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 For Private Circulation only. 
 
 EHANT-RIGHT IN THE PUNJAB, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 PUNJAB TENANCY ACT, 
 
 AND OTHER 
 
 Articles contributed to the " Pioneer.' 
 
 BY 
 
 COLONEL W. G. DAVIES, c.s.i., 
 
 COMMISSIONER OF JULLUN-DHUR. 
 
 ALLAHABAD: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE PIONEER PRESS. 
 1882. 
 


 TENANT-RIGHT IN THE PUNJAB, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 PUNJAB TENANCY ACT. 
 
 (Reprinted from the " Pioneer") 
 
 THE appearance of a pamphlet entitled " Opinions of the 
 Press on the Tenant-right Controversy " has led us once more 
 carefully to review the subject, in order to see if, indeed, it were 
 possible that we could have been so entirely mistaken in the con- 
 clusions we had arrived at on this question, and that the claim so 
 pretentiously advanced in the introduction to this collection of 
 newspaper articles, on behalf of the landlords, to have all the 
 justice on their side, and of their advocates to have all the 
 ability, intelligence, and knowledge, has any foundation in fact. 
 The labour we have imposed on ourselves in carrying out this re- 
 solve has been far from light having, as we have had, to wade 
 through masses of official documents, some of which were very 
 heavy reading indeed ; but we have as our reward the satisfac- 
 tion of believing that we have now thoroughly mastered our sub- 
 ject. We propose then now imparting to our readers such por- 
 tions of our hard-earned knowledge as will enable them to form 
 their own opinions on this much-vexed question, with certainly 
 better materials for arriving at just conclusions than any yet 
 afforded to the general public. The subject, however, is a large 
 one, and we cannot, therefore, hope to do justice to it within the 
 limits of a single newspaper article, so that we shall make no 
 apology if the full consideration we propose to give to it should 
 carry us far beyond those limits ; especially as, apart from its in- 
 trinsic importance, the question just now possesses a peculiar 
 interest, from the bearing which it has on the discussions taking 
 
 M41815 
 
( 2 ) 
 
 place in our own country in regard to the relations of tenants to 
 their landlords in Ireland. 
 
 Thus much by way of introduction, and now to our task. 
 There is no doubt that throughout this controversy the majority 
 of the Press in India has ranged itself on the side of the landlords ; 
 why this is we will endeavour to explain further on. Let us 
 first see what its general conclusions are, and how far they accord 
 or conflict with facts, as derived from official documents and other 
 sources of information to which we have had recourse in our 
 study of the subject. 
 
 The burden of the cry then is, that when the first settlements 
 were effected in the Punjab, no inquiry was made into the pre- 
 existing relations of proprietors and tenants ; that a continuous 
 occupancy of twelve years was blindly accepted as the sole test of 
 the right to permanent occupancy, and that occupancy rights were 
 thus created to a most injurious extent. And the framers of the 
 Punjab Tenancy Act are charged with having not only perpetu- 
 ated the original wrong, but with having added to it by raising 
 holders of "doubtful occupancy rights to the status of co- 
 proprietors," and this without due inquiry and on insufficient 
 data. There are other objections of detail to the Act, but the 
 above constitutes the gravamen of the indictment with which the 
 Legislature stands charged, and it is to the consideration of this 
 that we will first address ourselves. 
 
 We will first consider if the inquiry was so incomplete as it is 
 represented to have been, and whether there was any reasonable 
 prospect of obtaining more complete, and at the same time reliable, 
 data by prolonging the investigation in any conceivable manner, 
 and by means of any agency at the command of the Government. 
 Foremost, then, we must place the investigations made during the 
 progress of the first regular settlements as embodied in reports for 
 nearly every district of the Punjab, and in which are fully described 
 the relative positions of proprietors and tenants prior to annexa- 
 
( 3 ) 
 
 tion, and how these were affected by the previous history of the 
 country and the fiscal system of the Sikh Government. These 
 inquiries, it may be added, were continued in different parts of the 
 Punjab, with but slight interruptions, from soon after annexation 
 till within a comparatively recent period. Next came the inquiries 
 which followed the issue of a circular by the Financial Commis- 
 sioner in 1863. This circular was issued in consequence of a 
 letter written by the Settlement Commissioner, asking for ins- 
 tructions and advocating a general officious inquiry into the 
 relations of proprietors and tenants, on the ground of errors 
 alleged to have been committed during the early settlements. In 
 it Mr. (now Sir D.) McLeod requested Commissioners to ascer- 
 tain in each district of their divisions " what was the position of 
 the most favoured non-proprietary cultivators previous to annexa- 
 tion ; to what extent their right was recognized, and on what 
 conditions it was held ; whether the proprietor could eject 
 them in favour of others, and if so, on what terms ; and if 
 such right was not generally recognized, whether he could do so 
 in the event of his desiring to cultivate the land himself, and 
 what concessions were required of him, or usually made by him, 
 in such cases." Eeplies to this circular were received from the 
 majority of Commissioners and district Officers, and an abstract 
 of them forms Appendix II. of the Report of the Committee 
 assembled in 1865 to consider the question of tenant-right. 
 Lastly, there was the inquiry of 1866 instituted in consequence 
 of a request contained in a minute by the Governor-General, in 
 which Sir John Lawrence, while urging further investigation, point- 
 ed out that it should be restricted to facts, and not opinions as to 
 theoretical rights. On this occasion eight questions were circu- 
 lated by order of the local Government, of which the two follow- 
 ing chiefly concern the matters under consideration, viz. : (I.) 
 " So far as your observation and knowledge extend, have you 
 found it to be the fact that proprietors (before annexation) re- 
 frained, as a rule, from evicting tenants who had cultivated for 
 
( 4 ) 
 
 long periods, say twenty years, or two generations ; and were 
 such tenants, as a matter of fact, led to look forward with con- 
 fidence to the unmolested enjoyment of their holding ? " And (II.) 
 "Is the same observable in the case of cultivators who have 
 reclaimed waste lands ?" Replies were given by nearly all the 
 more experienced officials of the Punjab, and by a number of non- 
 official experts, so to speak men who had themselves had practi- 
 cal experience of the working of the Sikh system. 
 
 How then, we would ask, can it be affirmed that the inquiry 
 was incomplete, and what hope was there that by continuing it 
 anything new, or, if new, reliable, would be discovered ? The facts 
 of the case, as they were found to have developed themselves, 
 under varying conditions in different parts of the province, had 
 been carefully elicited by officers selected as specially qualified for 
 the task, at a time, too, be it remembered, when the minds of men 
 were calm, when the facts themselves were fresh in the recollec- 
 tion of all, and when there existed no motive for misrepresenta- 
 tion that is to say, under the most favourable conditions for 
 arriving at the truth. Was it likely, when nearly all these con- 
 ditions were reversed, when, owing to the increase in value of 
 property under British rule, the motives to false testimony had 
 greatly increased, and when, from the lapse of time, the remem- 
 brance of the facts to be ascertained had become weakened, that 
 better results would be obtaiued ? We think not, and it may be 
 added that at this later stage the official mind had become so in- 
 flamed by the prolonged controversy, that literally there were few 
 officials in the province who could have entered on the inquiry alto- 
 gether free from a leaning to one side or the other. Hence we 
 may, we think, conclude without hesitation that there are no 
 grounds for the charge that the Government legislated without suffi- 
 cient information to guide it. 
 
 We come now to the real gist of the enquiry, viz. : What were 
 the relations of proprietors and tenants to one another, and of both to 
 
( 5 ) 
 
 the ruling power, prior to the annexation of the Punjab ; and whether^ 
 in point of/act, a considerable section of the latter class had for long 
 periods enjoyed freedom from eviction, and shared in the profits of 
 cultivation. These questions require careful consideration ; but to 
 allow of sound conclusions being come to in regard to them, we 
 must, it is clear, have some previous acquaintance with the history 
 of the tract of country concerned, and specially with the systems of 
 revenue management in vogue for some time previous to its annex- 
 ation to the British dominions. Of the political history of the 
 country, it will suffice to say that, until Eunjeet Sing succeeded in 
 establishing his supremacy over his rivals of the Bhungee and 
 Kunheyia confederacies nothing approaching to settled govern- 
 ment had existed for at least a hundred years. The decline of the 
 Moghul monarchy and the rise of the Sikhs may be said to date 
 from the death of Aurungzeb in 1707. A period of more or less 
 anarchy followed, during which the country became a prey to the 
 ambition of rival chiefs contending for mastery, varied only by 
 the periodical invasions of the Afghans. It was not till 1824 
 that Eunjeet Singh had completely established his hold on the 
 Punjab, from which time till 1849, when we formally took posses- 
 sion of the country, a period of twenty-five years only, can such 
 law and order as are known to Native Governments be said to 
 have prevailed. But it is with the fiscal system of this period 
 that we are principally concerned, in order to see how the agricul- 
 tural classes were affected thereby, and this will best be described 
 by giving extracts from the published official documents. The 
 best account of this system is that contained in Mr. Temple's 
 Eeport on the Settlement of the Jullundur District : we shall 
 therefore quote this in its integrity, adding shorter extract sfrom 
 other reports where they either supply deficiencies in this one, or 
 record some change in the system resulting either from local cir- 
 cumstances, or from the idiosyncracies of the Government repre- 
 sentatives themselves. In Section IV. of his Eeport, Mr. Temple 
 wrote as follows : " The primary object in the mind of a Sikh 
 
