PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
EPELTIC.O. 882
سلئسسساس
5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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sales, to get rid of holders of undivided shares, but the number of these is infinitesimal, and they need not be taken into account in this inquiry.
The affection of the Sinhalese for their ancestral holdings is proverbial and universal, and the cultivation of them is their highest and most honourable calling. It will be seen by evidence in the appendix that the inducement to accept excessive assessments was, in some cases, in order to make good their titles. Further, it will be seen that to save the lands from being alienated the owners would sell every other possession, and incur heavy obligations. Hence, when the bad times came, with the failure of their coffee gardens and estate work, the people were soon overwhelmed with debt. When, therefore, they were in their extremity and the Government came in to complete their ruin, very few were able to raise even the small arrears for which their lands were put up for sale. The great mass of the people were absolutely unable to raise as much as a Wherever this was possible, by hook or by crook, the tax was paid. The fact that the people suffered themselves to be evicted from their ancestral holdings for default proves to anyone acquainted with the people that they were in the very last extremity, and yet this was the opportunity seized by a policy which regarded as a cardinal rule of revenue administration in the East, "Never to remit any land revenue." See paras. 44 and 15, page 27. So the agent “insisted on all the arrears being recovered," a threatened famine notwithstanding.
rupee.
The fact that the paddy lands in the district had become infertile is apparent on every page of the appendix. The consensus of testimony on that point is conclusive. The fact is indisputable, but the reasons have not been clearly expressed. They therefore claim a place in this review because they bear upon the policy we are reviewing. Seasons were adverse, but that is a temporary cause to which all agriculture is more or less subject, and they need not be considered in this connexion. The water supply had also fallen off, no doubt, and the deficiency was attributed to the clearings of the high forests on the mountains above, or the coffee plantations of the Europeans. The Governinent had sold these lands, and had realized a net sum, since 1846, of 1,025,6587. sterling, after paying all departmental expenditure. Considerably over a million of acres of virgin forest had been sold for British enterprise, and a great part had been cleared. The effect of those enormous clearings of the high lands upon the rainfall is not easily ascertainable, but it was undoubtedly considerable and diminished to some extent the water supply. This was not the worst, however, for the rain rushed over the cleared lands much more rapidly than it had formerly passed through the dense herbage that clothed the ground, and instead of filtering slowly through the soil into the sources of the streams, entered the stream beds quickly and swelled them into rapid torrents, which speedily subsided and left the streams nearly dry. In short, the water supply became irregular and much less available than before for the cultivation of the fields. There is yet another and very influential cause of infertility, arising from the impoverished character of the water itself. This is due to the fact that the water formerly received nourishing properties from the vast mass of vegetation upon which the rain fell, and through which it percolated slowly, receiving from the decaying mass highly nutritive qualities, which it ceased to possess when the lands were cleared, and when all the mass of roots of the trees and herbage ceased to impart their virtues to it.
It follows that the native cultivators suffered generally by the sale and cultivation of the high forest lands, and as the Government had been greatly enriched thereby it would have been more just to ease the burden of the taxation of the paddy growers than to increase it by a specious system of assessment.
Considering that paddy land in Ceylon rarely ever yields more than is necessary for the food of the people, that in fact it seldom yields enough for that primary purpose, and that the tax upon it, in the case under review, was paid by means of coffee and other resources; seeing, in short, that though called a paddy tax, paddy cannot and does not pay it, the policy of selecting this particular product of the soil, in a purely agricultural country, to bear the whole burden of taxation, is one of the strangest anomalies of our knowledge.
