villages, he gained over these traitors, who, instead of being the protectors of the inferior inhabitants, now consigned them without remorse to the exaction and plunder of the farmer.

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The above (adds the judge) are but a "few of the many practical proofs which may "be adduced in support of what I have advanced relative to the state of the Ryot in

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Rungpore." Every extra expence, and every religious or superstitious ceremony is paid for by the defenceless Ryot. "Not a child can be born, not a head religiously

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shaved, not a son married, not a daughter given in marriage, not even one of the ty"rannical fraternity dies, without an imme"diate visitation of calamity upon the Ryot. Whether the occasion be joyful or sad, in "its effects, it is, to the cultivator, alike "mournful and calamitous."

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The following further remarks by the Judge and Magistrate, in the same report, are very important, as regards the general effects of our revenue administration abroad:

"What I here bring to notice, may possi

bly prove that, in Rungpore, it is not the "prevalence of gang robbery, and other pub"lic crimes, which calls the most loudly for

a remedy. These are but the ramifications

"of an evil, whose root has long flourished "in secret. The arbitrary oppressions under "which the cultivator of the soil groans, has "at length attained a height so alarming, as "to have become by far the most extensively injurious of all the evils under which that district labours; and until by a steady ad"herence to the most decisive and vigorous

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measures, the bulk of the community shall "have been restored, from their present state

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of abject wretchedness, to the full enjoy"ment of their legitimate rights, I fear it "will be in vain to expect solid and substan"tial improvement.

"In my letter from Dinagepore to the ad"dress of Mr. Secretary Dowdeswell, under "date 14th July last, I dwelt at some length

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upon the very general perversion which the "landholders and farmers of this district and "of Dinagepore, made of the law of distress "and sale, to the furtherance of every species of rapacity and extortion; and I took the liberty at the same time to suggest such improvement as seemed to promise a mitigation of the oppressiveness of a law which, though a necessary evil, must, under any "restriction, ever continue to be a cruelly"powerful engine, in the hands of vindictiveness and rapacity, of crushing the poor and "the abject.

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In the course of this address, I shall en"deavour to shew to what a height rapacity, "seconded by this and other instruments, has " attained in the district of Rungpore. This enumeration will exhibit the state of the Ryot, far, very far more wretched than any one perusing in his closet the salutary rules “of 1793 and 1794, and the many legislative enactments which preceded them, could conceive it possible for it to have become, under a systematic administration of those laws."*

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Attached to this report is the following note. "From "obvious circumstances it would appear that in point of "fact the provisions of Reg. IV. 1794, were enacted rather "to correct an inconsistency in the code of 1793, than to ex"plain a law hitherto misunderstood. I am of opinion that "the limiting of Ryots' leases, in common with all others to "the term of 10 years by Reg. XLIV. 1793, has been the "principal cause of the almost utter extinction in practice of "the right of the cultivator to unlimited possession. Had the "framers of Reg. IV. 1794, openly corrected this mistake in " contradiction to the provisions of Reg. VIII. 1793, instead "of adding to the confusion by confirming the intricate and

inexplicable system of a decennial renewal of rights which ad"mitted not of alteration, the promulgation of Section 3. "Reg. V. 1812, would not have been followed by the inju"rious consequences it has produced."-Vide Beng. Rev. Sel. vol. i. p. 381 to 402.

The reader would do well to compare the whole of this very able report by Mr. Sisson in 1815, with the account of the state of the country, given by Governor Verelst, in his instructions to supervisors in 1769.-Vide supra, p. 56. et seq.

If these oppressions were of partial or rare occurrence, it might be thought invidious, or betraying a spirit of vulgar hostility to drag into public notice the peccadillos of a fair system, which in such case would amount to nothing more than another proof of the truism, that no human institution is perfect; but when the public records attest the universal prevalence of these monstrous abuses—when they are found to occur far and near-not only in remote and obscure corners, but at the very doors of our metropolis, in spite of multiplied enactments and regulations to restrain the violence - when we see the Court of Directors pressing the subject of "protec"tion to the Ryots" on their governments abroad for upwards of half a century, and that the ablest and best of their servants have, to this hour, failed in their endeavours to accomplish it can we be otherwise than convinced that the operation of this baneful system is too powerful for the operation of law? and that in the arrangements which must shortly take place for the future administration of India, it will be the duty of the legislature to provide more effectually for the security and comfort of this most important class of their Indian subjects? But if the numerous laws hitherto enacted prove

ineffectual, ought it not to suggest to us some distrust in the capacity of Europeans, with all their admitted superiority of talent and political science, for the performance of the task? and if our own peculiar habits and acquirements unfit us for the duty of exclusively legislating for a people differing from us as widely in manners, as in geographical position, does not reason point out the adviseableness of drawing more copiously on that fund of sagacity, acuteness, local experience, and minute knowledge of the morals and habits of the people, which we have at our command in native aid? But this is a subject which will be fully discussed hereafter, and which it would therefore be premature to dwell upon

here.

SECTION IV.

State of the Madras provinces. Case of Causey or Cass Chitty. Exactions of Native Revenue servants, universal in the Collectorships under Madras.

But we must now direct our attention to the Madras territories. The testimony and opinions of the Revenue Board at Madras, of the Government there, and of the Court of