One of these cultivators, with a good plough and bullocks, and a good
character, can always get good land on moderate terms from holders of
villages.[2] Those cultivators are, I think, the best, who learn to
depend upon their stock and character for favourable terms, hold
themselves free to change their holdings when their leases expire,
and pretend not to any hereditary right in the soil. The lands are, I
think, best cultivated, and the society best constituted in India,
where the holders of estates of villages have a feeling of permanent
interest in them, an assurance of an hereditary right of property
which is liable only to the payment of a moderate Government demand,
descends undivided by the law of primogeniture, and is unaffected by
the common law, which prescribes the equal subdivision among children
of landed as well as other private property, among the Hindoos and
Muhammadans; and where the immediate cultivators hold the lands they
till by no other law than that of common specific contract.
When I speak of holders of villages, I mean the holders of lands that
belong to villages.
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