origin and in theory, it is not so much a tax as a share of the produce to which the State is entitled as superior proprietor of the soil. In the fiscal interests of the State it is of course desirable that a land tax should be assessed on a fair valuation of the land; where, as in India, much of the land is farmed by cottiers, fairness of assessment is essential in the interests of the poor, who would be crushed out of life by a demand which, owing to unfair distribution, was in their case excessive. The value of land in India is subject, of course, to wide fluctuations. Waste areas are brought under cultivation. Irrigation is introduced or extended by State canals. New roads and railways increase the money value of produce. The growth of population enhances the monopoly value of land situated near towns or markets. On the other hand, owing to epidemics of fever or plague, or to such calamities as failure of rain, floods, hailstorms, or locusts, land falls out of cultivation or drops in value, or the people become so impoverished as to have claims to a temporary reduction of assess◄ ment. In some cases land is found actually to have deteriorated owing to saline efflorescence or to waterlogging, or to have been washed away by river action. While there is ordinarily a general tendency for land values to rise throughout a district, they rise unevenly in different localities, and in some localities they actually fall. In all provinces except Bengal (where the land revenue was fixed inalterably about a century ago) it has been the practice to reassess the land tax on the basis of a fresh valuation at periods of thirty years or so. In this matter the Indian Government has, for the last two generations, been carrying out a policy which in England is still in the dreamland of Liberal reformers. The task is one of great labour and difficulty. It is necessary to ascertain the area, soil, and cropping (as well as the ownership and tenancy) of fields the number of which in a single district runs into millions, and group these fields into land classes, and, after a most elaborate enquiry into agricultural conditions, to frame for each tract scales of rates which fairly express the taxable value of the different land classes when situated at different distances from centres of population or markets. In many provinces the Settlement officer has to take a further step. Concerning himself with persons as well as with land, he ascertains so much of the circumstances of individual landlords and tenants as is needed to assure him that enhancements which are, on the average, justified by his rates will not inflict too sudden or too heavy a burden in particular cases; or to enable him, by the grant of temporary rebates, to alleviate the pressure of the new tax upon individuals. The conduct of such elaborate Doomsday surveys within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost is an achievement upon which the Indian Government justly prides itself. But a Settlement is, naturally, not a popular undertaking. No one likes the prospect of increased taxation ; no VOL. LXV-No. 386 3 B one likes enquiries that are the foreground of such a prospect. It is not too much to say that if the investigations and conclusions of a Settlement officer are to be called in question by interpellations-and supplementary interpellations-in Council before the sympathetic audience of a non-official majority, it will be quite impossible to carry out a Settlement upon the lines now followed, and the inevitable result will be that, to avoid discussions of detail, reassessments will be effected in aggregate, that the amount of an enhancement will be determined a priori for a tract as a whole, and will be imposed by an all-round, uniform percentage, affecting all estates alike, irrespective of the changes in value which they have individually sustained. This idea is not a novel one. It was fully considered by the Government some twenty-five years ago, but was negatived on the score of its extreme injustice. An average which might be fair for a tract as a whole would be unfair for the individual holdings composing it, unless they had all sustained the same variations in value. This never is, and cannot be, the case. The best land would be under-assessed, the worst land over-assessed, and the procedure would favour the rich at the expense of the poor. This is, of course, precisely why it would commend itself to non-official members of Council. One remark should be added. It might be surmised that detailed Settlement operations are open to political objections, as they would tend to create disaffection. In this case Bengal should be the most loyal province of India, since it alone, for three generations, has not been liable to a resettlement of its land revenue. The recent history of the Central Provinces furnishes two very striking instances of humanitarian accomplishment, which would have been impossible had the Government been obliged to reckon with a strong non-official vote in Council. At the last resettlement of these Provinces, some seventeen years ago, it was discovered that the development of the wheat export trade had proved disastrous to those tenants-from a third to a half of the total number-who, being of comparatively recent standing, had been left unprotected by the law as it then stood. In their desire to secure wheat the landlords demanded rents in grain instead of in cash, and at such high rates as to be practically unpayable, the object being to gain control of the tenants' produce by the pressure of rent arrears. It was within the rights of the Government to assess its land revenue upon the landlords' rent rolls. The landlords objected that the rent rolls were fictitiously high. The offer was made to lower the demands of the State if the rent rolls were lowered to a realisable standard and fresh leases were issued. This alteration was, naturally, unpalatable, but after much negotiation it was accepted. Arrears were recalculated, with the result that thousands of tenants were set on their feet again. Some years later the Government took power by legislation to fix the rents of tenants who had hitherto been left outside the law-that is to say, to exercise by law the authority it had already exercised by consent. Practical experience had been so greatly in favour of this innovation that the landlords refrained from challenging it, and it was accepted as non-contentious by their representative in Council. A striking testimony to the benefit of the rent reduction in enabling the tenants to withstand the effects of a subsequent famine was given before the Famine Commission by one of the largest landlords of the Province, who at the outset was strongly opposed to the interference of the State with his rent rolls. It is unnecessary to explain that had the landlords been able, at the commencement of the negotiations, to withstand the intervention of the Government by resolutions or interpellations in Council this beneficent measure would never have been carried through. Indeed, it would never have been attempted as within the possibilities of practical politics. My second illustration is drawn from the misfortunes of the seven disastrous years, commencing with 1893, during which, owing to rust, blight, and failures of rainfall, many districts of the Central Provinces, lost, one year with another, at least half their produce. The mass of the tenants had, naturally, fallen into hopeless bankruptcy. Crops having failed them, they had borrowed, mostly in grain for sowings and for subsistence, at