amendments introduced into the former order by the Court of Directors in the Despatch which we have transcribed, they directed that in case of revision on the death of incumbents, 'the talookdaree allowances shall be calculated at 10 per cent. 'on the new Government juma, that is, at of the total 'payments of the biswahdars.' In other words this was cancelling the order of the Court of Directors, and restoring Mr. Thomason's abrogated order. Nay more; for even Mr. Thomason excluded all birt tenures from the operation of his orders, but under this vague and general instruction of the Board, which did not profess to have justice or equity for its basis, and which aspired no higher than to reconcile two conflicting rules, these birt tenures have also been included, and whether the settlement had been made with the biswahdars, or ex-proprietors throughout the provinces, or with the birtdars or ex-sub-proprietors of the sub-Himalayan districts, the talookdars have suffered alike in either case. It has been elsewhere pointed out that these birtdars were creation of the talookdars themselves, and all that they had a legal right to was a recognised position under the talookdar. Regulation VIII of 1793 is conclusive as to this point. It lays down that only those proprietors are entitled to engage direct ,with Government who held their smaller estates before they were incorporated into the larger. Yet this clear law was set aside, and men whom the said larger proprietors had, so to speak, made, were given independent proprietary titles. These birtdars are mentioned along with gherrooas, or mortgagees, in Section 17, Regulation II of 1795, as persons who were put in

a

' degree untrustworthy; and viewing the light under which they assume 'to have been given, are open to the charge of simulation and mere 'pretension.

4. These protests have been in vain. The orders I am considering start ' with the admission, that these cases are "judicial cases," to be determined on the evidence adduced by either party; but proceed to say it would be 'better to treat of the general question first, and then to apply the principles 'arrived at to every particular case in succession. I had most earnestly deprecated this mode of proceeding, and urged (I am sorry to see how vainly) 'with the greatest force I could, that each case should be treated altogether separately on its own individual merits as a judicial question between indi'vidual parties, and not at all as a general question, which must needs lead ⚫ to injustice.

5. The effect of such a mode of viewing the subject is a breach of the actual stipulations made in each case by the settlement officers with the 'talookdars, and confirmed or modified by the Board and by Government, and the breach of these particular conditions is justified by reasoning upon what the Government and Board must have intended, instead of what is the plain meaning of the words used by them.'

160

The Tulookdaree Tenure of Upper India.

possession of their lands by the Rajah of the day, and as they were considered as having a permanent interest in their tenures without any attempt to discriminate the precise nature of that interest, they were treated like hereditary zamindars—that is, sub-proprietors were at once converted into proprietors, to the displacement of the Rajah.

We have now portrayed some of the means that were used in the North-West to create and foster the local village system. We have shown in the case of a single talooka which, strictly speaking, was neither a wholly pure, nor a wholly impure one, but which belonged to the chief of an important quasi-Rajpoot tribe, how 200 out of 300 villages were taken from this ancient chief and given to the village occupants, and we have also shown that the estate in question formed the model for the disposal of all others similarly constituted throughout the Upper Provinces. We fully admit ourselves, that if we had a tabula rasa on which to operate, on economic grounds we should rather introduce a system of small than of large landed properties, but we also consider that it appears to us to be not only a point of honour and justice, but also of political wisdom, whether we be dealing with the natives of India or the natives of New Zealand, to respect the interests, such as they then are, of those whom we find to be in possession of the soil. It is too late now to retrace our steps in the North-West Provinces; it is not too late liberally to interpret the rule which has, perhaps, not yet been irremediably settled, as to the compensation given for the wrong that we have undoubtedly committed: nor is it too late to congratulate ourselves on the narrow escape we made in the settlement of Oude from following in such devious paths as those which we have just sketched. Our space will not permit of our further pursuing the subjeet; suffice it, in conclusion, to say that our reformed revenue system seeks to maintain things in Oude as we found them; it seeks, so far as may be, to adjust rights, as they have existed within the period of limitations, without attempting to revive those, the very tradition of which has been lost; it leaves for division between the proprietor and sub-proprietor a much larger proportion of the rental than was contemplated by the philosophy of the by-gone settlement age; and finally, it seeks to impress upon the minds of the people the banefulness of an overstrained official intervention, hoping thereby to inspire in them the purer advantages of that selfgovernment which the writings of Mr. Thomason so truly inculcate, but which the revenue system, which he so earnestly believed in to the last, was certainly not well calculated to teach.

161

ART. VI.-1. Etudes sur l'Economie Forestière. Par Jules

Clave.

2. Administration Report of the Bengal Government for 1864-65, Section IX.-Forests.

3. Report of the North-West Provinces Government for 1863-64. Appendix No. X. Memo. of the Forest Committee.

4. Administration Reports of the Central Provinces, 1862-63,

1863-64.-Forests.

