Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎450r] (24/238)

Suitable to the Present Circumstances of India? 237
own concluding pronouncement, impressing upon the revenue
authorities that they must be more careful to avoid over
assessment in future. T he land assessment is, of course,
not the only shape in which the pressure of taxation makes
itself felt. In one way or another, “ the cheapest civilized
Government in the world ” takes from its subjects according
to the lowest estimate— i.e., not according to Mr. Digby,
but according to the Viceroy—a slightly larger proportion of
income than is taken from the far wealthier population of
the United Kingdom.* The poorer the community, the
more painfully will the subtraction of a tenth of its income
be felt. Yet it may well be that the security which only a
regular Government can afford must in the nature of things
cost more proportionately to a poor country than to a rich
one, just as a working man has to pay away a larger
proportion of his income in house-rent than a millionaire.
If so, there is all the more reason why such a Govern
ment should confine itself to its absolutely necessary
functions, and should eschew all fancy expenditure.
But this is not all. A heavy burden evenly distributed
can be borne more easily than a lighter one ill-adjusted.
In India, as is not only admitted, but strongly insisted by so
thorough-going an official apologist as Sir John Strachey,
the richer classes pay much less, from which it follows that
the poorer pay much more, than their proper share. The
only province, for instance, which enjoys the privilege of a
permanent settlement is one of those in which the settlement
was made with the landlords, and not with the cultivators.
Here again it may be that as an alien Government we simply
cannot afford to quarrel with the well-to-do classes who now
get off too easily, for the sake of the overtaxed masses
who are too ignorant and apathetic to give us effective
support. Or it may be, on the other hand, that we are
unconsciously biassed by the fact that the financial system
* Approximately ten as against per cent., taking £2 and ^35
respectively as the average incomes per head, and comparing the combined
receipts from taxes and local rates for 1899, 1900.