was greater than that of the Mahomedans, but avows that now there is a scramble for land when put up for sale, the possession of which, during the Moslem dynasty, "was rather considered a misfortune than an advantage" (page 368); and describes lands selling in 1821 for seventeen years' purchase of the jumma (371). He proves that the Mahomedans exacted, plundered, and squeezed, without any fixed rule (25), declares that the East-India Company follow the same course (vol. i. page 279),* while before the House of Lords the very same authority, Mr. Rickards, is obliged to admit that "the Governments of India have been most anxious to improve the state of the ryots, as well as the Court of Directors in this country,—the orders of the Court of Directors abounding with able and humane instructions for a just administration of the territories committed to their charge" (Lords, 3964); again,-he sneers at the Company's territories as "a paradise of happiness and blessings" (p. 38), ridicules the Court of Directors as the "inspired high priests of the temple in Leadenhall-street,” &c. (p. 69); and yet Mr. Rickards recommends these very inspired high priests of the temple, whom he accuses of oppressing" their native subjects, using the most "bar

Yet at vol. i. page 621, admits, "the Revenue Board at Madras were obviously led to the adoption of the mouzawa or village system, by a sincere desire to relieve the inhabitants from that wretched poverty into which former financial systems had plunged them;" a pretty proof of following in the steps of their predecessors! But these admissions which burst out here and there like rays of truth, the effulgence of which no calumny however dark and thick can entirely destroy, are always qualified by a negative, so as if possible to destroy the import of what could not be obliterated. At vol. i. page 471, Mr. Rickards sneers at the idea of a Company's servant "lowering the assessment indeed!" and at p. 124, and at other places he describes them as the "subservient tools of arbitrary power.'

This inconsistent writer says, that the courts of the Asiatic monsters, the Mahomedans, &c. abounded in barbaric pearl and gold, while squalid poverty and misery stalked through every region of their dominions. The reverse is now the case; the Company are poor, and their subjects rich, in grain, &c. if not in money.

*

barous cruelty" to the free merchants, and perpetuating the most iniquitous system of fiscal exaction that ever was devised; yet, I say, after all this, Mr. Rickards recommends the Court of Directors to his Majesty's Government "the fittest medium they could employ for the political administration of India,"+-O tempora! O mores!

as

What the object of Mr. Rickards was in writing the two volumes now before me it is difficult to conceive; it is true he promised to shew his plan for reform in the fifth part of his work, which was certainly to be desired after the strenuous efforts he has made to demolish the whole of the present structure, and the heightened, but distorted manner in which he has painted the effects thereof. His eternal harping on the diary of the Surat factory some fifty years since; what he himself heard or saw, in the wildest and most uncivilized part of India, twenty-five years ago (!) and what passages he could pick out of old editions of works thirty years of age; nevertheless Mr. Rickards bids adieu to the

At vol. i. p. 570, of his work, Mr. Rickards says, in reference to these high priests of the temple,' "it is but justice to the Court of Directors to add, that the whole of their printed correspondence indicates an anxious desire to see these principles [to confer on the different orders of the community a security of property which they never before enjoyed; to protect the landholders from arbitrary and oppressive demands on the part of government; to relieve the proprietors of small estates from the tyranny of the powerful zemindars, and to free the whole body of merchants and manufacturers, and all the lower orders of the people, from the heavy impositions to which they have long been subjected:'-Court of Directors letter to the Bengal Government] carried into effect. Their letters," continues Mr. Rickards," abound with excellent instruction, sound philosophical views, and a constant desire to promote the general welfare; and more especially to guard the lower classes against oppression." Yet the authors of such measures are in other pages of the same volume loaded with every species of vituperation, ironical and direct. + Lords, 28th May 1830; evidence which was given after the work, from which I am quoting, was written.

