The Upper Provinces were in a part of India
peculiarly
liable to
that scourge, the tract about Delhi having suffered thirteen visitations
in the previous five centuries.
that scourge, the tract about Delhi having suffered thirteen visitations
in the previous five centuries.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
2 No special irrigation department was
created, but the services of military officers were utilised and the
strictest economy in expenditure was enforced. The restoration, carried
out on lines far from scientific, was completed in 1827. The work, now
known as the Western Jumna Canal, had a total length of 425 miles,
including distributaries, and, besides providing Delhi with water,
irrigated a considerable area in the Hissar district, which in 1807 had
been an almost uninhabited waste. In 1822 work was undertaken on
a similar but smaller channel from the left bank of the Jumna, con-
structed early in the eighteenth century by a Moghul ruler. This
project, now the Eastern Jumna Canal, with a total length of 155 miles,
was completed in 1830, but it took several years longer to remedy
defects which soon showed themselves. Meanwhile the directors of
the Company, unimpressed with the importance of irrigation for their
new territories, were loath to embark on costly schemes. Whatever
expenditure was allowed had to be met from current revenue; the
days of loan funds raised for productive works were yet far distant.
It was not until 1854 that the first great original project, the Upper
Ganges Canal, was completed, though it had been suggested as early
as 1836. Famine served to emphasise its necessity.
The Upper Provinces were in a part of India peculiarly liable to
that scourge, thu tract about Delhi having suffered thirteen visitations
in the previous five centuries. The development of British famine
policy has been sketched elsewhere in this volume. Its two funda-
mental features, the existence of means for the rapid transport of food
and a system of public works on which the mass of agricultural labour
1 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 40; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. 1882–3, p. 50.
: Triennial Review of Irrigation in India, Calcutta, 1922, p. 24; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 278 599. ;
Imp. Gaz. III, 327. 599.
i Triennial Řeview, p. 25; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 283 sqq.
## p. 85 (#117) #############################################
FAMINE AND IRRIGATION
85
suddenly thrown out of employment can earn a subsistence wage, did
not exist, and indeed could not have existed under native rulers. Their
famine measures were generally limited to a prohibition of grain
export, penalties for private hoarding, and the distribution of a modi-
cum of relief. There was thus no famine organisation, however crude,
which the new rulers could inherit and utilise. Their own experience
soon began. In 1803 the monsoon failed and famine visited the Upper
Provinces. One-third of a million sterling of land-revenue was re-
mitted and land-holders were assisted with advances, while bounties
were given on import of grain. In 1812 famine again appeared in
the country lying west of the Jumna. In 1837-8 it prevailed in a
severe form in a tract which held a population of twenty-eight
millions, including twenty-one millions in the then newly formed
North-Western Provinces. On this occasion the first definite efforts at
famine organisation were made at a cost of nearly a quarter of a
million sterling; the government definitely recognising its responsi-
bility for the relief of the able-bodied, while leaving that of invalids
and orphans to public charity. Liberal suspensions and remissions of
revenue, to the extent of nearly one million sterling, were given,
though loans and advances to land-holders were discouraged. The two
canals which had been recently reopened fully proved their value in
the famine, which served to impress on the authorities the vast im-
portance of irrigation, and in particular to secure attention for the
famous project which subsequently became the Upper Ganges Canal,
now irrigating large areas in the Doab. Originated by Colonel
Colvin, it was elaborated by Sir P. Cautley of the Bengal Artillery,
who ultimately constructed the canal. Work began in 1842 but it was
interrupted by lack of funds and by other causes during the Afghan
and Sikh wars. Irrigation actually commenced in 1854, but operations
were hampered by the Mutiny, and it was not until the famine of
1860–1 that the full supply of water could be utilised. Though it was
one of the earliest of the British canals,' and though defects in design
had gradually to be rectified, portions of it are even yet unique in
size and conception. Its total length, including branches and dis-
tributaries, is over 3800 miles. It is still the largest single irrigation
work in India and in 1919–20 it irrigated over one and a third
million acres.
Comparatively few public works, other than canals, some main
lines of communications, and some necessary public buildings,
were
constructed during the early years of British administration. There
was no Public Works Department; projects being executed through
the agency of a Military Board, an inefficient arrangement which
existed until 1854. 4
1 Imp. Gaz, III, 477 599.
: Imp. Gaz. II, 484, 501; Report of Famine Commission, 1880, p. 31; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs.
1911-12, p. 22.
's Triennial Review, p. 30; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 287 599.
• Imp. Gaz. IV, 307.
## p. 85 (#118) #############################################
82 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
Progress in carrying out the regular settlement was very slow. Besides
the decision of questions involving vague rights and customs, it
included the very difficult task of assessing land-revenue on a rental
basis, while rents, even when they existed, were dubious in nature and
amount. Rents paid in money were rare, so that rental calculations
depended largely on estimates of the value of grain produce and of
the cost of cultivation, a process which it was attempted to carry out
holding by holding. In a few years it became clear that success on
such lines was impossible. In 1833, under the auspices of Lord William
Bentinck, a simplified system was inaugurated, though the principles
of 1822 were retained. It was elaborated during the next twenty
years under the direction of two noted officers, R. M. Bird and James
Thomason. The standard demand was reduced to two-thirds of the
net rental, and a less theoretical method of assessment-known as
"aggregate to detail”—was devised. The land-revenue was fixed with
reference to general considerations affecting the tract under settle-
ment, such as agricultural and economic resources, past fiscal history,
and the level of money rents paid by tenants, or those estimated to be
fairly payable, wherever such rents had come into common use. The
gross assessment thus determined was distributed over individual
villages with reference to their comparative capacities as ascertained
by local enquiry. Theoretical estimates of rental based on assumed
data were discouraged. The cadastral survey was carried out for
every village on the basis of a prior scientific topographical survey
executed by professional officers. ?
