The public w judge between me and Mr. Dickens, aill now matter of misrepresen tation. s to the should be considered a bar to the recovery of the public dues" from lands, the tenures of which might be adjudged to be invalid. But I have no objection to meet my opponent upon his own ground. It is a very easy thing to say in 183839 what the Government was bound to This is not the proper place to go into an elaborate legal disquisition upon Clause 2. Section II, Regulation II, of 1805, the law of To ensure the full understanding of the sublimitation. To all the benefit which that ject to my readers, as well as fair play to my law, when construed in connection with opponent, I shall place his arguments and my other laws, confers upon the Lakhirajdars, replies in parallel columns. these parties are, of course, entitled, and will, doubtless, receive, when they prove their claims to its protection. I have never urged any thing more than the execution of the law, as I found it in the Statute Book, enac ted, as I presume, to that end, by my elders and betters. I have always said and say now, if the law be bad, rescind it; if good, enforce it vigorously; but do not make it the source of certain mischief to all parties, by allow ing it to stick to the country, for an indefinite term of years, as a perpetual blister. "1stly. Because the Government, on acquiring the Dewannee in 1765, a do in 1765; but all had full notice of the existence of rent-free lands, and full notice, too, that many of these claims were not valid, and were bound to make the enquiry at once into the validity of all claims to exemption. The Company, however, One word in conclusion, as to Mr, Dick-did not choose in 1765, to, ens's present position. He took his stand make that enquiry. This in his speech, upon the "broad ground" spe- is established by the folcified in the passage quoted in this letter. I, lowing extract from on the contrary, maintained, that nothing Minute of Sir John Shore, short of distinct legislative pledges, could pro-acting President of the tect, or ought to protect, the Lackhirajdars Committee of Revenue in from bearing their fair proportion of the pub-which Minute, the Bazeely 1782, in consequence of lic burthens, and showed how far the law Zemin Dufter, or first of 1793, had so protected them. My opponent attempt at a registry of has now left his "broad ground" to take rent-free tenures, was care of itself, and, coming down to the nar-established. row ground of the very law which I quoted The period from which in my first letter, (Section II, Regulatation the enquiry should take XIX of 1793,) claims the victory, because place into the titles by he has discovered (making many mistakes which the Bazee Zemin is in the process), at the end of December, that the Lakhiraj law of 1793, is what I stated it to be in my first letter, dated the 5th of November. He is very welcome to such a triumph. held, may, with propriety, gust 1765. As the Com. I shall deal in my next letter with what Mr.pany did not at that time Dickens calls the second head of his second think proper to set on foot proposition, and the ten reasons which bas adduced in support of it. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Hurkaru, Jan. 23.] No. VI. heatles of those who possess GAUNTLET To the Editor of the Bengal Hurkaru. cond proposition, and the ten reasons which Mr. Dickens's proposition is, "Had no such law been passed as Regulation II of 1805, still the sanction of Government ought to have been implied, after the lapse of a certain number of years." I have shewn, in my last letter, that there is no room in this case for implication, the Le gislature of 1793 having declared, in the mos unequivocal terms, that "no lapse of time ed lands rent-free, but prietors or possessors, whether they can or can. reasonable men will, on the 3d of November to the dreadful famine choice of 1770, which was relation to the inter nal administration of the country, Revenue and Judicial. "Though seven years had elapsed since the Company became possessed of the Dewanny, yet no regular process hid ever been formed for conducting the business of the Revenue. Every Zemindaree, and every Talook, was left to its own particular customs. These, indeed, were Seo Sec. 12, Reg. XIX. and Sec. 7. Reg XXXVII. not inviolably adhered to; the novelty of the business to as it was not possible for the Collector, with the greatthose who were appointed to superintend it, the chi est degree of attention on his part, to detect or prevent canery of the people whom they were obliged to employ it. The latter, it may be supposed, were not exempted as their agents, the accidental exigencies of each district from the general corruption; if they were, the other and, not unfrequently, the just discernment of the Col- lands which lay near them would suffer by the migra lector, occasioned many changes. Every change added tion of their inhibitants, who would naturally seek to the confusion which involved the whole; and few, refuge from oppression in a milder and more equitable were either authorized, or known, by the presiding mem-Government. The administration of justice has so bers of the Government. The articles which composed intimate a connection with the revenue, that we cannot the revenue, the form of keeping accounts, the computa omit