from 25 to 50 per cent. compound interest, and were so overwhelmed with debts that improving harvests merely gave occasion for mortgagees to foreclose or for landlords to eject. The situation was desperate, and the Government took courage to apply a special remedy. If private creditors would consent to abate their claims to amounts which the tenants could pay off within a reasonable period, the Government offered to submit its claims for arrears of land revenue and cultivating advances to a similar abatement. These claims were not inconsiderable, but were trifling compared with those of private creditors. For each group of villages an arbitration board was formed, composed of three or more non-officials who had a general acquaintance with the circumstances of those who came before them, and creditors were invited to submit their claims to these tribunals and to agree to their arbitration. Fortunately for the success of the operations, it was determined to make no attempt to settle the precise amount owed by each debtor-an enquiry which would have provoked endless wrangling. The function of the board was, after roughly determining the indebtedness of each man, to settle how much he could pay within a period of from seven to ten years, and to distribute the instalments among his creditors, the Government included. It may be imagined that it was only after long and patient negotiation that creditors were induced to accept this procedure. Most tenants were in debt to more than one person, and if one of the creditors stood out proceedings were blocked. In the end, to the lasting credit of landlords and moneylenders, the arbitration was accepted by practically all of them. The awards were cast in a form which gave them legal validity, and the general result was that in the five districts that had suffered most acutely debts amounting to some millions sterling were written off and thousands of families were rescued from degradation. Nothing would have been easier than to denounce this interference before it had proved its success; nothing easier than to have blocked the negotiations by interpellations in Council. That debtors were given hope when Nature bade them despair, that creditors did not exact what Nature offered them, was due to the State's being independent of the first hasty conclusions of public opinion. Similar reflexions arise from a consideration of Indian famine policy. To a student of the English Poor Law the most striking feature of Indian famine relief is not the magnitude of the task, the area over which the State extends its ministrations, or the vast crowds of humanity which it succours, but the absence of any demoralisation : the fact that Socialism, on a gigantic scale, is reconciled with the preservation of character. There are densely populated districts one-third of whose inhabitants have been in receipt of State relief for eight or nine months of the year. A month after the closing of the works you may ride through the country and receive not a single request for assistance. What a contrast to the effects of State and private charity in England! In India relief is given to the body without detriment to the mind because it is granted on a system which is logical in principle, uniform in working, and is unaffected by the spurious humanity which looks for gratitude as its reward. No one who can work is relieved unless he works, and the daily wage is so calculated as to suffice for the necessities of the day, but to offer no attractions when the ordinary market for labour has reopened. The State is uninfluenced by the appeals of false sentiment to the dignity of labour and by the opposition of trade unionism to the offer of less than a standard wage. The officers in charge of relief works have no reason to listen to the demand of the workers for easier terms or the demand of ratepayers for greater economy. It is not claimed that the Indian Government has been able entirely to seclude itself from the interested influence of particular classes of the community, though it has been swayed by pressure of this sort infinitely less than the English Government, and very much less than will be the case under its reformed Constitution. There are two classes which have been able notably to lead the administration of public affairs into tracks which serve their private interests—the legal profession and the landed proprietors of Bengal-and it is instructive to observe the effects of their influence upon the commonwealth. In medieval Europe such pecuniary advantages as are offered by literary education were shared between the lawyers and the Church; in India they are monopolised by the lawyers, who have become the richest and the most influential members of the working community. The people are exceedingly litigious. They find in the law courts the most complete satisfaction of the gambling instinct, and a means of maintaining their amour propre, and of wreaking vengeance-primordial feelings which in India overpower all prudential considerations and impel even the poorest to singular extravagance. Thus it comes that the surplus profits of the land are spent on law, and the lawyers can enrich themselves in a poor country. They make incomes which are liberal even according to a European standard, and have increased and multiplied exceedingly. A remote agricultural district in Bengal will support a bar of fifty or sixty advocates. At its headquarters station, amidst a group of unpretentious, low-roofed offices and bungalows there rises a handsome double-storied building of decorated brickwork. This is the Civil Court-house-or (cynically regarded) the Casino of the district, built out of the abundant revenue yielded by -court-fee stamps. Around it is a wide space, dotted with trees, which during business hours is a Vanity Fair of chattering humanity— plaintiffs, defendants, their witnesses and backers, lawyers' touts, and petition writers. Lawyers control the native Press, and public opinion, so far as it exists, dances to their piping. And they have enjoyed the powerful support of numerous English lawyers to whom India has offered a career, whether as barristers or High Court judges or Members of Council, and who, apart from feelings of professional sympathy, cannot divest themselves of an English suspicion of executive authority. The Indian Government has learnt by experience that legal interests are a force to be reckoned with. Between the Calcutta High Court and the executive authorities of Bengal there has been long-standing antagonism, and there are judges of this Court who, within the past three years, have seriously impeded the efforts of the Government to cut back the early shoots of anarchism. Outside Calcutta, or at least outside Bengal, lawyers have constrained the Government with less bitterness, but with no less pertinacity, and in all questions involving legislation have pressed it towards elaborations of idea and procedure which are not only unsuited to Indian conditions but are positively harmful to the Indian people. Not only have the speculative attractions of a law-suit been enhanced by complexity of procedure and the varying chances of appeals. Lawyers are permitted by interminable speeches and by irrelevant crossexamination to increase the length of proceedings-and the amount of their fees-to an extent which in England would be condemned as preposterous. And, especially in Bengal, by steady pressure they have fashioned an idea that no ruling can be obtained, whether in the law courts or from the executive authorities, except on a lawyer's |