PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
रायग
Reference :-
C.O. 882
5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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bis division for more than 15 years, I, who have lived in it for the last 11 years, and Mr. George Wall, who has constantly visited it for several years (Mr. Wall and I having no interest in condemning the Government, and the Assistant Government Agent and Ratémahatmeys having exactly the opposite tendency) or Mr. Moir, whose interest it is to defend the Government, who is a warm supporter of the paddy tax, who had never been in the place before, knows very little of the Sinhalese people, having served most of his time in Tamil districts, and whose conclusions have been formed after a short inquiry, lasting only a minute or two, into the circumstances of each field sold and the perusal of a mass of official documents?
8. Mr. Moir quotes (paragraph 13) from another report of this Ratémahatmeya as follows: "and almost all the villagers are reduced to poverty by the annual sales of "their crops for default of taxes and owing to the failure of coffee during the last seven years;" this was in 1883. There were seven years of failure, therefore, before the famine began. The sales began in 1882, and, as Mr. Le Mesurier says in his last letter, the distress of the people began and was coincident with the sales of their property for tax, the poverty was caused by the failure of their coffee, but their extreme distress, famine, and deaths by the sales for default.
9. I would ask your Lordship to compare, too, paragraph 23 in which Mr. Moir says that because the Ratémahatmeya warned the authorities that famine would result from the sales "distraint proceedings were stopped." Here Mr. Moir practically admits that the sales, if proceeded with, would have caused a famine. Now, distraint proceedings were NOT stopped, for we find by Mr. Le Mesurier's letter, paragraph 46, that on the 6th January 1883, i.e., only seven weeks later, the chena crops were sold. Therefore, since warning was given that if the sales were proceeded with a famine would ensue, the fact that these were proceeded with was clearly the cause of the famine that did ensue. Let Mr. Mor find a way out of this if he can. Does he really believe, in the face of all the documents that have been quoted, that the revenue officers had "no reason to believe the "people were unable to pay their taxes" (paragraph 23)? Surely this was a slip of the pen; and would he be surprised to learn that on one occasion Mr. Baumgartner had to seek refuge in my house from a mob of villagers, infuriated at his selling them up for default in payment of paddy tax?
10. It seems very strange to me that Mr. Moir should exclude from the fields sold those that were bought in by the Crown, because they were afterwards restored, as if the deprivation of their fields for some years had no effect on the people. It seems very strange, too, that throughout Mr. Moir's report he has ruade no reference to the cruel manner in which the people were deprived of everything movable, in the shape of food, crops, tools, furniture, cattle, &c. which they had, and were reduced to utter beggary This was, perhaps, because to do so would show how the sales for default affected those whose lands were uncultivated at the time of sale, and whose deaths he wished to exclude from his totals. How could a man cultivate his field when everything he had wherewith to cultivate it had been taken away from him? The wonder to me is that so many managed to go oa cultivating at the time, and not that so many fields were abandoned.
BEFORE the sales of their fields.
11. Mr. Moir thinks (note to paragraph 14) that "the loss of cattle bad more to do with the lands being thrown out of cultivation than the excessive taxation." I ask bim what caused the loss of cattle, and would he be surprised to learn that many of these lands in Walapane are now being cultivated since the tax on them has been reduced to less than half.
12. I do not care to follow Mr. Moir in his laboured criticisms on the death lists furnished to him. Suffice it to say that as he excludes the deaths of children whose parents were suffering from want, of those whose lands were uncultivated at the time of Bale, of many who were actually said to have died for want of food, his conclusions not only show a spirit of special pleading, but a want of fairness which was hardly expected from him. I won ask him one qucation. Did Mr. Le Mesurier's lists include deaths from suicide, deaths from acci lents, in gaol, murder, and such like? I have Mr. Le Mesurier's authority for saying they did not.
13. They are included in the total of 1,124 of deaths after the sales, but not in the total of the fields. Mr. Moir's 981, of deaths from want of food after the sales of the fields. Mr. Mor's criticisin of these lists, therefore, is either intended to cast undeserved ridicule upon them, by implying that they attribute to the sales of fields deaths which could not be so attributed, which is incorrect, or it has no value whatever, as it is beside the point.