the mention of it, while we are treating of this tion of time, even the technical terms, which ever form subject in a general view, although we have already the greatest part of the obscurity of every science, differed given our sentiments upen it at large in another place, as much as the soil and productions of the province to which we shall crave leave to refer. The security of This confusion had its origin in the nature of the former private property it is the greatest encouragement to inGovernment. The nazims exacted what they could dustry, on which the wealth of every state depends. from the zemindars and great farmers of the revenue, The limitation of the powers annexed to the Magistracy, whom they left at liberty to plunder all below; reserv. the suppression of every usurpation of them by private ing to themselves the prerogative of plundering them in authority, and the facilitating of the access to justice, their turn, when they were supposed to have enriched were the only means by which such a security could be themselves with the spoils of the country. The Mut- obtained; but this was impossible under the circumstanteseddees, who stood between the Nazim and the zemin- ces which had hitherto prevailed. While the Nizamut dars, or between them and the people, had each their and the Dewannee were in different hands, and all the respective shares of the public wealth. These profits were rights of the former were admitted, the Courts of Jusconsidered as illegal embezzlements, and, therefore, were tice, which were the sole provinces of the Nazim, taken with every caution wihch could ensure secrecy; though constituted for the general relief of the subjects, and being consequently fixed by no rules, depended on could receive no reformation. The Court and officers the temper, abilities, or power, of each individual for the of the Niz amut, were continued; but their efficacy was amount. It, therefore, became a duty to every man to destroyed by the ruling influence of the Dewannee. take the most effectual measures to conceal the value of The regular course of justice was every where sushis property, and elude every enquiry into his conduct, pended; but every man exercised it, who bad the while the zemiadars and other landholders, who had the power of compelling others to submit to his decisions. advantage of long possession, availed themselves of it, by The people were oppressed; they were discouraged, complex divisions of the lauds, and intricate modes of and disabled from improving the culture of their lands, collection, to perplex the officers of the Government, and and in proportion as they had the demands of individuals confine the knowledge of the rents to themselves. It to gratify, they were prevented from discharging what will be easily imagined, that much of the current wealth was legally due to Government. Such was the state stopped in its way to the public treasury. It is rather of the revenue when your commands were received by foreign from the purpose of this exposition, but too ap. posite not to be remarked, that it was fortunate such a system did prevail, since the embezzlements, which it covered, preserved the current specie of the country, and returned it into circulation; while a great part of the wealth, received by the Government, was expended in the country, and but a small superfluity remained for remittences to the Court of Delhi, where it was lost for ever to this province. To the original defects in the constitution of these provinces, were added the unequal and unsettled Government of them. Since they became out property, a part of the lands which were before in our possession, such as Burdwan, Midnapore, and Chittagong, continued subject to the authori ty of their chiefs, who were immediately accountable to the Presidency. The 24-Pergunnahs, granted by the treaty of Prassey to the Company, were their on a different tenure, being their immedate property. by the exclusion of the zemindars, or hereditary pro rietors; their rents were received by agents appointed to each pergunnah, and remitted to the Colloctor, who resided in Calcutta; the rest of the province was for some time entrusted to the joint charge of the Naib Dewan, and Resident at the Durbar, and afterwards of the Council of revenue at Moorshedabad and to the supervisors who were accountable to that Council. The administration itself was totally excluded from a concern in this branch of the revenue. The internal arrangement of each district varied no less than that of the whole province. The lands subject to the same Collectors, and intermixed with each other, were some, held by farm; some superinten led by Shicdars, o agents on the part of the Collectors; and sane left to the zemindars or talookdars themselves, under various degrees of controul. The first were racked withou mercy, because the leases were but of a year's standing, and the farmer had no interest, or check to restrain him from exacting more than the land could bear. The second were equally drained, and the rents embezzled, the Lapwing, and happily removed the difficulties which had hitherto opposed the introduction of a more perfect system by abolishing the office of Naib Dewan, and authorizing your administration to assume openly the management of the Dewannee in your name, without any foreign