The regular settlement served to elucidate that much discussed,
much belauded, and much misunderstood institution, the Indian
village community. Its significant feature is the ownership of estates
not by single individuals, but by groups of persons more or less closely
connected. Completely joint or collective ownership and enjoyment
of the entire village area is by no means an invariable incident. Some
degree of communal control over it is commonly found, mainly in the
type of village technically known as “zamindari”, but severalty in
,
the beneficial occupation of a part, at least, of the area is usual, the
sizes of the several holdings corresponding to shares regulated by
various definite and for the most part traditional methods. In
Southern and Central India a somewhat different type of village
community exists, technically known as "ryotwari”, in which separa-
tion of individual interests within the group is practically complete.
In the North-Western Provinces the settlement was generally made
with village communities of the zamindari type, the members being
jointly as well as severally responsible. But in very many cases the
1 Field, op. cit. p. 117; Bengal Reg. ix of 1833; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. p. 43; Adm. Rep.
Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 17; Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 12–13; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 25-7;
Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882–3, p. 128.
2 Baden Powell, op. cit. pp. 23, 38, 41 599.
Baden Powell, The Indian Village Community, London, 1896.
## p. 85 (#119) #############################################
TENANT RIGHT
83
body consisted of only a few persons, often indeed of a single individual,
who, or whose predecessor, had been a revenue farmer of the village
,
in the early years following annexation. A holder of a seignorial
status over a community was generally compensated by a fixed annual
sum payable by it. 1
The subordinate rights of tenants, not members of the community,
were also recorded and gradually protected. Only the barest reference
is here possible to the subject of tenant-right, a highly controversial
problem of Indian administration. The majority of indigenous Indian
tenancies comparatively seldom originated in any definite contract
between landlord and tenant: they were more frequently the relics of
previous more complete tenures which under various influences had
sunk to the status of a precarious occupancy, dependent for its con-
tinuance on the vague right, traditionally recognised, of the first
clearer of waste land and his heirs; or on the fact that, when waste
land was plentiful and cultivators comparatively few, there was little
of that induceinent to eject which came later under the altered con-
ditions of British rule. An adequate treatment of tenant-right clearly
required a classification of tenancies according to origin and an
ascription to each class of the rights equitably appropriate to it. In
the permanent settlement of Bengal no such treatment was attempted,
and the security of tenants, though promised as an essential part of
the settlement, was left to the operation of agreements which it was
vainly expected would be made between them and the landlords,
while a regulation of 1799 gave to the latter a harsh power of distraint,
which produced much mischief. Warned by the errors of Bengal;
British administrators in the North-Western Provinces tried to define
and protect the interests of tenants, but a definite classification was
very difficult, and in practice a broad rule, apparently first suggested
by Lord William Bentinck in 1832, was followed, under which a
tenant on proving twelve years' continuous occupation of his holding
was admitted to a permanent and heritable tenure at a judicially
fixed rent. A rule so wide probably covered more cases than really
deserved protection, but it was ultimately embodied in Act X of 1859,
the earliest Indian legislation which defined and protected tenant-
right, both in Bengal and in the North-Western Provinces.
The first regular settlement of those provinces, excluding the
Benares districts, which had already been permanently settled, was
carried out district by district during the period 1833-42, the revenue
being assessed for a term which was generally thirty years. It avoided
a
Moreland, op. cit. pp. 35–9; Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, u, 82, 83;
Adm. Rep. N. -W. Prous. 1882-3, pp. 38, 39.
* Bengal Reg. 1 of 1793, § 8 (i); Field, op. cit. p. 35; Baden Powell, op. cit. 1, 403-5.
Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 97-9; Selections from Revenue Records of N. -W. Provs. 1822–
33; Moreland, op. cit. pp.
55, 56.
Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882–3, p. 128; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. 1882–3, p. 43; Field,
op. cit. p. 118; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 27.
6-2
## p. 85 (#120) #############################################
84
ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
the radical defects of the permanent settlement of Bengal-haphazard
assessment based on inadequate data, the absence of any record of
rights or of any form of survey, and the insecurity of tenants. In the
Benares districts they were gradually remedied, as far as possible,
many years later, by the execution of cadastral surveys, undertaken
in 1877, and by the preparation of a record of rights.
The importance of canal irrigation for the agriculture of the Upper
Provinces soon attracted the attention of British officers. Their first
efforts were directed to the restoration of canals made by previous
rulers rather than to the construction of entirely new projects. After
a preliminary survey in 1809–10, work began in 1815 on an old
channel which had been originally made in the middle of the four-
teenth century by Firoz Shah, the Tughlaq king of Delhi, for the
irrigation of the arid tracts of Hissar and Širsa, and which after various
vicissitudes had ceased to flow during the period of Moghul decay.
It was in reality a series of natural drainages connected by excavation
rather than a true canal. 2 No special irrigation department was
created, but the services of military officers were utilised and the
strictest economy in expenditure was enforced. The restoration, carried
out on lines far from scientific, was completed in 1827. The work, now
known as the Western Jumna Canal, had a total length of 425 miles,
a
including distributaries, and, besides providing Delhi with water,
irrigated a considerable area in the Hissar district, which in 1807 had
been an almost uninhabited waste. In 1822 work was undertaken on
a similar but smaller channel from the left bank of the Jumna, con-
structed early in the eighteenth century by a Moghul ruler. This
project, now the Eastern Jumna Canal, with a total length of 155 miles,
was completed in 1830, but it took several years longer to remedy
defects which soon showed themselves, 3 Meanwhile the directors of
the Company, unimpressed with the importance of irrigation for their
new territories, were loath to embark on costly schemes. Whatever
expenditure was allowed had to be met from current revenue; the
days of loan funds raised for productive works were yet far distant.
It was not until 1854 that the first great original project, the Upper
Ganges Canal, was completed, though it had been suggested as early
as 1836. Famine served to emphasise its necessity.
The Upper Provinces were in a part of India peculiarly liable to
that scourge, the tract about Delhi having suffered thirteen visitations
in the previous five centuries. The development of British famine
policy has been sketched elsewhere in this volume. Its two funda-
mental features, the existence of means for the rapid transport of food
and a system of public works on which the mass of agricultural labour
a
1 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 40; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. 1882–3, p. 50.
: Triennial Review of Irrigation in India, Calcutta, 1922, p. 24; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 278 599. ;
Imp. Gaz. III, 327 399.