14. I will add one other observation in this respect. During the time I was present at Mr. Moir's inquiry the history of the family was never gone into; it was merely an
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inquiry of a minute or two in the case of each field, as to whether the field was or was not cultivated now, and who was now in possession of it. His totals after a “careful scrutiny" (paragraph 16) would therefore appear to be derived merely from an office examination of the lists furnished to him, and not as the result of personal inquiry in each or indeed in any case.
15. Mr. Moir's special pleading is particularly apparent in his criticism of the use of the word "evictions" (paragraph 6), as if selling up the people's houses where they were saleable and ejecting them from their fields afterwards required hair splitting.
16. The same spirit is also apparent in the "instances" adduced (paragraph 16), for as, I remarked before, he makes no mention of the previous sales of all movables before the sale of the lands, and I imagine the smaller the extent of the field owned the greater must have been the hardship of selling up the other property of the family. This spirit, too, characterises his treatment of the case of the old woman who died at Maturata, at his feet, as it were. Let Mr. Moir answer this question, If she and the other persons he mentioned bad not had their movable and immovable property sold, and had remained in the village in possession of it, would they have died of starvation? 1 think not, and that
is the question at issue. But Mr. Moir, we must remember, was inquiring into the truth or otherwise of the deaths from starvation of the exact number of 1,048 persons, and whether or not this was due to one particular cause, namely, the sales of their fields, and no lawyer should go beyond his brief. "I deem it quite impossible," he says, “to "ascertain with precision in how many instances death can be rightly attributed to the sales of a land" (paragraph 16), and yet later on, he " cannot doubt that deaths were due rather to the general poverty of the people than to the sales of their fields." Where it suits his argument he "cannot doubt;" when it destroys it his hesitation begins.
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17. How unfair is his comparison of the registered death-rates of the two districts of Kandy and Nuwara Eliya. He includes estates, towns, and bazaars, and then concludes that there was no exceptional mortality in the villages. A village or two may almost have ceased to exist, as in the case of Arukwatta in Walapane, and yet the deaths per mille over the whole district might be very small, and even where he is bound to adinit an increase, and a very abnorinal one, in registered deaths, i.e., between 1,281 in 1882, and 2,076 (over 60 per cent. increase) in 1885 it is "probably due to more attention having been given "to registration business," i.e., anything but the true cause. I do not remember that any unusual attention was paid to "registration business" in 1884 and 1885, at least I was not troubled much that way then on this estate.
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I have already commented in the public press on the very unfair treatment Mr. Moir has accorded me in his report, and so, far as this matter is concerned I will content myself here by annexing a copy of my last letter on the subject to the " Ceylon Observer."
18. Of Mr. Le Mesurier's method of recovering the arrears of tax by instalments, I will only remark that it was a kind and thoughtful scheme, the people gladly accepted it, and though it may have given the Government a great deal of clerical work, it did not harm the villagers, and with all due respect to Mr. Moir, it was the interest of the people that should have been considered in this matter, and not the amount of hard work it involved in the Kachcheri,
19. Mr. Moir says "I doubt if any arrears were wiped off by Mr. Le Mesurier's method." How does this correspond with Mr. Le Mesurier's statement in his administration report of 1881 that Rs. 2,155 were recovered by its means in the last six months of the year.
20. Mr. Moir says it was
quite right" of Sir John Dickson to revert to the method
of sales for arears. Surely Mr. Moir's conscience must have beco.ne deadened in his desire to shield a fellow civilian! Is it "quite right" to break a promise ? After Government had allowed their debtors to compound their debts, was it "quite right," was it even legal, for Government to cancel the agreement without their consent, and, taking advantage of their helplessness, to ruin them because they could not pay their debts ? Is this English justice? If the method of recovery by degrees was long, costly, and difficult, why were not the arrears wiped off altogether, particularly as the tax was excessive, and the people had lost the incans of paying it?
21. Mr. Moir's argument at the close of paragraph 20 is puerile, because the wealthy people who had bought the fields sold the previous year for arrears of tax were able to pay the current year's tax, therefore the defaulters of the previous year deliberately allowed all their movables and then their lauds to be sold when they were really able to pay the tax-to spite the Government, I presume.
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