intervention. In the execution of these your intentions, the points which claimed out principal attention, as will appear by the above description, were, to render the accounts of the revenue simple and intelligible; to establish fixed rules, for the collections; to make the mode of them uniform in all parts of the province, and to provide for an equal administration of justice." If this be not sufficient, let any candid man take up a British Indian Choronlogical table, extending from 1765 to 1793, or, indeed, to the end of Lord Hasting's Governor-Generalship; and, contrasting the difficulties and dangers of the period with the means, moral and physical, at the command of the Government (especially during the first years of the series,) for all the purposes of civil administration, put his finger upon any ten years of that period, (and our present experience, with greatly enlarged and improved appliances, proves that a shorter time would not have sufficed), during which the operation of investigating every claim, to hold land exempt from the payment of revenue in Bengal, Behar and Orissa, could have been conducted to consummation. Nothing is so common, nothing is so utterly unjust, as the charges of neglect and supineness brought against the great men who won or maintained the British Empire in the East, on account of this or that alleged omission. The marvel is that they did so much. The marvel is that with such inadequate means, with so many the failure so to conclude it, ought to be powerful enemies to cope with here, and with an absolute bar against all proceedings at so much counteraction, arising sometimes from the present day; for the law of 1793 is, as ignorance, timidity, and selfish motives, and I have said, the Charter of the Lakhirajdars, sometimes from an honest desire to repress which they must take for better and for inordinate ambition, at home, they shouli worse: -they cannot pick and choose, benehave been able to lay deep and wide the founfitting by what they like, and arguing away dation of an empire, which the Caesars migh what they do not like, upon such grounds envy. I by no means praise, or even justifs, as those ten reasons of Mr. Dickens's, which all the acts of those great men. Their success I am now considering. was tarnished by much crime; but we who are reaping in our position the benefit of those crimes, and who could not now abandon that position without inflicting upon the country far greater evils than were involved in attaining to it, are the fast men who ought either directly to vilify their memory, or to rake up miserably petty charges of omission against their administrations. 2lly, Because, in 1795, (sic in orig. it ought to be 1769, however, vide Mill, vol. 31 P. 460) the Government must have male such enquiry, for it established supervisors of revenue, and two councils to supervise the supervisors; and among the duties recommended to the supervisors, was to collect a body of informa⚫ tion with respect to the amount of the revenues. With respect to the state, produce and capabilities of the great source of the revenues, the lands, the supervisors made reports, extracts from which may be seen in the celebrated fifth report of the Select Committee of the House of Commous of 1810, who remark, that the whole system thus resolved itself on the part of the public But, as it is evident, from many passages of my opponent's speech and letters, that he has greatly misunderstood the law of 1793, tion XIX. of 1793, upholds in perpetuity not only supposing that Section II, Regulaevery tenure which was created antecedently to 1765, but that every tenure so created, is now-protected by his large and liberal construction of Clause 2, Section II. Regulation I hold, then, that it 11. of 1805, (for he says, that that law" also was morally impossi- further provided what was necessary then, ble for the infant though it would not be necessary now, that British Government even where no such period as 60 years had to do at any period intervened, still no Government clim to reantecedent to 1793, sumption, should be heard where the cause of what that Govern- action had originated in Bengal, Beher and ment, in comparative- Orissa (not Cattack) before the 12th of August ly mature age, and 1765,") it will be well, before we go further, far better supplied to inform him and the public what that law with means of every really is. description, has been engaged for the last five years, by по means without diffi 110 culty, in effecting. officers, into habitual ex- vincial councils were organized in 1770. 3dly. Because, the Government, had continuing and continual notice up to 1793, in Bengal, Behar, Orissa and Benares, that the abuses, whatever the amount of them might be, to argue, as my oppo- been done between Clauses 1st, 4th and 5th, Sec. 2 Reg. XIX of 1793, confer a life tenure, at least, upon all persons who in 1793 held land exempt from the payment of revenue under grants" by whatever authority, and whether by a writing or without a writing" made previously to the 12th of August 1765. hereditary, was kept quite distinct from the But the question whether such tenures were indulgence of a life tenure accorded indiscri minately to all; and it was enacted, that" the heirs of any person now (1793) holding land, exempt from the payment of public revenue, under a grant made previous to the Dewanny." should not be entitled to succeed to it, unless the grant were proved to be hereditary either by its terms, or according to the ancient usages of the country."