( 6 ) 
 
 Financier was to extract the utmost from the land. Indian, indeed 
 Asiatic experience has usually shown that the occupant of the soil, 
 be his rights what they may, can give up to the State half the gross 
 produce without ruining himself or impairing the resources of cul- 
 tivation. This proportion the Sikhs resolved to demand. The 
 justice or expediency of such a demand was another matter. It 
 might possibly be enforced, and therefore it was to be made ; to 
 demand anything less than this was a sheer act of grace. The 
 normal method of collecting this amount was the division of the 
 garnered grain, or the appraisement of the standing crop any 
 money revenue which might be fixed would be based on the half 
 produce estimate. The rigour of the rule was relaxed only in favour 
 of parties whom the Government used as an agency for collection. 
 Over each circle of villages, locally denominated a tuppeh or 
 taluqua, was plac d a chowdhree. The chowdhree was to aid 
 in realizing the revenues of his division, the moquddum of his 
 villages. In the lands or estates held by these parties the Q-o- 
 vernment demand was generally lowered from half to two-thirds, 
 or even to one-fourth. Various grants of land were also assigned 
 under such titles as ' chowdra-yut/ ' moquddumee,' &c. Gratui- 
 ties were also allowed in cash or in kind under the general 
 denomination of ' enam/ Similar favour was shown to the per- 
 gunnah cannongoes, who held their office upon a hereditary tenure 
 and were the official repositories of fiscal records. Pew, if any, 
 cases could be named in which these favourable proportions had 
 been accepted on any other conditions except actual service of 
 some kind or other. But it was one thing to demand and ano- 
 ther to collect half the gross assets o a harvest. The villagers 
 of course corrupted the tax-gatherers and the ' kuneas' or ap- 
 praising officers. It may safely be affirmed that less than half 
 was collected from the fields or granaries, and much less than half 
 found its way to the kardar's treasury. The deficit was, how- 
 ever, made up in another way. Extra dues were levied on all 
 imaginable pretexts, such as are known to English history under 
 
( 7 ) 
 
 the names of feudal aid, forced loans, purveyances. Then there 
 were presents to the king, his courts, his ministers, his favourites, 
 the provincial governors, and their train of subordinates ; gifts 
 on the occasions of marriages, solemnities, or festivities in fami- 
 lies of royalty or nobility ; subsistence allowance for the sowars 
 and other Government menials and myrmidons who were con- 
 stantly quartered and billeted in the villages. Besides these 
 there were the necessary subscriptions for village expenditure, or 
 the illegal gratuities paid to the servants of the Government. All 
 extra imposts were gathered together under the dreaded name of 
 * mulba.' I have often heard of the ' mulba' in a village equal- 
 ling the revenue. None of those little perquisites which add much 
 to the comfort of rustic life escaped the grasp of the kardar. 
 Grass, wood, timber, fruit, garden produce, were all seized upon 
 to say nothing of the imposts which fell upon the agriculturists 
 in common with the other residents of the village. The site of 
 the village could not be removed, no house could be built, no wall 
 erected, no plot enclosed without the payment of a fee." 
 
 Nor was this system peculiar to the Jullundur Doab. The 
 proceedings of the revenue officials in even the turbulent districts 
 of the Frontier, where eood policy would certainly have counsell- 
 ed liberal measures, were characterized by the same grasping 
 spirit, as will be seen from the following extract from Major 
 James's Eeport on the Settlement of the Peshawur District. In 
 paragraph 165 he writes : " The arbabs and influential mullicks 
 receiyed the farms of their * tuppehs' and villages, but in the 
 absence of such men the district was leased to Hindoo capitalists 
 whose agents were spread over the country, employing all the 
 means in their power of extracting wealth from the cultivators, 
 to whom a bare subsistence was allotted. The nominal share of 
 the produce claimed by Government was one-half, but extra fees 
 were demanded, and advances had to be adjusted, which afforded 
 a pretext for unlimited extortion. The revenues were mostly 
 collected by these farmers in kind, so that at every stage of 
 
( 8 ) 
 
 agricultural progress, the houses of the villagers were subject to 
 the visitations of swarms of rapacious and ill-paid menials. 
 Strife and litigation were constant, for these Hindoo farmers 
 felt no compunction in transferring fields from hand to hand in 
 prospect of greater gain, and without regard to the ties which 
 bound together Pathan communities, and the breaking of which 
 was the sure prelude of affray and bloodshed." 
 
 As a contrast to the above we will now give an extract from Mr. 
 Monckton's Report on the Settlement of the Jhung District, to 
 show that what the fear of political disturbance could not ac- 
 complish in a well-cultivated tract like that of the Peshawur Val- 
 ley, self-interest compelled in the unappropriated wastes of 
 Southern Punjab. This part of the province was under the rule of 
 Sawun Mull, the most enlightened and liberally disposed of all 
 Bunjeet Singh's Lieutenants. "He," writes Mr. Monckton, 
 " organized afresh the revenue system, and fixed the tax on the 
 land actually under cultivation according to the nature of the 
 crop grown. It was simply an excise on agricultural produce 
 levied in the form of an average tax in money, or a fixed propor- 
 tion in kind according to the choice of the zemindar. On first- 
 class crops as tobacco, sugar, poppy, money-rates were invariably 
 charged and no option allowed. Fallow lands and fodder crops 
 escaped taxation entirely, as also corn eaten down green by cattle 
 engaged in agriculture. Persons desirous of embarking capital 
 in the construction of new wells, or the repair of deserted ones, 
 were encouraged by the grant of leases for periods of twenty years, 
 on a fixed cash payment of generally twelve rupees. Special in- 
 dulgence to encourage the investment of capital in agriculture 
 was also bestowed in the form of ' enam turudoodana' which may 
 be translated grants in reward for cultivation ;' e. g., a man of 
 wealth and influence would engage to sink eight new wells and 
 found a village on condition of receiving in rent-free tenure one 
 well." It would be useless to mutiply extracts ; the above will 
 convey to the reader's mind a good general idea of the oppressive 
 
( 9 ) 
 
 character of the Sikh fiscal system, and further illustrations will 
 be met with as we proceed with the subject. 
 
 Let us now consider what were the effects of this system on the 
 two classes, which, for want of terms more correctly describing 
 their relative positions, we style proprietors and tenants, whe- 
 ther it left to the actual tiller of the soil aught beyond the share of 
 the produce necessary to keep him alive, and allow him to replace 
 his agricultural stock ; and if so, what became of the modicum so 
 left ? Did it go to the proprietor, or was it not rather retained 
 by the teoant ? Again, under a system where everything was 
 sacrificed to the interests of revenue, had the proprietor that 
 control over his property which alone entitles a man to that title 
 as understood in civilized countries ? Could he, whenever ifc 
 suited his convenience, turn out his tenant and replace him by 
 another? And if theoretically he had the power, was it often ex- 
 ercised ? These are some of the questions to which we must look 
 for answers in the evidence before us. 
 
 Of the generally oppressive character of the Sikh rule, and ita 
 tendency to obliterate all distinctions between the different 
 members of the agricultural community, these reports abound 
 with instances ; e. <?., Mr. Morris in his lleport on the Settlement 
 of the Goojranwala District, shows how everything depended on 
 the caprice of the kardar ; that it being to the kardar's "advant- 
 age that cultivation should increase, it became his interest to give 
 over the land to those who would till it best, who are generally 
 mere cultivators." " Thus," he adds, " the rights of proprietors 
 were disregarded, and the value of property decreased." Again, 
 in para. 51, he gives us one of the reasons for a light assessment 
 the absence of proprietary right ; and in para. 72 speaks of the 
 " kun" system as almost doing away with the distinction of 
 proprietors and tenants, and in para. 73 points out that the lum- 
 berdars were the men who, under the Sikh system, enjoyed all the 
 profits. Mr. A. Braudreth's most interesting Report on the Set- 
 
tlement of the J.helum District, contains further evidence to the 
 same effect, how that " it was the rule of the Sikh kardurs, 
 too far off from Lahore to be under any check, \vhich reduced 
 the Rajpoot and the G-iikkhur alike to their present state of 
 poverty, so that they are now often compelled to become tenants 
 under their former ploughmen." Much more of this general na- 
 ture might be quoted had we space, but we have not, and must 
 therefore seek for more precise replies to the questions we have 
 put. One of the best descriptions of the mode in which, under 
 the Sikh rule, tenants grew into co-proprietors, is to be found in 
 Captain Hector Mackenzie's Report on the Settlement of the 
 G-oojerat District, and ns such we shall quote it at length. la 
 para. 169 he writes as follows : 
 
