Perpetual settlement ordered.
Lord Wellesley, however, interfered, and ordered that perpetual settlements should be concluded with zemindars. Somehow this zemindari settlement had a fascination for British statesmen of the period. It was believed that the creation of an aristocracy of landlords would guarantee the permanence of British rule in India. Accordingly, Lord Wellesley was deaf to all arguments in favour of a ryotwari settlement, and threatened to remove any public servant in the Madras Presidency who should hesitate to carry out his orders.
No zemindars.
Madras had no alternative but to submit. There were zemindars in the Telugu country to the northward, which had been conquered centuries previously by the Mohammedan Sultans of Golconda; and with these zemindars it was easy to conclude a perpetual settlement. But there were no zemindars in the Tamil country to the southward.
Zemindars created.
In this extremity there was no alternative but to manufacture zemindars. Accordingly zemindars were created in the Madras Presidency by the old Bengal process of grouping villages together, selling them by auction, and treating the lucky buyer as a zemindar. But the new zemindars failed to pay the stipulated revenue. The groups of villages were again brought into the market, and as Lord Wellesley had left India, the estates were bought in by the Madras government, and the revenue resettled with individual ryots or cultivators.[24]
Military bond-holders.
In Malabar and Canara on the western coast the proprietors of land did not live in villages. They were landholders of the old military type, clinging to their lands with hereditary tenacity, employing serfs or slaves to cultivate them, and paying no revenue except feudal service and homage to their suzerain. Eventually Malabar and Canara were conquered by Tippu of Mysore, and the landholders were compelled to pay revenue, or to surrender their lands.
Thomas Munro: ryotwari settlement.
Thomas Munro is the real author of the ryotwari settlement. He was a cadet in the Madras army, who landed at Fort St. George about the time that Hyder Ali was desolating the Carnatic. In 1792 he was employed in settling the revenue in Malabar and Canara, which had been ceded by Tippu to Lord Cornwallis; and there he formed his ideas of a settlement direct with individual landholders. The controversy between Madras and Bengal raged for years, but in the end Thomas Munro was victorious. He converted the Board of Control and Court of Directors to his views. He was knighted, and appointed Governor of Madras. He died in 1827, after having triumphantly introduced the ryotwari. The zemindars in the Telegu country still retain their estates with the proprietary rights of landlords.