed antiently the most usual "course of descent all over England."

Though Gavelkind lands are not subject to escheat for felony, &c., they are, as in Malabar, subject to escheat for want of heirs.

In fact Gavelkind is only one of the varieties of socage tenure, of which Du Cange observes, in socagio hæreditas dividitur inter "omnes filios per partes æquales." As all lands therefore were socage, which were not held on condition of military service—" Fun

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it

dus omnis qui non possidetur per servitium

militis, per servitium socæ possideatur”. may be concluded that the law of inheritance in ancient Europe, was the same as now exists in India, until by the introduction of feudalism it came to be altered in respect to military or chivalry tenures.

SECTION XX.

Erroneous opinions entertained in England of the real character and capacity of Indians. The European character from the same causes as little improved throughout the middle ages.

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In some late remarks by one of our ablest journalists, on the war now pending between the Russians and Turks,* it is observed "in "the East Indies, the French first, and our"selves afterwards, formed armies of natives, " and these men, led by Europeans, are al"lowed to fight gallantly; but though Sepoy regiments have been often disbanded, and "numbers of trained natives have been al"lowed to disperse themselves over the face "of the country, and to enter the service of "native princes, they have never been able "to organize of themselves, a native force. "The moment they cease to be led by Europeans they are ineffective. The Turks, "however, are evidently a very different de

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scription of people. They are probably "little, if any thing, inferior in capability to "the Western Europeans; and one or two Sultans, like the present, may succeed in availing themselves of European arts, and

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* This was written about the middle of 1829.