 " A man founded n village, his descendants were the heirs 
 of the village lands (waris), and would have reaped all the 
 benefits of the luirdsut or mdliJcee (proprietorship) had the 
 Government left any to be enjoyed. All other classes in the 
 village would have been reckoned inferior. But time went on, 
 land was abundant, population scant, the country became long 
 subject to Pathan devastation, and afterwards to Sikh misrule, 
 and the tendency became rather to abandon rights symbols 
 more of misery than of benefit than to contend for their exact 
 definition and enjoyment. The heritors of estates and subsequent 
 squatters, the waris and the tenant, were placed on the same 
 miserable level. It was nob till llijah &ool;ib Singh's governor- 
 ship that a wiser system can be said to have been introduced. 
 But it was too late all classes called for more lenient treat- 
 ment, and to a certain extent obtained it. But equality had 
 existed too long for the waris successfully to demand from, 
 the old tenant cultivator of two. three, or more generations' 
 standing, what a more liberal economy had made it possible 
 for a proprietor to exact ; and thus, although the headmen by 
 virtue of their office enjoyed special privileges, the rest of the 
 community, the waris and the asainee alike, were on the same 
 
( 11 ) 
 
 level. Bisivee or vnalikana (proprietary) dues were unknown. 
 Ancestral shares were forgotten or had fallen entirely into disuse. 
 Mulba was levied alike, upon the extent of cultivating posses- 
 sion, so the revenue, fines, cesses, and burdens of every kind. 
 There was, in short, no evidence to be found of one class having 
 exercised proprietary right over other classes resident in the 
 same village. Distinctions of rank had no real existence. The 
 question of who was proprietor, generally elicited the reply that 
 the Government was the proprietor." Again, further on he 
 says : " The waris did nob even attempt to exhibit any evidence 
 of his having exercised any rights or privileges over, or which 
 were not equally shared in by, the rest of the old cultivators;" 
 and he adds in a note, " The \raris would say that he had, bufc 
 conld not contemplate such a possible contingency occurring; if 
 pressed lie would doubt his power, the cultivator would stren- 
 uously deny it-. Ifc had, in fact, no reality." The same state of 
 things appears to have existed at Pesbawur, for in para. 312 of his 
 Report, Major James writes: "At annexation we found them 
 (cultivators of old standing) in the nctual possession of all pro- 
 prietary rights, except those of sale or transfer; but acknow- 
 ledging a vague liability to ejectment from a portion of their 
 holdings on the appearance of the rightful owner. The service, 
 too, which they had in former times been called on to render, 
 had, in the course of years and the social changes created by 
 successive governments, gradually become less definite, and 
 may be said indeed to have depended solely on the power 
 of the dufturee (proprietors were so called) to exacfa 
 them. Everything tended to make their position one of inde- 
 pendence : on the one hand, the proprietors were interested in 
 retaining them on the estate and on the other hand, the Gov- 
 ernment farmers supported a class to which they mainly looked 
 for profit. But the ejectment to which I have stated them to be 
 liable applied only to such lands as they occupied in the absence 
 of the dufturee: they were all in possession of shares assigned to 
 
( 12 ) 
 
 them asfaqueers (cultivators with occupancy rights were so called), 
 to the occupation of which they retained a hereditary right" 
 
 The pros and cons of the case are also fully and fairly set forth 
 by Major Cracroffc in his Report on the Settlement of the Bawul 
 Pindee District, but we have only space to state the conclusions 
 at which he arrived. Speaking of the eastern half of the district, 
 where the Sikhs had obtained a firmer hold, he says that the 
 preponderance of this power "had rendered the position of the 
 cultivator more secure, and such a burden had been imposed that, 
 though theoretically the proprietor had the power of ousting the 
 cultivator, practically he never had the will :" and further on, in 
 discussing the question of rent, he adds, " that during the Sikh 
 rule the Government really took by far the larger portion of the 
 rent, and that of the remainder left, if any, it is very problemati- 
 cal whether it did not in fact remain with the cultivator rather 
 than with the proprietor." The same conclusion is arrived at by 
 Mr. A. Brandreth, after a very able discussion of the subject, in 
 which he admits that the proprietors had never received malilcana 
 from the better class of tenants, for " it was not the custom, as 
 the Sikhs left nothing, but they (the proprietors) were allowed 
 some laud rent free, or a certain sum from the kardar's collec- 
 tions." 
 
 "We have hitherto been speaking of the better cultivated por- 
 tions of the Punjab. Towards the south and west, where land 
 was abundant, and capital and labor in great demand, rights of 
 occupancy, scarcely distinguishable from proprietary rights, grew 
 out of the necessities of the case in great profusion; e.g. (1). 
 The "Bootamars" (so called from having broken up land gener- 
 ally along the banks of the rivers) were never interfered with, 
 and were even allowed to sell their right of occupancy:* (2). The 
 Chukdur tenure in Mooltan where to use Mr. Gust's words 
 
 * See para. 49 of the Gogaira Settlement Report and note to para. 25 of Colo- 
 nel Lake's memo, on the status of tenants. 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 " either the proprietor still cultivates his acres'and pays a rent- 
 charge to the capitalist who has sunk his well, or the capitalist 
 himself cultivates by his own oxen or his own cultivators, and 
 pays a quit-rent to the proprietor:" and (3). The peculiar tenures 
 in the Kolachee pergunnahs of the Dera Ismail Khan District, 
 where a right of occupancy was acquired by pnying down a small 
 sura, for which the land was considered thereafter to he perma- 
 nently mortgaged, "Whole villages," writes Major Busk, "have 
 been founded by the mortgagees, and in many cases they have 
 been named by the founder." 
 
 We have, up to this time, confined our attention to the firsfc 
 Settlement Reports, and this because in our opinion they contain 
 the most reliable evidence of the status prior to annexation. But 
 lest it should be said that we have not allowed the opposition an 
 opportunity of being heard in this question, we will give the re- 
 plies of Mr. J. B. Lyall and Captain Nisbet, two of Mr. Prin.ep'g 
 Assistants, to the first two questions circulated by the Local 
 Government in 1866. The former writes: "If asked whether 
 proprietors as a rule refrained from evicting such tenants (those 
 of old standing) to put in another tenant, I should say decidedly 
 yes ; and I should say that, as a matter of fact, they, tl>e tenants, 
 were Jed to look forward with confidence to the unmolested en- 
 joyment of their holdings as long as the proprietors did not 
 require the land for their own cultivation, and as long ns the 
 tenants did not seriously misbehave themselves. It must be re- 
 membered thnt ordinarily the rent'did not go to the proprietors 
 in those days ; the Government or Jagheerd.ir took the real rent 
 direct from the cultivators by buttai or Icunlcoot, and the proprie- 
 tors only got proprietary dues, biswee or seermunnee, if they got 
 anything at nil. Even, however, when the proprietors were res- 
 ponsible to the Government for the revenue, and collected by 
 buttai from the tenants, such rates of buttai as well as the rate of 
 proprietary dues were fixed, not by competition, but by the usage 
 of the tract of country; the usage only varied from[special causes at 
 
long intervals; such variations were not anticipated by the parties 
 when they entered into the contract, that is when the proprietor 
 induced the tenant to settle down in the village. The under- 
 standing between the parties I believe to have ordinarily been 
 that the tenant would hold at customary rates during good beha- 
 viour, and not that the proprietor was at liberty, from mere caprice, 
 to turn out the tenant and put in another. The payments by 
 tenants to proprietors not being guided by competition, the great in- 
 ducement which leads landlords to change their tenants wns absent; 
 the supply of tenants also was not equal to the demand, and the 
 ambition of the proprietors was to have settled tenants." And again 
 further on he says: " In the above reply with regard to the point 
 of eviction I have had in mind those villages only in which, before 
 annexation, there was some family which was actually in posses- 
 sion of the privileges and powers pertaining by custom to the 
 possession of a village malik, or as we translate it a village pro- 
 prietor. But the really difficult tenant cases do not turn up in 
 such villages, but rather in those in which the village proprietors 
 had in practice, before annexation, lost all but the name, or had 
 retained nothing but a seermunnee due, or in which it is doubtful 
 whether any real village proprietorship ever existed, and whether 
 the whole community might not more correctly have been de- 
 clared to consist of lumberdars and Crown tenants." .... Mr. 
 Lyall h is here been speaking of the state of things as it existed in 
 the well-cultivated tracts comprised in the present divisions of 
 Umritsur and Jullandur. Let us next see what Cuptuiu Nisbet, 
 Settlement, Officer of Goojranwala, says of the wilder region 
 where Ins experience had been chiefly acquired: " Previous to 
 annexation," he writes, "rights in landed property were so ill- 
 defined, or the kardar or ruler of the day exercised such almost 
 arbitrary power, that the relations between landlord and tenant 
 were little understood and still less recognized, though, where per- 
 mitted by the /carcfar, or the landlord felt strong~enongh to demand 
 it, some due or quit-rent was paid by the cultivators to the so- 
 
( 15 ) 
 
 called proprietors. The proprietor, as a rule, exercised no autho- 
 rity to locate a cultivator, nor could lie evict one who paid revenue 
 direct to the Government officer who collected, unless the Jcardar 
 or ruler was induced by some illicit consideration to commit au 
 act of oppression, and then only when the proprietor would 
 himself undertake to pay the Government revenue on the land. 
 The extent of cultivation was the real standard of every man's 
 value, as it became, after a few years, the general measure of pro- 
 prietary right. In this district it is well known that both De- 
 wan Savvan Mull and General Avitabile, two of the cleverest 
 "kardars who ruled the country, extended great protection to cul- 
 tivators, encouraging them to remain on their holdings, and in 
 numerous instances guaranteed proprietary right or undisturbed 
 occupation. General Avitabile granted proprietary rights to 
 large bodies of cultivators in the Bela (river) lands of Tehseel 
 Wnzeerabad, where much land was reclaimed and brought under 
 cultivation by men who originally could have had no proprietary 
 right in that part of the country. The presence there of such a 
 mixed body of Jats, Buhroopias, and others, is evidence of this 
 when Cluiltals and Turives are the indigenous races. A^ain, in 
 Tehseel Hafizubad, Dewan Savvan Mull located cultivators on 
 waste land, giving them as much as half the Government revenue 
 as eiidm, to give them confidence in the permanency of their 
 occupancy, and induce them to reclaim more laud." 
 
