CO882-(4-5)

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O. 882

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

threshing floor. It is in many cases a conmutation made in the interests of the people for the personal service due from their lands. In all cases it represents the rent due to the Crown as the supreme landlord, and, according to Oriental custom, in fact the actual owner of the soil, which is held by hereditary cultivators.

2. This right to a tenth extends to all cultivation, but, since the British occupation of Ceylon, it has in practice been collected only on grain cultivation, and the people have been left in full enjoyment of their coco-nut and other fruit trees, and in con- sequence no rent or tax is paid on coffee or tea or other like cultivation carried on by Europeans with European capital.

3. Originally the right to collect the tenths on grain was sold to persons called renters, who exercised the powers of the Crown to collect the tenths on the threshing floor; in practice the renter generally settled with the cultivator for a money payment; if the renter was too grasping, or the cultivator too anxious to pay too little, disputes invariably arose, and it became a case of "diamond cut diamond," it being by no means certain that the renter would in the end be the chief gainer.

4. Gradually this system was superseded by a system of commutation, by which the cultivator (or so-called owner) of the field became liable to a fixed annual payment in money. The commutation

was originally voluntary, latterly it has been made compulsory, in deference to those who, with imperfect knowledge of the subject and of the feelings and necessities of the nativee, have pressed for the abolition of what, with much exaggeration, they term the iniquities of the renting system. No tax has yet been devised which does not involve soine hardship; but undoubtedly there are a large number of poor cultivators who prefer the renting system, under which full payment is made when there is a crop, to a fixed annual payment, crop or no crop, even if that payment is based on a low average and on a low valuation of the crops. The system of commutation suits the rich; it is unsuitable to the poor and to out-of-the- way and isolated districts where money is scarce, and I succeeded, during the whole time I was in Ceylon, in saving a whole province (the North-Central) from the Commutation system. I have before had occasion to point out that the rigidity of English law and our stern unbending methods-perfectly just in themselves, but incapable of adjustment to the varying conditions of a rural Oriental population- frequently inflict great hardship and misery on our Eastern fellow-subjects.

5. However true this may be, it affords no excuse for the exaggerations and mis- statements with which the papers circulated by the Cobden Club abound. The commutation system was offered to and accepted by the people of Walapane* (the sub-district of Nuwara Eliya now in question); they inhabit a poor mountain district, where the crops are uncertain and irregular; they have not yet recovered from the misfortunes of their origin, for they are the descendants of the convict settlements of the Kandyan kings; they are not industrious; and they have always been difficult to manage. It is hard to conceive conditions under which a commutation system would he more unsuitable, but the people managed to pay when they came in for a share of the prosperity arising from coffee cultivation; when coffee failed, they were among the first to suffer; and when, by allowing their dues to the Crown to fall into arrears, the opportunity was lost of compelling them to take to honest and steady labour to support themselves and pay their dues, the arrears became heavy and impossible to collect without greatly intensifying the hardship which unavoidably results from the adoption of the commutation system in a district unsuited to it. The arrears had, in many cases, been allowed to accumulate for six years.t

6. It was in this state of affairs that I was placed in charge of the Central Province. It was my duty to collect these arrears and to restore the authority of Government, to which at least passive resistance was shown by the non-payment of the Crown dues. In the fulfilment of that duty, I had to order, in due course of law, the sale of certain fields in default; and it is attempted to be shown that the result was the death of the owners by starvation. The necessity for the sale was, in some cases, brought about by the ill-judged combination of the cultivators not to pay at all, encouraged thereto by the neglect to regularly enforce payment year by year; in other cases it was the result, when the arrears had been allowed to accumulate, of the distress consequent on the failure of coffee, combined with continual neglect to cultivate the fields; and this neglect arose in some cases from idleness, in others from the water supply being reduced by the

• The present compulsory law was not introduced into the Central Province before 1886.