Triennial Review, p. 25; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 283 sqq.
## p. 85 (#121) #############################################
FAMINE AND IRRIGATION
85
suddenly thrown out of employment can earn a subsistence wage, did
not exist, and indeed could not have existed under native rulers. Their
famine measures were generally limited to a prohibition of grain
export, penalties for private hoarding, and the distribution of a modi-
cum of relief. " There was thus no famine organisation, however crude,
which the new rulers could inherit and utilise. Their own experience
soon began. In 1803 the monsoon failed and famine visited the Upper
Provinces. One-third of a million sterling of land-revenue was re-
mitted and land-holders were assisted with advances, while bounties
were given on import of grain. In 1812 famine again appeared in
the country lying west of the Jumna. In 1837–8 it prevailed in a
severe form in a tract which held a population of twenty-eight
millions, including twenty-one millions in the then newly formed
North-Western Provinces. On this occasion the first definite efforts at
famine organisation were made at a cost of nearly a quarter of a
million sterling; the government definitely recognising its responsi-
bility for the relief of the able-bodied, while leaving that of invalids
and orphans to public charity. 2 Liberal suspensions and remissions of
revenue, to the extent of nearly one million sterling, were given,
though loans and advances to land-holders were discouraged. The two
canals which had been recently reopened fully proved their value in
the famine, which served to impress on the authorities the vast im-
portance of irrigation, and in particular to secure attention for the
famous project which subsequently became the Upper Ganges Canal,
now irrigating large areas in the Doab. Originated by Colonel
Colvin, it was elaborated by Sir P. Cautley of the Bengal Artillery,
who ultimately constructed the canal. Work began in 1842 but it was
interrupted by lack of funds and by other causes during the Afghan
and Sikh wars. Irrigation actually commenced in 1854, but operations
were hampered by the Mutiny, and it was not until the famine of
1860–1 that the full supply of water could be utilised. Though it was
one of the earliest of the British canals, and though defects in design
had gradually to be rectified, portions of it are even yet unique in
size and conception. Its total length, including branches and dis-
tributaries, is over 3800 miles. It is still the largest single irrigation
work in India and in 1919–20 it irrigated over one and a third
million acres.
Comparatively few public works, other than canals, some main
lines of communications, and some necessary public buildings, were
constructed during the early years of British administration. There
was no Public Works Department; projects being executed through
the agency of a Military Board, an inefficient arrangement which
existed until 1854. 4
1 Imp. Gaz. III, 477 599.
: Imp. Gaz. II, 484, 501; Report of Famine Commission, 1880, p. 31; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs.
1911-12, p. 22.
• Triennial Review, p. 30; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 287 599.
• Imp. Gaz. IV, 307.
## p. 86 (#122) #############################################
86 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
The indigenous system of liquor excise, termed abkari, was one of
farm pure and simple, the unrestricted and exclusive right to manu-
facture and sell spirituous liquor within a more or less defined area
being usually leased to the local Moghul tax farmer, whether an
official or a zamindar. Under the Company's government a similar
system of leases of defined areas in favour of licensees was continued,
but between 1790 and 1800 restrictions on the number and locality
of shops and stills were introduced. " This modified system was
extended to the Upper Provinces, but as early as 1813, in order to
secure greater control, central distilleries were established at con-
venient places, generally the headquarters of districts, or of their sub-
divisions, termed tahsils. Within these buildings the licensed distillers
were required to carry on their operations, the right to sell at specified
shops being separately licensed; though in order to cope with illicit
distillation, an ever-besetting difficulty in Indian excise administra-
tion, single stills were permitted in distant outlying areas, their
licences covering both manufacture and sale. To such single detached
stills the term "outstill”, so common in Indian excise discussions, is
properly applicable. In the Upper Provinces as well as in Bengal the
new system was found unable to cope with illicit traffic, and after
1824 there was a general return to the system of farms or leases of
specified shops in defined areas, with outstills where necessary. This
arrangement, with minor modifications, continued in force in the
Upper Provinces until after 1858. The attainment of the ideal, then
only dimly perceived, of controlled consumption combined with high
or even adequate taxation was incompatible with a volume of illicit
traffic with which the administration of the time was quite unable to
contend.
As in the case of spirituous liquor, the excise of opium, regarded by
the Moghuls as a subject for state monopoly, took the form of a farm
of the exclusive right to manufacture and sell. The manifold defects
of this system, which the East India Company took over in 1773,
caused its abandonment in 1797, the government then assuming the
monopoly of manufacture through its own agencies; an organisation
which was extended to the Upper Provinces and has been described
elsewhere. 2
Municipal self-government did not exist at the introduction of
British rule. 3 A pure exotic, it was planted very gradually and tenta-
tively by the new-comers. Their first efforts were confined to the
presidency towns, and it was not until 1850 that legislative provision
was made for the constitution of municipal bodies in provincial towns.
These consisted of the district magistrate, in whom all executive
Papers relating to Excise Administration in India printed in Government of India
Gazette of 1 March, 1890; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, p. 170; Imp. Gaz. IV, 254;
H. of C. Papers, 1831-2, vol. xi.
: Imp. Gaz. IV, 242; H. of C. Papers, 1890-1, LIX, 384.
• Imp. Gaz. IV, 281, 284 99. ; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882–3, p. 48.
1
## p. 87 (#123) #############################################
NON-REGULATION AREAS
87
authority was vested, and a body of nominated councillors, whose
function was to assess rates in accordance with certain prescribed
principles, and to assist the district magistrate with advice. Taxation
might be a personal assessment on householders, or by rates on houses,
and the proceeds were expended in the entertainment of town watch-
men, simple sanitation, lighting and other local objects. The act of
1850 was fairly widely applied, and apparently with a considerable
degree of success, in the North-Western Provinces. 1
Passing now from the regulation districts of that région, the re-
mainder of this chapter will be concerned with non-regulation areas.
