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educated and most under the eye of Government of any of the divisions in Bengal. The subjoined list of 27 different sorts of illegal cesses has been officially reported from the 24-Pergunnahs district alone:

(1.) Dâk Khurcha.-This cess is levied to reimburse the zemindars for amounts paid on account of zemindari dâk tax. The rate at which it is levied does not exceed three pice per rupee on the amount of the tenants' rent.

(2.) Chanda, including bhikya or maugon.-A contribution made to the zemindar when he is involved in debt requiring speedy clearance.

(3.) Parbony. It is paid on occasions of poojah or other religious ceremonies in the zemindar's house. The rate of its levy is not more than four pice per rupee.

(4) Tohurria.-A fee paid on the occasion of the audit of ryots' accounts at the end of the year.

(5.) Forced labor or bagar.-This labor is exacted from the ryots without payment.

(6.) Maroocha or marriage fee.-Paid on the occasion of a marriage taking place among the ryots. It is fixed at the discretion of the zemindar.

(7.) Ban salami.-A fee levied on account of preparation of goor or molasses from sugarcane.

(8.) Salami, including all fees paid on the change of ryots' holdings and on the exchange of pottahs and kaboolyuts.

(9.) Kharij dakhil.-A fee commonly, at the rate of 25 per cent., levied on the mutation of every name in the zemindar's books.

(10.) Taking of rice, fish, and other articles of food on occasions of feasts in zemindar's house.

(11.) Battah and multa kumrae.-The former is charged for conversion from Sicca to Company's rupee; the latter on account of wear and tear of the same.

(12.) Fines.-These are imposed when the zemindar settles petty disputes among his ryots.

(13.) Police khurcha.-A contribution levied for payment to police officers visiting the estate for investigating some crime or unnatural death.

(14) Junmojattra and râsh khurcha are exceptional imposts levied on occasions of certain festivals

(15.) Bardaree khurcha.-A fee levied at heavy rates by a farmer taking a lease of a mehal.

(16.) Tax or income tax levied by a few zemindars to be reimbursed for what they pay to Government on account of this tax.

(17.) Doctor's fees.-This is levied exceptionally by a few zemindars on the plea that they are made to pay a similar fee to Government.

(18.) Tantkur.-A tax of 4 annas levied from every weaver for each loom. (19.) Dhaie mehal.-A fee levied from every wet-nurse carrying on her profession in the zemindar's estate.

(20.) Anchora salami.--A fee paid by persons carrying on an illicit manufacture of salt.

(21.) Hal bhangun.-A fee paid by a ryot on his ploughing land for the first time in each and every year.

(22.) Mathooree jumma.- A tax levied on barbers.

(23.) Shashun jumma.-A tax levied on moochees for the privilege of taking hides from the carcasses of beasts thrown away in the bhaugor of a village.

(24.) Punniah khurcha.-The contribution made by the ryots on the day the punniah ceremony takes place.

(25.) Bastoo poojah khurcha.-A contribution made for the worship of bastoo pooroosh (god of dwelling-houses) on the last day of the month of Pous.

(26.) Roshud khurcha.-A contribution levied to supply with provisions some district authority or his followers making a tour in the interior of the estate.

(27.) Nazarana, or presents made to the zemindar on his making a tour through his estates.

In most districts there are cesses peculiar to the district. In all districts it must be said that these exactions largely prevail. It has been found that they are really almost quite universal, the only

difference being that in some places and in some estates they are levied in greater numbers and amount, and in less numbers and amount in others.

The following is a translation of a list of abwabs actually exacted from the ten or fifteen householders of a small hamlet in Nuddea, men neither of substance nor yet of exceptional poverty. The zemindari gomastahs proceeded with their peons to this village during the inundation of 1871, and apportioning on an average their requirements at three annas to every rupee of rental, demanded a benevolence of fifty-four rupees and two annas. The translation is made from a list prepared under their own hand and admitted by them in Court :—

Nuzzur to the naib at the punyah, or the annual settlement of
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Nuzzur to the mahashoys or the zemindars (of whom there
are five sharers) on the same occasion

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Parboni (a donation granted at the time of the poojah) to the
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This case has been given at length to illustrate the usual nature of these exactions. The above sums of money were actually realized: yet the ryots did not complain. They never would have complained in this case had the zemindars allowed matters to stop at this point. But the zemindars ventured within three or four days after the realization of this amount to impose another cess of forty rupees upon this petty village as its contribution towards the marriage expenses of the daughter of one of their own number. Yet even in these straits the ryots exhausted every means of complying with the additional exaction. They sowed indigo for the planter, and they applied to him for assistance, but in vain; they besought their mahajun for the money, but fruitlessly, and only as a last resource petitioned the Magistrate for redress.