The common allegation in defence of the tax, its antiquity, is no very great recom mendation in our eyes. Many other ancient practices have had to be abolished, and this is a survival that does little credit to our paternal Government. Especially, seeing that the collecting of the tax is in the hands of unpaid headmen, who naturally help them- selves by means of the authority with which they are necessarily invested. This institution of unpaid officers, who are the chief usurers and the only native capitalists of the country, is also an inheritance from the ancients, and is worthy of its twin sister, the paddy tax. The two together worked well under the old regime, because the headmen then kept their places, and held their lives, subject to their obtaining satisfactory results,
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as regards the condition of the people, and the contributions to the royal granary. For this purpose, the people had to be fed in order to do the work, and the irrigation works had to be kept in order, or the fields could not be cultivated. Under the ancient system, therefore, grain culture was a splendid enterprise, as is testified by the stupendous works we have begun to restore. But now that the unpaid headınen retain their authority, without the responsibilities by which it was formerly kept in check, the people have gone to poverty, the lands have become infertile, and the irrigation works are in ruins.
Having now described the policy of the Government in regard to the paddy tax and its administration, we must take a glance at the results of the policy as shown by the evidence in the case under review, and its application to the country generally.
One effect of the sales of land for non-payment of tax has been to throw out of cultivation a very considerable proportion of the lands sold. In the village of Manikola, mentioned, para. 2 of letter 460 (page 22), the extent cultivated in 1882 was 170, and was reduced to 95 amunas in 1886, and of 106 people 20 had disappeared. As regards these lands, therefore, the policy has killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Whether it was worth while to recover R. 170 per acre (the average amount realized by the sales) as a capitalization of all future taxes from the evicted owners, we leave our readers to decide.
These, however, are not the only lands which have been thrown out of cultivation by the recent policy of the Government. The evidence before us shows that many people are afraid to cultivate their lands for fear of their being sold, and a great many more lands are kept out of cultivation because they could not pay the increased assessments. In a recent controversy it was contended that the revenue having decreased in a certain district. was a proof that the assessments had been reduced, whereupon a large landowner of the district showed that the reduction of the revenue was owing to the fact that the assessments had been increased by about 50 per cent., and that his lands, and those of others, had thus been thrown out of cultivation. The increased assessment had defeated its object, and reduced the revenue. In one way or another, however, the area of land under paddy cultivation in the island has actually declined from 605,757 acres in 1883 to 562,016 acres in 1887, a falling off of 43,741 acres in five years. And the grain tax revenue, despite the increased assessments, had declined from Rs. 1,089,574 in 1883 to Rs. 947,828 in 1897, the latest returns our Government has furnished. These are speaking facts which no official gloss can conceal, and they are only parts of the ill results of a policy that cries aloud to be reformed off the face of the country it has blighted. Another effect of the policy in review was to convert a large number of peaceable inhabitants into destitutes, vagabonds, and criminals, and to devote many to starvation and death. We have the testimony of the Salvationists who watch the prison gate in Colombo, in order to help the discharged prisoners, and if possible to reclaim them, that a very large proportion of them are villagers who have lost their lands. return of the prisoners throughout the island a few months ago showed that a vast proportion of them were of the agricultural, usually the least criminal, class. The demoralising effect of persecuting and ruining people because they were really unable to pay the tax is self-evident, and the fact of the inability of those we are considering is abundantly proved by the evidence contained in numerous passages of the appendix.
With reference to the vexed question of the number of deaths referable to the policy, we have already alluded to the fact that, in the absence of any particular disease or epidemic, the population had actually decreased in the district in question by 18 per cent. in eight years, instead of increasing by 10 per cent. as in the previous decade of normal mortality. This seems conclusive, but the Honourable Mr. Moir professes not to think so, and drags into his report statistics that have no relation to the matter at issue. So we give the following from the official vital statistics of the Nuwara Eliya district for the years-
-
Number of deatha
1869.
1883.
1884.
1985.
1884.
1,281
1,188
2,197
2,076
1,963
A
The two first-mentioned represent about the normal mortality, and are the years in which sales commenced. The persecution culminated in 1895, when there were no more buyers. Hence, assuming 1,234 (the average of the two years 1882 and 1883) as the normal rate of mortality, the deaths in 1884, 1885, and 1886 were 963, 842, and 652, respectively, making a grand total of 2,457, over and above the ordinary death-rate. Now, these figures are official, and they are free from any complication due to removals I 3