Eastern,
No. 50.
Printed for the use of the Colonial Office.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference:
TLC.O. 882
וווווווו
5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
L
The Ceylon Grain Taxes and the Alleged Hardships to Taxpayers in the Nuwara Eliya District.
There are two points to be kept clear :---
1. The general question of the paddy tax.
2. The mode in which the collection of arrears of the tax was enforced in a
certain place at a certain time.
This latter point has nothing to do with the nature of the tax itself, though it has been made an occasion for an attack upon it.
The following memorandum deals separately with these two points :
See also
Against p. 58.)
No. 26, p. b.
1. The grain tax in Ceylon represents immemorial Crown rights. The land of the island, other than Temple lands, was held subject to feudal services. These services (Eastern, were abolished, and a tax of, roughly speaking,* the tenth of the produce was sub- No. 26, p. 18, stituted, which became narrowed to a tax on paddy and dry grain alone this tax was set a duty on imported rice "calculated as an equivalent to the tax on "the home cultivation." Sessional Paper, No. 30, of 1876 gives much correspondence respecting the merits and demerits of this tax dating back from 1831, and from the table given on the last page of that paper it will be seen that by 1876 the tax had been commuted to a considerable extent in the Island; that in some districts com- mutation had been tried and abandoned; and that in one, the then hardly-opened North Central Province, the commutation had been temporarily discontinued pending "improvement of cultivation by irrigation."
Commutation implies: *
i. Payment in money instead of kind.
ii. As a rule, payment of a fixed sum per year for a term of iii. The consequent absence of a middleman or tithe farmer.
years.
Eastern,
Where & district is uncivilised there is not much money, and payment in kind is a Ses pages convenience to the natives, it is also a convenience to them to pay or not according 25-6 of as their crops are good or bad, especially if the water supply is uncertain, hence the No. 26. objection under such circumstances to a fixed tax per year; on the other hand, it is convenient to Government to have a definite sum paid over as tax, and not to be obliged to undertake minute collections in kind, hence comes the tithe farmer. Ordinance was passed to restrain exactions by the farmers; at the same date the No. 26, p. 26.
In 1840 an Government appears to have been prepared to allow total redemption of the tax on the ́ receipt of the aggregate amount of 10 years; while other occasions on which the tax was brought prominently forward are summed up in Sir W. Gregory's despatch of the 9th of January 1877, a despatch written in defence of the tax against Mr. T. B. Potter, Pages 3-5 of who is now again moving in the matter.
On reading this despatch the Executive Council expressed their opinion that
i. The taxes on home-grown and on imported grain must stand or fall together; ii. To give up the revenue derived from them would be "in the last degree
inexpedient and prejudicial; '
"
iii. The only possible substitute would be a land tax, which, as a matter of fact,
would be impracticable;
iv. To obviate the evil of the renting system commutation should be encouraged, and, where the villagers were unwilling to commute, facilities should be offered to them to purchase their own rente.
Every encouragement was given in the Anuradhapura province, in Sir F. Dickson's time, to induce each village of cultivators to rent their own tithes, but, apparently, with not much result.
Eastern,
No. 26.
Page 39 of No. 26. Eastern,
Meanwhile, a Commission was appointed to inquire into the matter, one member of (Eastern, which was Mr. George Wall, the present editor of the Ceylon paper which has taken No. 26, up the matter. Mr. Wall having, at a public meeting held after the appointment of P. 85.) the commission, moved that taxes "on the staple food of the people are impolitic and P. 50.
*
tend seriously to discourage agriculture in Ceylon," at the sittings of the Commission
• The amount varied in different districts, and on some lands the tax was redeemed altogether.
61861. 60.-2/90.
G. 80. B. & 8.
A