I might point to many verbatim passages in Mr. Rickards' writings unacknowledged; an old edition of Hamilton's East-India Gazetteer contains, word for word, Mr. Rickards' description of the invasion of Hyder Ali into the Jaghire; and his quotations from Colebrooke's Husbandry of Bengal, in 1800 and 1804, is a pretty criterion for the state of the country in 1832 !

public, without telling them what superstructure he would raise on the present system of landed taxation, which he says, "bears down with an overwhelming force and universal pressure men of caste, and men of no caste, who exhibit one uniform picture of pauperism and degradation," (vol. i. p. 41); and which he informs the House of Lords, 14 May 1830, "keeps the cultivators in India in a state which gives them little more than a bare sufficiency to keep body and soul together." Their Lordships were naturally most anxious to know what could be done to relieve this state, and thought the witness before them a fit person to suggest such amelioration as would be desirable, particularly as Mr. Rickards dwelt so strongly on his prophesies in 1813, and referred them so constantly to his works for an exposure of the Company's system; it would be therefore only reasonable to expect, that a man who had taken such pains to prove the pernicious effects of one system of revenue, would have been enabled to point out some better means of meeting the "indispensable necessity of a certain quantum of revenue, to pay the present heavy expenses of the Company's Government ;* their Lordships therefore said (Qu. 4000), "Pray, Mr. Rickards, as you have represented the mischief which had arisen out of the land revenue in India, can you suggest to the committee any improvement in that system ?" The task of censure is easy, or as the poet might say,

"Facilis descensis Averni."

Mr. Rickards, I dare say, found it quite facile, to send the Company's revenue system to Avernus, but he was obliged to tell their Lordships," it would be quite impossible to reduce the aggregate amount of land taxation in India; it must be done gradually, as other sources of

* Mr. Rickards; Lords, 14th May 1830.

supply present themselves!" (Lords, Qu. 4000). The answer did not satisfy their Lordships, after so much vituperation had been bestowed on the system, more especially as Mr. Rickards condemned so strongly the inequality of the assessment, and yet informed them that he was "of opinion that surveys would never be of use to us." "Well then, Sir," said the Committee (4005), ❝ in what manner would you assess the revenue without the assistance of a survey ?" "Oh !" said the denunciator against the system in force, which only leaves the people as much as will keep body and soul together;' "we must necessarily proceed for the present on the systems which are in force in the different districts of India, subject to such modifications and amendments as may be afforded through the means of native committees ;* unless they can suggest means, by which this object can be accomplished, I should despair of success!" This, then, is Mr. Rickards' panacea, for all the evils which he complains of. Why what have the Company's Governments been doing the last fifty years, but trying to amend the revenue, as well as judicial institutions of the country, consulting with natives of every caste, class, and persuasion? nay, they were even desirous of striking out other paths of supply to meet the exigencies of the state, one of which was a house-tax, which was strenuously opposed every where; the causes for which I

*The Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone says, with reference to Bombay, the very place where Mr. Rickards was, "the mode of collecting the revenue is adapted to the circumstances of the country; in some few parts settlements are made with the proprietors of tracts of country, more commonly with the heads of villages, or with the village communities, or with the individual cultivators. In some instances tracts of uncultivated country are given in farm to any people who will undertake to lay out their capital in improving them.' (Lords, p. 307.) Mr. Elphinstone says that before he left Bombay, "a more complete survey was just commenced in the Deckan, with a view to a new and lighter assessment, and to defining tenures and fixing boundaries, the revenue being assessed according to the real productive power and range of the land." (p. 308.)

cannot better give, than in the words of a distinguished divine, as I have noted it down when perusing his delightful writings.

Disinclination of the Hindoos to any other species of taxation than the present system.-Bishop Heber, in describing the tumult and sitting dhurná which occurred at Benares when we attempted to levy a house-tax there, gives the following reasons of the natives for objecting to it: " They recognized in their British rulers the same rights which had been recognized by the Moguls; the laud-tax was their's, and they could impose duties on commodities going to market, or for exportation; but their houses were their own, they (the Hindoos) had never been intermeddled with in any but their landed property and commodities used in traffic, and the same power which now imposed a tax on their dwellings, might do the same next year on their children and on themselves."

Acting on these feelings, the Bishop says, that "in three days, and before Government were in the least aware of it, above three hundred thousand men deserted their houses, shut up their shops, suspended the labour of their farms, forbore to light fires, dress victuals, many of them even to eat, and sat down with folded arms and drooping heads, like so many sheep, on the plain which surrounds Benares !” A deputation of ten thousand persons was next proposed to be sent to Calcutta,-in fine, Government abandoned the tax. A nearly similar scene occurred at Bareilly.* What alternative then have the authorities? would Mr. Rickards recommend their following the plan in England,

* Mr. Christian says that " any change is viewed by the natives with a very considerable degree of jealousy; and any change, however just, they do not understand, and they are apt to suspect that something more is coming."(Lords, 847.) Mr. Christian was asked, "from your knowledge of the state of the population of Bengal and the territories subject to the Bengal Government, do you think there

are