21989.
2. THE WALAPANE EVICTIONS.
This subject has been reported upon by Mr. Moir, and his Report is separately minuted.
It should be noted that—
1. The real or alleged distress occurred not lately, but four or five years ago, i.e.,
in 1882-1885.
2. It is very difficult either to prove or to disprove death from starvation. Numbers die from specific diseases every year in London who, they had been better fed, would have had stronger constitutions and probably would not have died.
3. It was a case of alleged harshness in collection of arrears of a tax. i.e., it had, as already said, little or nothing to do with the nature of the tax; any tax of any kind might be too high and too rigidly enforced.
4. It occurred in a district in which the 1878 Paddy Ordinance was not in force, but where voluntary commutation of the grain tax had existed for years. The Assistant Agent of the district in his 1887 Report states, "It was, unfortunately, the apparent success of the commutation system in the Central Province that led to the "introduction of the Grain Tax Ordinance."
"L
5. That being so, the special distraint on land provided for by the Ordinance did not apply to this district.
8. Nor on the other hand, did the crop commutation alternative, which the Ordinance allows to the less favoured districts.
7. It was a district on the outskirts of the coffee plantations, it suffered from the clearing caused by such plantations, and subsequently by the failure of the coffee crops; the natives grew coffee themselves, and no doubt found it pay better than paddy; hence they paid their paddy tax out of the coffee and out of their work on the European plantations; and when both these sources of prosperity failed, they were thrown back on paddy land which had been injured in water supply by the clearings on the high land, and where cultivation had apparently not spread owing to the counter
attractions of coffee.
It seems only natural that a district close to the coffee plantations should share in the distress caused by the breakdown of coffee; whether sufficient allowance was made for that distress in collecting the arrears of taxes under the direction of the man who was, of all the leading Ceylon officials, most in sympathy with the Kandys population, must be judged from Mr. Moir's fair and impartial report.
January 1890.
C. P. L
51
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