The communities in which the cultivators are considered merely as
leaseholders are far more numerous; indeed, the greater part of the
village communities in this part of India are of this description;
and, where the communities are of a mixed character, the cultivating
proprietors are considered to have merely a right of occupancy, and
are liable to have their lands assessed at the same rate as those
held on a mere lease tenure. In all parts of India the cultivating
proprietors in such mixed communities are similarly situated; they
are liable to be assessed at the same rate as others holding the same
sort of lands, and often pay a higher rate, with which others are not
encumbered. But this is not general; it is as much the interest of
the proprietor to have good cultivating tenants as it is that of the
tenants to have good proprietors; and it is felt to be the interest
of both to adjust their terms amicably among themselves, without a
reference to a third and superior party, which is always costly and
commonly ruinous.[6]
It is a question of very great importance, no less morally and
politically than fiscally, which of these systems deserves most
encouragement--that in which the Government considers the immediate
cultivators to be the hereditary proprietors, and, through its own
public officers, parcels out the lands among them, and adjusts the
rates of rent demandable from every minute partition, as the lands
become more and more subdivided by the Hindoo and Muhammadan law of
inheritance; or that in which the Government considers him who holds
the area of a whole village or estate collectively as the hereditary
proprietor, and the immediate cultivators as his lease-tenants--
leaving the rates of rent to be adjusted among the parties without
the aid of public officers, or interposing only to enforce the
fulfilment of their mutual contracts.
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