5. Report on Forest Administration in Burmah, 1862-63.

VERY

RY few persons would care to be told that the rivers and wells of India are of inestimable value to the country, or to listen to a catalogue of all the evils which would result to this generation and to posterity from a failure of water supply. And yet it is not every one who realizes the fact that the forests, as well as the rivers and wells, store up and distribute a necessary of life, that the supply of wood is as invaluable as the supply of water, requires more care to maintain, and is cut off for generations with infinitely geater ease. Still less does every one understand the extent to which the rivers depend on the forest, or the manner in which the trees affect our climate, and thus our whole society and history.

It is not many years since the subject was first taken up by the Government, which in India ought to keep, and perhaps does keep, considerably ahead of even the better-informed portion of the Anglo-Indian community; and though every local Government which possesses forests has by this time got a forest department, yet the art and science of forestry, and its progress in India, are perhaps as little known by the general public as ever.

One great cause of this ignorance among Englishmen is probably the absence of any organized sylviculture on a large scale in England, where the crown forests are now very limited, and where the great woods which formerly spread over the country fell very early into private hands, when the old forest laws soon became obsolete. And so while in France and Germany modern governments have found vast forests still standing, when they turned from preserving game to preserving timber, the crown forests of Great Britain have for the most part passed into the hands of the freehold landowners, with whose doings no public

U

trustee dares interfere. Luckily some of the great proprietors of England are as enlightened as any public administrator, for the ducal forests of the north are strictly preserved and tended. The love of sport, and the peculiar taste of the Englishman for a country life and woodland scenery, deterred the great body of landowners from making their immediate profit from the timber on their estates, but the greater part of the woods have been at one time or other thrown into the market, and they have never been under any system of culture or cutting. In France, on the contrary, feudal institutions, and the absence of any freedom of commerce in respect to the land or its products, preserved the forests up to a recent period in the hands of the king and his lords, the severe game laws were in full force, and the people had none of the common rights of pasture and wood-cutting on the seignorial estates, which tempered the dominion of the English squire. This sort of property was also in the hands of ecclesiastical bodies up to a much later date on the continent, but these forests, as well as those belonging to the communes, were merely held as of the feudal lord in France and Germany, and were not readily alienable until the Revolution changed all that' in France.

It has thus resulted that the knowledge and practice of forestry have been carried much further by the Government in France and Germany than in England, and as the Indian Government has now seriously taken in hand the forests throughout the empire, while the subject possesses far more immediate interest for all classes than is generally supposed, we have undertaken to review the book and the papers named at the heading of this article. We only aim at giving an abstract of the scientific and economical information which is contained in M. Clave's essays, and at drawing what profit we may from a comparison of the history and condition of the forests in France and in India.

M. Clave makes eight divisions of his subject. In the first he deals with the question of proprietary right in forests.

The second treats of the preservation of forests on hills and mountain ranges; its effect, and that of denudation, on climate and the water supply.

The third of sylviculture in France and Germany.

The fourth of the management of forests.

The fifth of their 'exploitation,' or working with view to profit.

The sixth of forest produce and the trades connected therewith.

The seventh of animal life in French forests.

The eighth of forest establishments.

Each of these essays contains so much that is interesting and instructive, that, instead of presenting our readers with a string of extracts, we prefer to abstract the gist of the chapters, and to epitomize the book in a English form with a commentary of our own, dwelling upon any remarks or information that may by analogy, contrast, or otherwise, be made applicable to the forest question in India.

This method will, we believe, be admitted as fair, and even advantageous to the author in a country where French economical works are so little accessible to the general reader.

It may be useful to remind the men of our day, whose sole object in life seems to be the accumulation of wealth that the world has not been created exclusively for the benefit of their generation, and that certain natural treasures have only been given to them to hold in trust for posterity, to whom they will have to give account of their stewardship. They cut down the oak which they did not plant, they have inherited the woods from their forefathers, and the consequences of waste or mismanagement will fall on their heirs. No kind of property shows more clearly the joint and mutual responsibility of one generation to another. But as the greater number of men are incapable of looking beyond the prospect of immediate gain, and for cash in hand would always cut off the entail of ages, it is absolutely necessary in the interest of the nation to restrict the exercise or abuse of private rights, and to tie up the inheritance in perpetual trust. The conditions, which usually make it sound policy to meddle as little as possible with private enterprise and private rights, are entirely wanting here; it is unreasonable to expect the individual to postpone his own profits to prospective national advantage, and the two interests in no way coincide as to the management of forests.

Forests are of inestimable value to a country, (1) from the influence which they exercise over climate, (2) from their produce, and sedulous and skilful management is required to preserve their value. But this is just what the ordinary private owner is unable and unwilling to give. The future sterility of fertile plains, violent inundations and sudden floods, the spread of stagnant marshes-all these serious national evils are of small account to a man, when the price of timber has risen and he has got a good ready-money offer for his trees. He may turn a forest into cash and get high interest at market, but a very easy calculation will show him that it does not pay him to reserve his young woods for timber, which will