To the explanation of the origin and general significance of that dis-
tinction as already given, it may be added that the type of adminis-
tration adopted in non-regulation areas was characterised by simple
and more direct modes of procedure and by the greater accessibility
of officials to the people; but chiefly by the union of all powers,
executive, magisterial, and judicial, in the hands of the district officer,
here termed deputy-commissioner in place of magistrate and collector,
subject however to the appellate and supervisional jurisdiction of the
commissioner of the division in all branches of work. ? The system
was paternal rather than formally legal, though legal principles were
by no means set aside; and it largely depended for its success on the
personal character, initiative, vigour and discretion of the local
officers. Passing over the non-regulation Sagar and Narbada terri-
torics, of which the early administration was not conspicuously suc-
cessful, though law and order and a judicial system were established,
we may proceed at once to an account of administrative development
in thc Panjab, the whole of which was always non-regulation.
That province, as it exists at present, including the recently
separated Delhienclave, comprises cis-Satlej and trans-Satlej portions.
The first consists of the Delhi territory, annexed in 1803, and of a
tract, lying between it and the Satlej, which was gradually absorbed
as a result of the protectorate assumed in 1809 and of the first Sikh
War. The second comprises the annexations of 1846 and 1849, the
Jalandhar Doab and the Panjab proper. In accordance with the
policy approved on the retirement of the Marquis of Wellesley, the
Delhi territory after its formal annexation was for long outside the
sphere of direct British control, which it was sought to restrict to the
eastern side of the Jumna, leaving the territory, which, as the result
of recent war, was largely a deserted waste, in the hands of a ring of
semi-independent chiefs, with whose administration the Resident at
Delhi interfered as little as possible while endeavouring to maintain
peace. The aggressions attempted by Ranjit Singh on the country
cast of the Sailcj, foiled in 1809 by the Treaty of Amritsar, resulted
* Moral and Mar. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P. 54.
· Campbell, op. cit. p. 250; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 447 sqq. ; Sir C. Aitchison, Lawrence, Oxford,
1892, pp. 59 599. ; Imp. Gaz. IV, 54.
; Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs, 1882-3, p. 16.
## p. 88 (#124) #############################################
88 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
in the protectorate already mentioned, but even then administrative
control over the Delhi territory was very slowly asserted. It was only
in 1819–20 that the tract was divided into four districts under locally
resident officers, a fifth being added in 1824. In 1832 they were
definitely included in the North-Western Provinces for purposes of
administration, which it was directed should be carried on in the
spirit of the Bengai Regulations, though these were never, it appears,
formally extended to them. The early revenue administration up to
1828 was of the same highly unsatisfactory character as in other parts
of the North-Western Provinces, but the tract was greatly benefited
by the restoration of the Western Jumna Canal, especially during the
famine of 1837–8, of which it felt the full force. Up to its union with
the Panjab in 1858 its administration proceeded on the lines already
described, a regular settlement being made between 1837 and 1842. 2
The growth of the supremacy of Maharaja Ranjit Singh over the
trans-Satlej Panjab has been described elsewhere. Here we deal only
with his administrative system. 3 Immersed in war and diplomacy, he
had no leisure for the creation of a stable polity. Beyond military
organisation and conquest, the collection of revenue was his chief
interest. To this all other branches of his administration were sub-
ordinated, and to it the attention of all his officials was unremittingly
directed. He appears to have utilised all known sources of taxation:
imposts direct and indirect, on land, on houses, on persons, on manu-
factures, on commerce, on imports and exports; all had a place in
his fiscal system. The revenue of remote provinces was farmed to men
of wealth and influence, or of vigour and capacity, and they were
invested with powers of government in the exercise of which they
experienced little interference, provided that revenue was regularly
remitted. Military chiefs, who enjoyed the revenue of jagirs, or
assigned tracts of land, on condition of furnishing armed contingents,
also exercised practically unlimited authority in their jurisdictions.
These farmers and jagirdars had under them local agents, or kardars,
who exercised such administrative functions as were recognised, and
of these the only one of importance was the collection of revenue. In
tracts, neither farmed nor held in jagir, and known as khalsa, the
kardars were under the nazim, or local governor of a group of dis-
tricts, who was directly responsible to the maharaja and his informal
council, or cabinet; but their positions depended largely on the
influence which they could command at court, and on their success
in collecting revenue. In Ranjit Singh's later years central control
was much relaxed and the system of farming became more prevalent.
Land-revenue was collected as a rule direct from the cultivator in the
shape of a fixed share of the produce, 4 except in the case of crops, such
Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, p. 23; Ibbetson, op. cit. pp. 34, 35; Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1911-12,
pp. 16–17.
2 Ibbetson, op. cit. chaps. iv and v; Panjab Sett. Manual, p. 17.
's Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, sect. 1, pt 11; 1882-3, p. 25; H. of C. Papers, 1849, vol. XLI.
• Panjab Sett. Manual, chap. iv.
## p. 89 (#125) #############################################
THE RULE OF RANJIT SINGH
89
as sugar-cane and cotton, which could not readily be divided. In
lieu of the actual share of the crop its estimated money value was
sometimes taken, common shares being one-third and two-fifths, with
one-half on the more fertile lands. Numerous additional dues in cash
or kind were also collected, and cultivators of all grades were treated
on the same footing without reference to any distinctions of superior
or inferior rights on land, though occasionally the leaders of the village
community received a measure of indulgence. Joint responsibility of
its members for the payment of land-revenue was not enforced, except
rarely when a few of its leaders were allowed to engage for a lump
sum, and then they tended to assume the privileges of landlords
towards the rest of the cultivators, who fell back into the position of
tenants.
