A.S.B._ (vols. viii, ix,
x, xii, and xvi).
CHAPTER 72
Subdivisions of Lands--Want of Gradations of Rank--Taxes.
The country between Delhi and Meerut is well cultivated and rich in
the latent power of its soil; but there is here, as everywhere else
in the Upper Provinces, a lamentable want of gradations in society,
from the eternal subdivision of property in land, and the want of
that concentration of capital in commerce and manufactures which
characterizes European--or I may take a wider range, and say
Christian societies.[1] Where, as in India, the landlords' share of
the annual returns from the soil has been always taken by the
Government as the most legitimate fund for the payment of its public
establishments; and the estates of the farmers, and the holdings of
the immediate cultivators of the soil, are liable to be subdivided in
equal shares among the sons in every succeeding generation, the land
can never aid much in giving to society that without which no society
can possibly be well organized--a gradation of rank. Were the
Government to alter the System, to give up all the rent of the lands,
and thereby convert all the farmers into proprietors of their
estates, the case would not be much altered, while the Hindoo and
Muhammadan law of inheritance remained the same; for the eternal
subdivision would still go on, and reduce all connected with the soil
to one common level; and the people would be harassed with a
multiplicity of taxes, from which they are now free, that would have
to be imposed to supply the place of the rent given up.
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