 And now to our conclusions, for surely the proofs we have 
 adduced are sufficient both in quantity and quality to warrant us 
 in giving unhesitating replies to the questions propounded for 
 solution. First, then, we think it will not be denied that under 
 Sikh rule the so-called proprietor and tenant occupied, both re- 
 latively and absolutely, very different positions from the proprie- 
 tor and tenant of European countries and civilized systems of law. 
 For we have seen that, uuder the Sikh system, the State absorbed 
 nearly all the profits of cultivation, and where it left anything 
 this modicum was divided between the so-called proprietor and 
 
( 16 ) 
 
 the so-called tenant. That the former often received nothing at 
 all, and where even some acknowledgment of: superiority was 
 made by the latter, the payment seldom exceeded a seer in the 
 maund (a fortieth part of the produce), and sometimes degenerat- 
 ed into the render of an occasional fee or offering on the occur- 
 rence of a marriage or other festive event in -the superior's family. 
 That, on the other hand, the position of a large proportion of the 
 so-styled tenants was secure, and if the State tax-gatherers Jefb 
 any profits to the individual cultivators, the tenant took the larger 
 share. That, whether located by the proprietor or put in by the 
 kaidar, the tenure of the better class of tenants was equally assur- 
 ed; for, in the former case, labour being of greater value than 
 land, the proprietor had every motive to retain and none to re- 
 move his tenant, who helped so materially in bearing all the heavy 
 burdens of the State; and in the latter case his authority, if in- 
 deed he should have had the hardihood to assert it, would have 
 been peremptorily denied, for the Sikhs recognized no claims, 
 the assertion of which would in any way have endangered the 
 stability of their revenue. 
 
 "We are aware that the justice of these conclusions has been 
 strenuously denied by one party of officials in the Punjab, who 
 loudly and persistently contend that the proprietor had the right 
 of eviction, and in proof appeal to the result of the recent in- 
 quiries, laying special stress on what they call an admission of 
 this right in one of the early Settlement Reports. The passage to 
 which such value is attached is the following : " However long 
 a patch of ground may have been occupied, the proprietor would 
 at his pleasure resume it without ceremony, and the cultivator 
 would resign it without demur." It occurs in para. 207 of 
 Mr. Temple's Eeport on the Jullundur Settlement. Read alone 
 this passage would undoubtedly afford good evidence in support 
 of the views of the party citing it, but not when taken together 
 with the rest of the description in which it occurs. It then be- 
 comes quite evident that, when he penned this passage, Mr. Tern- 
 
( 17 ) 
 
 pie was thinking only of the theoretical right of the proprietor iu 
 regard to tenants located by himself. This is proved by the whole 
 tenor of the argument regarding proprietary right as distinguish- 
 ed from cultivating possession, in which he shows that the right, 
 if it deserves the name, had but a nominal value and was recogniz- 
 ed only in theory, and that whenever the slightest indications of 
 failure of the revenue showed themselvees, the " kardar acted much 
 as if he was the immediate proprietor and undertook the management." 
 It seems superfluous to add that, under such circumstances 
 and such a system, the occasions when a proprietor " would 
 resume without ceremony" would not often arise, and that there- 
 fore, practically, the better class of tenants enjoyed uninterrupted 
 occupation of their holdings. The same may be said of a passage 
 in the Gogaira Settlement Report, in which the writer speaks of 
 the distinction between hereditary and non-hereditary cultivators 
 being a creation of our Q-overnment, and that, under the native 
 rule, proprietors " had the right to eject any tenants whom they 
 disapproved of, however long the latter may have resided on the 
 estate." For, in the same sentence, he adds, as a somewhat re- 
 markable fact, that in some portions of the district, notwithstanding 
 the uncertain tenure, the tenants were in the habit of selling their 
 right of occupancy, and further on that ** land is so abundant and 
 population is so scanty," that he has " never found proprietors 
 object to have their cultivators entered in any class the latter may 
 prefer themselves." Surely a tenure that could be sold could not 
 have been an uncertain one, nor a tract of country in which pro- 
 prietors would make any sacrifice to retain their tenants one 
 where evictions could have been frequent. Here again then are 
 we irresistibly led to the same conclusion. Nor, indeed, if we 
 refer to the replies given to the questions put by Mr. Prinsep to 
 certain experienced native officials and gentlemen of the Punjab 
 during the recent inquiry, do we see any reason to modify our 
 conclusions. It is true, as pointed out by Mr. Maine during 
 the debate on the Punjab Tenancy Bill, that very difficult ques- 
 
( 18 > 
 
 tion were put about rights, without defining what meaning the 
 word was intended to convey, and the answers are therefore want- 
 ing in consistency. But the general result may be fairly given in 
 the following extract from the replies of one of the most intelli- 
 gent of the officials examined : " In the Sikh times the question 
 did not arise as to the respective rights of the two classes of pro- 
 prietors and tenant; rights were nowhere clearly defined or es- 
 tablished. I have written above that we certainly find in the 
 Punjab a species of tenancy from father to son. It is extremely 
 probable that this tenancy must have been protected by the rulers 
 of the time, or how should it have survived so long ? I am asked 
 what is its name. I answer I don't believe it had any. The fact 
 is, in past times no one took the trouble to search into fine points 
 of right, so no name was necessary ;" and again " Tenants hold- 
 ing from four or five generations were, as a rule, not ejected, but 
 they were not aware of any law positively depriving the pro- 
 prietor of the right of so doing, so they were civil and obedient. 
 The proprietors, on their part, did not wish to eject them. Some- 
 times, however, a violent proprietor would eject such a tenant, 
 but it is difficult to say whether such an act was one of right or of 
 might only" "We entirely concur in this sentiment of the can- 
 did Jaishee Earn ; it is very difficult, and this of itself would con- 
 stitute a sufficient answer to the clamorous claimants for the re- 
 cognition of alleged rights and customs of eviction rights which 
 are at the same time admitted to have been rarely exercised, and 
 customs of which the known instances are so few I A curious 
 illustration of the confusion of ideas which has led to such claims 
 being preferred, coupled with such admissions, will be found in 
 para. 10 of the Eeport of the Law Committee of the Anja- 
 man, where the Committee contend that, even in the case of 
 tenants whose status nearly approached his own, the proprietor 
 " had the power, rarely if ever exercised, but still customary and 
 undoubted, of eviction !" A gem so rare ought not, we think, to be 
 denied a place in Mr. Maine's cabinet of curiosities. 
 
( 19 ) 
 
 We think we have now clearly shown that when the British Gov- 
 ernment assumed possession of the Punjab, ifc found amongst the 
 agricultural population a class of men who, although not popular- 
 ly recognized as proprietors of their holdings, had been for long 
 periods in uninterrupted possession of the lands in their occupancy ; 
 that the tenure was an essentially beneficial tenure i. e., the oc- 
 cupant enjoyed some portion of the profits of tillage, or in other 
 words, of the residue left after satisfying the demands of the 
 State, and after deducting the wages of labour and the interest 
 of any capital invested in the undertaking ; that the so-called 
 tenant was in fact a co-proprietor, and the so-called proprietor 
 was often nothing more than a mere annuitant. 
 
