They thus often acquired a personal regard for the people, whom it was their pride, as well as their duty, to protect—a feeling which has since, we fear, been too much weakened. The young civilians of the present day, though excellent men of business, and accomplished linguists, have seldom any individual feeling for the natives, whom they regard in a light for which no word occurs to us so happily expressive as the French term, “les administrés.” Thus it happened that the abolition of Registerships proved almost the death-blow to the Cornwallis system, and shook, not merely the framework, but the very principles of judicial administration throughout the country. It was followed up by a series of measures, all calculated to lower the judicial department of the service, and to prove to the natives that the protection of the law, promised in the still unrepealed regulations, was thenceforward to prove illusory, wherever it was required to shield them from the encroachments of any new scheme or theory finding favour for the moment with an executive government ruling avowedly upon principles of expediency, and seeking every occasion to shake off the trammels imposed upon its freedom of action by the cautious provisions of the Cornwallis code.
The people soon found in their rulers under the new system a scrupulous discharge of all positive duties, combined with a diminished consideration for native prejudices, a neglect of many punctilios of etiquette, and a stern hostility to every exceptional privilege exempting an individual in any degree from the operation of the rules of general administration. This last-mentioned tendency showed itself particularly in the case of the rent-free tenures, which had for some ten years previously been undergoing revision.
These landed tenures were held under grants from former rulers, exempting the grantee and his heirs from all payment on the score of revenue, though sometimes, as in our own feudal tenures, imposing upon him obligations of suit and service in some form or other.
When the framers of the Cornwallis code, in 1793, determined on recognising the validity of every such tenure as was held under an authentic and sufficient grant, a provision was at the same time made for their being carefully recorded and registered.
This duty of registration was, however, either totally neglected or very imperfectly performed, and the consequence was, that by collusive extensions of their limits, and other means, such as it would be tedious to explain, the rent-free tenures were gradually eating into the rent-paying lands forming the main source of the revenues of the state. Careful revision, therefore, became necessary, and was in fact commenced so far back as the year 1819. The inquiry was intrusted to the officers of the revenue department; but for some time permission was left to those discontented with their award, to bring the question at issue between them and the Government before the regular courts of justice for final decision. This process proving too tardy, in about ten years afterwards a sort of exchequer court, called a Special Commission, was erected for the trial of appeals from the decisions of the revenue authorities on the validity of rent-free grants. This commission was filled by officers of the judicial branch of the service, and their proceedings, carried on in strict conformity with the practice of the courts of civil justice, gave no offence, and created no alarm, notwithstanding that extensive tracts were brought by their decisions under the liability of paying revenue to the state. But not long after the country had entered into the third period of its administration, the revenue authorities got impatient of all restraint, and sought to break through the impediments of judicial procedure and rules. The primary proceedings, being intrusted to young deputy-collectors, were carried on with a rapidity which rendered due investigation utterly impossible, and all real inquiry must have been deemed superfluous by juniors, who saw their superiors gravely pronounce, even in official documents, that the very existence of a rent-free tenure was an abuse, and ought to be abated.
We have said that the forgeries practised by some, and the extension of their privileges by others of the holders, rendered strict investigation of rent-free tenures an immediate necessity and a duty. Still, it was to be borne in mind, that our faith was pledged to the recognition of all genuine grants, and that, in the larger of these tenures, the fallen nobility and gentry of the land found their solace for the loss of power, place, station, hope of advancement, and all that gives a zest to the life of the upper classes in every part of the globe; while the smaller tenures of the kind constituted, in many instances, the sole support of well-descended but indigent families. There was something to move the compassion even of a universal philanthropist, in the thought of the humble individuals of both sexes to whom a sweeping resumption of all such tenures was in fact the extinction of almost every earthly hope. The Indian government itself, though at that period described by Mr F. H. Robinson (p. 12) as “a despotism administered upon radical principles,” became startled at the havoc which the zeal of its subordinates was committing among this class of sufferers, and interfered to mitigate the severity of their proceedings. Many of the “soft-hearted” seniors of the Civil Service rejoiced at a resolution which relieved them from an odious and painful duty. But thus reasons a strong-minded junior on what he regards as a feeble concession:—
“Unfortunately the long delay in making the investigations had established in their seats the fraudulent appropriators of the revenue; and when it came to be taken from them, the measure caused great change and apparent hardship to individuals in comfortable circumstances; hence arose a great cry of hardship and injustice. We were still most apt to view with sympathy the misfortunes of the higher classes; many soft-hearted officers of Government exclaimed against the sudden deprivation; and some of the seditious Europeans, who find their profit in professional attacks on Government, raised the cry much louder. But the worst of the storm had expended itself; a little firmness, a little voluntary beneficence to individual cases, and it would have ceased; and the temporary inconvenience to fraudulent individuals would have resulted in great permanent addition to the means of the state; but the Bengal Government is pusillanimous. Since Warren Hastings was persecuted in doing his duty, and Lord Cornwallis praised for sacrificing the interests of Government, and of the body of the people, it has always erred on the side of abandoning its rights to any sufficiently strong interested cry. It wavered about these resumptions. It let off first one kind of holding, then another, then all holdings under one hundred beegas (about seventy acres), whether one man possessed several such or not: life-tenures were granted where no right existed. Finally, all resumed lands were settled at half rates in perpetuity, and the Board of Revenue intimated that they ‘would be happy to see all operations discontinued.’ The result therefore is, that the Government have incurred all the odium and abuse of the measure, have given the cry more colour by so much yielding, and in the end have got not half so much revenue as they ought to have had. There has been an addition of about £300,000 to the annual revenue, at an expense of £800,000.”[[36]]
According to Mr Campbell’s calculation, a stricter enforcement of the resumption laws might have doubled the above sum; but as only the smaller tenures were let off, it is scarcely possible that more than half as much again as was actually realised could have been wrung out of the remnants to which the Government so timidly, as he asserts, abandoned its rights. An addition, therefore, of about £450,000 to our annual income would have been all that we should have gained by a measure violating the most solemn pledge given to the people that every VALID grant should be respected, reducing many families to ruin, and shaking the general confidence in our honesty and good faith. Though the passage cited is open to many objections on the score of arbitrary assumption and false reasoning, it is to its hardness of tone that we would chiefly draw our readers’ attention, as strongly confirmatory of the following remark, taken from Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet:—
“I have said enough, I think, to demonstrate that the disaffection which exists is traceable to the despotic character our administration has of late years assumed, simultaneously with its sedulous diffusion of liberal doctrines; to the unhappy dislike of natives, as natives, which has crept in among the servants of Government; to the many acts of abuse, oppression, and arbitrary misgovernment, arising as much from misguided zeal as from evil intention, which, on the part of the administrative officers, harass and vex the people.”—(P. 31).
We have already recorded our assent to Mr Marshman’s remark on the thoroughly English character of our Indian empire and its administration; but we have, moreover, to observe, that, in the application of new principles even of European growth, India often outstrips the mother country. That which in England is still theory has in India become practice. There are not wanting in England people to maintain that all grants of olden times ought to be forfeited, and their proceeds applied to the purposes of general government. If these people had their way, they would certainly resume the lands of the deans and chapters, probably those of the schools and colleges, and possibly such also as are devoted to the support of almshouses, and other charitable institutions scattered over the face of the country. These speculations in England evaporate in pamphlets, and cannot for a long time assume any more positive form than that of a speech in the House of Commons. But the following passage in Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet shows us how differently such matters are ordered in India:—