There were no definite and regular courts of justice, though ere
was a judicial officer, termed the adalati, in Lahore. Private property
in land of a kind was recognised and in principle upheld, and the
general corporate existence and obligations of village communities
were maintained, while disputes were settled to a minor extent by the
local authorities, but mainly by private arbitration, resort to which
by means of a comparatively organised system of committees, or
panchayats, was widely practised. There were local police officers, but
their functions were more often political and military than civil, their
duty being to check local disturbances and to arrange for the move-
ments of troops. There was no excise system, the production and sale
of liquor being quite uncontrolled. All officials enjoyed much licence,
but cultivators were not as a rule needlessly oppressed if they paid
their revenue. The criminal law was unwritten and contained mainly
two penalties, fine and mutilation.
created, but the services of military officers were utilised and the
strictest economy in expenditure was enforced. The restoration, carried
out on lines far from scientific, was completed in 1827. The work, now
known as the Western Jumna Canal, had a total length of 425 miles,
including distributaries, and, besides providing Delhi with water,
irrigated a considerable area in the Hissar district, which in 1807 had
been an almost uninhabited waste. In 1822 work was undertaken on
a similar but smaller channel from the left bank of the Jumna, con-
structed early in the eighteenth century by a Moghul ruler. This
project, now the Eastern Jumna Canal, with a total length of 155 miles,
was completed in 1830, but it took several years longer to remedy
defects which soon showed themselves. Meanwhile the directors of
the Company, unimpressed with the importance of irrigation for their
new territories, were loath to embark on costly schemes. Whatever
expenditure was allowed had to be met from current revenue; the
days of loan funds raised for productive works were yet far distant.
It was not until 1854 that the first great original project, the Upper
Ganges Canal, was completed, though it had been suggested as early
as 1836. Famine served to emphasise its necessity.
The Upper Provinces were in a part of India peculiarly liable to
that scourge, thu tract about Delhi having suffered thirteen visitations
in the previous five centuries. The development of British famine
policy has been sketched elsewhere in this volume. Its two funda-
mental features, the existence of means for the rapid transport of food
and a system of public works on which the mass of agricultural labour
1 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 40; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. 1882–3, p. 50.
: Triennial Review of Irrigation in India, Calcutta, 1922, p. 24; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 278 599. ;
Imp. Gaz. III, 327. 599.
i Triennial Řeview, p. 25; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 283 sqq.
## p. 85 (#117) #############################################
FAMINE AND IRRIGATION
85
suddenly thrown out of employment can earn a subsistence wage, did
not exist, and indeed could not have existed under native rulers. Their
famine measures were generally limited to a prohibition of grain
export, penalties for private hoarding, and the distribution of a modi-
cum of relief. There was thus no famine organisation, however crude,
which the new rulers could inherit and utilise. Their own experience
soon began. In 1803 the monsoon failed and famine visited the Upper
Provinces. One-third of a million sterling of land-revenue was re-
mitted and land-holders were assisted with advances, while bounties
were given on import of grain. In 1812 famine again appeared in
the country lying west of the Jumna. In 1837-8 it prevailed in a
severe form in a tract which held a population of twenty-eight
millions, including twenty-one millions in the then newly formed
North-Western Provinces. On this occasion the first definite efforts at
famine organisation were made at a cost of nearly a quarter of a
million sterling; the government definitely recognising its responsi-
bility for the relief of the able-bodied, while leaving that of invalids
and orphans to public charity. Liberal suspensions and remissions of
revenue, to the extent of nearly one million sterling, were given,
though loans and advances to land-holders were discouraged. The two
canals which had been recently reopened fully proved their value in
the famine, which served to impress on the authorities the vast im-
portance of irrigation, and in particular to secure attention for the
famous project which subsequently became the Upper Ganges Canal,
now irrigating large areas in the Doab. Originated by Colonel
Colvin, it was elaborated by Sir P. Cautley of the Bengal Artillery,
who ultimately constructed the canal. Work began in 1842 but it was
interrupted by lack of funds and by other causes during the Afghan
and Sikh wars. Irrigation actually commenced in 1854, but operations
were hampered by the Mutiny, and it was not until the famine of
1860–1 that the full supply of water could be utilised. Though it was
one of the earliest of the British canals,' and though defects in design
had gradually to be rectified, portions of it are even yet unique in
size and conception. Its total length, including branches and dis-
tributaries, is over 3800 miles. It is still the largest single irrigation
work in India and in 1919–20 it irrigated over one and a third
million acres.
Comparatively few public works, other than canals, some main
lines of communications, and some necessary public buildings,
were
constructed during the early years of British administration. There
was no Public Works Department; projects being executed through
the agency of a Military Board, an inefficient arrangement which
existed until 1854. 4
1 Imp. Gaz, III, 477 599.
: Imp. Gaz. II, 484, 501; Report of Famine Commission, 1880, p. 31; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs.
1911-12, p. 22.
's Triennial Review, p. 30; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 287 599.
• Imp. Gaz. IV, 307.
## p. 85 (#118) #############################################
82 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
Progress in carrying out the regular settlement was very slow. Besides
the decision of questions involving vague rights and customs, it
included the very difficult task of assessing land-revenue on a rental
basis, while rents, even when they existed, were dubious in nature and
amount. Rents paid in money were rare, so that rental calculations
depended largely on estimates of the value of grain produce and of
the cost of cultivation, a process which it was attempted to carry out
holding by holding. In a few years it became clear that success on
such lines was impossible. In 1833, under the auspices of Lord William
Bentinck, a simplified system was inaugurated, though the principles
of 1822 were retained. It was elaborated during the next twenty
years under the direction of two noted officers, R. M. Bird and James
Thomason. The standard demand was reduced to two-thirds of the
net rental, and a less theoretical method of assessment-known as
"aggregate to detail”—was devised. The land-revenue was fixed with
reference to general considerations affecting the tract under settle-
ment, such as agricultural and economic resources, past fiscal history,
and the level of money rents paid by tenants, or those estimated to be
fairly payable, wherever such rents had come into common use. The
gross assessment thus determined was distributed over individual
villages with reference to their comparative capacities as ascertained
by local enquiry. Theoretical estimates of rental based on assumed
data were discouraged. The cadastral survey was carried out for
every village on the basis of a prior scientific topographical survey
executed by professional officers. ?
The regular settlement served to elucidate that much discussed,
much belauded, and much misunderstood institution, the Indian
village community. Its significant feature is the ownership of estates
not by single individuals, but by groups of persons more or less closely
connected. Completely joint or collective ownership and enjoyment
of the entire village area is by no means an invariable incident. Some
degree of communal control over it is commonly found, mainly in the
type of village technically known as “zamindari”, but severalty in
,
the beneficial occupation of a part, at least, of the area is usual, the
sizes of the several holdings corresponding to shares regulated by
various definite and for the most part traditional methods. In
Southern and Central India a somewhat different type of village
community exists, technically known as "ryotwari”, in which separa-
tion of individual interests within the group is practically complete.