 If this be true, then, with all due deference to such an authority 
 as the Friend of India, we would ask, where in anything that the 
 British Government or any of its servants has done, is to be 
 found that wholesale " creation of occupancy rights," that 
 ** eviction of landlords " regarding which so much has been said 
 and written during the last four years ? where the injustice of 
 applying a rule suggested and approved of by the " accumulated 
 common sense of ages?" Having found a tenure in existence 
 when we took the country one, be it remarked, not peculiar to 
 the Punjab but common to all Northern India surely it was but 
 the barest justice to recognize it. And as this tenure was also a 
 species of property, one certainly not less valuable than that enjoyed 
 by the so-called landlord, surely it was but fair, in the absence 
 of any other certain tests, to apply the same rule of prescription 
 which has all along been applied in the case of other rights of 
 property. It is, however, for doing this, and for confirming by 
 legislation what was originally done, that the Government has 
 been charged with socialism ! We must leave to the decision of 
 the candid reader the question, whether it is more socialistic to 
 accept facts as we find them and mould our system accordingly, 
 or to organize society afresh in order to carry out a pre-conceived 
 theory of what is best for the land as the Friend of India would 
 
( 20 ) 
 
 appear to wish to do when ifc pleads for " encouragement of 
 farms of moderate size and worked with some capital and intelli- 
 gence? " The truth is, the question to be decided was one entire- 
 ly of facts, and not in any way whether this or that economical 
 theory was the best, and it was decided accordingly. We do not 
 wish to assert that no mistakes were made by the early Settlement 
 Officers in the classification of tenants : far be it from us to ad- 
 vance so preposterous a claim on their behalf. All we contend 
 for is that (1) tle errors were not so numerous as they are re- 
 presented by the landlord party to have been ; that (2) the rule 
 adopted by the Settlement Officers for discriminating between the 
 two classes of tenants those entitled and those not entitled to 
 be recorded as having rights of occupancy was intelligible and 
 fair in itself j and that (3), if mistakes were made, this was more 
 the fault of the proprietors themselves than of the settlement 
 officials and their system of inquiry. Still we would not have 
 denied the proprietors an opportunity of obtaining a rectification 
 of the alleged errors, and would have given them a patient hearing. 
 But why go out of our way to search for mistakes, and unsettle 
 men's minds by making a general officious inquiry ? This we are 
 convinced was a great mistake, and were the work to be done 
 over again we feel sure Mr. Prinsep would himself avoid it. For 
 are not our courts open at every man's door, and do not the 
 statistics of litigation show that the people are ready to resort to 
 the courts on every, even the most trifling, occasion ? Would it 
 not have been better to allow grievances, if they existed, to be 
 settled gradually as they showed themselves, rather than turn 
 thousands out of house, home, and lands, and send them forth 
 wanderers on the face of the earth and all to carry out an 
 economical theory, and get rid of the disadvantages of " double 
 interest" in the land? And could not the same object have been 
 attained without ignoring the most ordinary principles of justice, 
 and without causing a tithe of the suffering which has already 
 been inflicted ? We certainly think so, and that one of the beat 
 
( 21 ) 
 
 solutions of this difficult problem is that contained in the Punjab 
 Tenancy Act. 
 
 We now come to the last division of our subject-, a considera- 
 tion of the objections made to certain portions of the Act ; but, 
 before entering on this, we must fulfil our promise and endeavour 
 to account for the spirit of partisanship with which a portion of 
 the Press of India has sided with the landlords against the tenants. 
 We are convinced, then, that this has been due to imperfect 
 knowledge of the facts of the case, combined with the influence of 
 a sentiment known to exist in great intensity in the minds of 
 Englishmen respect for what is termed " the sacred rights of 
 property/' We believe that the writers have been completely mis- 
 led by the terms " landlords" and "tenants" into believing that the 
 classes designated by these titles occupied relatively precisely simi- 
 lar positions, and enjoyed absolutely similar privileges "and advan- 
 tages to those of the classes properly so called in our own country. 
 They were seemingly not aware that the so-styled landlord, under 
 an oppressive system, had been reduced to almost a level with the 
 so-called tenant. That the former had been compelled by the same 
 cause to resign to the latter advantages, to which he himself had 
 theoretically the right, glad at any price to induce his tenant to 
 share with him the responsibilities which, unassisted, he was unable 
 to discharge. They did not apparently know that, under the silent 
 but sure operation of this system, rights on the side of the tenant 
 had grown up, and become strengthened by prescription, which 
 equalled, if they did not exceed, those of the proprietors. They 
 forgot that after the annexation of the Punjab the British Gov- 
 ernment had confirmed the rights so acquired by a special and 
 formal guarantee. Had all these facts been known, and their 
 force duly appreciated, we feel sure that the same sentiment 
 which, under mistaken impressions, led them to raise their 
 voices against what they believed to be a contemplated invasion of 
 rights of property, would have constrained them to acquiesce in 
 the justice of the measures which the Legislature had in view. 
 
( 22 ) 
 
 For we do not suppose that the writers would deny the validity 
 of prescriptions, or that rights so acquired are as " sacred," and, 
 therefore, entitled to as tender consideration at the hands of an 
 enlightened Government as any other form of right. 
 
 And now let us see what we have to say of the Punjab Tenancy 
 Act. First, then, we would impress on the reader the necessity 
 of constantly bearing in mind that the measure is based on a com- 
 promise. The official reformers, the advocates of the exclusive 
 rights of landlords, had pushed their views with great vehemence, 
 and had been allowed to have their way for many years before the 
 Legislatiure found it necessary to interfere. During this time 
 great and violent changes had been wrought by the Settlement 
 Officers in the relations of the two principal classes into which 
 the agricultural community is divided. At last one of the 
 sufferers had the courage to carry his appeal up to Lahore, and 
 the proceedings of the Settlement Officers were pronounced by the 
 highest tribunal in the province to be illegal. It thus became 
 absolutely necessary to interfere to restore order and prevent fur- 
 ther complications. But this bad to be done without casting un- 
 necessary discredit on the public acts of our official functionaries. 
 Out of this state of things grew the Act which, while undoubtedly 
 bearing hard on certain sections of the tenant classes, has enor- 
 mously improved the position and prospects of the proprietor 
 body as a whole. To show that this is no exaggeration we must 
 describe what the exact status of the tenant with a right of occu- 
 pancy (or, as he was called, hereditary cultivator) was under the old 
 Punjab law, nnd what was the effect of his restricted tenure on both 
 the parties concerned, and on the land comprised in his holding. 
 Briefly, then, these were the general features of his tenure. He 
 could not be interfered with so long as he paid his rent, nor could 
 the rent itself be raised during the term of settlement. He pos- 
 sessed the right of sab-letting his holding, and otherwise providing 
 for its cultivation ; and on his death his rights passed by inheri- 
 tance even to near collaterals, but were not ordinarily transferable 
 
( 23 ) 
 
 by gift or sale : whether temporarily alienations were allowed ia 
 doubtful. Lastly, he had no power to improve the land in his occu- 
 pancy. It should be added that the hereditary tenant often held 
 his laud altogether free of rent, and even when rent was paid, it 
 reoresented the merest fraction of the profits of tillage, owing 
 to low assessments and a vicious system in force of making the 
 rent bear some fixed proportion to the Government revenue as- 
 sessed on the land. The evil effects of so inelastic a tenure on 
 the land can be readily imagined. The tenant could not make 
 improvements, and the proprietor would not, seeing that by so 
 doing he must be a loser, owing to his having no power of raising 
 his rents, or otherwise reimbursing to himself his outlay. Its 
 influence for evil on the proprietor class, if not so self-evident, was 
 no less real, and the spirit of discontent thereby excited, if neglect- 
 ed, would have constituted ere long a grave political danger. For 
 as the country advanced in prosperity, and land grew in value, 
 the proprietor saw with ever-increasing jealousy his tenant mono- 
 polizing all the profits of the land, which, theoretically at least, 
 was his own. This no doubt was exceedingly galling to him, and 
 what was worse, his tenant had begun to look upon himself as 
 his landlord's equal. It was here that the shoe pinched. It was 
 not that the landlord wished to evict his tenants : the influence of 
 public opinion, if not of old associations, would have prevented 
 this. What he did want, and thought himself entitled to, was 
 a fair share in the profits of the land in his tenant's occupancy, and 
 that the latter should admit his subordinate position. This, which 
 the former system did not permit, the Punjab Tenancy Act has 
 allowed him, and hence it is, we say, that that measure has vast- 
 ly improved his position and prospects, The Act, it is almost 
 needless to say, provides for periodically raising the rent of such 
 tenants up to 50, 70, and 85 per cent of the rate usually paid in 
 the neighbourhood by tenants not having a right of occupancy for 
 land of similar description, according as the tenant belongs to one 
 of the five grades described in Sections 5 and 6 of the Act ; and 
 
( 24 ) 
 
 we must not forget to add that if the tenant belongs to the low- 
 est of these grades, the landlord obtains the additional privilege 
 of buying him out, should he require the land for his own use. 
 These are very substantial advantages, and we do not hesitate to 
 say that the proprietor class never expected more, before the re- 
 volutionary measures introduced during the late settlements began 
 to unsettle men's minds and raise hopes which could not, with 
 any regard to public faith and good policy, be satisfied. But it 
 is not only the proprietor's position which has been improved by 
 the Act, the land in the tenant's holding will equally benefit, for 
 the disability under which the tenant has hitherto laboured has 
 been removed, and now he can lay out capital in increasing the 
 productive powers of his land with the certainty either that he 
 will be repaid at once, in the event of eviction, or that he shall 
 njoy the whole fruits of his expenditure until his first outlay has 
 been made good. 
 
