on hemp, oil, blankets, butter, raw hides, on measuring land and on weighing, on gambling with dice, on new and full moon festivals, on sawing timber, on the buyer and seller of houses, on passports, for killing cattle, on tanning, on the commencement of reaping, on lime for building, on ploughs, on salt, on spirituous liquors, on brokerage, on fishermen, on storax, on felt, on houses; there was also a kind of poll-tax called "pug," as also hearth money, lodging charges, town dues, market dues,* shroffage, bags for the money revenue, money trier's dues, subordinate collector's dues, daroga fees, and a hideous list of et ceteras, which Mr. Rickards has the audacity to assert are for the greater part "continued to the present day."+ Leaving this candid antagonist to the deserts which such conduct ought to meet with from the public, let us observe one of the methods by which such collections were made by the Mahomedan Government.

Jaffier Khan, whose administration is so highly extolled by his countrymen and contemporary historians, by the expression that during his government, "the wolf and the lamb lived in harmony together; the hawk and the partridge dwelt in one nest;" this beneficent ruler (whose system, says Mr. Rickards, the Company follow) " used to suspend the zemindars by the heels, and, after rubbing the soles of their feet with a hard brick, bastinado them with

*The zemindars and farmers exercised the liberty of levying tolls on goods of all kinds in transitu, by water, as well as duties on commodities sold either in the established, or in the occasional markets. Toll-houses were erected without restriction as to number, and without any public regulation as to the rate of tolls. Every thing depended on the discretion of the zemindars and farmers. Thus the internal trade of the country, whether carried on by water or by land (alluding to the government custom-houses) was liable to endless impediments and indefinite extortion.-Right Honourable Robert Grant's Expediency maintained, p. 25.

+ Vol. ii. p. 35.

a switch;"* although these gentle admonitions might have made the zemindars pay Jaffier what he required in summer, it seems to have been too mild for the winter, for we learn from his panygerists, that "in the winter he would order them (the nobles of the land) to be stripped naked, and then sprinkled with water, and he used then to have them flogged until they paid the money!" The Mahomedan prince thought that what was good for the goose was good for the gander: for if he found that in spite of rubbing the soles of their feet with a brickbat, and tickling them with a knout, or giving them a shower bath, until their skins were raised to a high state of titillation, (cutis anserina) and fit for the reception of the cat-o'-nine tails;-if he found these and a hundred other infernal devices, which none but a demon could invent and none but devils execute, fail, then he compelled the offender, his wife, and children, to turn Mahomedans! When the zemindar or landed proprietor was thus treated, the graduated scale of extortion and cruelty, which increased as it proceeded down to the lowest human beings, may be imagined. Mr. Orme, who wrote in 1753, before the Company became possessed of the territory in Bengal, thus describes the miserable condition of the wretched subjects of the celebrated Aliverdi Khan :

"Imitation (says Mr. Orme) has conveyed the unhappy system of oppression which prevails in the government of Hindostan throughout all ranks of the people, from the highest even to the lowest subject of the empire. Every head of a village calls his habitation the durbar, and plunders of their meal and roots the wretches of his precincts; from him the zemindar extorts the small pittance of silver which his penurious tyranny has scraped together; the phousdar seizes upon the greatest share of the zemindar's collection, and then secures the favour

* Narrative of Transactions in Bengal, translated from the Persian by F. Gladwin Esq.; Calcutta, 1788.

of the nabob by voluntary contribution, which leave him not posses sed of the half of his rapines and exactions; the nabob fixes his rapacious eye on every portion of wealth which appears in his province, and never fails to carry off part of it. By large deductions from these acquisitions, he purchases security from his superiors, or maintains it against them at the expense of a war.'

Such is the system which Mr. Rickards contends, in 1832, to be that of the East-India Company at the present day, by which" the surplus of the preceding year followed that of its precursor, to be buried in the coffers of its merciless spoiler !"+

To enter into a discussion on the past state of the landed revenues of Hindostan would occupy volumes upon volumes, it will be therefore sufficient to shew its present practical operation.

The modes in which land is now assessed in India are these:

1st. A perpetual settlement with the zemindars, as in lower Bengal.

2d. A temporary settlement with the heads of villages or townships, as in Bombay and the Western provinces. 3d. A temporary settlement with each individual occupant or farmer, as at Madras.

These assessments are termed the zemindarry, the village, and the ryotwar assessments. The permanent settlement was made in 1793 with the zemindars of Bengal in perpetuity, it extends over the greater part of lower Bengal.

As a means of ascertaining the aggregate amount of taxation in the lower province of Bengal, over the greater part of which the permanent settlement extends, I prepared, while in India, the first four columns of figures in the fol

* General Idea of the Government and People of Indostan, book iii. chap. 9

Rickards' India, vol. ii. p. 7, et passim.

S

lowing table, from Government documents; the last, or amount of revenue collected in 1828-29, I derive from the documents laid before Parliament in the present year (1832), they are the latest returns on the subject; the table will shew whether the average rate of taxation be so monstrous* as Mr. Rickards has endeavoured to shew by quoting, as Mr. Poynder has done, the opinions of men who wrote in the last century on the condition of the people.

* Mr. Rickards, of course, omits to state that in India the labourer is not taxed for his food, drink, &c., while in England the principal portion of the Government revenue (independent of a protecting duty of twelve or fourteen millions sterling on corn) is derived from articles which enter into the consumption of the lowest class of people; on tobacco, for instance, which to most working men is an absolute necessary of life, the most inferior kind pays a duty of 1,440 per cent. Those who wish to see a complete exposure of Mr. Rickards' disingenuous conduct with reference to the East-India Company, and which deprives him of the slightest value as a political or commercial opponent of the Company, will find an able exposition of it in the Asiatic Journal for May, June, and July, 1832. Mr. Mill says (Commons 11th August 1831) that the land revenue system of India, not carried beyond the limits of a moderate rent, is the best revenue system in the world, because so far as the wants of a state can be supplied from that source such a country is untaxed! "In many cases," says the same profound philosopher, "the landed assessment of India is not one-tenth of the gross produce," and "instructions, more and more peremptory, have been sent out to India, to take special care that no more than the rent is taken, and in all doubtful cases that the error, if any, be on the safe side, by taking lèss than the rent rather than more." "3443. In fact, the land tax of India is not much more than five-tenths of the whole Indian revenue drawn by the East-India Company.