* And to clinch the matter, and prevent abuse, "the present pos sessors of lands now exempt from the payment of Revenue, under such life grants, made previous to the Dewanny, and declared, by the preceding clause, not to be hereditary, were (are) prohibited from selling, or otherwise transfering them, or mortgaging the revenue of them, for a longer period than their own li ves, and all such transfers and mortgages were (are) declared illegal and void."† actually done in the Mr. Dickens is, therefore, altogether mislast mentioned year, taken in assuming, that any possible con. were in a progressive state of increase, a and that too, princi-struction of Clause 2 Sec. II, Reg. II of 1805, appears from Sir John Shore's Mi- pally, as regards all (the law of limitation) can bring within its nute above quoted, and details, by the very scope, for many years to come, a single tenure numerous revenue records statesman (Mr. Shore,) created previously to the 12th of August 1765, and publications." whose authority he seeing that the law of 1793, bestowed a life cites in support of his argument, that the whole investigation ought to have been concluded at a much earlier date, and that' * Clause 4th, Sec. 2, Reg. XIX of 1793. interest upon the then possessors of all such tenures, and thus made the demise of such parties" the origin of the cause of action." " 5thly. Because, in 1800, by Regulation VIII, My opponent's fifth reason is even more loose and inconclusive than his fourth, because it is not brought forward in connection with any alledged deposit and destruc of 1793; and if he believes that any Lakhirajdar was so superfluous as to volunteer more than the law required from him to the jeopardy of his sunnud, I can only say that he is It is unfortunate, also, for the objects of far more credulous than I am. Section XIV. my opponent's protection, who eat Revenue of the Regulation above cited, will shew instead of paying it, that both the preambles when, and when only, and under what safe. of Reg. XIX and XXXVII of 1793, and all guards, any Lakhirajdar could be compelled experience of the officers employed in con- to deposit his title deeds. ducting the investigations now in progress, assure us that a very large proportion of the parties who obtained tenures during the years immediately following 1765, antedated their sunnuds, or the claims which they advanced by Registry, in order to bring themselves within the indulgent safeguard of Sec. II. Reg. XIX of 1793, (or the corresponding Section of Reg. XXXVII,) above cited. These parties, therefore, stand in this dilemma in Tegard to the law of limitation. Either their tenures are really of older date than 12th August 1765, or they are not. If they are, the question whether they are hereditary must (construe the law of limitation as you please,) be open for 60 years from the death of the Lakhirajdar in possession in 1793. If they are not, they will assuredly fall within the scope of Clause 4 Sec. III, Reg. II of 1805, which enacts," that no length of time shall be con ́sidered to establish a prescriptive right of property, or to bar the cognizance of a suit for the recovery of property, in any case whatever, wherein the possession of the actual oc. cupant or of those from whom his occupancy may have been derived, shall not have been under a title bona fide believed to have conveyed a right of property to the possessor." Mr. Dickens, who charges me with "want of candour" for not noticing Clause 2, Sec. Il, Reg. II of 1805, when I was writing about other and general matters, ought certainly to have adverted to Clause 4, Sec. 3, of the same law, when he was treating particularly upon that law. But I am quite sure that a want of candour" was not the cause of his overlooking it. the Government again tri- taken to 6thly. Because, from who thus bad undisturbed In this, his sixth reason, my opponent entirely omits to notice the laws of 1793, which first gave any legal rights to any Lakhirajdar, which gave a life tenure to every Lakhirajdar then in possession of lands granted previously to 1765, and which declared all tenures of a latter date invalid. He has also omitted to mention the corresponding laws of 1795, 1803, and 1805, and Reg. VIII. of 1811, V. of 1813, XXIII. of 1817, II. of 1819, IX. and XIV, of 1825, and III. of 1828. possession of their estates 4thly. Because, in Mr. Dickens's pro1793, the Government position is, that had established various regis no such law passed as Regulation ters in Bengal, Behar, and the As to the laws of 1793, (with which those of 1795, 1803, and 1805 correspond for other provinces), I repeat what I have more than once stated, but which is studiously kept out of sight (for it cannot be denied) by the anti-resumptionists, to wit, that those laws conferred a mighty boon, such as the class had never enjoyed under any other Government, or in any former æra, upon every Lakhirajdar I confess that I do not quite see the relation who had any, even plausible, claims to indulbetween the two. What my opponent asserts gence. The Legislature declared at the in regard to