 So far, then, we think we have shown that the general effect of 
 the Act is immensely to improve the proprietor's position, and 
 that this improvement has been made almost entirely at the ex- 
 pense of the tenant, for the power to improve the land in his 
 occupancy conferred on the latter is manifestly to the advantage 
 of both. But having made all these concessions in favour of the 
 landlords, was it, we would ask, so very inequitable to give some- 
 thing to the tenant in exchange for all that had been taken from 
 him, especially if we could improve his tenure economically at the 
 same time ? We have shown that before annexation he had a 
 proprietary interest in the land ; that after annexation his title 
 to this was distinctly recognized by the British Government ; and 
 that with the growth of the country in prosperity under our rule 
 this beneficial tenure had vastly increased in value. Was it not, 
 then, but the barest act of justice to remove the one disability 
 under which the tenant with right of occupancy, or co-proprietor, 
 whichever we may style him, still laboured, and enable him to 
 transfer his rights, should circumstances compel him to part with 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 them for a time, or even permanently ? After what we have said 
 we cannot believe that any reply but one in the affirmative can be 
 given to this question. No startling innovation, be it remember- 
 ed, was introduced by this change in the former law ; for have we 
 not shown that under the Sikhs the better cLiss of tenants, espe- 
 cially those who had reclaimed waste lands, commonly mortgaged 
 their rights of occupancy, and that instances of the same rights 
 being Bold were not uncommon? and, further, let it not be for- 
 gotten that while making this return concession to the tenant, 
 the Legislature has jealously secured to the landlord his right of 
 first purchase. We might have urged, as has been argued by 
 some of our best revenue officials, that the British Government 
 by the moderation of its assessments and the large margin of pro- 
 fits thus left, having, so to say, created rent and given all its pre- 
 sent value to land, would have been perfectly justified in giving 
 full proprietary rights to the occupant or essential proprietor, and 
 in pensioning off the superior or potential proprietor ; but no 
 such extreme measure was required to neutralize the ill effects of 
 the " douhle interest" in the land, and it would undoubtedly have 
 been very unpopular. The expedient actually adopted secured 
 this object far more effectually than this or than the other plan of 
 wholesale confiscation for which it was substituted, ^because, at 
 the same time that it improved the proprietor's status, it gave a 
 marketable value to the tenant's holding which could not fail 
 ultimately to benefit the land itself ; and yet it is this single con- 
 cession to the tenant, in return for all that he has lost, which 
 has excited so much indignation in the minds of the landlord party, 
 and has led to all sorts of senseless charges of ** confiscating 
 rights" being brought against the Government. 
 
 We believe we have now disposed of the principal objections to 
 the Act, and there remains for consideration~only one of a more 
 general nature that the Act proposes to interfere too much bet- 
 ween the landlord and tenant, instead of leaving them to adjust; 
 their differences, as far as may be without an appeal to the 
 
( 26 ) 
 
 courts that in fact its tendency will be to foster litigation. But 
 this objection seems to us to imply ignorance of the object of laws 
 of this kind and of the mode in which they ordinarily work. 
 Laws of this kind both define rights and provide for the enforce- 
 ment of the rights so defined. But while providing an ultimate 
 standard for the guidance of the Judge, they do not proclaim to 
 the people that in all their dealings with one another they shall 
 in no way depart from that standard. On the contrary, the mes- 
 sages they give forth is this " Settle your own affairs, and so 
 long as you agree among yourselves we shall not interfere, but if 
 you cannot agree and have recourse to us to decide your quarrels, 
 these are the rules which shall be applied in every case. The Punjab 
 Tenancy Act is no exception to this rule. No doubt the passing 
 of such an Act will for some time give rise to considerable liti- 
 gation ; for this, however, surely neither the authors of the mea- 
 sure, nor the measure itself, can be held answerable, but rather 
 those whose revolutionary proceedings rendered the passing of a 
 law on the subject necessary at all. "When matters have once 
 more settled down, by which time the law will have become gene- 
 rally well known, the necessity for resorting to our courts under 
 its provisions will probably not be more frequent than it is under 
 any other similar Act of the Legislature. The greatest fanatic for 
 the right of landlords will probably not deny that as a piece of 
 legislation the Punjab Tenancy Act is in every way superior to Act 
 X. of 1859. For ourselves, who have no fanatical inclinations 
 either way, we are convinced that the authors, supposed to be Sir 
 B. Temple and Mr. J". Strachey, have much reason to congratulate 
 themselves on having so well succeeded in reconciling the conflict- 
 ing interests of the two classes concerned, and in framing a law, 
 of which the general tendency must be largely to benefit the pro- 
 vince for which it has been designed. 
 
 It will, perhaps, be urged that if all this is indeed true, and 
 the Act deals so fairly by all parties, how is it that there has 
 been so much opposition to it, both while its provisions were 
 
( 27 ) 
 
 under consideration, and after it became law ? Wherefore all tins 
 memorializing and petitioning on the part of the landlords ? We 
 might reply, that ifc is scarcely a matter of surprise that there 
 should be a feeling of disappointment when, after the hopes of a 
 party have been raised to an unduly high pitch, they are suddenly 
 informed that they must rest contented with much less than was 
 promised them ; and that under the influence of this feeling they 
 should give forth cries, however unreasonable the hope excited, 
 and however unauthorized the promise. But this is not our 
 answer : our answer is that the memorials and petitions are nob 
 what they profess to be; that they do not fairly represent the 
 feelings of the landlord class in the Punjab as a whole; that ou 
 the contrary, they are entirely the result of machinations on the 
 part of the native settlement employes in and about Lahore and 
 Umritsur, who have succeeded in convincing the leading gentry 
 within a certain distance of these capitals that the rights of the 
 class are being invaded by the Legislature an undertaking of no 
 extraordinary difficulty, seeing that they had ignorance and self- 
 interest to aid them. It is only necessary to refer to the signa- 
 tures attached to these pseudo-memorials and petitions to see 
 that this is the true explanation of the apparent opposition to the 
 Act. The signatures are those entirely of residents of the capitals, 
 and of a few villages in the neighbourhood, with the addition, 
 doubtless to swell the list and give to it an imposing appearance, 
 of the names of a host of bankers, merchants, pensioners, and 
 even cleriis in the public offices ! It is somewhat amusing 
 mentally to associate the names of Earn Narain, Head Clerk iu 
 the Office of the Director of Public Instruction, and Pundit 
 Amur Nath, Translator to the Chief Court, with the lofty expres- 
 sions of pride with which the petitioners, in the body of one of the 
 memorials, look back to the active devotion displayed by them in 
 the warlike scenes of 1857 ! We repeat, then, that these docu- 
 ments are in no way an index to the feelings of the mass of the 
 peasant proprietors of the Punjab, and this for the very sufficient 
 
( 28 ) 
 
 reason that, as a body, they know nothing of the Act ivhich is so 
 materially to affect their future. An ignorant population can only 
 learn a law by seeing it in actual operation among them, and 
 of this they had had no opportunity when those false manifestos 
 of public opinion were framed. Three or four years hence, if the 
 Act be allowed a fair trial in the interim, the landlords of the 
 Punjab will be in a position to pronounce an intelligent opinion, 
 and we shall be much surprised if the verdict then come to is so 
 altogether unfavourable as that contained in the documents we 
 have been considering. 
 
 Having thus fulfilled the promise made at the outset of giving 
 the subject of tenant-right in the Punjab the fullest consideration, 
 we might now bring this long series of papers to an end. But 
 before doing so it will, we think, be convenient if we bring to- 
 gether and place before our readers at one view the several con- 
 cisions at which we have arrived during the course of this 
 lengthened discussion. First, then, we showed that the inquiry 
 made by our officers at different times into the relations of pro- 
 prietors and tenants prior to the annexation of the Punjab, was 
 not only very complete, but that there was really no hope of 
 obtaining additional information of any value by prolonging the 
 inquiry, and that, therefore, the charge of hasty legislation on 
 insufficient data brought against the Government by some of the 
 representatives of the Press, notably by the Friend of India, was 
 entirely groundless. "We next inquired into the Sikh system of 
 revenue management, and found that the guiding principle in the 
 mind of every Sikh official, from the highest to the lowest, was to 
 extract from the land the utmost it could be made to yield without 
 altogether impairing the resources of cultivation. "We then 
 described the effects of this system on the status of the two classes 
 into which tha mass of the agricultural population is divided. 
 How that its tendency was to reduce both to one level by raising 
 the position of the tenant at the expense of the proprietor. 
 
( 29 ) 
 
 How that under it the hold of the better class of tenants (those 
 who resided in the village and cultivated with their own stock) 
 on the land in their occupancy became in practice absolutely se- 
 cure, because, in the case of tenants located by himself, the pro- 
 prietor had no motive, and in the case of those located by the 
 kardar, he had no power to eject. How, further, that of the little 
 something which, in practice, was nearly always left by the Sikh 
 tax-gatherer, the larger share almost certainly went to the tenant. 
 From these established premises we next drew the conclusion 
 that the British Government, in assigning the status of hereditary 
 cultivator (a tenure of which we described the chief features) to 
 tenants of this kind, had in no way rendered itself obnoxious to 
 the charge of creating occupancy rights, but had rather in so doing 
 restricted the tenant's prescriptive rights and privileges. And, 
 lastly, we showed that the authors of the Punjab Tenancy Act with 
 happy art had unloosed the knot which one party was bent on 
 abruptly tearing asunder, and without violently disturbing the re- 
 lations existing between the two principal elements of rural society 
 had succeeded in reconciling their conflicting interests that the 
 framers of the Act had accomplished this by giving to the pro- 
 prietor the only thing he wanted, a fair share of the profits of the 
 laud in his tenant's occupancy, and, at the same time, had econo- 
 mically improved the latter's tenure by allowing him to make im- 
 provements, and also to transfer his rights should circumstances 
 require him to do so; and by these concessions, made to him in 
 return for all that he had been forced to give up to his superior, 
 had completely removed tbe only bad features o the tenure 
 known by the title of hereditary cultivator as previously existing. 
 