In the North-Western Provinces the settlement was generally made
with village communities of the zamindari type, the members being
jointly as well as severally responsible. But in very many cases the
1 Field, op. cit. p. 117; Bengal Reg. ix of 1833; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. p. 43; Adm. Rep.
Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 17; Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 12–13; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 25-7;
Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882–3, p. 128.
2 Baden Powell, op. cit. pp. 23, 38, 41 599.
Baden Powell, The Indian Village Community, London, 1896.
## p. 85 (#119) #############################################
TENANT RIGHT
83
body consisted of only a few persons, often indeed of a single individual,
who, or whose predecessor, had been a revenue farmer of the village
,
in the early years following annexation. A holder of a seignorial
status over a community was generally compensated by a fixed annual
sum payable by it. 1
The subordinate rights of tenants, not members of the community,
were also recorded and gradually protected. Only the barest reference
is here possible to the subject of tenant-right, a highly controversial
problem of Indian administration. The majority of indigenous Indian
tenancies comparatively seldom originated in any definite contract
between landlord and tenant: they were more frequently the relics of
previous more complete tenures which under various influences had
sunk to the status of a precarious occupancy, dependent for its con-
tinuance on the vague right, traditionally recognised, of the first
clearer of waste land and his heirs; or on the fact that, when waste
land was plentiful and cultivators comparatively few, there was little
of that induceinent to eject which came later under the altered con-
ditions of British rule. An adequate treatment of tenant-right clearly
required a classification of tenancies according to origin and an
ascription to each class of the rights equitably appropriate to it. In
the permanent settlement of Bengal no such treatment was attempted,
and the security of tenants, though promised as an essential part of
the settlement, was left to the operation of agreements which it was
vainly expected would be made between them and the landlords,
while a regulation of 1799 gave to the latter a harsh power of distraint,
which produced much mischief. Warned by the errors of Bengal;
British administrators in the North-Western Provinces tried to define
and protect the interests of tenants, but a definite classification was
very difficult, and in practice a broad rule, apparently first suggested
by Lord William Bentinck in 1832, was followed, under which a
tenant on proving twelve years' continuous occupation of his holding
was admitted to a permanent and heritable tenure at a judicially
fixed rent. A rule so wide probably covered more cases than really
deserved protection, but it was ultimately embodied in Act X of 1859,
the earliest Indian legislation which defined and protected tenant-
right, both in Bengal and in the North-Western Provinces.
The first regular settlement of those provinces, excluding the
Benares districts, which had already been permanently settled, was
carried out district by district during the period 1833-42, the revenue
being assessed for a term which was generally thirty years. It avoided
a
Moreland, op. cit. pp. 35–9; Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, u, 82, 83;
Adm. Rep. N. -W. Prous. 1882-3, pp. 38, 39.
* Bengal Reg. 1 of 1793, § 8 (i); Field, op. cit. p. 35; Baden Powell, op. cit. 1, 403-5.
Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 97-9; Selections from Revenue Records of N. -W. Provs. 1822–
33; Moreland, op. cit. pp.
55, 56.
Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882–3, p. 128; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. 1882–3, p. 43; Field,
op. cit. p. 118; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 27.
6-2
## p. 85 (#120) #############################################
84
ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
the radical defects of the permanent settlement of Bengal-haphazard
assessment based on inadequate data, the absence of any record of
rights or of any form of survey, and the insecurity of tenants. In the
Benares districts they were gradually remedied, as far as possible,
many years later, by the execution of cadastral surveys, undertaken
in 1877, and by the preparation of a record of rights.
The importance of canal irrigation for the agriculture of the Upper
Provinces soon attracted the attention of British officers. Their first
efforts were directed to the restoration of canals made by previous
rulers rather than to the construction of entirely new projects. After
a preliminary survey in 1809–10, work began in 1815 on an old
channel which had been originally made in the middle of the four-
teenth century by Firoz Shah, the Tughlaq king of Delhi, for the
irrigation of the arid tracts of Hissar and Širsa, and which after various
vicissitudes had ceased to flow during the period of Moghul decay.
It was in reality a series of natural drainages connected by excavation
rather than a true canal. 2 No special irrigation department was
created, but the services of military officers were utilised and the
strictest economy in expenditure was enforced. The restoration, carried
out on lines far from scientific, was completed in 1827. The work, now
known as the Western Jumna Canal, had a total length of 425 miles,
a
including distributaries, and, besides providing Delhi with water,
irrigated a considerable area in the Hissar district, which in 1807 had
been an almost uninhabited waste. In 1822 work was undertaken on
a similar but smaller channel from the left bank of the Jumna, con-
structed early in the eighteenth century by a Moghul ruler. This
project, now the Eastern Jumna Canal, with a total length of 155 miles,
was completed in 1830, but it took several years longer to remedy
defects which soon showed themselves, 3 Meanwhile the directors of
the Company, unimpressed with the importance of irrigation for their
new territories, were loath to embark on costly schemes. Whatever
expenditure was allowed had to be met from current revenue; the
days of loan funds raised for productive works were yet far distant.
It was not until 1854 that the first great original project, the Upper
Ganges Canal, was completed, though it had been suggested as early
as 1836. Famine served to emphasise its necessity.
The Upper Provinces were in a part of India peculiarly liable to
that scourge, the tract about Delhi having suffered thirteen visitations
in the previous five centuries. The development of British famine
policy has been sketched elsewhere in this volume. Its two funda-
mental features, the existence of means for the rapid transport of food
and a system of public works on which the mass of agricultural labour
a
1 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 40; Adm. Rep. N. -W. Provs. 1882–3, p. 50.
: Triennial Review of Irrigation in India, Calcutta, 1922, p. 24; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 278 599. ;
Imp. Gaz. III, 327 399.
Triennial Review, p. 25; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 283 sqq.
