The Passing of Empire

by H. Fielding

Then came a reaction, and all large estates were denounced as bad. There was to be a small tenantry holding direct from Government, forbidden to alienate their land, and all leasing of land to tenants was forbidden.

This I understand to be the policy still. It is a policy of fixed ideas, and as applied to anything that has life, like land tenure, it is unfortunate, no matter what the fixed idea be.

If there be one truth above another that is clear in studying land systems it is that no one permanent system is good. The cultivation of land, like all matters, undergoes evolution and change. What is good to-day may not be good to-morrow. The English system of large estates cultivated by tenants did, at one time in English history, produce the best farming in the world. English farming was held up as an example to all countries and was so admitted by them. The system of large estates allowed of the expenditure of capital, experiments in new cultivations and new breeds of cattle, and variety of crops. It suited its day well. And though its full day has passed, there will never be a time when some large estates will not be able to justify themselves. Even if, as apparently is the case now in England, petite culture is that best adapted to the cultivation of the day and the needs of the people, yet there is still room for large estates. A dead uniformity of small holdings could not but be unfortunate for any country.

Further, although excessive alienation of land through money-lenders may be very bad, yet stagnation in ownership may be worse. India and Burma are progressive, and changes must take place. Cultivators will become artisans and traders; city people will like to return to the land. There is an ebb and flow which is good for all. Too great rigidity of system will stop progress. A good system of land tenure is that which is in accordance with the evolution of the people it applies to and assists in that evolution.

While recognising that for the bulk of the people small holdings are best, it will not forbid larger estates; while admitting that the alienation of land through borrowing recklessly from money-lenders is bad, it will see that the progress of the people from purely agricultural towards a state of industrial activity is not checked. It takes all sorts to make a State.

It may be good for the cultivator to hold direct from Government, but if Government is to be the landlord it must act up to its name. It must give compensation for improvements when a tenant has to relinquish the land. Otherwise no tenant will improve, and the necessity for improvement, for wells, irrigation, embankments, manuring, and so on, is the greatest necessity of agriculture. In my own experience I have seen that the system of State land tenure in Upper Burma does stop improvements.

That is the light in which the land question has to be worked out, on broad comprehensive lines—that, while acknowledging the present, sees also the future, which, while seeing one form of good does not deny another.

So, with an understanding and a sympathetic personnel, the administration would be brought nearer to the people, until at length when their capacity for self-government had developed they would be able to take over our administrative machine little by little and work it themselves.

They could never do that now. If by any chance they did get possession of the machinery at present, they would set to work to smash it till none remained.