† On representations made by me, on behalf of the people, instructions have been issued by the Ceylon Government to ensure the punctual collection of all revenue within the year for which it is due, so that the accumulation of arrears should never be allowed to occur again. The revenue is now punctually collected,

felling of forest for coffee and tea, so that the fields were valueless and merely cumbered the rent-roll.

7. It need not be said that the duty of recovering these arrears was most unpleasant, but it had to be done; and it was done with all care and consideration for the people. I went about myself into the villages, and made myself accessible to the people every- where, and wherever I found any real distress, I at once took care to relieve it, and the Government, on my initiative, spent "considerable sums in distributing rice and giving work to the destitute."* From the extreme smallness of the parcels of land sold, and from the condition into which it had been allowed to fall by the neglect of cultivation, I do not believe that a single death can be attributed to these sales; it is strange that this report should be started after seven years, and it is not perhaps without significance that when the authors of the report were called upon to justify it, the lists said to contain the particulars were "not forthcoming," though they had been drawn up "with great care after months of patient and laborious inquiry; they have somehow disappeared!' (See paras. 5 and 6 of letter from A. G. A., Nuwara Eliya, above quoted.)

8. Let the saddle be put upon the right horse; for the distress consequent on the recovery of these arrears, those who allowed the arrears to accumulate, not those who carried out the law for their recovery, are responsible. For the way in which the law was carried out, the responsibility rests with me, and I fully accept it. spared no pains, and no fatigue, and no inconvenience to make myself freely accessible to the people and to see that all possible consideration was shown to them in their distress. I was in daily communication with the humane and able officer in immediate charge of the district, and so long as I was in Ceylon I took care, by distributing rice and giving work, to relieve every case approaching destitution. I do not believe that a single death is the result of the sales to which certain deaths are attributed.

9. Some importance is attached in the papers circulated by the Cobden Club to a plan which was tried of keeping a cultivation account with each field, with a view to gradually wiping off the arrears. Suffice it to say of this that it was illegal and impracticable, and involved intolerable interference with the freedom of the cultivators. Is it unfair to suggest that it is spoken of with approval simply because of its futility and because in a year or two it would have rendered it impossible for the Crown to collect the arrears at all?

10. A few brief remarks on the land revenue system of Ceylon may not here be out of place. It was the subject a few years ago of a very exhaustive inquiry by a Commission, of which the present editor of the " Ceylon Independent" was a member. That inquiry showed the history of the land rents now surviving in the form called by the Cobden Club papers the "paddy tax," and the figures collected showed that if the paddy taxes were remitted the taxes on imported grain must go too. Taken as a whole, the paddy taxes were not found to press heavily on the natives, while the taxes on imported grain fell in great measure on the European planter, and were, in fact, his only contribution to the revenue. Moreover, if the taxes on grain were abolished, the remaining customs duties would not be worth the costly establishments required, and however desirable it might be to make Ceylon a free port, the revenue could not be sacrificed without substituting some other taxes in place of those on grain-home

grow and foreign. The question of a land tax on the Indian method was fully considered; it would place the European capitalist and the Native cultivator on perfect equality, for it would be levied on all land in private hands and not only on one kind of cultivation, and that the food of the people. It was, however, the opinion of the Commission that, however great might be the improvement theoretically in practice, it would be better to leave things as they were, and let the people go on paying what they were accustomed to, rather than introduce a fresh system or fresh taxes. In the draft of that report there was an interesting statement comparing the taxation in Madras and in Ceylon; it was altogether favourable to the Ceylon cultivator, it showed that his, taxes were small as compared with his neighbour in Madras, but the figures were, unfortunately, not published; they were omitted at the instance of those who were opposed to all taxes on grain,

J F. DICKSON,

Singapore, 15th February 1890.

late Government Agent,

Central Province of Ceylon.

** Letter from A. G. A., Nuwara Elfys, 17th June 1889, para. 21, p. 12 of Sessional Papers, Ceylon, XXIX.

of 1889.

1 62068.

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