## p. 85 (#121) #############################################
FAMINE AND IRRIGATION
85
suddenly thrown out of employment can earn a subsistence wage, did
not exist, and indeed could not have existed under native rulers. Their
famine measures were generally limited to a prohibition of grain
export, penalties for private hoarding, and the distribution of a modi-
cum of relief. " There was thus no famine organisation, however crude,
which the new rulers could inherit and utilise. Their own experience
soon began. In 1803 the monsoon failed and famine visited the Upper
Provinces. One-third of a million sterling of land-revenue was re-
mitted and land-holders were assisted with advances, while bounties
were given on import of grain. In 1812 famine again appeared in
the country lying west of the Jumna. In 1837–8 it prevailed in a
severe form in a tract which held a population of twenty-eight
millions, including twenty-one millions in the then newly formed
North-Western Provinces. On this occasion the first definite efforts at
famine organisation were made at a cost of nearly a quarter of a
million sterling; the government definitely recognising its responsi-
bility for the relief of the able-bodied, while leaving that of invalids
and orphans to public charity. 2 Liberal suspensions and remissions of
revenue, to the extent of nearly one million sterling, were given,
though loans and advances to land-holders were discouraged. The two
canals which had been recently reopened fully proved their value in
the famine, which served to impress on the authorities the vast im-
portance of irrigation, and in particular to secure attention for the
famous project which subsequently became the Upper Ganges Canal,
now irrigating large areas in the Doab. Originated by Colonel
Colvin, it was elaborated by Sir P. Cautley of the Bengal Artillery,
who ultimately constructed the canal. Work began in 1842 but it was
interrupted by lack of funds and by other causes during the Afghan
and Sikh wars. Irrigation actually commenced in 1854, but operations
were hampered by the Mutiny, and it was not until the famine of
1860–1 that the full supply of water could be utilised. Though it was
one of the earliest of the British canals, and though defects in design
had gradually to be rectified, portions of it are even yet unique in
size and conception. Its total length, including branches and dis-
tributaries, is over 3800 miles. It is still the largest single irrigation
work in India and in 1919–20 it irrigated over one and a third
million acres.
Comparatively few public works, other than canals, some main
lines of communications, and some necessary public buildings, were
constructed during the early years of British administration. There
was no Public Works Department; projects being executed through
the agency of a Military Board, an inefficient arrangement which
existed until 1854. 4
1 Imp. Gaz. III, 477 599.
: Imp. Gaz. II, 484, 501; Report of Famine Commission, 1880, p. 31; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs.
1911-12, p. 22.
• Triennial Review, p. 30; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 287 599.
• Imp. Gaz. IV, 307.
## p. 86 (#122) #############################################
86 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
The indigenous system of liquor excise, termed abkari, was one of
farm pure and simple, the unrestricted and exclusive right to manu-
facture and sell spirituous liquor within a more or less defined area
being usually leased to the local Moghul tax farmer, whether an
official or a zamindar. Under the Company's government a similar
system of leases of defined areas in favour of licensees was continued,
but between 1790 and 1800 restrictions on the number and locality
of shops and stills were introduced. " This modified system was
extended to the Upper Provinces, but as early as 1813, in order to
secure greater control, central distilleries were established at con-
venient places, generally the headquarters of districts, or of their sub-
divisions, termed tahsils. Within these buildings the licensed distillers
were required to carry on their operations, the right to sell at specified
shops being separately licensed; though in order to cope with illicit
distillation, an ever-besetting difficulty in Indian excise administra-
tion, single stills were permitted in distant outlying areas, their
licences covering both manufacture and sale. To such single detached
stills the term "outstill”, so common in Indian excise discussions, is
properly applicable. In the Upper Provinces as well as in Bengal the
new system was found unable to cope with illicit traffic, and after
1824 there was a general return to the system of farms or leases of
specified shops in defined areas, with outstills where necessary. This
arrangement, with minor modifications, continued in force in the
Upper Provinces until after 1858. The attainment of the ideal, then
only dimly perceived, of controlled consumption combined with high
or even adequate taxation was incompatible with a volume of illicit
traffic with which the administration of the time was quite unable to
contend.
As in the case of spirituous liquor, the excise of opium, regarded by
the Moghuls as a subject for state monopoly, took the form of a farm
of the exclusive right to manufacture and sell. The manifold defects
of this system, which the East India Company took over in 1773,
caused its abandonment in 1797, the government then assuming the
monopoly of manufacture through its own agencies; an organisation
which was extended to the Upper Provinces and has been described
elsewhere. 2
Municipal self-government did not exist at the introduction of
British rule. 3 A pure exotic, it was planted very gradually and tenta-
tively by the new-comers. Their first efforts were confined to the
presidency towns, and it was not until 1850 that legislative provision
was made for the constitution of municipal bodies in provincial towns.
These consisted of the district magistrate, in whom all executive
Papers relating to Excise Administration in India printed in Government of India
Gazette of 1 March, 1890; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, p. 170; Imp. Gaz. IV, 254;
H. of C. Papers, 1831-2, vol. xi.
: Imp. Gaz. IV, 242; H. of C. Papers, 1890-1, LIX, 384.
• Imp. Gaz. IV, 281, 284 99. ; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882–3, p. 48.
1
## p. 87 (#123) #############################################
NON-REGULATION AREAS
87
authority was vested, and a body of nominated councillors, whose
function was to assess rates in accordance with certain prescribed
principles, and to assist the district magistrate with advice. Taxation
might be a personal assessment on householders, or by rates on houses,
and the proceeds were expended in the entertainment of town watch-
men, simple sanitation, lighting and other local objects. The act of
1850 was fairly widely applied, and apparently with a considerable
degree of success, in the North-Western Provinces. 1
Passing now from the regulation districts of that région, the re-
mainder of this chapter will be concerned with non-regulation areas.
