THE great question of the day, as regards the administration of our Indian empire, is the Land question. It is one which affects the condition and fortunes of India, alike socially, politically, and financially. It concerns the relations of the people to the soil, the popularity of our Government, and the stability of our revenue. In order to form a right judgment on the question, it is indispensable to understand the deep-rooted diversities which distinguish the condition of our Eastern empire from that of England or any of her colonies, or indeed of any country with whose circumstances the English public is familiar. It has been said by a statesman who knew our Eastern empire well, that "if ever India is lost to us, it will be lost in the House of Commons," because that assembly is always disposed to judge of Indian questions solely from an English point of view. As regards the great land question, such a course would be most disastrous in its consequences. The question of late has been keenly discussed, and as a decision upon it will probably be taken during the present session, it is important that the real facts of the case should be laid before the public, and submitted to the consideration of our legislators.

Among the many diversities which distinguish the East from the West, there is none more striking than that which relates to the land-system, or the relations of the Government and people to the soil. In every country of the world, except our own, the agricultural classes constitute the majority of the population. But in the East-in the vast empires of India and China-the agricultural classes constitute nineteen-twentieths, or nearly the entire amount, of the population. The tenure by which they hold the land, and the mode in which they may occupy uncultivated portions of it, are also

entirely different from what prevails in Europe and the Anglo-American States of the New World. And not less different is the part which the land plays in the revenue-systems of these opposite divisions of the globe.

In Europe, land is private property. An owner of land can do with it as he likes. He can sell it indefeasibly, with all the rights belonging to it; or he can change his tenants at will. The land is his, as much as his horse or his house is. In the East it is not so. There the soil has no landlord. The freehold of the soil belongs to the people; the rent belongs to the Government. The land is regarded as a vast raw material for the support of the people, and for the manufacture of which into the means of life every facility is given by the State. But the people are not its owners, nor is the Government its owner. It is held in common between the two. The occupant cannot withhold the rent; the Government cannot change the occupant. From the most ancient times there has been established a species of tenant-right, in virtue of which no man can be dispossessed of his ground as long as he pays the land-tax to the State. As long as this annual payment is made, the farm or estate belongs to the occupant and his descendants in perpetuity. In China, this landsystem is seen in its simplest form. There, every occupant of the soil pays the land-tax in kind, and pays it directly to the officers of the Government. There are no middle-men, no territorial magnates of any kind

only the cultivator and the State. In India the land-system is more complicated. Over a large extent of India, it is true, the system is as simple as it is in China (save that the land tax in India is now paid entirely in money, and not in kind), but in other parts there is an intermediate class between the Govern

ment and the cultivators. Partly owing to the conquests to which India has been subjected, partly as an administrative arrangement adopted in the earliest times, a class of men has been superimposed upon the common population, who act as middlemen between the people and the Government, and who obtain a portion of the land-tax-in other words, a portion of the Government's share of the produce of the soil-on the condition of being responsible to the Government for the whole land-tax of their estate or district. Long before the Mohammedans invaded India, this system was in force in many parts of the country; but under the Mogul emperors the intermediate class was increased, the lordship of thirty or forty villages being assigned to some favourite, partly as a reward of his services, partly as a means of facilitating the collection of the revenue. Thenceforth these men - Talookdars or Zemindars-became responsible to the Government for the revenue of the districts assigned to them, at the same time receiving a portion of the land-tax which they thus collected. This was their revenue. It was not an additional impost upon the people; it was a deduction from the revenue of the Government. And in no case did these men acquire any right to the land itself. The Government had no such right, and therefore could not transfer it; and so entirely foreign to Indian notions is an absolute proprietorship of the soil, that the talookdars and zemindars did not seek to acquire it. In short, in India, landed property confers a right only to the rents, and not to the soil itself. This has been the law or usage from time immemorial, and even the most tyrannical of zemindars never attempts to gainsay it. The rent goes to the State

(although the State has given away its right to a portion of it to these middle-men); and neither the Government nor any one else can eject an occupant of the soil as long as the rent or land-tax is paid. Thus the land-system of India is the pillar of the empire. It secures the rights of the subject, as well as those of the Government. It is at once the mainstay of the revenue and the Magna Charta of the people.

