Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎477r] (78/238)

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The Poverty of the Ray at.
system had been that the State was entitled to one-third of
the gross produce, and it was to be collected in kind,
excepting that a few specially marketable items—known as
“zubti”—were subject to an Excise instead of being
divisible. Under the Viceroys of Bengal and Bihar there
was no limit in actual practice ; the managers and contractors
collected as much as they could, and paid to the Viceroy’s
Treasury as little as the Viceroy could compel. Warren
Hastings adopted that method, subject to the condition of
punctuality. No questions were asked so long as the
revenue was duly paid by the “ Zemindars,” who were no
more owners of the land than a Tahsildar is of his Tahsil,
which he manages, but cannot alienate or bequeath.
Then came Lord Cornwallis, a military veteran of high
rank and character, who persuaded the authorities in London
that great advantages were to be obtained by vesting the
property in these officials or farmers, and the “ Permanent
Settlement ” was the result. By fixing for all time the pay
ments due from the State, Cornwallis pledged the State to
waive all unearned increment, all share in the gradual
increase in prices, and, since the State is the steward of the
tax-paying community, this entailed a gradual increase in
taxation. That was a flaw in the system, as Campbell is
careful to point out; but the other charge usually brought
he firmly denies, quoting official records and the findings of
the High Court to prove that the proprietorship conferred
upon the Zemindars in 1793 was not absolute and never
intended to swamp the rights of the cultivating classes. Be
this as it may, the point for us to notice is that the policy
of that period set the example to all succeeding times.
However the land-revenue work of Monro might differ
from that of Elphinstone or Bird, there was always the
common object of determining what was to be demanded
from the land, and by whom that demand was to be met.
The demand never, under any of the various methods
employed in British India, aimed at an exact estimate of the
gross produce of the soil ; nevertheless—since it was to be
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