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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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TELEC.O. 882

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ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

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5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

21,989.

(No. 406.)

MY LORD,

No. 4.

SIR A. H. GORDON to LORD KNUTSFORD.

(Received November 11, 1889.)

Queen's House, Colombo, Ceylon,

October 22, 1889.

I HAVE the honour to enclose six copies of the report of an inquiry made by Mr. R. W. D. Moir, Government Agent of the Central Province, into the mortality alleged to have taken place between 1882 and 1887, in the district of Walapane, ia consequence of sales between 1882 and 1885 of paddy land, in default of payment of the grain tax due on them by their proprietors to the Government.

2. These allegations, originally made by Mr. George Wall, in the "Ceylon Mail," were reproduced, with heightened colour, by Mr. C. Salmon, in the " Manchester Guardian," and repeated with increased exaggeration, by Sir E. Watkin, in the House of Commons, and have already attracted your Lordship's attention. Your Lordship's directions to institute a careful inquiry into the circumstances referred to had, however, been already anticipated by me, and I had entrusted that duty to Mr. Moir.

3. Mr. Moir is an officer of sound and calm judgment. He possesses great knowledge and experience of revenue questions; the tone of his mind is peculiarly impartial and dispassionate, and his conclusions may be regarded as those of a sober and sagacious judge.

4. Mr. Moir finds that of the 1,125 deaths returned as those of persons more or less interested in the lands sold for default of taxes between 1882 and 1885 (a return which includes the deaths not only of those who were part proprietors of the lands, but their descendants to the third and fourth generation), 552 cannot possibly be attributed to the cause alleged, as they either took place before the sales of the land in which the deceased was interested or were due to accident, suicide, or other causes unconnected with the incidence of the grain tax.

5. Of the remaining 573 deaths, Mr. Moir is of opinion that the great majority must be referred to causes other than the sale of land in which they were interested. He points out that in the absence of evidence, it is unreasonable to suppose that because a inan who has lost some laud seven or eight years ago is now dead, his death must be attributed to this cause; that there was no abnormal mortality in the district during the period in question; that on the contrary, its death-rate per thousand was less than that of the adjoining district; and that the interest possessed was, in many cases, 80 small that it alone could not suffice to support its proprietor, by whom the land was often wholly neglected, and who must have depended mainly, it rot exclusively, on other sources for his livelihood.

6. At the same time, Mr. Moir considers that some few of the deaths in question may have been directly due to the loss of the lands forfeited, and that, in a larger number of cases, the sale of land may have so increased the already existing want and misery of its owners as to have seriously augmented their difficulties in procuring the means of living. But he is decidedly of opinion that the want and wretchedness which existed, and exist, in Walapane are not due to the sales, but that, on the contrary, they existed before those sales took place, and were not their rebult but their cause.

7. The impoverishment of the people, which led to the accumulation of arrears and consequent sales may be traced, Mr. Moir thinks, to three main causes.

8. Of these, the chief is the failure of the coffee crop, on the sale of the produce of which, raised in their own gardens, many of the villagers of Walapane had largely depended, while the closing, from the same cause, of the larger European estates, or restriction of operations on them, deprived hundreds of the remunerative employment they had been accustomed to find there.

9. Another cause was the fact that the rate of grain tax to which the lands were liable was, and long had been, too highly assessed, and though easily paid when the villager had more than one source of earning money, it became onerous when it had to be defrayed from the produce of the paddy land alone, while, when allowed for several Fuccessive years to fall into arrear, it became an obligation which it was impossible to discharge.

10. A third cause may be found in the reckless destruction of the forests of the district by the opening of coffee estates. The supply of water the fields received was thereby materially diminished, and their fertility seriously impaired in consequence.

11. In Mr. Moir's conclusions I generally concur. I am inclined, however, to take a less indulgent view than he does of the rigour with which the payment of arrears was enforced in 1882, 1883, and 1884. The proceedings then taken were, I think, harsh in the extreme, although I am confident Sir John Dickson was far from intending to inflict the degree of suffering actually experienced by the people in regard to whom his theories as to Oriental taxation were inexorably applied.

12. It is important to remember that this rigour as regards arrears is now a thing of the past, and that for the last five years the utmost reluctance has been shown to sell land for default of taxes. It is, and manifestly always will be, sometimes necessary to do so, but resort is now never had to that extreme measure when it is possible justly to avoid it.

13. I am having a return prepared of the lands sold in the district in question, not by the order of Government for non-payment of tax, but by creditors for the non- satisfaction of private debts, and I expect that the comparison will be, in some respects, curious.

14. The far more important and extensive subject of the operation of the grain tax throughout the island is now engaging the attention of a strong and able select com- mittee of the Legislative Council When that committee has reported, it will be my duty to address your Lordship at much greater length on the difficult and intricate questions with the consideration of which that committee is now occupied. I have, &c.

The Right Hon. Lord Knutsford, G.C.M.G.,

SIB,

&C.

&c.

&c.

Enclosure in No. 4.

(Signed) A. GORDON.

ALLEGED Deaths from STARVATION in the NUWABA ELiya District.

The Hon. R. W. D. MOI, Government Agent for the Central Province, to the Hon. the COLONIAL SECRETARY,

(No. 993.)

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Kandy Kachchéri, September 25, 1889.

REFERRING to your letter of the 10th June last, No. 548, calling my attention to a letter addressed to the Manchester Guardian," signed by Mr. C. S. Salmon, which had been shortly before copied into the local newspapers, and instructing me to make a full investigation and report respecting the grounds for the assertions therein made, I have now the honour to report as follows.

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2. On the alleged authority of the " Ceylon Mail," Mr. Salmon asserts that 1,048 villagers, evicted by Government for non-payment of grain tax, died of starvation almost within sight of" Nuwara Eliya. On appealing to the editor of the "

Ceylon Mail

for information as to how these exact figures were arrived at, with the view of ascertaining precisely who the persons were who died of starvation, and their places of residence, I found that that gentleman was not in possession of any original information on the subject, but he referred me to passages in the Administra. tion Report of the Assistant Government Agent of Nuwara Eliya for 1887, wherein it was stated that "between 1882 and 1885, 2,889 paddy fields were sold for default of payment of the paddy tax," and "that in the case of the fields so sold 1,048 of the "late owners had died"; also to the opening paragraph of an appeal on behalf of the. Bodi-ela scheme, the prime mover of which is the Assistant Agent who wrote the Administration Report above quoted from, which sets forth that "during the

years from 1882 to 1885 large numbers of Kandyan villagera in the Nuwara Eliya- "district were ejected from their ancestral holdings by the sale of their paddy landa. "for default in the payment of the paddy tax, to lead a vagabond life, eke out "miserable existence by pilfering in the villages, to migrate to towng, and awell the criminal population of the country, or, as was often the case, to die of sheer starvation in the jungle." And as, at a meeting held in the Nuwara Eliya Kachchéri on the 12th March last, when the Bodi-ela scheme was advocated, the Assistant Agent is reported to have stated that the paddy landa of which the villagers were dispossessed – were their only source of existence," it was perhaps not unreasonable for the echané of the "Ceylon Mail" to conclude that the 1,048 deaths specified by the Assistant Agent in his Administration Report were to be attributed solely to the sale of the fields for the recovery of arrears of grain tax.

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