The tenure by which the talookdars and zemindars of India hold their lands very much resembles the baronial tenure of medieval Europe; but it has not led to similar results. Originally the tenure of the barons was a mere lordship— they had a right to certain payments and services from the population in their districts, and in turn they owed certain payments and services to the State; but, in course of time, this right to a portion of the produce of the district, and to the service of the population, was converted into an absolute right to the soil, with the power of changing and evicting the occupants of it. The feudal lord could dispose of the occupancy of the land as he pleased; and even the peasantry on his estates, at one time, were regarded as property, which he could dispose of almost as freely as the land itself.

This revolution in the land-tenure of Europe may be well illustrated by the case of the Scottish Highlands. Originally the chiefs were but the head-men of the clans, entitled to a quota of service, or of payments in kind, from their followers; but, in comparatively recent times, on the decadence of the clan-system, these chiefs came to be regarded by the State as the absolute owners of their districts, and treated their fellow - clansmen as mere tenants-at-will. In short, in Europe, the peasantry were divorced

from the soil; and though they did not at any time lose much by the change, which took place by imperceptible stages, it sufficed to alter entirely the land-tenure from what it had previously been in Europe, and from what it still is in the East. Like all great changes, this one has had its bad side as well as its good; but it is undeniable that it has quickened the progress of civilisation. It promoted the division of labour, and has made our people more self-reliant and enterprising than if they had stagnated half agriculturists and half craftsmen-on the bits of land, the occupancy of which descended from father to son. In fact, but for this change, England could never have been the England of to-day, or at least could only have arrived at its present condition of multifarious industry and widespread social enterprise by infinitely slower stages. No similar change has taken place in India. Generally throughout Europe, the line of demarcation may be easily drawn between the agricultural and non-agricultural classes. Whether the farm be large or small, whether it be a mere cottar-holding or a farm of a thousand acres, each cultivator of the land, whether he be a sheep-farmer or a grain-farmer, lives in a house upon his own ground, apart from his neighbours. Moreover, he is a farmer, and nothing else. In India there is no such line of demarcation. Almost every unit of the population has a little piece of ground of his own, and at the same time follows any other calling that choice, or the requirements of caste, may direct. The bricklayer who builds your house, the carpenter who mends your tables and chairs, the very coolie who carries your palkee for a stage, is also an agriculturist. In one sense, division of labour is carried further in India than anywhere else. The man who waits at your table is forbidden by caste to sweep your house. The man who cooks your food, for the same reason, cannot carry your

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palkee. Socially, the division of labour is carried to an injurious extreme. But, industrially, division of labour has advanced but a short way in India. There are a good many Mohammedan and Madrassee domestics who are domestics and nothing else; and there are also a good many artisans who have lost their hold upon the land, who have floated away from their original settlement, and who rely solely upon trade for support. But these are exceptional classes. In general, the tailor who comes to your bungalow to make your coat or the Mem-Sahib's dresses-or the silversmith who sits in your verandah and converts the rupees you give him for the purpose into the exquisite filagree ornaments that could not be surpassed in Bond Street-these, and Indian artisans generally, have each a piece of ground which they cultivate themselves, or which is cultivated by members of their family, and of which they are entitled to a share of the produce. All of them, whatever be their occupations, and however rigidly separated in occupations from one another by the laws of caste, are alike in this, that they are more or less dependent upon the cultivation of the soil. The land is common ground, upon which they all meet. It is their grand basis of support. And their right of tenure of the soil, and all legislation affecting it, are subjects of keener and more universal interest to the natives of India than any others connected with their material condition.

ants-at-will, liable to be rack-rented or evicted at the pleasure of the zemindars. Forty years afterwards (in 1832), when we came into possession of the North-West Provinces, our Indian statesmen were better acquainted with the land-system, and left untouched the rights of the peasantry. The middlemen who collected the land-tax (and who in the North-West Provinces, where the village-system prevails, are not zemindars, but potails or headmen of villages), obtained no new powers in their districts, and the population continued to possess their heritage in the soil, conditional upon payment of their quota of the land-tax. In these provinces, also, a thirty years' settlement was adopted, instead of the perpetual settlement made in Bengal. Financially, of course, Lord Cornwallis's policy in Bengal cannot be revoked. The land-tax has there been fixed at a certain amount, and, whatever be the loss to the revenue, it would be a breach of faith to revise the settlement, and exact the higher rates which might fairly be levied now. But the social effects of his enactment have been found so detrimental to the wellbeing of the general population, that in 1859 an Act was passed, the object of which was to restore to the people their immemorial rights in the soil. In order to put a stop to the course of rack-renting and evictions pursued by the zemindars in their new character as absolute proprietors of the soil, it was enacted that no cultivator should be liable to eviction as long as he paid a "reasonable rent." "'* This enactment-the celebrated Act X."-has given rise to great discussion in India. The wisdom of the enactment is generally acknowledged; but a new school of politicians of the doc