This case was especially reported by the Board of Revenue to Government. The Board observed "the case seems to prove the unmerciful manner in which unauthorized cesses are demanded; the fear of the oppressed ryots which induces them to comply with oppressive demands, of the illegality of which they may be aware; and the extreme

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difficulty of obtaining any adequate redress; and to show conclusively that some means should be afforded to the Government to check the rapacity of the zemindars and their agents, and to afford protection to their victims."

The whole subject of these cesses was long before the Government, and a matter of careful inquiry and deliberation. Opinions from all sources were invited and placed before the consideration of the LieutenantGovernor. It was, however, made evident by more than one Commissioner that while the practice of realizing these cesses was open to strong reprobation, there was much to be said on both sides of the question, and that anything like peremptory interference with the long-existing practice might not be altogether beneficial to the ryots.

It has been the ryots' immemorial practice to pay these abwabs, and they pay accordingly; they pay because they have always paid, and because in the long run it involves less trouble to pay than to refuse. Upon a full review of the matter, the Lieutenant-Governor came to the conclusion that the system of these exactions was now in such universal vogue, was so deeply rooted, and so many social relations depended thereon, that it became a question whether it was desirable that Government should, by any general or very stringent measures, interfere to put a stop to them. It was at the same time made thoroughly clear that the Government, in hesitating to adopt severe or extreme measures, in no degree recognized or legalized those cesses. Illegal, irrecoverable by law, and prohibited by law, they must, it was said, remain; but it was deemed that it would perhaps be better, under all the circumstances, not directly to interfere except in extreme cases. As the people get better protected, better educated, and better able to understand and protect their own rights and position, things would, it was felt, no doubt, to some extent, adjust themselves. At present the people certainly prefer to pay moderate cesses to an enhancement of rent.

Government orders.

For the present, then, the Lieutenant-Governor thought that it would be sufficient to rule that Magistrate-Collectors should be careful to interfere in the case of any extreme oppression. In any case in which any duress or violence might be used by zemindars or others to enforce illegal cesses, the Magistrate was directed to interfere promptly, treating the matter as an extortion; and wherever in any particular estate the zemindar, by any means, might manage to collect from his ryots inordinate cesses, exceeding those sanctioned by the usages of that part of the country, it was enjoined that measures should be taken to inquire and ascertain the facts, to protect and instruct the ryots as to their rights, and generally to put a stop to such oppressions by every legal and proper means. Advantage was also taken of the opportunity offered by the publication of the Road Cess rules to make it generally known to the people that excepting that one cess, of which the burden on the ryots will be strictly limited in each district, all other cesses are illegal and irrecoverable by law.

These orders and the action taken by His Honor were entirely approved by the Supreme Government.

Illegal exactions in Orissa.

Failure of the Orissa Settlement.

