CO882-(1-2) — Page 1

CE

Easterny

Avī

CONFIDENTIAL

a soula raplenkaan MAA SE

Memorandum on the Land Revenue.

of Ceylon.

A maski

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

TTIC.O. 882

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

1 ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE

BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

NS

UND

E

EVERY one will admit that the present system of land revenue in Ceylon is of the radest and most primitive descripțion ; but it is by no means so certain that the plan pro posed in supergession of it, by the Colonial Secretary of the Local Government, in his recent Report, would be the great improvement he thinks. Its pretensions to merit and superio, rity are not satisfactorily made out. Doubta even arise whether it be practicable or safe.

In the first place it professes to be based on sound principles-good in themselves, inad better than we are accustomed to in the East. But what these principles are, or wherein their novelty or superiority is conceived to Ne, is no- where stated except in a very vague, obscura, and even contradictory manner.

Then, in illustration of the above, or as a new ground of preference, the Report invites us to remark how well its proposition avoids what it takes to be the practical errors of the East India Company's land-tax. But these so-called errors are either not truly stated s8. attaching to the Indian systems, or are not avoided in the new system of the Report, or are not errors at all.

•

The administration of land revenue in India is by no means so uniform as the report sup- poses, there being, besides minor ones, threg principal modes of land taxation, all of very extensive application, called Zemindary or Talookdary, Mousawar, and Ryotwar. The first is the case of largo, estates assessed in the gross; the second, of assessmenta laid on vik

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