[8]
If there be any truth in my conclusions, our Government has acted
unwisely in going, as it has generally done, into [one or other of]
the two extremes, in its settlement of the land revenue.
In the Zamindari settlement of Bengal, it conferred the hereditary
right of property over areas larger than English counties on
individuals, and left the immediate cultivators mere tenants-at-
will.[9] These individuals felt no interest in promoting the comfort
and welfare of the village communities, or conciliating the
affections of the cultivators, whom they never saw or wished to see;
and they let out the village, or other subdivision of their estates,
to second parties quite as little interested, who again let them out
to others, so that the system of rack-renting went on over the whole
area of the immense possession. This was a system 'more honoured in
the breach than in the observance'; for, as the great landholders
became involved in the ruin of their cultivators, their estates were
sold for arrears of revenue due to Government, and thus the
proprietary right of one individual has become divided among many,
who will have the feelings which the larger holders wanted, and so
remedy the evil.
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