[6] The
tomb of the old collector stood near my tents, and his son, who came
to visit it, told me that he had heard from Gwalior that a new
Governor-General was about to arrive,[7] who would probably order the
villages to be given back, when he should be made collector of the
village, as his father had been.
Had our Government acted by all the rent-free lands in our
territories on the same principle, they would have saved themselves a
vast deal of expense, trouble, and odium. The justice of declaring
all lands liable to resumption on the death of the present incumbents
when not given by competent authority for, and actually applied to,
the maintenance of religious, charitable, educational, or other
establishments of manifest public utility, would never have been for
a moment questioned by the people of India, because they would have
all known that it was in accordance with the customs of the country.
If, at the same time that we declared all land liable to resumption,
when not assigned by such authority for such purposes and actually
applied to them, we had declared that all grants by competent
authority registered in due form before the death of the present
incumbents should be liable on their death to the payment to
Government of only a quarter or half the rent arising from them, it
would have been universally hailed as an act of great liberality,
highly calculated to make our reign popular.
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