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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O. 882

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5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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yielded less, because they were re-cleared at shorter intervals than had been previous y the practice; chenas being cleared in jungle of four or five, instead of 10 or 12 years' growth. All these causes combined to lessen the resources of the people, who were unable to meet the heavy taxes and had even to borrow for their own bare support. Consequently arrears of tax accumulated, and their fields were eventually sold by Government. Much of the land sold is cultivated by strangers introduced by the purchasers. It is the fact that where the fields were unproductive and found no bidders, the movables of the defaulters were seized and sold, cattle and other property. Movables were always sold first, and if they did not suffice the fields were sold. Consequently, some peop'e left the district, some took employment on estates, and many died of want of food; few are left in the villages.

Rikiligaskada, July 16, 1889.

WP. J. F. Soyza says:—I have residled in Hanguranketa during the last 28 years. I know something about Gangapaláta villages-about three or four villages. I know chiefly about Gangapaláta and Diyatilaka.

There is a good deal of distress in both of these kóralés, but it is most severe in Gangapaláta. There was no distress when I first came; the country was then in a flourishing state. Distress has prevailed since 1877 and 1878.

The original cause of the distress was the failure of coffee. As the failure of the coffee crops extended the people became more and more impoverished, from having no other means and no way of borrowing. The people gradually sold or mortgaged all that they had, until now they are left with hardly a rag to wear; and, with the ex- ception of those who find employment on the estates, many being employed by Mr. Soysa, who discharged his Tamil coolies and engaged villagers in their stead, they have no proper food to eat.

The cultivation of some fields has been given up during this period owing to the want of water, and some were abandoned as the people had no means. The fields abandoned from want of water used to be formerly regularly cultivated when there was a better supply of rain and when there were tanks, which have since fallen into disrepair.

Many fields have been sold for the recovery of the tax. The tax fell into arrear because people had no money. The produce of the fields which were cultivated up to the time of the sale by Government used to be consumed immediately it came in, and there was nothing left wherewith to pay the tax. In some cases the cultivator had borrowed seed and food paddy for consumption during the cultivation season, and the creditor took the whole crop in satisfaction of his debt. Thus arrears of tax accumulated. There are fields close by here which yield barely the amount of the seed paddy, yet the assessment was Rs. 133 per pel. Mr. Soysa owns a field, Pallémallows, of two «munams. Before the tank was breached it used to yield ten or twelve fold. The average would be seven or eight-fold. The whole average crop would be 56 bushels. (In commutation register 90 bushels.)

As a result of selling the fields the owners had nothing left, and they suffered great distress; many suffered frou want of food, and many died from that cause. of lands not cultivated, the tax used to be paid by the people scl'ing the cattle, jewels, In the case and all movables which they owned.

24,106.

(No. 456.) MY LORD,

No. 5.

SIR A. GORDON to LORD KNUTSFORD. (Received December 16, 1889.)

Queen's House, Colombo, Ceylon, November 20, 1889.

I WAVE the honour to transmit herewith to your Lordship a printed letter addressed to you by Mr. Whitefoord, a planter in the Nuwara Eliya District.

2 la justice to Mr. Moir I thought it only right to give him an opportunity of making his own observations on the contents of Mr. Whitefoord's letter in order that I might be able to forward then to your Lordship along with the letter itself. I have now the

bonour to do so.

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3. As Mr. Moir, in two places, refers to a correspondence with the Colonial Secretary for his answer to Mr. Whitefoord's charges, I have the honour to enclose a copy of that correspondence also.

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

&c.

MY LORD,

&c.

&c.

Enclosure 1 in No. 5.

I have, &c. (Signed)

A. GORDON.

Maha Uva Estate, Udapussellawa, Ceylon, October 26, 1889.

1. In connexion with the subject of the alleged deaths by starvation in the Nuwara Eliya district, I have the honour to annex a detailed critique on Mr. Moir's report, which I hope your Lordship may deem worthy of consideration.

2. At the commencement of his report (paragraph 2), speaking of his application

to Mr. G. Wall for the grounds of his assertions, Mr. Moir says, "I find that that gentleman was not in possession of any original information on the subject."

3. I emphasise the word " any, and I ask your Lordship to consider whether Mr. Wall's knowledge of the district and my own justify this conclusion. It seems to me that our original information, being that of eye-witnesses, and, in my own case, of long residence, is about the most original information that could possibly be desired.

4. Mr. Moir quotes in the same paragraph the Assistant Government Agent's statements that the fields were "the only source of existence" of the people, and implies that this was not the case.

5. May I ask your Lordship to turn now to paragraphs 48, 49, 50 of the Assistant Government Agent's report and see what he say 6.

"48. The process was somewhat as follows:-

"49. A villager was in arrears of tax for two, three, four, and five, and sometimes even six years. Perhaps his field was cultivated; often enough it was too poor to yield even the yearly tax on it, much less the arrears, and it was left uncultivated. But the mau had a hut and garden, perhaps a buffalo or a chena crop to depend on, and he managed to get along somehow.

50. Suddenly he was called upon to pay up his arrears, and no mercy was shown him; first his movables were seized, his store of food, his cattle, his tools, his bed, his gun, his pots and pans, the materials of, his hut, his fruit trees, or the crop of his field or chena, if they were under cultivation-in fact, anything that the seizing officer could lay bands on. And when this was found insufficient to pay the arrears, his last remaining property-his field-was sold, and he and his family were turned adrift. He wandered about the village, getting food as best he could from his relations and neighbours, or from what he could pick up in the jungle, and now and then working as a cooly for a meal. His relations and neighbours being badly off, and having little enough for themselves, were not able to do much for him, and so, before long, he became so enfeebled and emaciated by want of food and proper shelter and clothing, that fever or diarrhoea, dropsy or consumption, or some kindred disease fastened on him, and his constitution being unable to withstand the attack he soon dropped off."

This, I can state from my own knowledge, is a true account, and does it not follow from it that when the fields were sold they were the only source of existence of the people, and that their subsequent deaths were due to the sale of this last resource, this

last remaining property "as the Assistant Government Agent calls it?

6. Mr. Le Mesurier says (paragraphs 3 and 4 in Mr. Moir's report) that when the coffee gardens failed the arrears began, and when those arrears came to be rigidly enforce they caused a famine. Paragraph 23 shows that the Raté nabatmeya of Uda-Hewaheta warned his superiors in 1882 that the sales would have this effect; the quotations throughout Mr. Moir's and Mr. Le Mesurier's reports show that the, famine did come on, and the concluding part of the report of the same Ratémahatmeys in 1886, quoted in Mr. Le Mesurier's first letter, paragraph 23, "in conclusion I wish to state that the recent famine in Kohaka Korala and adjoining korales was chiefly "due to the wholesale sale of paddy lands for default of paddy tax

" is further evidence

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of this fact.

7. Now I venture to ask your Lordship, who is most likely to have arrived at a correct conclusion-the Assistant Government Agent who has administered the district for the last four years and who knows it intimately, the chief who had ruled

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