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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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To Te Ti

Reference :-

C.O. 882

5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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"Others have made a living by collecting and selling firewood, and similar work. "The Ratémahatmaya states that some people are in danger of starvation."

20. I could multiply these extracts if necessary, but the above are, I think, sufficient for the present.

21. To meet this distress Government was forced to spend considerable sums in distributing rice and giving work to the destitute, but all the time the policy was being pursued of selling up fields for default of payment of tax; and the Government Agent, Mr. J. F. Dickson, was continually urging the Assistant Government Agent to close his arrears, and reprimanding him for his delay in doing so.

**

22. Letter from Mr. A. L. Cross, dated 19th November 1886:-

MY DEAR LE MESURIER,

"I QUITE forgot to mention to you yesterday a thing which happened when I was riding through the piece of chena below the Elamulla eetate on Monday. I came on two Sinhalese girls gathering a jungle fruit, the only food they said they had to eat. I never saw such fearfully emaciated creatures. They said they belonged to the village of Matombuwa on the opposite side of the river froin where we were, I gave them a small santosam each. I was afraid if I had given them a rupee some of the villagers would bone it. They said they had neither father or mother. Jackson, who was with ne, can confirm what I say as to their appearance. They seemed in the last stage of starvation.

"I asked them to come up to Gallélié and we would give them more then, but they did not seem to understand what we wanted. They might be from 10 to 12 years of age. It is a pity if the young villagers are starving at Maturata, for there is plenty of work on the tea estates. I could bave got these girls attached to the gang of coolies and given the kangani head money just to look after them. They would in a short time, no doubt, make good tea planters.

"I have no doubt you will easily, in your official capacity, be able to find out all about these children. I never saw anything more horrible. There was no disease in them, shrunken appearance being evidently the result of long-continued starvation."

23. Finally, I annex copy of a report from the late Ratémahatmayá of Uda Héwáheta in answer to a letter of mine asking him the following questions:-

(1.) Have the sales from 1882 to 1885 of paddy lands had the effect of decreasing the population or not?

(2.) Have they had the effect of decreasing the area under paddy cultivation

or, not ?

(3.) As a general rule, what has become of the late owners and their families ? (4.) Give reasons and illustrations,

24. I have purposely avoided reference to my own diaries and reports on the subject, for obvious reasons.

25. In conclusion, I beg to point out that the number of fields sold is not 1097, as given in the annexure of your letter under reference, but close upon 3,000.

(No. 480.) SIB,

I ain, &c.

C. J. R. LE Mesurier,

Assistant Government Agent.

Maturata, October 25, 1886.

WITH reference to your letter, No. 428/160 of the 8th instant, I have the honour to furnish my replies to the queries.

1. The population has greatly decreased. The villages that were once thickly populated are now almost abandoned, as most of the people who have lost their fields are now either in a state of utter destitution, or have gone out of the district altogether in search of some means of employment, In Manakola alone, in 1882 there were 106 people, and now 86.

2. The cultivation of paddy has been seriously affected by the sales; that whereas, for instance, in 1882 the extent cultivated in Manakola was 170 amunas, it is now 95 amunas, because the purchasers, not being resident villagers, are not very desirous of cultivating the lands purchased by them, and hence an average extent of about 75 amunas is left wholly uncultivated or partly abandoned.

3. It is a matter of very great sorrow to me to have to state that the once happy and contented villagers of the district are now reduced to utter destitution and want,

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and have been forced, as it were, to run away from the land of their nativity simply for the purpose of gaining their livelihood, either by labour or begging, in other districts. As a general rule, the villagers have partly gone away in search of employment, and partly are loitering about the district, subject to the severest hardships of life. In conclusion, I wish to state that the recent famine in Kohoke and adjoining kóralés, when Government had to spend a large sum of money for relief, was chiefly due to the wholesale sale of paddy lands for default of paddy tax.

The ASSISTANT GOVERNMENT AGENT, Nuwara Eliya, to the Hon. the GOVERNMENT AGENT, Kandy. (No. 779.)

SIB,

Nuwara Eliya Kachchéri, July 22, 1889. Wrrн reference to your letter, No. 569 of 12th June last, and to the inquiry now being held by you into the cause of certain deaths in this district, I have the honour to submit the following report:-

2. I understand, from the terms of your letter, that I am called upon to substantiate the following remarks made by me at a meeting of the Bódi-ela Association in March

During the

years 1882 to 1885 large numbers of Kandyan villagers in the Nuwara Eliya District were ejected from their ancestral holdings by the sale of their paddy fields for default in the payment of paddy tax, to lead a vagabond life and eke out a miserable existence by pilfering the villages, to migrate to towns, and swell the criminal population of the country; or, as was often the case, to die of sheer starvation in the jungle."

3. To the best of my ability I will now proceed to [prove?] this.

last :-

+6

4. I have obtained lists of 981 persons who have died of want and destitution, and the diseases consequent thereon, in this district after the sale of their lands for default in the payment of their grain tax; and I annex these lists, with a resumé of them, to this letter; but in order to explain thoroughly the exact position of affairs-(1) why the arrears of tax accumulated; (2) what measures were taken to recover them; and (3) what the effects of these measures were at the risk of being tedious I ask your permission to review the whole question generally.

How the Arrears accumulated.

5. You are doubtless aware, Sir, that the commutation system has been in force in this district for the last 50 years. The rate fixed at first was a very light one, equal to from 35 to 40 cents per bushel, in order to induce the people to accept it. It was increased in 1856 to the equivalent of 664 cents; and iu 1864, in Uda Héwaheta and Kotmalé, to the equivalent of Re. 1.33, and in Walapane to the equivalent of Re. 1 per busbel, although the value of paddy had not risen proportionately in the ineantime; the reason why the people agreed to this increase being, not that the value of paddy had increased, but that having, from their coffee gardens, the command of money, they were willing to pay more to avoid the exactions of a renter.

6. This rate continued unaltered by the subsequent agreements of 1871 and 1877 until the end of 1887, when a revision took place; one district, that of Uda Héwaheta, being brought under the new Grain Tax Ordinance of 1878, and the rate being reduced from Re. 1.33 to Re. 1.08 per bushel, and in the others, i.e., Kotmalé and Walapane, a new commutation agreement being entered into, by which in Kotmalé the rate was reduced from Re. 1.33 to Re. 1, and in Walapane from Re. 1 to 64 cents.

7. It is an admitted fact that the commutation revision of 1877 was a very hasty and imperfect one.

8. The Ratémabatmaya of Walapane at once pointed out that the assessment in many cases was too high, as the crops oftener failed than succeeded; but the Assistant Government Agent was instructed to adhere to the old assessment, which, indeed, was very slightly departed from.-R. M. to A. G. A., March 13, 1877.

9. "The people were then well-to-do," says my predecessor, Mr. Baumgartner, "and "could afford to pay a perhaps unfair tax on their fields out of the profits of their coffee "and other enterprises; but with the failure of the coffee crops and general depression they lost the means of paying tax on unprofitable fields.”—Â. G. A. to G. A., 503 of June 6, 1885.

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