CO882-(1-2) — Page 9

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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mwimmilm TLC.O. 882

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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whatever weight of taxation may fall on cin- namon (and coffee the same) in the shape of export duty, the cinnamon grower ought to get credit for in the calculation of his land-tax. If the duty is reduced before the land-tax is intro- duced, the reduction of duty ought not to be greater than what is stated above. Otherwise, if the land-tax is after all to be introduced, there will be two changes in the burdens on cinnamon cultivation instead of one, to the double derangement of trade.

Coffee is on nearly the same footing as cin- namon, except that as no one proposes to reduce its export duty (which we may safely assume is at a minimum) till a land-tax is ready, the question here is, whether that export duty should remain on its present footing till the land-tax is ready, or whether the export duty should be at once compared with and raised to the standard of the rent-charge above described and afterwards commuted wholly or in part for a land-tax, according to the reso- lution that may be taken by Government for the reduction or abolition of export duties.

3. Next, as to waste lands claimed or occu- pied in proprietorship by individuals, but not actually cultivated.

These are at present exempt from taxation both in the Kandyan and maritime provinces. To bring them under it, would seem called for by the magnitude of the evil pointed out both by the Report and the Colombo Committee of 1842, of there being quantities of unre- gistered waste lands of doubtful ownership, an evil which such a measure seems well calcu- lated to remedy. This tax would affect the Europeans more than the natives; indeed, the latter very little indeed, if it is true that the right of the crown to dispose of all uncultivated land is generally admitted in Ceylon; and we know that this right where sold or granted away has been so to Europeans almost exclu- sively. Neither, therefore, the law or conven- tion of 1818, exempting all land from tax in the

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Kandyan provinces, other than paddy-land;

nor the usage regarding waste land in both Kandyan and maritime provinces, can be held to be a bar to the measure proposed. On the other hand, the terms of sale by which Govern- ment lands have been conveyed to European planters, would not seem to preclude it, if moderately enforced. But this is a question which should be thoroughly discussed with the parties interested. In order to obviate all risk of encroaching on native rights, a broad mar- gin of waste, though always well defined, might be conceded at a nominal tax, to every culti- vated estate or settled village. The rights of common and pasturage might also remain on their present footing, provided no claim to large timber and proprietary right in the land was involved in them.

The Report proposes its minimum tax on waste land at 1s. per acre. This is manifestly too high for even the best waste land in the colony, and Government can have no right or intention of confiscating the worst. The high- est market value of waste lands during the past year would seem, from the returns, to be about 50s. an acre, while sales have taken place as low as 5s. shillings. (Vide Petition of the Cey- Ion Planters, September 1846.) If the ordinary interest of money in Ceylon be taken at 10 per cent. (it could not be taken to be higher), the tax proposed by the report would raise the price of the one sort of land from 50s. to 60%., and of the other from Bs. to 15s. How could land be saleable at prices so enhanced?

The fair rule to apply have, as in all other cases of land assessment, is that of a rent- charge as laid down for cinnamon and coffice. A rule founded on considerations of produce of course fails in the case of waste land, but a rent- charge is at once and easily applicable. The yearly sales by Government are a fair standard of market value. The interest of money being taken ́at 10 per cent, and the land being strictly wasto and unimproved by capital, 10 per cent, on that value may be taken to repre