To the explanation of the origin and general significance of that dis-
tinction as already given, it may be added that the type of adminis-
tration adopted in non-regulation areas was characterised by simple
and more direct modes of procedure and by the greater accessibility
of officials to the people; but chiefly by the union of all powers,
executive, magisterial, and judicial, in the hands of the district officer,
here termed deputy-commissioner in place of magistrate and collector,
subject however to the appellate and supervisional jurisdiction of the
commissioner of the division in all branches of work. ? The system
was paternal rather than formally legal, though legal principles were
by no means set aside; and it largely depended for its success on the
personal character, initiative, vigour and discretion of the local
officers. Passing over the non-regulation Sagar and Narbada terri-
torics, of which the early administration was not conspicuously suc-
cessful, though law and order and a judicial system were established,
we may proceed at once to an account of administrative development
in thc Panjab, the whole of which was always non-regulation.
That province, as it exists at present, including the recently
separated Delhienclave, comprises cis-Satlej and trans-Satlej portions.
The first consists of the Delhi territory, annexed in 1803, and of a
tract, lying between it and the Satlej, which was gradually absorbed
as a result of the protectorate assumed in 1809 and of the first Sikh
War. The second comprises the annexations of 1846 and 1849, the
Jalandhar Doab and the Panjab proper. In accordance with the
policy approved on the retirement of the Marquis of Wellesley, the
Delhi territory after its formal annexation was for long outside the
sphere of direct British control, which it was sought to restrict to the
eastern side of the Jumna, leaving the territory, which, as the result
of recent war, was largely a deserted waste, in the hands of a ring of
semi-independent chiefs, with whose administration the Resident at
Delhi interfered as little as possible while endeavouring to maintain
peace. The aggressions attempted by Ranjit Singh on the country
cast of the Sailcj, foiled in 1809 by the Treaty of Amritsar, resulted
* Moral and Mar. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P. 54.
· Campbell, op. cit. p. 250; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 447 sqq. ; Sir C. Aitchison, Lawrence, Oxford,
1892, pp. 59 599. ; Imp. Gaz. IV, 54.
; Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs, 1882-3, p. 16.
## p. 88 (#124) #############################################
88 ADMINISTRATION IN U. P. , C. P. , AND PANJAB
in the protectorate already mentioned, but even then administrative
control over the Delhi territory was very slowly asserted. It was only
in 1819–20 that the tract was divided into four districts under locally
resident officers, a fifth being added in 1824. In 1832 they were
definitely included in the North-Western Provinces for purposes of
administration, which it was directed should be carried on in the
spirit of the Bengai Regulations, though these were never, it appears,
formally extended to them. The early revenue administration up to
1828 was of the same highly unsatisfactory character as in other parts
of the North-Western Provinces, but the tract was greatly benefited
by the restoration of the Western Jumna Canal, especially during the
famine of 1837–8, of which it felt the full force. Up to its union with
the Panjab in 1858 its administration proceeded on the lines already
described, a regular settlement being made between 1837 and 1842. 2
The growth of the supremacy of Maharaja Ranjit Singh over the
trans-Satlej Panjab has been described elsewhere. Here we deal only
with his administrative system. 3 Immersed in war and diplomacy, he
had no leisure for the creation of a stable polity. Beyond military
organisation and conquest, the collection of revenue was his chief
interest. To this all other branches of his administration were sub-
ordinated, and to it the attention of all his officials was unremittingly
directed. He appears to have utilised all known sources of taxation:
imposts direct and indirect, on land, on houses, on persons, on manu-
factures, on commerce, on imports and exports; all had a place in
his fiscal system. The revenue of remote provinces was farmed to men
of wealth and influence, or of vigour and capacity, and they were
invested with powers of government in the exercise of which they
experienced little interference, provided that revenue was regularly
remitted. Military chiefs, who enjoyed the revenue of jagirs, or
assigned tracts of land, on condition of furnishing armed contingents,
also exercised practically unlimited authority in their jurisdictions.
These farmers and jagirdars had under them local agents, or kardars,
who exercised such administrative functions as were recognised, and
of these the only one of importance was the collection of revenue. In
tracts, neither farmed nor held in jagir, and known as khalsa, the
kardars were under the nazim, or local governor of a group of dis-
tricts, who was directly responsible to the maharaja and his informal
council, or cabinet; but their positions depended largely on the
influence which they could command at court, and on their success
in collecting revenue. In Ranjit Singh's later years central control
was much relaxed and the system of farming became more prevalent.
Land-revenue was collected as a rule direct from the cultivator in the
shape of a fixed share of the produce, 4 except in the case of crops, such
Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, p. 23; Ibbetson, op. cit. pp. 34, 35; Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1911-12,
pp. 16–17.
2 Ibbetson, op. cit. chaps. iv and v; Panjab Sett. Manual, p. 17.
's Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, sect. 1, pt 11; 1882-3, p. 25; H. of C. Papers, 1849, vol. XLI.
• Panjab Sett. Manual, chap. iv.
## p. 89 (#125) #############################################
THE RULE OF RANJIT SINGH
89
as sugar-cane and cotton, which could not readily be divided. In
lieu of the actual share of the crop its estimated money value was
sometimes taken, common shares being one-third and two-fifths, with
one-half on the more fertile lands. Numerous additional dues in cash
or kind were also collected, and cultivators of all grades were treated
on the same footing without reference to any distinctions of superior
or inferior rights on land, though occasionally the leaders of the village
community received a measure of indulgence. Joint responsibility of
its members for the payment of land-revenue was not enforced, except
rarely when a few of its leaders were allowed to engage for a lump
sum, and then they tended to assume the privileges of landlords
towards the rest of the cultivators, who fell back into the position of
tenants.
There were no definite and regular courts of justice, though ere
was a judicial officer, termed the adalati, in Lahore. Private property
in land of a kind was recognised and in principle upheld, and the
general corporate existence and obligations of village communities
were maintained, while disputes were settled to a minor extent by the
local authorities, but mainly by private arbitration, resort to which
by means of a comparatively organised system of committees, or
panchayats, was widely practised. There were local police officers, but
their functions were more often political and military than civil, their
duty being to check local disturbances and to arrange for the move-
ments of troops. There was no excise system, the production and sale
of liquor being quite uncontrolled. All officials enjoyed much licence,
but cultivators were not as a rule needlessly oppressed if they paid
their revenue. The criminal law was unwritten and contained mainly
two penalties, fine and mutilation.