In Orissa, however, the case is in many respects different and worse than it is in Bengal. Not only has it been established that illegal exactions have there been carried to a monstrous point, but the inquiries on this question, and the separate inquiry regarding remissions of land revenue specifically granted by Government on account of the famine of 1866 on the express condition that the rents of the ryots should also be remitted, show conclusively that, as a rule, the zemindars did not give the benefit of either the remissions or the advances they received to the ryots, but continued to collect their rents. Further, in some parts of Orissa at any rate, the Government settlement made direct with the hereditary ryots has been utterly set at naught; the Government leases have been taken from the ryots; the rents fixed by the Government officers have been increased many fold; and the main object of the extension of the settlement for a fresh term of thirty years after the famine, viz. permitting the ryots to hold on at the old settlement rates, has been utterly defeated. For the rest, the papers showed most conclusively in the LieutenantGovernor's opinion the utter failure of the system adopted in Orissa of making a minute and careful settlement of the rights of all parties, and then leaving the settlement to itself without the supervision of Government and the machinery of tehsildars, canoongoes, and village accountants, by which such settlements are worked and carried out in other provinces. Nowhere was the settlement more carefully made, or made in greater detail than in Orissa: perhaps nowhere were the status and privileges of the ryots so well protected in theory as in Orissa; yet we find after the expiry of a thirty-year settlement, during which no annual or periodical papers were filed, and the settlement records were in no way carried on, that this whole system of record and protection have utterly collapsed, the records have become waste paper, and the ryots supposed to be so well protected are among the most oppressed in India. The papers brought home to the LieutenantGovernor most strongly that, so far at least, the settlement should be immediately revised. The ryots certainly ought not to be left in a much worse position than if there had been a new settlement in the regular course. His Honor thought His Honor's views and recommendations. the course followed in 1867 (when as an act of grace a renewal of settlement for 30 years at the old revenue was given to the zemindar) should be so far modified that a complete new record of rights should be made, and that it should be made at the expense of the zemindars, as the Commissioner proposed. Every effort, it was added, would be made to remedy the other evils that had been brought to light.

With reference to a suggestion of the Government of India that a remedy might be applied by making better provisions for the trial of suits regarding rent and exaction, the Lieutenant-Governor observed that in Orissa the rent suits were still tried in the revenue and not in the civil courts, and Sir George Campbell thought that no simplification of procedure, such as he might advocate in Bengal, would suffice to remedy the injustice which had been committed towards the Orissa ryots. If their rights were now well defined and recorded, he did not doubt that, with the

attention drawn to the subject, a reduced stamp duty, and any additional assistance that might be required, our officers could do much justice in Orissa even under the present law, in case the zemindar should attempt to tamper with the ascertained rights of the ryots. But the difficulty was that thirty-five years having passed since the settlement without any adequate protection to the ryots, with no continuance of the record throughout all that time, no decent accounts, public or private, and no security against the constant attempts of the zemindars to suppress ryot rights, there had come to be a state of things in which the ryot was too much weighted to leave it possible for him, ignorant and oppressed as he was, to assert his rights successfully by individual suits. The more the ryots had substantial rights by the theory of the Orissa settlement, and the more the zemindars were by the same settlement mere middlemen and collectors, the more it had been an object to the zemindars to obliterate the rights and lower the position of the ryots and to raise their own. They had lost no opportunity to deprive the hereditary ryots of their Government pottahs, to change their lands, to raise their rents, to obliterate the distinction between hereditary ryots and mere tenants, till the situation was such that nothing but a full inquiry by an authority vested with large powers could restore the ryots to a position in which they may be fairly expected to hold their own for the future. The Lieutenant-Governor could not but express his very decided opinion that nothing but a resettlement, restoration, and record of rights in Orissa, could cure the injustice existing there. It had already been proposed to make a cadastral survey of the greater part of Orissa in view to the working of the irrigation system, and Sir George Campbell's view was that this survey, which has already been for the most part approved, should be accompanied by an accurate record of rights, which again would be continued from year to year by the establishments of canoongoes and patwaries now being organized, and in connection with the road cess returns which have been rendered.

His Excellency the Governor-General in Council was not, however, able at once to accept His Honor's recommendations, and nothing has yet been settled.

Putwarees.

Seeing how strongly it has been brought out by the experience of Orissa that adequate protection of the ryots is impossible unless there is some recognized record of tenures and rents and some regular system of accounts, the Lieutenant-Governor has thought it more than ever his duty to do all that he can to rehabilitate the old institution of the village accountant or putwaree. This institution is clearly indigenous in Orissa, where the old 'Bhooee' still remains in many villages. The Orissa settlement obligations comprise the maintenance of putwarees, and the Commissioner has been desired to revise and restore the system. The putwarees also survive in good preservation throughout Behar in the Patna and Bhaugulpore divisions; they have been already much rubbed up and improved, and orders have been issued to take measures for doing so still more effectually. In all North Bengal and some parts of East Bengal especially Sylhet) putwarees are or were also common, though now the servants of the zemindars. The Regula tions impose on the zemindars the obligation of maintaining put warees

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