the loss of title deeds, is found-same time, to whom it would not accord that ed upon misapprehension of the law, which indulgence, and that no lapse of time should did not require any party to deposit, nor even render a tenure valid, then pronounced to be to produce, such documents, as he may satisfy invalid. And this was done in such plain himself by perusing Sec. XXV. Reg. XIX. terms,; and was so universally known, that towed on all rent free te- of decrees of Court, and for the recovery of arrears of revenue (Registers being simultaneously opened), | 8thly. Because, by almost every Lakhirajdar in the country who such a course of proceed did register, shewed that he was sufficientlying in revenue sales, an incogizant of the law to enter his claims as of direct sanction on the part orgin prior to 1765. Yet we are told now, that of Government was bes these Charter Laws, are to be stringent against the indulgent Government and the commu nity, which I admit to be quite fair; but that The only absolute public sale which can they are to be so much waste paper against take place, is that of an estate "sold for the all parties fraudulent y assuming to be Lakrecovery of any part of the Revenue assess birajdars, (for they can affect no one else,) ed upon it." Lakhiraj land can never, of seems to me to be signally unfair. course, be in such a predicament; and with regard to all other circumstances of Revenue Moreover, I deny altogether that there has sales, the law has distinctly declared, that been any thing approaching to what might defaulter, or his surety, may be sold for the "in cases in which any land belonging to a truly be called undisturbed possession" on recovery of an arrear of revenue, not being the part of the Lakhirajdars as a class, the land on account of which the arrear may though the laws have, unhappily, not been have accrued, then whether the said land sold vigorously enforced, till recently, against be Malguzaree or Lakkeraj, the purchaser shall those monstrous caterpillars of the state. only be held to have acquired the rights, inThe laws above cited, the records of the terests, and title, possessed by the said Courts of Justice, and still more, I fear, the defaulter or surety, in like manner as if the constant hush-money paid by those partiesland had been sold by private sale, under a to the native officers of the several Collec- decree of Court, in liquidation of a private torates, will prove beyond question, that the privilege never practically settled down into property as regards the class, though some tenures may have been considered, with reference to the laws, more secure, and, therefore, more valuable, than others. But life tenures lapsed, and litigation to resume others was carried on from time to time; and all those whose tenures were really invalid, knew all along, nearly as well as they know now, that they were obnoxious to ment. assess I observe that Mr. Dickens, in this his sixth reason, mentions 1783 as the date of the Decennial settlement, and fixes it by reckoning 48 years from that event to 1831. But Lord Cornwallis, who formed the De cennial settlement, did not arrive in India un til September 1786, and Article 1. Reg. I. o 1793, would have informed my opponent, that that fiscal measure was not commenced upon till 1789 90. "It was not, however," (says Mill vol. v. p. 417)," before the year 1793, that the Decennial settlement was executed in every district.* debt "* revenue Sales of Lakhiraj lands, then, for the recovery of arrears of due from category as private sales, or as sales under a Khiraj lands, belong to precisely the same decree of Coart. of 1793, will prove how jealously the Legisla But the following quotations from the laws ture of that day guarded against affording any plausible color to the argument now urged by Mr. Dickens on the score of such, and consequently of any, sales. Firstly, in the Lakhiraj Law, "The present possessors of lands now exempt from the made previous to the Dewanny, and declared payment of revenne, unler such life grants by the preceding clause not to be hereditary, are prohibited from selling, or otherwise of them for a longer period than their own transferring them, or mortgaging the revenue lives, and all such transfers and mortgages are declared illegal and void." (Clause 5, Section II, Regulation XIX. of 1793.) the grant, or the nature of the tenure, are here"Grants of land which, from the terms of ditary, and are declared valid by this regulation, or which have been or may be confirmed by the British Governmet, or any of its officers, possessing competent authority to confirm them, are declared transferable by gift, sale, or otherwise; and all persons succeeding to such grants, by whatever mode, are required to register their names in the office of the Collector, within six months after they may succeed to the grant. But all such purchases are to be considered as made at the risk of the purchaser, and in the event of the grant not proving to be hereditary, or not to have been made or confirmed by the ever, is merely an authoritative and precise declaration Section 29, Regulation X1, of 1822. This, howof an established revenue axiom. See the commencement of Clause 2d, and the Proviso at the end of lause 5th, Regulation VII. of 1799, repealed by Regulation X1, of 1822. |