PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
TILLLC.O. 882
سلسلسياسيس
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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ment officer, or through the head of his village or caste, who is sometimes the paid officer of Government, and sometimes the unpaid and elective representative of the village or caste. In none of these cases can the characteristic features of the stranger middlemen be recog- nised, as drawn by implication in the Report. In the exceptional instances before described, where the Government stands upon its simple common law right, the collection of its dues is sometimes farmed out to a contractor, some- times made by salaried officers of Government. But the latter, badly paid and mostly natives, are in such cases found to practise quite as much "oppression, extortion, and tyranny," as the formet, while the Government is equally without effectual means, either of checking those practices or knowing their extent or preventing embezzle- ment. As far as the elected managers or ap- pointed heads of village communities and castes may be included by the report in its term of middlemen, its dislike to them would not seem well grounded. In a country where co-par- cenary rights prevail, and property is minutely subdivided, some such machinery must be far preferable, indeed must, of necessity, be sub- stituted for the agency of salaried officers.
We might from the first have suspected, and shall bye-and-bye discover beyond question, that no uniform system of land-tax would be generally applicable to Ceylon in its present state, whether such a system were to be im- ported from India or devised in Colombo. But assuming that we had nothing to do but to choose between this or that systematic plan, it is not too much to say, that any of the Indian systems would be preferable to that proposed by the Report. The latter has most of their vices, but not the same share of their merits. In common with the Ryotwar system of Munro it would appear to attempt too much in assess- ing rates on minute portions of soil, and to involve the evil of a recurring inspection of lands on every occasion of certain changes in or any extension of their cultivation. In com-
mon with both the Zemindary and Ryotwar systems, it is wanting in flexibility and capa- city of adaptation to a variety of tenures and territorial circumstances. In point of fluctu- ation and uncertainty in the cess, it is fully as capricious as the most inconstant of the Indian systems, viz., the Ryotwar, and is far inferior to the others. In dealing with waste lands it yields in merit to them all.
The real and undeniable advantage which the land-tax of the report possesses over the Indian land-tax at large, is one upon which it
can hardly be said to touch; one which it de- rives from the more favourable state of the common law of Ceylon, which it shares con- sequently with the existing land-tax of the island, but which it so shares not throughout its entire, and only to a limited extent, as will be immediately shown. The advantage in question is in fact the simple though impor- tant one of amount.
The Indian Government well understand, and in practice cannot be said to have gene- rally broken the rule that confines the land-tax
to the limits of rent, that so may be ensured the immunity of agricultural labour, and agri- cultural capital of recent investment. But it is obvious, that when the Government is entitled
by law to so large a proportion of the surplus produce of land as it is in India, it must, from pursuing its claim so close to the boundary of
its proper jurisdiction, and that too very much
in the dark, lighted by very imperfect inform ation, and led by very fallible or untrustworthy guidance, be in perpetual danger of trespassing on the forbidden ground. The prosent demand of Government in Ceylon, rarely extending to more than one-tenth of the gross produce, in- volves no such risk. As much cannot be said for an important part of the plan of the Report. The consequences of over-assessment are disastrous when it in cultivated land thas
fors; but they are not immaterial when tivated land is thereby prevented from being