[7] The rates vary every year
on every estate, according to the varying circumstances that
influence them--such as greater or less exhaustion of the soil,
greater or less facilities of irrigation, manure, transit to market,
drainage--or from fortuitous advantages on one hand, or calamities of
season on the other; or many other circumstances which affect the
value of the land, and the abilities of the cultivators to pay. It is
not so much the proprietors of the estate or the Government as the
cultivators themselves who demand every year a readjustment of the
rate demandable upon their different holdings. This readjustment must
take place; and, if there is no landlord to effect it, Government
must effect it through its own officers. Every holding becomes
subdivided when the cultivating proprietor dies and leaves more than
one child; and, as the whole face of the country is open and without
hedges, the division is easily and speedily made. Thus the field-map
which represents an estate one year will never represent it fairly
five years after; in fact, we might almost as well attempt to map the
waves of the ocean as field-map the face of any considerable area in
any part of India.
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