 Having shown all this, we think we may, in conclusion, fairly 
 appeal to the official disputants in the Punjab to accept the award 
 of the high tribunal to which their differences were referred for 
 decision, to join hands and make up their minds, as they are in 
 duty bound, loyally to carry out the provisions of the new law 
 remembering that the real test of a law is its practical working, and 
 
( 30 ) 
 
 that experience is better than any amount of theory. If the 
 Punjab Tenancy Act is what we believe it to be, it will, when 
 judiciously handled, harmonize differences, silently diffuse content- 
 ment throughout the agricultural masses, and be the means 
 ultimately of permanently improving their condition. But if 
 our estimate of the measure is an erroneous one, and it be found 
 to work for evil, we shall assuredly be among the first to cry out 
 to change it. Let it, hoivever, first Jiave a full and fair trial. 
 
 THE PUNJAB REVENUE POLICY. 
 
 (Reprinted from "Pioneer" of 15th July and 1st August 1874). 
 
 NOT long ago the Friend of India contained an article, in which 
 Mr. E. A. Prinsep, late Settlement Commissioner, was represented 
 as having been driven from the service by " the new rack-renting 
 school" in the Punjab, having at its head the Lieutenant-Governor 
 Sir H. Davies, and the Financial Commissioner, Mr. E. E. 
 Egerton. We contented ourselves for the moment with briefly 
 pointing out the palpable absurdity of the charge implied in the 
 heading " The Ilewardof Doing Justice to the People" viz., that 
 if one member of an administration is distinguished by a desire to 
 do justice to the people, he thereby becomes obnoxious to the rest. 
 "We now propose to examine more fully the particular statements 
 contained in this and other articles on the same subject, which 
 have appeared from time to time. Each has been a repetition in 
 substance of its predecessor, and it will be enough to make the 
 last the especial subject of our analysis. 
 
 We promise that the analysis shall be fair and searching : at 
 the same time the result will show that the charges brought 
 against the Punjab Government are entirely without foundation, 
 that they are such as no one who had any knowledge of the men 
 concerned would have thought of publicly bringing forward 
 except on the most convincing evidence, and that the writer of the 
 
( 31 ) 
 
 the article, at every step, betrays ignorance of the special eubje6t 
 he is discussing. 
 
 The article commences with charging the Lieutenant-Gover- 
 nor and the Financial Commissioner with having last year 
 " announced their determination to set aside the deliberate deci- 
 sions arrived at, and made publicly binding by engagements 
 with the agriculturists (of five of the most important Punjab 
 districts) by their distinguished predecessors, the late Mr. A. A. 
 Eoberts, Financial Commissioner, and two successive Lieutenant- 
 Governors, Sir E. Montgomery and Sir Donald McLeod." Now 
 if this means anything it means : 
 
 1st. That Mr. Eoberts and the two Lieutenant-Governors 
 named were parties to binding engagements with the agricul- 
 turists of five districts of the Punjab, by which a settlement for 
 certain term was assured to them at a certain sum. 
 
 2nd. That the present Lieutenant- Governor, Sir H. Davies, 
 and the present Financial Commissioner, Mr. E. E. Egerton, 
 while aware that such engagements had been entered into, vet 
 did not hesitate publicly to break faith with the people. 
 
 The charge is a serious one : let us see how it is sustained. 
 To begin with, the first proposition betrays a singular ignorance 
 of the procedure followed in making and confirming settlements. 
 "Would our contemporary be surprised to learn that engagements 
 are never made with the agricultural population by the Financial 
 Commissioner, much less by the head of the Government. The 
 engagements actually taken from the people in the settlements 
 supervised by Mr. Prinsep were taken either by Mr. Prinsep 
 himself, or by his assistants, and always contained a clause to the 
 effect that the assessments ivere subject to the, ultimate sanction of Go- 
 vernment. In the case of the settlements of the three districts of 
 the Umritsur Division, that sanction was never given, for the simple 
 reason that the final reports of the operations were never furnish. 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 ed by Mr. Prinsep. The functions of the Financial Commission- 
 er consisted then, as now, in laying down, on the report of the 
 Settlement Commissioner, the principles on which the assessment 
 was to be made. The detailed application of those principles was 
 left to the Settlement Commissioner and his assistants, who, after 
 determining the amount to be taken from each estate in each of the 
 main revenue divisions of the district, publicly announced the sums 
 so fixed, and if the representatives of the people agreed to engage 
 for their quotas of the revenue, formal engagements were there and 
 then taken from them to pay the sums specified for the term of 
 settlement, subject to any modifications which the Governmen t might 
 see Jit to maJce after receipt of the Settlement Officer s final report. 
 Such being the procedure, it is absurd to talk of binding engage- 
 ments having been entered into by Mr. Eoberts and two 
 Lieutenant-Governors with the agriculturists of five of the most 
 important districts of the Punjab. 
 
 Of these five districts, the final reports of three, as before stated, 
 have not been submitted to this day, and we believe we are right 
 in saying that those of the remaining two, Goojranwala and Gooj- 
 rat, did not reach the Government till after the present Lieuten- 
 ant-Governor had assumed office. But it will perhaps be contend- 
 ed that the breach of faith consisted in reducing the terms of 
 settlement in the districts of the Umritsur Division to ten years, 
 after a term of twenty years had been accorded to them by the 
 Government of Sir Donald. Our reply in that case would be first, 
 that both the present Lieutenant-Governor and Financial Com- 
 missioner (for reasons which have before been given in these 
 columns) were entirely unaware of any such sanction having been 
 given ; and, secondly, that the mere telling a Settlement officer 
 that he may make a settlement for a certain term, does 
 not deprive the Government of its power of withholding 
 sanction to his assessments, should he fail to satisfy the 
 Government tha^ they were sufficient. "We contend therefore 
 that Mr. Priusep having failed to report the grounds on which 
 
( 33 ) 
 
 he had made the settlements of the TJmritsur Division, and the 
 Government having been compelled in consequence to make in- 
 quiries through other source", and having satisfied itself that the 
 assessments were inadequate, was at liberty to refuse to sanction 
 them without any breach of faith being involved in such refusal. 
 Were it indeed otherwise, there would be no meaning in re- 
 serving to Government the power to give or withhold sanction 
 to a settlement. That in this particular instance the exercise of 
 the right in an adverse sense had eventhe semblance of a breach 
 of faith, was solely due to the culpable negligence shown by Mr. 
 Prinsep in regard to one of the most important of his duties, the 
 submission of the final reports of the settlements made by him. 
 How constantly he was urged officially and demi-officially to send 
 in these reports, and with what patience his obstinate refusal to 
 comply with the legitimate orders of his superiors in this respect 
 was borne by them, is best known to Mr. Prinsep himself. 
 
 Thus falls to the ground the first count of the indictment 
 brought forward so persistently by our contemporary against the 
 Punjab Government and its trusted adviser, Mr. Egerton. The 
 remainder of the article consists of a curiously illogical attempt 
 to prove that Lord Northbrook's determination to maintain the 
 term of twenty years for the settlements of the Umritsur Divi- 
 sion wat not arrived at independently of the consideration whether 
 the assessments were fair or sufficient ; and a repetition of the 
 charge often before made, that the present Government of the Pun- 
 jab, actuated by a desire to " rack-rent" its subjects, was trying 
 to made the work of its predecessors, and in the process blasting 
 the reputations of officers, some of whom are still serving it. 
 
 We reserve for another opportunity the full consideration of 
 this ludicrously unfounded indictment. Enough for the present 
 to ask our contemporary whether he would not have better ful- 
 filled his duty to the public, if before giving to the world imputa- 
 tions so serious, he had taken the trouble to learn something of 
 
( 34 ) 
 
 the character and antecedents of the high public functionaries he 
 has so wantonly attacked, and had gravely considered if they were 
 likely to have inaugurated a policy so entirely at variance with 
 their recorded opinions, and the traditions of the school in which 
 they have been brought up. 
 
 IN" our last article on this subject we promised to consider more 
 fully, in a future issue, the absurd charge so persistently prefer- 
 red by the Friend of India against the present Government of the 
 Punjab of trampling all obligations under foot in its eager haste 
 to carry out its newly-adopted policy of " rack-renting" its sub- 
 jects, and in the meantime we concluded with asking whether that 
 paper would not have better fulfilled its functions as a public 
 journal if, before launching a serious accusation of this nature, 
 it had taken the trouble to learn something of the characters and 
 antecedents of the high public functionaries so wantonly attacked. 
 We will now endeavour to fulfill our promise, and as a first step 
 towards showing the groundless nature of the charge referred to, 
 will supply briefly the information which our contemporary 
 might have obtained for himself without any very deep research, or 
 great expenditure of time and trouble. 
 
