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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference

TILLC.O. 882

سائل...

5

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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

19,568.

102

No. 19.

SIR A. E. HAVELOCK to LORD KNUTSFORD.

(Received October 6, 1890.)

Queen's House, Colombo, Ceylon, September 10, 1890.

No. 345.

MY LORD,

WITH reference to my despatch, No. 259, of the 26th July last," I have the honour to forward a further letter addressed to your Lordship by Mr. C. J. B. Le Mesurier on the subject of the charge against him of having permitted arrears in the collection of

I have, &c. (Signed)

taxes.

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

MY LORD,

dc.

&c.

&c.

Enclosure in No. 19.

A. E. HAVELOCK.

Nuwara Eliya, Ceylon,

September 2, 1890. In continuation of my letter of the 7th May last, I have the honour to annex extracts from two letters regarding the arrears in question, the one conveying the acknowledgment of His Excellency Sir James Longden that I had done my work very effectively in recovering the arrears; and the other from His Excellency Sir A. H. Gordon stating his knowledge that I was not responsible for them.

am, &c.

(Signed)

The Right Hon. the Secretary of State for the Colonies,

Downing Street, London.

EXTRACTS

1.

C. J. LE MISURIKE.

EXTRACT of a letter from the Hon. the COLONIAL SECRETARY to the Hon. the GOVERNMENT AGENT, Kandy, No. 154 of the 17th February 1882, regarding the collection of the commutation arrears in the Nuwara Eliya district :---

"I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, No. 111, of the 27th ultimo.

"Mr. Le Mesurier has done his work very effectively in recovering the arrears, and the Governor requests you to acknowledge this on behalf of His Excellency.”

2.

EXTRACT from a demi-official letter from His Excellency Sir A. H. GORDON to. C. J. R. LE MESURIER, dated 29th April 1890:---

▸

"You are, I think, entitled to vindicate yourself to the Secretary of State. will forward any reply you wish to make, and will express my opinion-in fact, my knowledge that you were not responsible for the arrears."'

21429.

No. 20.

Sm A. E. HAVELOCK to LORD KNUTSFORD. (Received November 4, 1890.)

Queen's House, Colombo, Ceylon,

October 10, 1890.

(No. 400.) MY LORD,

DURING a visit I paid to the Northern Province in July last, my attention was repeatedly and emphatically called by petitions and by personal representations to the injustice suffered by the inhabitants through the operation of the tax on dry grain, and to the hardship, oppression, and corruption which accompany its collection.

• No. 17.

108

2. The tax on dry grain continues, under Ordinance No. 14 of 1840 and under Part L of Ordinance No. 11 of 1878, to be levied in the Northern, Eastern, and Southern Provinces, while in the Western, Central, North-western, and North-central Provinces it is no longer levied. The paddy tax is at the same time levied all over the Island. I bare been unable to discover the grounds on which the tax on dry grein should have been retained in certain portions of the island and abandoned in others. In the absence of good grounds, it appears that the different treatment thus applied in respect of this tear to the Northern, Eastern, and Southern Provinces, is an injustice to the inhabitants those provinces. The tax on dry grain yields but a small amount of revenue, and about four-fiths of this amount are raised in the Northern Province. The total yield of the tax is now about Rs. 50,000, of which the Northern Province contributes about Rs. 40,000. The hardship, oppression, and corruption which attend its collection is the Northern Province were fully and forcibly brought to the notice of the Government in a letter from Mr. Twynam, the Government Agent, dated_9th_September 1870, a copy of which I enclose. It will be seen from this letter that Mr. Twynam, sa long as twenty years ago, earnestly recommended, in the interests of the Government, of the cultivators, and of the public in general, that the dry grain tax in the Jaffna District (Northern Province) should be abolished; nod that his reasons for this recommendation were, (1) that the tax is wrong in principle; (2) that its collection is demoralising on account of the corruption and fraud which are inseparable from it; and (3) that its yield towards the general revenue is too mall to justify its retention on grounds of financial necessity. I had much conversation with Mr. Twynars on the subject of this tax in July last. The manner of its collection remains the same as in 1870. Its ovila continue unabated, and its injustice unredressed. In a communication dated the 15th August last, Mr. Twynam refors me once again to his letter of the 9th September 1870, as containing the expression of his present views on this tax.

8. But Mr. Twynam's condemnation of the dry grain tax is not the only one that has been pronounced upon it. The majority of the Commission which inquired in 1877 on the taxes on grain, recommended that dry grain throughout the island should be exempted from taxation, on the grounds that dry grain is not taxed in the Kandyan Provinces, that the amount of revenue derived from the tax is small, and that its collection by commutation was held by Mr. Twynam, the Government Agent of the Northern Province, to be impracticable. The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sue Bir M.Hinks Bouch's in reviewing the report of this Commission, was unable, having Despatch, 9th July 1979, regard to the unsatisfactory state into which the revenue Eastern No. 25, page 71. trade of the Colony had fallen, to give his assent at that time to the abolition of the tax. But, admitting, apparently, the evils of its mode of collection, he desired that it might be further considered whether some scheme of commutation might not be adopted in the case of dry grain as in the case of paddy. A Commission was thereupon specially appointed to inquire and report irpon this question in particular, and on the subject of the dry grain tax generally. This fresh Commission, whose report forms Sessional Paper, No. XXII. of 1880, mammed up the result of their inquiry as follows: In the case of the Jaffna Peninsula, i.e., the Northern Province, dry grain grown in paddy lands (this is done to a large extent between the intervals of the paddy crops) cannot be equitably taxed whilst an impost is being already levied on the land for the cultivation of paddy thereon, and that no system can be devised for its recovery that will not involve the continuance of most of the evils inseparable from the renting system. That on dry grain grown in gardens, it is not posible to levy the tax otherwise than by renting - mode of collection that has” been abolished, f..., in provinces in which Part II, of Ordinance No. 11 of 1878 has been proclaimed, and that, it is to be hoped, may never be revived. That in parts of the Island, other than the Jaffna Peninsula, the tax cannot be satisfactorily levied on private lands, although it might be possible to collect it on Crown lands. The final conclusion arrived at by the Commission is that the tax on dry grains generally must be abolished. The select committee of the Legislative Council which reported during the present year on the Grain Tax Ordinance of 1978, did not deal with the question of the dry grain tax. The investigation of this lattar question had already been so exhaustive that the select committee could hardly have added anything to it, except possibly to accentuate the repeated recommendations that have been made for the abolition of the tax.

4. If a further argument be needed in favour of the abolition of the dry grain tax, it, is found in the obvious and special expediency that exists of encouraging the cultivation of the very kinds of grains that come under the operation of that tax. The grains which are naturally best adapted for cultivation in the comparatively dry climate of the N4