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trinaire type, ably represented by the 'Friend of India,' and not less ably opposed by the 'Times o. India,' are eager advocates not only for the maintenance of the absolute rights of the zemindars, but for giving to this system as wide an extension as possible. They consider that it would be a wise policy to ignore entirely the immemorial rights of the people to the soil, and leave them wholly at the mercy of the zemindars, in order that, by a process of evictions, part of the redundant population should be compelled to become a floating body of day-labourers, carrying their labour to the best markets they can find for it. The object of this sect of politicians is to abolish the old land-system of India, and to introduce the system that has gradually grown up in Europe. Such views, however, are not likely to obtain the approval of Government. It is one thing for a revolution to take place gradually and almost unnoticed during the dark ages of Europe, and another thing for such a revolution to be accomplished by legislative enactment at the present day. Moreover, landrights in Europe were never defined and recognised with such precision and authority as they were in India in the earliest times. In the Code of Menu, we find the landsystem of India firmly established, at a time when Rome was hardly built and Europe was still a wilderness. It would certainly be little in keeping with the character of our Government if, for the first time in the history of India, the rights of the people were to be abolished under our rule; and there is no measure which would excite more universal discontent. We fear, also, that such a social revolution could only

be effected after a period of immense suffering on the part of the masses, and that the new régime would not be got into working order until millions of the population had been swept away in succession by seasons of famine. What the slow work of time may accomplishwhat changes may take place in the ideas and desires of the people themselves-it is needless to conjecture. Statesmen have to deal with the Present. We must take India in the main as we find it. It must suffice for us that the ideas and social organisation of our Indian fellow-subjects are in unison with, and founded upon, the present system of land-tenure, which has been established from the earliest times, and that it must be the basis of our legislation alike with respect to the revenue of the Government and the relation of the people to the soil.

There is little fear, we trust, of our Government adopting any proposal for changes in the land-system of India which would inflict injustice upon our Indian subjects. The facts of the case are now fully known, and will, we doubt not, be rightly respected. We may proceed, therefore, to consider the political and financial aspect of the changes which have recently been proposed for adoption in regard to the landtax. Financially, the importance of the subject is manifest on the surface. The produce of the land-tax constitutes one-half of the Indian revenue. It yields 21 millions sterling out of a total revenue of forty-three millions. And as part of the present revenue is derived from taxes which were imposed to meet a temporary emergency, and which the Government is pledged to abolish in a year or two, we do not magnify the importance of the land-tax when we say that our Government is dependent upon it for fully one-half of the revenue out of which must be defrayed the ever-increasing expenditure of the administration. Moreover, it is a tax which possesses the inestimable quality of steadily increasing in productive

ness. It increases at the rate of at least half a million a-year. It is also a tax to which no native objects. It has existed in India from time immemorial. It comes down to us established by the sanction of more than two thousand years. Languages have become obsoletedynasties innumerable have come and gone,-new races have appeared on the scene, and India has several times changed masters,and yet the land-tax has maintained its position from first to last. On the other hand, nothing is more difficult than the imposition of new taxes in India, because nothing is more distasteful to the natives. Rather than impose the taxes on licences and tobacco-pitiful as was the sum which these would have yielded Lord Canning said he would prefer to rule India with forty thousand European troops, instead of the hundred thousand which were then in the country. In truth, so unpopular were the new taxes, imposed under the pressure of an imperious necessity in 1860, that the great aim of the Government ever since has been to get quit of them as soon as possible.

Obviously such a source of revenue as the land -tax ought not lightly to be tampered with. Nevertheless the opinion has recently been gaining ground that the present mode of levying the tax raises obstacles to the improvement and extension of cultivation, and also to the introduction into India of British capital and settlers. It is said that if the State were to sacrifice a portion of the land - tax, cultivation would extend, the wealth of the country would increase, and that the deficit produced in the revenue could be made up by the increased productiveness of the other taxes, and by the imposition of new ones. It is also said that by adopting a liberal policy in regard to the settlement of waste lands, the inestimable advantage would be attained of opening a new field for British capital and enterprise, and attracting an unprecedented