 It is unnecessary for our purpose to say more of the characters 
 of Sir H. Davies and Mr. Egerton than that they are essentially 
 safe men men of sound judgment and moderate views men not 
 easily carried away by such passing currents of thought and feel- 
 ing as not infrequently disturb the stream of Indian policy. It 
 was for these qualities that the former was selected by Lord Law- 
 rence for the post of Financial Commissioner in Oudh, at the time 
 when the party headed by Sir C. Wingfield was striving to destroy 
 all subordinate proprietary rights in that province ; and for simi- 
 lar reasons the latter was appointed Financial Commissioner in 
 the Punjab, when party-feeling ran high on the question of tenant 
 right. Both men were brought up, so to speak, at the feet of 
 Lord Lawrence, and learnt under him the first lessons of that 
 
( 35 ) 
 
 policy which made the Punjab in 1857 the citadel and safeguard 
 of the Empire, and of which the leading principle is to base our 
 rule on the well-being and contentment of the people rather than 
 on material force. Lesson so learnt, and of which the wisdom 
 was so soon and so signally demonstrated, sink deep in the mind 
 and are seldom forgotten ; and, if we had the space, it would be 
 easy to prove, from official documents, that throughout their 
 careers, the men to whom we refer have been guided in their 
 dealings with the people by the policy learnt in the school of 
 Lawrence and Montgomery. 
 
 Whence, then, this charge of rack-renting so persistently 
 brought forward ? Not a tittle of evidence, be it observed, has 
 ever been adduced in support of it. It rests, and has rested, on 
 assertion alone, as if a charge could be established by merely re- 
 peating it a certain number of times. We need not, we think, 
 look far for the answer to our question. The Government of the 
 Punjab is grasping and rapacious because it has dared to question 
 the sufficiency of the assessments made by Mr. Prinsep and 
 some of his assistants ! Their amour-propre has been wounded, 
 and this is the only way in which they can justify their proceed- 
 ings ! 
 
 But what shall we say to the part taken by our contemporary, 
 who has not been ashamed to allow itself to be made a catspaw in 
 the matter, without exerting itself in the least to verify the 
 interested statements by which it has been misled. And yet it 
 might have had access to documents such as the annual adminis- 
 tration reports which are open to all, and could have there seen 
 what the Government had to say in vindication of the course ifc 
 was reluctantly compelled to take, and might have given the 
 Government credit for common honesty and truthfulness in its 
 officially recorded explanations. In his review of the Eevenue 
 Administration Report for 1871-72, the Lieutenant- Governor, after 
 explaining why he had been unable to confirm the assessment made 
 
( 36 ) 
 
 by Mr. Prinsep for more than ten years, goes on to say : The 
 Lieutenant- Governor was well aware tbnt his action would not be 
 popular, but the principles of the land revenue assessments are 
 fully known, the Government share is moderate, and can be given 
 without inconvenience by the people, and it would have been 
 indefensible to have abandoned the increase of revenue due to the 
 prosperity which the Government has itself conferred on the coun- 
 try, or to accept estimates which were, on their very face, fallacious 
 as the true basis of assessment. The Lieutenant- Governor lias no 
 desire to compel officers to frame harsh and oppressive assessments. 
 The Punjab is, he admits, differently situated from other provinces, 
 and for many years to come it will be politic to assess lightly. The 
 people have well nigh forgotten the misrule which preceded the 
 annexation of the country, and are not yet like the population of 
 the rest of India so advanced, or so long accustomed to English 
 rule, as to know that it is preferable to any other that could 
 replace it. But there is a difference between light assessment 
 and a complete surrender of the rights of Government which 
 would have been the result of accepting for a long term of 
 years the assessments of the Uinritsur Division." The italics 
 are ours. We would draw attention to the passages so indi- 
 cated, and ask if they express the sentiments of a mau anxious 
 to rack-rent the people committed to his charge ? The suffi- 
 ciency or otherwise of certain assessments is a matter re- 
 garding which there may be difference of opinion, but the policy 
 of a Government must be judged by its acts, and the instructions 
 it issues for the guidance of its subordinates ; and tried by this 
 test, we have no hesitation in affirming that there never was a 
 charge more unfounded than that we have been examining. 
 
 But perhaps the best way of refuting it will be to take as type 
 one or two of the settlements which have actually been carried 
 out under the orders of Sir Henry Davies and Mr. Egerton, and 
 analyse the assessment. And, for obvious reasons, we cannot 
 do better than select for this purpose those of the two frontier 
 
( 37 ) 
 
 districts of Debra Ghazi Khan and Hazara, just completed. In 
 the former district, alt hough the cultivated area had increased from 
 326,232 acres to 652,864, or cent per cent, and the irrigated area 
 from -149,369 acres to 266,947 acres, or nearly 80 per cent, and 
 although prices had nearly doubled during the last ten years, the 
 assessment was only raised 37 per cent, viz., from Es. 3,30,369 to 
 B,8. 4,51,072, which falls at the rate of only 11 annas 2 pie per 
 acre in the cultivated area, and even this moderate assessment 
 has since, in accordance with orders given by the Lieutenant- 
 Governor during his tour through the district last cold season, 
 been considerably reduced, on the ground of the " desirability 
 of light assessments in frontier tracts." 
 
 To show how careful the Settlement Officer was to carry out this 
 policy, we may add that the assessment was far below the sum 
 obtained by applying either the produce or the revenue rates, that 
 the produce rates themselves were obtained by assuming as the 
 Government share no more than from one-eighth to one-twelfth 
 of the gross produce, while the produce was converted into cash 
 on a price current which had been reduced from 34 to 38 per cent 
 below the average of the last twenty years ! 
 
 These facts and figures will probably suffice to satisfy any 
 unprejudiced person that there was no " rack-renting" here, and 
 if further proof were required of the lightness of the demand, it 
 would be found in the alacrity with which the assessments were 
 accepted by the agricultural population throughout the district. 
 
 The assessment of the Hazara district has also been consider- 
 ably raised, but the Settlement Officer has conclusively shown that 
 it is not so high as the people might fairly have been requir- 
 ed to pay had the previous settlement not fallen, during the 
 past 20 years, so far behind the proportion of the assets 
 which it originally represented, and had it not been the 
 policy of Government to assess lightly the frontier districts. The 
 following figures give the results of the different processes employ- 
 
( 38 ) 
 
 ed as guides to the assessment, and the assessment itself as com- 
 pared with the expired settlement and the Sikh collections of 
 1845 : 
 
 Sikh collections of 1845 . . . . Rs. 2,81,923 
 
 Summary settlement of 1852 . . 2,28,497 
 
 Estimate at |th of gross produce . . 3,72,772 
 
 by plough rates . . 3,49,575 
 
 by soil rates . . 3,64,458 
 
 Assessment fixed on land 
 mills 
 
 Total . . Rs. 3,10,973 
 Rate per cultivated acre, Rs. 0-12-8. 
 
 The gross produce was estimated for each illaqua with due 
 regard to the proportion of good and bad soil in each, and the 
 result gave the following low average rates for the principal 
 crops : Wheat 446 Ibs. to the acre, barley 572 Ibs., maize 614 Ibs., 
 bajra 515 Ibs. One-sixth was taken as the Government share, 
 and in converting it into money, a scale of prices was adopted, at 
 least 25 per cent below the average of the last ten years, and the 
 assessment actually fixed was nearly 20 per cent below the sum 
 thus obtained, and with the permission of Government has since 
 been still further reduced ; wherever inquiries showed that the 
 assets of a village had been at all overestimated, and this 
 notwithstanding the fact that in no single instance did the pro- 
 prietors refuse to take up the new assessments. How much the 
 district has advanced in material prosperity under our rule, and 
 what good reason there was to look for an increase in its revenue, 
 will be seen from the following extract from Captain Wace's 
 assessment report, with which we may fitly close this long arti- 
 cle: "When the Sikh assessments were made in 1845, the dis- 
 trict had suffered under continual disorder for 20 years past ; 
 great insecurity prevailed, the village communities were in 
 
( 39 ) 
 
 weak and depressed state, large numbers of the cultivating classes 
 had deserted their lands, large areas were waste, land had no 
 value, there were no roads and no means of exporting grain, 
 grass and wood were unsaleable, cattle and milch produce stood 
 at half their present value. Now the district has had 22 years of 
 peace, every acre of culturable land is under the plough, and has 
 been so for some years past, land is so valuable that practically 
 it cannot be purchased, large quantities of grain are exported 
 southwards, milch produce has increased and has doubled in 
 value, in some parts of the district grass and wood are valuable 
 assets, and people have settled down from a state of periodical 
 disorder to one of undisturbed peace, and are free of debt, con- 
 tented, and abundantly well off." 
 
M41815 
 
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